A Mother’s Pain

Today is the feast day of Teresa of Avila, one of my very favorite saints. This sixteenth-century Spanish noblewoman is patroness of writers and migraine sufferers, perhaps best known to us for three things: reforming the Carmelites, writing The Interior Castle, and her cheeky retort to being summarily dumped in a stream by her horse. Looking up to [...]

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Montana Supreme Court Hands Parental Rights of Woman

Today at CatholicExchange.com I came across this sad story, in which a woman who had left the lesbian lifestyle to marry and raise her children was forced to relinquish custody of her adopted children to her former lover.
At every level, this makes no sense — the woman who was granted sole custody was not the [...]

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Weekend Ponderings: How Blessed Are You?

One of the shortest Gospel readings is this weekend, from Mark 11:
While Jesus was speaking,
a woman from the crowd called out and said to him,
“Blessed is the womb that carried you
and the breasts at which you nursed.”
He replied, “Rather, blessed are those
who hear the word of God and observe it.”
There are times in Scripture — [...]

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Weekend Ponderings: Pope says children of divorce and cohabitation “the new orphans”

In this recent interview on CNS, Pope Benedict is quoted during a meeting with Brazilian bishops.
He said as divorces increase and cohabitation is on the rise, the children in these situations are “deprived of their parents’ support and become victims of malaise and abandonment, thus spreading social disorder.”
Children need concrete fixed points of reference such as [...]

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Miracle Mondays: “The Fiery Gift”

Today on Sarah’s FB page was a link to this article in America magazine that compares childbirth and prayer. One paragraph in particular caught my attention:
“All the adorable clothes for infants, jokes about pickles and ice cream, and debates about appropriate names for children occupy the expectant woman’s mind like sitting-room company sharing a pleasant [...]

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Miracle Monday: Between the Dreaming and the Coming True

Yesterday I opened a comment from a reader, Mei-Ling (who if memory serves is an adult adoptee, can’t remember from which country), who writes:
Since you didn’t allow commentary on the other post, and I’m just too lazy to e-mail you, here goes: “Should we adoptive parents just go away quietly to lick our wounds, and wait for our [...]

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Today at “Mommy Monsters”: *sigh*

Every once in a while I notice some incoming activity or link from a site that — to put it mildly — doesn’t think much about EMN, or the National Council for Adoption, or anyone who believes that there could be circumstances when a birth mother ought to have a say in whether she wants to [...]

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