Stolen babies - Argentina

Argentine grandmother recalls finding stolen grandson

The fate of stolen babies is one of the most painful legacies of Argentina's "Dirty War". During this period, up to 30,000 people were killed - or were made to "disappear" -by the armed forces, according to rights groups.

Children born to mothers held in detention centres were given to police or army families. Many were brought up not knowing they were adopted and only found out as adults. Many more still do not know that they were seized from their parents.

The fate of stolen babies is one of the most painful legacies of Argentina's "Dirty War". During this period, up to 30,000 people were killed - or were made to "disappear" -by the armed forces, according to rights groups.

Children born to mothers held in detention centres were given to police or army families. Many were brought up not knowing they were adopted and only found out as adults. Many more still do not know that they were seized from their parents.

BBC Newsnight's Sue Lloyd Roberts meets  one of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an organisation which aims to find the children taken during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

Rosa recalls the moment she found her own grandson - some 25 years after he was born.

Watch Sue Lloyd Roberts' full report on BBC Newsnight on Thursday 4 April 2013 at 22:30 BST on BBC Two and the afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.

Woman's Hour did a feature on this today which you can catch on the BBC Listen Again website.

The Primal Wound

Following on from yesterdays post, The Power of Words, Find Your Family highly recommend the above book The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier. A moving and honest study by an adoptive mother who looks deeply into the bonds of birth and attachment. Cliché it may well be but you may well find yourself within the pages of this book. 

"The Primal Wound is a book which is revolutionizing the way we think about adoption. In its application of information about pre- and perinatal psychology, attachment, bonding, and loss, it clarifies the effects of separation from the birth mother on adopted children. In addition, it gives those children, whose pain has long been unacknowledged or misunderstood, validation for their feelings, as well as explanations for their behavior."

Read more here...

Find Your Family

The power of words...

Find Your Family were recently featured in a local newspaper.

It was strange to see parts of our story in print, evoking memories of another time when another newspaper played a huge part in our own family search. 

Not long before the above group shot was taken, the Irish Times had printed a letter written by Kathleen. The letter was a plea for information about Kathleen’s mother, Mary’s sister.  This letter was written after having exhausted many other avenues in the long journey towards finding our birth family, before the days of the internet. The letter in the Irish Times did indeed lead to the discovery of Kathleen’s mother (sadly deceased) as well as many other close family members, cousins and aunts (including Mary O'Connor, above), brothers and sisters. It was seen by a family member who, like many Irish families who have settled in the UK and elsewhere, regularly reads the Irish Times to keep abreast of events back ‘at home’. As well as finding her relatives, Kathleen received many letters and cards from others hoping to help and kind souls praying she may be their own kin.  Correspondences which developed in friendships.

Newspapers can still be an invaluable resource when looking for long lost family. Their readership can be both broad and specific, often covering large audiences in precise search areas. Never underestimate the power of words; a simple letter or e-mail to an editor, a heartfelt plea or straightforward query, can lead to doors you perhaps never dreamt you would open.

www.findyourfamily.org.uk 

Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander

Internationally acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander always considered himself a man of science. His unwavering belief in evidence-based medicine fuelled a career in the top medical institutions of the world. But all this was set to change.

One morning in 2008 he fell into a coma after suffering a rare form of bacterial meningitis. Scans of his brain revealed massive damage. Death was deemed the most likely outcome. As his family prepared themselves for the worst, something miraculous happened. Dr Alexander's brain went from near total inactivity to awakening. He made a full recovery but he was never the same. He woke certain of the infinite reach of the soul, he was certain of a life beyond death.

In this astonishing book, Dr Alexander shares his experience, pieced together from the notes he made as soon as he was able to write again. Unlike other accounts of near-death experiences, he is able to explain in depth why his brain was incapable of fabricating the journey he experienced. His story is one of profound beauty and inspiration.

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You may wonder why this book is featured on a blog about genealogy. The reason is that apart from being about life after death, this book is also about family, adoption and identity. I read the book without knowing this fact but if ever there is a list of books that show the importance of genes and of family this would have to be one of the top titles.

More titles for such a list will follow in due course.

Beginning

 

Artist Gustav Klimt

 

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage - to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness. 

Alex Haley, Roots

 

The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Lao-Tzu

 

 

Searching for Shells Machrihanish

Artist: Helen L Robertson

 

 

 

 

Tokens for the Foundlings

Drawing by Mary Husted

 

The Foundling Museum in London is somewhere I have never got around to visiting but I hope to do so. I was recently visiting the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and spotted this book of poems for sale. I just had to buy it as the subject is close to my heart.

Tokens for the Foundlings

Edited by Tony Curtis

 

The royalties from sales of this book are donated to The Foundling Museum, in support of its work.

Established in 1741, The Foundling Hospital was essentially Britain’s first orphanage; admissions to it were catalogued by tokens left by the children’s parents. The book is an anthology of poems about orphans, childhood and family inspired by and supporting the work of The Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. Contributors include Seamus Heaney, Carl Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, Carol Rumens, Michael Longley, George Szirtes and Charles Simic.

 

 

 

Tokens given by mothers to their children on leaving them at the Foundling Hospital. 18th Century

I want to post two poems today from the book, the first is a prose poem by Mary Husted - the drawing at the top of this post is one of many made by Mary Husted before she was forced to give up her baby for adoption (they have since been reunited).

 

The Shawl

A memory haunts me. It is the wrapping of a shawl. I am leaving the nursing home, following two women; one of them has the baby in the shawl. Snow is thick beneath our feet. It started snowing on Boxing Day and in early February it is still falling.

The women turn left – I follow. We walk up a driveway into an empty waiting room. the doctor comes to meet us, searches my face and looks at the child she delivered ten days ago. We sit on hard chairs and exchange awkward pleasantries. The baby is unwrapped from his shawl. He sleeps. I ask to hold him – here he is in my arms.

In a corner of the room near the door is a fish tank. A stream of bubbles rises slowly and continually to the surface as the colourful fish swim to and fro. to and fro. The three older women watch me with guarded glances. They do not know what I will do. ‘It is time,’ says one. I take the shawl, soft and woollen, and very slowly, carefully, with studied tranquillity, I wrap it around the child, before standing and handing him to one of the women. She takes him and turns, followed by the other woman, to go out of the door. I watch them go. I am one of the bubbles in the fish tank.

Mary Husted.

Rain

The day I let you go there were floods

in Wroxeter and Bishopstown.

Leaves, caramel coloured, were swallowed

by the rivers and as weather travelled north

windows ran grey for hours.

Far from that tiny parlour room,

prams were being pushed around still dry

parks or else their thin wheels were hissing

on wide, wet paths and mothers were thinking

of feeding times, baths.

The moment of goodbye was soon over.

Woollen blankets soft between my fingers;

the silk hem of the parting dress a breath

on my skin, and your weight, like kilos of sweet

apples, swung in my arms.

And then, I was cradling air and dust

and stood near the grate, in an awkward tableau

listening to rain falling into soot.

Each clear drop sent dark motes into the room

and the terrible space in my arms gathered all of them in.

Roz Goddard