The Hippie and the Soldier's Daughter

I recently read a really great book written by an adult adoptee. It is called The Mistress's Daughter and is written by A.M. Homes. She doesn't sugar coat anything and writes not about growing up adopted but about her reunion with her birth parents.Almost all of these stories that one sees on 'Oprah' or reads about in magazines are uplifting and healing. In real life they are messy and unpredictable. In 2003 I had to do a thesis project at the the end of art school. Thesis is a bit of a misleading term. The idea was to make a proposal and then set out to prove or disprove it using the visual media of your choice. So I decided to do a film about my search for my birth parents. (You can see it here and/or hear me being interviewed on the radio about the project here—just click on Interview on KALX 12/2/2003). Once I found my birth parents and finished the film I thought that this was a chapter of my life that I could finally put to bed. But what happened next was the real surprise. Discovering where I had come from and the people who had brought me into this world, as well as bringing my own little person in the world, started to re-frame everything. And what followed was way more 'Jerry Springer' material than 'Oprah'. So I decided to re-visit those heady days after I found my birth parents. I want to pick up from where the film left off. And I want to write about it so I will never forget. Think of this as one of the old magazine serials. The story is too big and overwhelming to do in one chunk. So here goes...