Awareness...

...here's what I know.

At the age of five, a girl is taken from her mother, deemed unfit to raise her child.  Mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, often seen ranting about on the front stoop.  Neighbors complain to the authorities of her lewd behavior, tossing dirty laundry out of her second story window, screaming at alarmed families venturing by her residence at night.

She refuses her medication, arguing that it makes her sleepy.  Fights a court order to be hospitalized, and manages to scrape by, mentally unstable, yet savvy enough to live off her neighbors's tax dollars.

The young girl is placed in a foster home, her mother declared unable to ever care for her daughter for the remainder of her childhood.  

The courts however, allow weekly visits to continue, despite terminating mother's parental rights.

This act alone dissuades any potential adoptive parents from offering the girl a chance at a real family.

Years drag on like grass clippings in a weary breeze.  The girl ages to a teenager, bounces around from one home to the next, settling in, moving out...and continues to visit her mother.

At fifteen, she finds a family willing to adopt, on one condition.  No more visits with the birth mother.

Mother hires a lawyer, goes to court, and wins.  Visitations continue.  

The girl lets her grades slide.  Begins acting out in school, getting into fights, facing suspension.  She tells her foster parents that she can't control herself, that she feels "crazy" at times.  She tries to run away...is caught, demands to be moved, blows out of another home three months later...

A year limps by, and the girl now resides in a therapeutic home, doors locked at night from the outside, constant supervision, no time for play.

And the visits with Mom continue...

...I know of a young boy, three at the time, who is taken into care after his father beats him to a pulp for waking him up one night with a belly ache.

The boy spends two years in care, settling in with a family who adores him, yearn to have him as their son.  They push Children's Services to fight for full custody.  Hire their own lawyer, wage a custody battle with a set of birth parents struggling to sober up, to keep a job, to maintain a residence...and lose.

The boy is returned to his birth parents.

Three months later the boy is beat to death by his father, who now sits in prison.  

I wonder if he ever thinks of his son...while he sits there, thinking.

...here's what I believe.

...in this world we live in, the majority of  females, regardless of species, is at some point in their life, capable of reproduction.  Gifted with the ability to create life.

Where we as a society continue to fail, is in the belief of motherhood.  Giving birth to a child does not make one a mother.  The title of Motherhood is a noble accomplishment...one that is earned, not granted.    

When will we learn?  When?

El

 http://www.amazon.com/South-Charm-A-Novel-ebook/dp/B005DJ945A/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_4_JED2

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-ebook/dp/B00AZBIM68/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2_CA7M