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Show only lesson I've learned after receiving more than four years of heavy mail and having been asked to share the deep and intimate concerns of many thousands of Americans. Another lesson translates to a cry, an appeal that has grown within me week after week, month after month. I wish I could somehow erase a single word that has needlessly, unfairly caused more searing human anguish, more pain than any other. That word is "illegitimate." Sometimes it seems to me that we act as if we've been cursed with some need to create, then nurture an endless supply of stigmas to inflict on others, all in some fury. If only I could communicate the branding, psyche-scarrin- g cruelty, the pain of those letters to me which begin, "I am illegitimate." I wish I could somehow erase a single word that has needlessly, unfairly caused more searing human anguish, more pain than any other. That word is ' illegitimate. ' Does anyone know of any human birth lacking both a father and mother? That we do not know their names does not obliterate their very real existence, which leads me to another sadness sometimes in the mail to me that is, persons orphaned by abandonment. Although they're now adults, some live with suppressed rage while they forlornly wish to know from whose body and genes they exist. These letters are virtual pleas to discover if there is any way that they might locate their parents. Even one parent? The gulpy fact is that when secret abandonment of an infant occurred 20 to 30 years ago, there is usually no starting clue. Even more traumatic may be continued |
