News
Saturday, Apr. 30: Event Celebrates Women Touched by Adoption
Open to the public, gathering honors adult adoptees and their birth/adoptive mothers, grandmothers
March 3, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Saturday, Apr. 30: Event Celebrates Women Touched by Adoption
Open to the public, gathering honors adult adoptees and their birth/adoptive mothers, grandmothers
CINCINNATI (March 3, 2011)—Recognizing and honoring adult adoptees and their birth mothers, adoptive mothers, and birth and adoptive grandmothers, A Celebration of Women Touched by Adoption will be held on Saturday, April 30, 2011. Presented by Celebrate Adoption, a Cincinnati-area network of families touched by adoption, the event is from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. It will be located in the Evendale Recreation Center, 10500 Reading Road, Evendale, Ohio 45241.
This adults-only event is free and open to the public, however, advance registration is required. To register, please call Julie Eshman, event chair at 513-777-9391 or send an email to deshman@fuse.net.
“This event, in its 12th year, honors the triad of adoption: birthmothers, adoptive mothers and the adoptee,” says Patty Bonem, LISW, Celebrate Adoption’s professional facilitator. “Adoptive families are built out of both loss and joy, and this event is a chance for women to come together with others who understand and celebrate the miracle of adoption, particularly close to Mother’s Day.”
Held annually, the event includes refreshments and a brief ceremony with adoption poetry and music. Participants are encouraged to bring family photos—framed or unframed—to share. The photos will be returned at the conclusion of the event. Attire is dressy-casual.
“The event is for adult women whose lives have been touched by adoption,” explains Celebrate Adoption member and event chair Julie Eshman. “We welcome birth mothers, birth grandmothers, adoptive mothers, adoptive grandmothers and adult adoptees to share their stories and honor their connections.”
Past participants have included families in open, domestic adoptions—where birth and adoptive families maintain varying degrees of communication—as well as birth mothers and adoptive mothers in closed international and domestic adoptions, where information about birth families might be sparse or nonexistent.
Eshman, a mother by adoption to two children, has attended the event in the past with her own mother, as well as her daughter’s birth mother and birth grandmother. “Although we maintain an open adoption relationship, the event is a beautiful way for me to formally express my appreciation to my daughter’s birth family for their decision to pursue adoption.”
Although she has reunited with the daughter she placed in a closed adoption 45 years ago, birth mother Sharon Roll has found that attending this event over the past several years has helped her make peace with the lingering emotions from that difficult time in her life. “It’s amazing to be in a room with all these women celebrating the special connection that you can only understand if you’re a part of the adoption triad,” says Roll. “To me, coming to this event feels like coming home and I wouldn’t miss it.” Both Roll and her birth daughter have contributed poetry to the event’s program.
For Celebrate Adoption member Christine Traficanti whose two daughters were adopted from China, the gathering holds a different appeal. “The event offers me the chance to honor my girls’ birthmothers—women I never met but admire greatly—and their courageous choice to make an adoption plan for their children,” she says.
For more information, or to register to attend the event, please call 513-777-9391.
