Walking the line of emotion

For myself until recently it has been hard for me to communicate honestly about how I feel towards surrogacy. Those of us who are products of donor conception typically care about the adults who were involved in our conception. This creates a natural gag, that makes you nervous to be too vocal about any opinion that might be hurtful.

For myself I always felt a bit like a product that a group of people came together to put into the world. I have felt a bit like I’ve had no voice or say so about this ride called life. The process of putting my opinion out there has been one that has made me feel a bit more empowered. I hope to be able to show people who are looking to start their families that there are pitfalls to egg/sperm donations and surrogacies that they may not even be able to imagine.

Although it’s been helpful to be beginning to put this opinion out here, I still fear that my birth mom may take offense to this process that I need to go through. So I want to be clear that I have no ill will towards her, or most of the people who get involved in this process. I was one of the earlier products of surrogacy, there definitely wasn’t information out at that time that the children of these arrangements weren’t always happy with their situations. I don’t think that anyone realized that children would fight a lot of the same issues that traditionally adopted children do.

Recently, I took part in filming for a documentary about surrogacy. When I sat down with Jennifer Lahl (the director/ producer) I expressed my two concerns. First being that I didn’t want to put anything out there that would seem critical of my birth mom or hurtful towards her. The second one was that I wanted to be able to articulately express my view point, to be able to be effective with what I was trying to communicate. Jennifer Lahl has done some previous documentaries such as “Anonymous Father’s Day”, and “Eggsploitation”. She says when she speaks to people who have been involved with sperm/egg donation and surrogacies (both the products of and donors) they have always had a concern about hurting someone. That they also have censored themselves to some extent.

I am attempting to walk the line where I don’t hurt anyone that I care about, but I feel that this information is very important to put out there because in putting this message out there maybe future children and families can be spared unnecessary turmoil. Maybe if we’re really lucky adults who have struggled with starting a family even after they get one could come together to force adoption reform! To me this would be ideal.