Tennessee Voices: Film sheds light on dark days of adoption
Many in the adoption reform movement are praising The Weinstein Co. for its investment in the movie “Philomena.” It’s a bittersweet film about an Irish mother searching for her long-lost son, who was illegally taken from her by nuns and adopted to America.
Birth mothers who willingly or unwilling surrendered their children during those dark days of closed and illegal adoptions are almost never the focal point of a movie based on the truth.
When we look at the history of adoption, surrender, and birth mothers and adoptees, the lens through which we view depictions of this triangle are often tinted with our own history and how we were personally touched by adoption.
Those who network in adoption reform movements are hearing from birth mothers who have seen the movie. Many, like me, found it hard to get up and walk out of the theater. It takes a while to recompose, stop the tears and make your way out the door. For many, this is a movie that stays on your mind long after you watched it.
“Philomena” has a deep impact and resurrects a lot of the feelings associated with having to surrender a child for adoption or being an adoptee in search of his or her roots and encumbered with a system that deceives and withholds valuable information.
The movie served as a good look at one of countless thousands if not millions of unintentional surrenders. Your love for a surrendered child is never quenched by the passing of time. The capacity of the movie to portray the realistic feelings a birth mother has for her child is astoundingly poignant and honest.
What hits you the hardest about this movie is the reality of the birth mother and her son and how both had not provided pertinent information that could have brought them together. This information was intentionally withheld on that all-too-familiar shroud of secrecy that enshrined those dark days of closed adoption, black-market adoption and baby-stealing and -selling. Tennessee has its own horrible history. Georgia Tann was a baby thief in Memphis and operated her baby-stealing business out of the Tennessee Children’s Home with state funding.
The dark days of mandatory separation of young mothers from their children is well depicted in “Philomena.” This is history that must never be forgotten. Everything should be done to make sure all who were ever separated from their biological families have a right to know where they came from and to reconnect if they so desire.
“Philomena” goes to the very heart of why the American Adoption Congress exists. Our mission to represent those whose lives are touched by adoption or other loss of family continuity is grounded in the sad history portrayed in “Philomena” and countless other adoptions where biological families are still struggling against closed systems to reunite.