Forced adoption survivors should be compensated, West Australia Parliamentary inquiry recommends

A WA parliamentary inquiry into the devastating forced adoption scandal of last century has recommended financial redress for mothers, adopted people and some fathers.

READ: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-22/forced-adoption-scandal-inquiry-financial-compensation/104249056

ADOPTION REALITY: Marshall Islands | Paying for Inmates Babies in TEXAS

 #adoptionreality

Lawyer In Illicit Marshallese Adoption Scheme Now Accused Of Paying Texas Inmates For Babies

Jody Hall previously arranged for pregnant women to fly from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. through Honolulu in violation of international law. It's unclear if this new investigation will examine those actions as well as the jail accusations.

By John Hill / August 1, 2024

A lawyer who was a subject of a Civil Beat investigation in 2019 into an illegal adoption pipeline from the Marshall Islands through Honolulu has been accused of paying pregnant women at a Texas jail to place their babies for adoption.

Jody Hall was paying “multiple” inmates in Tarrant County, Texas to give up their unborn children in adoptions through her agency, Adoptions International, according to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office.

Hall was arrested on July 23 at her home in Kyle, south of Austin, on the charge of sale or purchase of a child — a third-degree felony — according to an online booking record. She was released the same day on a $50,000 bond. The jail where she is accused of paying for babies is in Fort Worth, about a three-hour drive to the north of her home.

Texas lawyer Jody Hall was booked in Hays County Texas last week and released on $25,000 bond. (Hays County Sheriff’s Office/2024)

Hall’s agency is still in good standing with the state of Texas, according to an online database, and she retains her license to practice law. Hall did not return a phone call seeking comment.

The arrest was apparently part of a broader investigation into Hall’s adoption business. That investigation “concerning unethical adoption practices” began on May 28 and is still underway, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office said.

It’s unclear if that investigation includes her brokering of illicit adoptions involving birth mothers living in the Marshall Islands. In 2019, Civil Beat identified Hall as one of several lawyers illegally arranging for such adoptions.

Hall said in communications with potential clients that she was flying birth mothers from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. mainland through Honolulu. A treaty between the two nations bars such transactions.

In the jail inmate case in Texas, Hall discussed monetary agreements in texts and deposited money into the inmate’s commissary accounts and paid for time on their jail-issued tablets, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

“Those communications showed Hall explain that she will send adoption packets and will continue to provide support for the inmates presuming they do not scam her,” according to the affidavit.

These payments were illegal under Texas law, the affidavit says, because the jail was providing everything the women needed for their pregnancies, including health care, and so could not be justified as necessary.

When one inmate decided to keep her baby, Hall responded in a text, “Amber you’re in jail and a drug addict … You are a scammer and I will be telling the prosecutor in your case all about how this family supported you since November and you scammed them WITH THE HELP OF YOUR BOYFRIEND.”

In another case, one inmate provided Hall with the name of another inmate who was pregnant.

Hall later texted the pregnant inmate, according to the affidavit.

“If you have family members who can take the child, that is great,” she wrote. “Or if you will be out of jail by the time the child is born, that is great too. But if you still won’t be in a position to raise a child … we can help you even when your are not in jail.”

Hall offered to put $100 a week on the inmate’s “books.” At another point she promised $2,500 “when you get out,” the affidavit says, or would make the weekly payments to the inmate accounts.

Hall warned the woman to tell the nurses at the hospital where she delivered that she was planning to give up the child for adoption because otherwise child welfare workers would be called.

“I can get them to close their case if I know you have told the social worker and nurses that you have an adoption plan,” Hall texted, according to the affidavit.

In 2019, while arranging Marshallese adoptions, Hall told would-be adoptive parents that the adoption fee would include payments to “helpers in Honolulu” who would pick up the Marshallese woman and her baby at the airport and drive them to a hotel to await the flight to the mainland.

In one text, Hall told a client that “it’s easier to control” the birth mothers flown from the Marshall Islands, compared to Marshallese women already in Arkansas, “because we buy the tickets. That way they can’t change the tickets. We placed 3 in the past 3 weeks.”

One client told Civil Beat that Hall offered to match her with a birth mother living in the Marshall Islands, but that she would have to cover the airfare. Another told a similar story — after an agreement with a woman already in the U.S. fell through, Hall offered a baby born in the Marshall Islands.

“They fly from the M.I. to Hawaii and then to Dallas,” Hall texted the client.

The Marshall Islands has a tradition of informal adoption, but the practice of permanently severing a parent’s rights is relatively rare. (Jessica Terrell/Civil Beat/2018)

Hall worked with a well-known adoption fixer named Justin Aine, who in 2019 was charged in the Marshall Islands with human trafficking. Aine left the Marshall Islands after being charged and was seen soon after in Arkansas, the home of a large Marshallese population, where he was known to be an adoption facilitator.

Five days after Civil Beat reported on Hall’s activities, an accreditation agency suspended her from continuing to do international adoptions. Two months later, that agency — the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity — canceled Hall’s accreditation for failing to comply with standards. IAAME is the only agency authorized by the federal government to screen international agencies, as required by law.

Adoptions of children from the Marshall Islands have long been prone to exploitation. The practice of permanently severing a parent’s relationship to a child, common in the U.S. and other Western countries, is virtually unknown in the Marshall Islands.

Instead, it’s common for children to live in another household for a while and then return to their birth parents. Marshallese birth mothers have said they did not understand the implications of giving up their children for adoption in the U.S. and were devastated to find that they would never see them again.

Guatemalan Government Apologizes to Victims of Illegal Adoptions

 👇As the theft of children from their families and the subsequent illegal adoption became a tactic of war, it also became a political market.

progressive.org /latest/guatemalan-government-apologizes-to-victims-of-illegal-adoptions-abbott-20240722/

ANOTHER COUNTRY? Government Apologizes to Victims of Illegal Adoptions

By Jeff Abbott 7/22/2024

---

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo has taken an important step in seeking justice for tens of thousands of children illegally adopted from the Central American country. 

On July 12, the president made a public apology to the parents of two children illegally adopted by a family in the United States in 1997. This is the first time that the Guatemalan government has made a public apology for illegal adoptions carried out in the country between 1977 and 2008.

The public apology was in response to the case of Osmín Tobar Ramírez, who was seven years old in 1997 when he and his younger brother, Jeffrey Arias Ramírez, who was nearly two years old, were taken from their family by the Guatemalan state and housed in the Asociación Los Niños de Guatemala orphanage. They were put up for adoption, an act that would later be revealed to be illegal. 

“It was something sensational,” Gustavo Tobar, their biological father, tells The Progressive. “I never thought I would be in front of the highest authorities of the country, in an act especially dedicated to us. You feel a positive energy, you feel nervous, you feel everything, but it is something wonderful, it is something very wonderful.”

In 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of Osmín and Jeffrey’s parents after years of searching for the children and struggling to find justice in Guatemala, where their complaints were met with disinterest from authorities. The court ruled that the Guatemalan state had violated the rights of the family and that a criminal network had financially benefited from the trafficking of the brothers through adoption, ordering that the Guatemalan government apologize to them and set up a commission to find the children that were sold as part of the illegal adoption scheme. 

“We sought justice here in Guatemala,” Tobar says. “We went to courts [in Guatemala], but they did not want to touch the issues. So we had to find an international court so that they could be heard. Everything seemed very long.” 

He adds, “But thanks to God, after twenty-seven years we had that glimmer of hope, that the government of Guatemala would apologize for all the atrocities that were committed against us.”

Osmín and his brother were taken by the state and adopted out during the darkest days of Guatemala’s internal armed conflict, when criminal networks would steal children and put them up for adoption. Arévalo’s public apology comes as a welcome shift for those who have been seeking justice for decades. 

“It was a historic step after a long struggle,” Mariela SR Coline Fanon, the President of the Lost Roots Foundation and who herself was illegally adopted from Guatemala in the 1980s, tells The Progressive. 

“The Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued this sentence before the state because really the apologies were one with an international sentence that the state of Guatemala should comply with the order,” she explains. “It opens the door for everyone. It is a first step.” 

Between 1977 and 2008, Guatemala became one of the primary countries in the world for illegal adoptions, just ahead of Russia and China.  During those years there were an estimated 30,000 cases of children being illegally adopted from the Central American country before international adoptions were made illegal in 2008. Each adoption cost between $12,000 and $80,000. 

Many of the people involved with the illegal adoption scheme were directly connected to Guatemalan political and business leaders, meaning these crimes have largely gone unpunished and families have remained separated. 

“Impunity cannot be the only response to what happened,” Fanon says. After discovering her story at age thirty, she wrote a book entitled Mamá, No Estoy Muerta (Mom, I Am Not Dead) that documents her own kidnapping, adoption, quest for justice, and meeting her biological mother. 

Buy a Native child?

How much I changed (Part 8) (final installment) #Adoption

10 years already? How has adoption perception changed?

By Lara/Trace Hentz (DeMeyer) (Part 8)

If you had asked me in 2004 what I had planned for myself, I would have not said “writing” about adoption and human trafficking or blogging. I had just left my editor’s job at the Pequot Times in Connecticut in August and by September I was married, my second time. How life changed so dramatically for me is documented in my memoir in much greater detail.

It doesn’t seem possible 10 years zoomed by so fast – it’s like a time tornado hit. Time sped up to warp speed and still has me in its grip!

I know many bloggers on adoption (many good friends to me) had hoped we’d made a strong and lasting impact by now. I had that dream myself.  I am not sure we can actually gauge or measure how world views of adoption have changed. (If books on Amazon are an indication, adoptee memoirs are now climbing the ranks over all the propaganda books about how to adopt a baby.)  If the statistics on adoption are any indication, the number of babies adopted by Americans are dropping each and every year. There is definitely a demand for infants (primarily because of infertility) but there is still a short supply of newborn flesh to adopt.  (I do believe the adoption traffickers are constantly reinventing new ways to grab a fresh supply of infants. Think of what new poor countries or communities they will invade as the demand increases!! Read THIS)

What hasn’t changed fast enough for me are adoption laws, sealed adoption files or the old views of promised secrecy and confidentiality for first mothers. If you gave birth, wouldn’t you want to know what happened to your own baby? If you are an adoptee, don’t you want to know what happened to your mother (and father)?  Haven’t we moved past shaming women for unwed pregnancies? Yes, but not enough, apparently.  Lawmakers are still being wined and dined by adoption agency lobbyists so I don’t expect to see much change in the laws – but I hope I am wrong.

What I’d hoped would change faster is the perception of adoption, that it’s not as great for adoptees as people were made to think and believe.  As much as I’ve read in these past 10 years, blogs and books changed me beyond recognition!  Many times I emailed legislators (like in New Jersey and Illinois) and offered my memoir (as a free ebook) hoping they would see the light and change existing adoption laws. Maybe it helped?

Open Adoption - when adoption is necessary – is also an indication that times are changing! But we have a long way to go…This is a quote I saved about open adoption:

…ignored by the adoption agencies is the reality of “open adoption.” Only 22 of fifty states in America recognize open adoption agreements, but failure of the adoptive parents to comply with the agreement is not legally enforceable by the surrendering mother.

There are many excellent writers making profound statements too.

A quote by adoptee-author-blogger Elle Cuardaigh:  And adoption certainly is “worked.” When supply of newborns decreased in the 1970s, the adoption industry had to put a new spin on relinquishment  to stay in business. Since women could not be so easily shamed by single motherhood, they changed tactics. Potential suppliers (pregnant women) are now encouraged to “make an adoption plan.” She reads the “Dear Birthmother” letters and interviews hopeful adoptive parents. She is provided with medical care and possibly even housing.  She is promised this is her choice, and that she can have ongoing contact with her child in an open adoption. It would seem she has all the power, but she is being systematically conditioned to accept her role, her place. She doesn’t want to hurt the baby’s “real parents,” feels indebted to them, emotionally invested. She is soon convinced they are better than she is. She becomes “their birthmother.” It almost guarantees relinquishment. 

 

READ Elle’s blog and new book THE TANGLED RED THREAD.  Or visit: http://ellecuardaigh.com

READ LAURA DENNIS and the guest post: Welcome to the Adoptionland Carnival, Next Stop: The End.
 

Read any and all posts at THE LIFE OF VON. (We lost Von in 2020)
 

Such powerful WRITING!

If you want insight into The St. John’s/Montclair University Adoption Initiative conference from attendee Jae Ran Kim, an adoptee/social worker who I admire greatly, read this.  “Adoptive parent scholars and scholars without any connection to adoption sometimes just miss asking certain questions that adoptee scholars ask,” she wrote on her blog Harlow’s Monkey. (Check out the books too while you are at Harlow’s Monkey!)

The number of excellent powerful blogs and books by adoptees and first parents (and some APs) has exploded in the past 10 years and for that I am so very grateful! Writing three books about the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs and that history (and exploring my own journey) and contributing to new books like ADOPTIONLAND certainly changed me.

I am happily shocked my blog AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES reached over 240,000 hits (in 2014)! If that is any indication, the times really are a changin’.  That blog came about when my memoir One Small Sacrifice was about to be published in 2009 and experts claim if you have a book, you have to have a blog. Well it worked!
I never would have guessed my life would move in the direction it did but I see that there was much more I needed to write about my life and experience.  I let Great Spirit use me and this was the path.
I want to thank those brave bloggers and hundreds of adoptees who have inspired me so much over past 10 years. Keep it coming!

There is a FACEBOOK PAGE by Carol Schaefer that lists many books about adoption: https://www.facebook.com/adoptionbookslist

So what will the next 10 years be like? I don’t have a clue.

Adoption Scandal in Spain investigated

Spain Opens Court Inquiry on Newborn Abductions

By RAPHAEL MINDER

Published: April 12, 2012 New York TimesNew York TimesTop of Form

Bottom of Form

MADRID — An 87-year-old Spanish nun became the first suspect to appear in court Thursday as part of an investigation into at least 1,500 allegations that newborns were abducted and then given or sold for adoption over four decades.

The nun, Sister María Gómez Valbuena, used her right to remain silent before the judge. She then made her way from the Madrid courtroom to a waiting car amid a crowd of journalists and onlookers, some of whom jeered and shouted abuse at her.
Sister Gómez Valbuena was subpoenaed last month after being accused by María Luisa Torres of abducting her baby daughter, born in a Madrid clinic in 1982. Ms. Torres was reunited with her daughter Pilar last summer, after the start of a nationwide campaign to help parents find their abducted children, using DNA testing to confirm parentage.
While the nun refused to testify in court, she issued a statement later in the evening denying any wrongdoing and saying that she found "repugnant'" the idea that a mother could be separated from her baby. She said that she had spent her long life helping the most needy in a disinterested manner, in accordance with her profound religious beliefs.
The associations that have spearheaded the campaign met Thursday with Spain’s ministers for the interior, justice and health, as well as the attorney general, to seek stronger government support for their crusade and to push for a more speedy judicial handling of the cases.
While the associations have complained about foot-dragging by Spain’s judiciary, the attorney general and investigators have underlined the difficulty of confirming startling allegations that have resurfaced several decades after the events and that have involved several people who have since died.
The baby-snatching practices supposedly started in the 1950s under the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco and are believed to have continued until about 1990, 15 years after Franco’s death.
The investigations have also proved sensitive because many of the cases have at least indirectly involved the Roman Catholic Church, since its nuns commonly worked in maternity wards or orphanages.
Antonio Barroso, president of Anadir, an association representing parents searching for missing children, described the meeting Thursday with the ministers as “clearly positive.” The ministers agreed to take several measures to help with the investigations, including devoting more staff to such inquiries as well as setting up a national archive to help coordinate and contrast the different data.
“We have wasted a lot of time, but things should speed up now,” Mr. Barroso said. “While it’s too early to claim any victory, it’s important to have strong government support.”
Anadir also says that Spain was a hub for gangs trafficking snatched babies, with many of the newborns then sold into adoption overseas. Such trafficking dwindled after 1987, it says, when tighter legislation on adoption procedures came into force in Spain.
Meanwhile, some judges across Spain have recently ordered exhumations from cemeteries to confirm whether infants had in fact been buried there. These exhumations have been linked to cases filed by mothers who claim that their newborns were taken away from them immediately after giving birth — officially to undergo further medical checks — and that they were then told that the infant had died.
Ms. Torres recently told the judge investigating her case that she had attempted to get her baby back from Sister Gómez Valbuena, who worked in the maternity ward of the Madrid clinic where she gave birth. But according to Ms. Torres, the nun instead threatened to denounce her for adultery because Pilar was fathered by a man whom she met shortly after separating from her husband.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/world/europe/spain-opens-court-inquiry-on-newborn-abductions.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

We know that Canada, Australia and Ireland had inquiries into the practices of Catholics and other churches who sold babies for profit. Spain is the latest on the list... Trace

Illinois Adoptees can open their records!

http://www.idph.state.il.us/vitalrecords/vital/non_certified.htm

Information on requesting a Non-Certified Copy of an Original Birth Certificate or filing a Birth Parent Preference form in Illinois Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Original Birth Certificates Public Act 96-0895 became effective May 21, 2010 and makes it possible for an adult adoptee or surrendered person to obtain a non-certified copy of his or her original birth certificate under certain circumstances. This same Public Act allows some birth parents to specify their wishes with regard to contact and the release of their identifying information. The bill includes the following provisions: As of May 21, 2010, any adult adopted or surrendered person who was born in Illinois before January 1, 1946, may request a non-certified copy of his or her original birth certificate using a special form (see link below.) Beginning January 1, 2011, birth parents of children born on or after January 1, 1946 who were surrendered may file a Birth Parent Preference form with the Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Information Exchange (IARMIE). This form allows the birth parent to express their wishes regarding the release of their identifying information on the original birth certificate and regarding contact. Starting on November 15, 2011, any adult adopted or surrendered person who was born in Illinois on or after January 1, 1946, may request a non-certified copy of his or her original birth certificate. The ability of an adult adopted or surrendered person born on or after January 1, 1946, to obtain identifying information listed on their original birth certificate may depend on whether his or her birth parents have filed forms with the Illinois Adoption Registry stating a preference regarding the release of their identity. If an adult adopted or surrendered person is deceased, their adult child or spouse (if there is a minor child) may request a non-certified copy of the adopted or surrendered person’s original birth certificate. Please note registration with IARMIE will be required before the non-certified copy of the original birth certificate can be released. Click here for the Surviving Relative of a Deceased Adopted Person registration forms.

THIS FORM is to be used by adopted or surrendered persons to submit a request for a non-certified copy of the original birth certificate. Once completed, the form, along with a legible copy of identification (driver's license, state issued identification card or passport) and a check or money order for $15 (made payable to Illinois Department of Public Health) should be sent to IARMIE. THIS FORM is to be used by birth parents to specify their wishes regarding contact and the release of their identifying information on the original birth certificate. This form, along with a legible copy of identification (driver’s license, state issued identification card or passport) and either a completed IARMIE Medical Questionnaire form or a check or money order for $15 (made payable to Illinois Department of Public Health) should be sent to the IARMIE . Either of these forms and required documentation should be sent to: Illinois Department of Public Health Division of Vital Records Attention: IARMIE 925 E. Ridgely Ave. Springfield, IL 62702-2737 Questions may be directed to the Illinois Adoption Registry at 877-323-5299. Get more information about the Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Information Exchange. Link to Chicago Tribune story:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-adoption-birth-certificates-20120318,0,7825341,full.story

Navajo Elder gets birth certificate at 74

Click here for the story about the Elder...

Thanks to my Dine brother Leland Morrill for sharing this. S

everal of us adoptees are in for a shock (as if we aren't already in shock!) when we go to apply for a new driver's license in the USA. If we cannot supply an original birth certificate, they can deny us. It happened to Leland, who was adopted by Mormons. (His story is posted on my blog here and he is also a contributor in the new book "Two Worlds."
Leland has taught me so much about the Real ID Act of 2005 - which forgot to take into account many Native adoptees have amended (fake) birth records or no birth certificate.

So, please leave a comment if you are having issues with getting a new driver's license. There ought to be a class action lawsuit over this one, eh?

Read Leland's blog: http://amiauscitizennavajo.blogspot.com/

Google: Real ID ACT of 2005 if you need more information...

Trace Hentz (blog editor)

Guest Blog: Adoption Reality by Celeste Billhartz

Adoption Reality by Celeste Billhartz  

May 2, 2011

Celeste Billhartz

A few months ago I got a photograph from a mother who visited with her daughter, in a hospital room. In the photo she is showing her the beautiful little christening gown she had saved, all these 40-some years, to show her daughter that she never wanted to "give her up" for adoption. The daughter blinked, "Yes" in acknowledgment ... her body frozen by ALS/Lou Gehrig's  disease. My friend's other daughter took the photo and another daughter stood,  nearby. They had come to say, Goodbye. Not in the photo, but standing "guard" in the room, was the adoptive mother, who would not allow them a precious few moments of privacy. Four months later, my friend's daughter died. At the funeral service none of the adoptive family, and none of their eulogies, acknowledged this natural family, sitting there, grieving ... and not one person offered condolences on their loss.

The lies in adoption are many. We all tell them, every day. It's all we know, all we have been told to say, all that is allowed. We pretend our sisters, brothers, cousins are, really, ours; they are not. We pretend we have traits inherent in our adoptive families; they are not our traits.

And, all our lives, we protect our adoptive families from the truth: We have our own natural families, our own sisters, brothers, cousins ... our own trails of traits, somewhere, reaching back to the ancients in our souls. And, our natural mothers ... we wonder where are they, who they are, why did

they "give" us away?? Not having answers, not "awake" to the reality of adoption coercion, many of us pretend. We believe they didn't want us or wanted something else more -- school, a job, etc.

And, so, we make new lives among the strangers -- not of our skin, not of our  hearts. We doze; we pretend. All our adoptive lives, we pretend. And, because we believe we are lucky to have been adopted/wanted, we protect ourselves with happy faces and words of gratitude.

Eventually, we are old enough to be more curious than content, so we ask about our origins. The good strangers -- and there are many -- tell us what they know, show us the original papers with the original names we must see, offer any help we may need to find our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles. How odd; we are strangers to our kin and we love our strangers.

Still, we must reunite. First, for our mothers, and then for ourselves. We both are owed nothing less.

Unfortunately, some adoptive mothers refuse to help adoptees reunite with their natural families and refuse to be gracious, helpful and respectful to natural mothers.

The adoption world has convinced adoptive mothers -- and most civilians -- that Amoms are the saviours of millions of babies/toddlers whose own mothers/families couldn't or wouldn't care for them as well as Amoms can and that natural mothers don't deserve to care for them as much as Amoms do.

Rubbish.

Lawyers, doctors and adoption workers (many of them unmarried women who never had babies) have always taken advantage of young mothers instead of helping them. In closed adoptions of yesterday and open adoptions of today, all the players take advantage of scared young mothers. They count on their agreeing to "do what's best for the baby" well before the young women give birth, well before they know the powerful, undeniable, life-changing love they will feel for these little beings who slipped from their wombs and are, forever theirs, no matter what pre-birth agreements were signed.

These mothers -- millions of them -- are now "awake" ... and they know they were used by the indu$try to supply millions of infertile women (and today, single women) with babies.

Most of society doesn't know how devastating adopting is to young mothers. Most don't want to know, because they can't imagine being forced/schmoozed to surrender their own babies. They cannot imagine anyone daring to do that! They want to believe adopting is always -- and only -- in the best interests of the babies.

Truth is, adopting is a bu$iness.

When women stop paying big bucks to buy infants and toddlers, and when pregnant women are supported in keeping their babies, the bu$iness in adopting will dwindle, and babies will stay with their own families ... where they belong.

OK, you're an adoptive mother who is "waking up" -- now what?

• Help your adopted son or daughter know about his/her natural family. It isn't only a mother lost, but a whole tribe, a whole lineage, sides of two families, personality traits, physical traits, habits, health, quirks and talents. No more secrets. No more lies.

• If mother and child are planning to spend time together, don't stand in their way. Step aside. This is not about you.
• Let your conscience be your guide. You know right from wrong. Most of all, you know injustice when you see it.

In The Mothers Project, I tell the stories of the girl/mothers who lost their babies to adoption in past generations. The coercion continues. Adopting is woman's inhumanity to woman.

[I thank my friend Celeste for this beautiful and wise guest blog...Trace]