Entering 2021, there was so much hope for a return to normalcy. To decency. To the US I always thought existed in America. Here in December, with another wave of Covid causing concern not only across America but across the globe, it is easy to lose sight of all the good that happened in the […]
My birthmother, Lee, died on July 8th. I wasn’t there at her side. No one, save amazing medical personnel, was with her. Welcome to America 2020. After she was born in August of 1934, she spent a year and a half in a Depression orphanage, one of those rooms filled with cribs where people would walk […]
It’s almost been a year (literally!) so it’s not news that I did not win the election to become State Rep for the Worcester Fifth District. But I would do it all again in a nanosecond. The people I met in my community, throughout the eleven towns in our district, were amazing. I feel bonded […]
What a wild year 2017 was, filled with so many experiences and emotions – with becoming a grandmother at the top of my list of ‘highs’… 2018 dawned with three major events: Filming the enactment of Missouri’s Adoptee Rights Act on January 2nd was monumental. The ‘Show Me State’ was one of the last places […]
FINALLY. After an over three and a half decade battle, citizens adopted in New Jersey now have the right to receive their own original birth certificates. I stand in awe of the long-standing effort. The tenacity and resolve of Pam Hasegawa and many many other people in NJ-CARE is a testament to the power of […]
Sometimes, there is so much to say, I end up saying nothing. I have spent the three months since Joan died in silence, trying to organize footage and images and interviews from the days we spent working on her film – and yet in truth I have spent a great deal of time staring off […]
I am making a film that has nothing to do with adoption for the first time in almost ten years. The subject is one of the women I’ve admired most in my life. Joan Lind Van Blom is an extraordinary athlete, the very first woman ever to earn an Olympic medal for the United States […]
Governor Pat Quinn lost his re-election bid in Illinois yesterday. He had come into office by replacing Rod Blagojevich, and then winning one term on his own. And somewhere in there, he signed HB 5428 – the bill that would provide Illinois adoptees with access to their original birth certificates. Governor Quinn did this for a […]
2014 is the year of fourteen. 14. That’s how many states to date provide access to original birth records for adopted citizens. It’s wonderful – yet also sobering. Its taken so much effort to get to this place – and there’s still so far to go. I stand in awe of those who have navigated […]
Last June, as I was filming testimony of NJ-CARE members during an Assembly hearing, my primary camera failed. I was filming Susan Perry at the time, and I remember thinking – well, New Jersey isn’t going to pass access legislation while Governor Christie is in office, and Susan Perry is one of the most important […]