Tag: Katie Couric

Adopt Change

Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness

I don’t really “follow” celebrities but news that the two are divorcing caught my attention and then further this information – Hugh and Deborra-Lee Jackman are the parents of two children, whom they adopted as young children: Oscar, 23 and Ava, 18. “To be clear, Deb and I always wanted to adopt. So that was always in our plan,” Hugh Jackman told Katie Couric in 2012. Someone in my all things adoption group wrote – “didn’t they hold themselves up on a pedestal as superior (as wealthy 2 parent family) to the biological families of the kids they purchased & promise a better life & ‘forever family’.”

It is said that “After the past few years, the love they had for each other turned more into a friendship which got broken during COVID, as the lockdown didn’t help their marriage at all and really put a strain on their relationship. They worked on it and couldn’t get it back.”

Then, I read this – Deborah Furness is the driving force behind a not for profit adoption advocacy group in Australia called LINK>Adopt Change. Their key argument is to make it quicker and easier to adopt in Australia – they’re trying to make it more like the system in the USA. It’s revolting. They’re trying to campaign government departments to make Australia’s version of Termination of Parental Rights easier – it’s backwards thinking, to aid the stealing babies from poor families in order to give them to rich families. Someone else noted –  as much as it’s a very very ‘small mercy’ comparative to the huge traumas they have already experienced in their lives – I am grateful that the children (of Hugh and Deborra-Lee) are both adults.

The Adopt Change website also notes that Deborra-lee is the co-founder of LINK>Hopeland, a US-based platform driving awareness around the issue of vulnerable children. The mission of Hopeland is to ensure children belong in loving families. Hopeland is about family strengthening and community empowerment and driving creative solutions for vulnerable and abandoned children globally. Sounds un-impeachable on the surface.

In discussing this story, one mother who surrendered her child to adoption writes –  I was definitely encouraged to give my son a “two parent” family and that is touted in Christian circles as a reason single moms should choose adoption. My son’s adoptive parents divorced. And it turns out that I wasn’t given all the facts when I chose them as my child’s home and family. I’ll grant that she didn’t likely have the word “abuse” in her marriage vocabulary yet – because I was in an abusive marriage and can remember the day my subconscious allowed that word into my mind – but she did already know that the way her husband presented himself to the world was different than the way the family experienced him. And that was something I deserved to know when making such a life changing decision.

I know it happens. This happened with my sister’s choice of adoptive family (it was a private adoption through a lawyer). I think that sometimes adoption is a hoped for cure in a struggling marriage and it doesn’t always bring about that outcome.

Kristin Chenoweth Reunion

Kristin with Mamalynn

Kristin’s birth mother has passed away but thankfully, she was able to reconnect with the woman and spend 10 years knowing her. She tells the story (about the 3:50 mark) in an interview with Katie Couric in 2019) that her uncle said to her birth mother “There’s a girl on there (Jay Leno’s show) that acts just like you.”

She has spoken about meeting her biological mom for the very first time – “I walked in the room and she went, ‘It’s you?!’ And I said ‘hi!’ and [it was] just like looking in the mirror.”

blogger’s note – I’ve had similar moments when I saw photos of my mom’s birth mother and my dad’s birth father – how much my parents were like their genetic parents. It’s that genetic mirroring that is so often lacking in an adoptee’s life with their adoptive parents, and sometimes extended families. Each of my parents had one sibling who was also an adoptee.

Chenoweth has said in interviews before that her adopted parents always made sure she knew she was adopted and loved, while growing up as a child. “They always said, ‘The lady that had you in her belly could not take care of you the way she wanted to, and she loved you so much.’”

Kristin goes on to describe her birth mother as an incredible person. She notes that upon the two of them meeting, her birth mother asked her “Can you forgive me?” Which she does and says “I’m so grateful for her.”

Chenoweth goes on to say “So many things became clear to me about myself when I met her and came to really know her. Those of us who knew her loved her light. Her love of music and all things artistic. An artist herself!”

Kristin adds, “In her belly, I became fans of Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Doyle Bramhall, Jimi Hendrix, and, of course, Billy Ethridge – my bio dad. The two of them gave me the innate artistic ability I have today,” Kristin continued.

(LINK>Bassist Billy Ethridge replaced Lanier Greig, shortly after ZZ Top was first formed. Ethridge was a bandmate of Stevie Ray Vaughan. He quit because he didn’t want to sign with London records, so Dusty Hill took his spot. )

On her birth mother’s passing, Kristin notes – “Mamalynn prayed for me every year on my birthday, hoping I was having the most perfect life, which of course, I was.”

“I snuck away and prayed for her too, wishing that someday I would be allowed tell her ‘thank you,’ Which I did on 12/12/12. A beautiful day!” she said, adding that the two “didn’t leave anything unsaid in the end.”

“I will miss her till the end of my days,” Chenoweth continued. “But then, I will fly into the sky, where she will be waiting to greet me, and she will say, ‘start singing Babygirl!’ And I will. RIP Mamalynn.”

“Kristin, I’m so sorry for your loss,” Rita Wilson wrote on the tribute. “What a blessing you got to know each other over these past years. And that she got to know you. Your gratitude in this tribute is so bright and clear. Love you. May her memory be eternal.”

blogger’s note – my mom was a singer – she even sang and played her guitar at my wedding. She and my dad both died knowing next to nothing about their genetic parents. I did think that each of my parents met their birth parents after they passed and instantly knew more – than even I know now – about their genetic ancestors. What I know now is hugely more than my parents knew about them during their own physical lifetimes.