Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Where were you born?

Today I did a home visit for one of my families and was reminded of the day the kids moved in. The 6 year old was running in and out, leaving the door open. Finally, the new mom said, “Shut the door? Were you born in a barn?” The girl stopped dead in her tracks and got a really puzzled look on her face. “I don’t know” she replied.

Today the mom and I were reminiscing and the just turned four year old was sitting on my lap. She piped in, “I wasn’t born in a barn. I was born at Walmark.”

I found this not only funny, but incredibly poignant that there are kids out there who have no idea where they were born. Knowing their abusive and neglectful birthparents like they do, they would have no trouble at all believing that they had been born in a barn or born in a Walmart. The stories of their birth, that in functional families are repeated again and again, are unknown.

I was born in a hospital and my parents have told me the story many, many times. Again, what a simple thing, completely left out of the lives of many, many children.

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