The release of the movie Philomena has created a lot of buzz about Irish adoption. Philomena tells the story of an Irish woman who was forced to give her son up for adoption. The film shows her journey to find him 50 years later. For my family, Philomena’s story hits home. My father’s own adoption story closely mirrors the story portrayed on the big screen. My dad began looking for his mom in the 70s through Sean Ross Abbey but the nuns who worked there were no help, discouraged, he put his search on the back burner for awhile. In early ’00s he decided to try again. With help from a woman who specialized in Irish adoption he was able to locate his mother who is now living in London with her family. My dad and his mother connected through phone conversations for a few weeks before she asked him to stop contacting her. She was not yet ready to tell her family. It was not until this past year, when her husband passed away, that she decided it was time to share the news with her children.
Dad with his Mum and half siblings in London, Spring 2014.
My vision for this blog is to walk my readers through my dads journey to finding his mother and her family. This will include my own reflections on this experience as I get to know my new family members. I also hope to include interviews of my family members. as well as reviews of movies, books and articles related to Irish adoption.
In terms of how I want my blog to look, I am thinking minimalist design. I want most of the focus to be on the story that I am telling. However, I realize that I cannot have just a black and white web page of text, that is not appealing no matter how compelling the story may be. I do plan to include photos and media. A blog layout that I find appealing and fairly easy to navigate is the clothing company, Free People. Their blog is clean, not cluttered with adds, they provide easy to follow links to various categories, archives, social media outlets, etc. Although their content is completely different from what I will be writing about, their design is similar to what I am going for.
As it turns out, there are not many adoption blogs written from an adoptee’s child’s perspective, go figure! But I did find a blog titled, My Adopted Life: From Search, Through Reunion, to Self which is written from an adoptee’s perspective. I like her writing style and the way she breaks down her story.