Featured today on: SheWrites.com

Oprah Winfrey's mother had a child and put her up for adoption when Oprah was nine. The news is out, the show is run, and in response—adopted people, birth mothers and countless fans toss emails around the internet and scramble to their computers to watch the show that "tells all" about this star-studded reveal.

In thirty-four days Found: The True Sequel to Blackbird will come out. Thank you to Seal Press. This book is the story of my own search and finding of my birth mother, and with the Oprah reveal of this week, is likely well timed. In fact, friends are writing about how lucky I am that Oprah is releasing this story at this time. It's free publicity. Go. Go. Go.

Free publicity? Perhaps. Good timing? I don't know. What's intriguing to me is how, as artists in a world where the buck funds our process and our creative ventures (at least we hope), we have been tuned to want a coveted slot on Oprah Winfrey's program. But what are we willing to do to get that nod and what do we think of ourselves if we don't? ling to do to get that nod? Will we sacrifice our honor? Will be compromise our truth? Will we skim off a layer of integrity?

These are truly haunting questions, are they not? And they are questions that go beyond the writer's life and into life itself, as well as the decisions we make as women, artists and even mothers.

Ten years ago, I was on Oprah, which was a blessing—yes—but also very different than you might imagine. During my interview prior to the show, I was fed my lines, which was so compromising to my former journalistic self that I broke down in tears.

In preparation for the actual show, Oprah's stylist told me that I could not put my hair up, which was how I felt most comfortable. "If you want it up, cut it off!!!" she yelled. She whipped out a flat iron and my hair was pressed instead (and broke off later—burnt to a crisp).

And then I met Oprah who was late to the taping due to the fact that she was reading Blackbird at that very moment. When she finally appeared, she bellowed, "Why isn't this a Book of the Month book?" In response, a flurry of producers rushed around, insued mass commotion, and insisted this show—one on abandoned children—was the show we had to do.

Some would say, "don't complain, Jennifer, you were given a gift." And I don't disagree. I scurried back to my life, snipped off the seared hair and continued on my quest for answers. I was grateful to Oprah while also deeply disturbed by my own willingness to be shoved around.

While Oprah continued along her journey, racking up millions of dollars and becoming even mightier than before, I became as poor as a pauper, retreated into Buddhism and racked up millions of prayers in the Rocky Mountains, for the benefit of all beings.

While Oprah interviewed all manner of celebrity and became the brightest star, I spoke only to the inner guides of my soul—a few very skilled therapists—and was shown the way home to my orginal family and ancestors.

Low these ten years later, I return with answers, a new-found identity and a beautiful story of how it all happened. And as Found is about to be released, here is Oprah with her stunning revelation of a half sister (named Patricia) abandoned in 1963.

As a seeker of healing and of truth, I am happy Oprah is now "in" the story of adoption. What concerns me is the same issue that concerned me, long ago. Will the story of adoption and it's many heartaches be "shoved" around? Or will it be given the attention, wisdom and depth that the subject so needs at this time?

In researching and writing Found, about my own adoption, I have learned first hand about this least spoken of and yet the most mind-boggling sorrow of these last one hundred years. Women, countless millions, due to economic, social and family pressures, were (and continue to be) forced to make impossible soul-shredding decisions to part with their children.

Like William Styron showed us in his stunning novel Sophie's Choice, when that woman was forced at gun point—by a Nazi—to chose between one of her children or both would be killed, the outcome was beyond grim. Both children died and Sophie was haunted until taking her own life. Styron portrayed this global epic tragedy—where cultures force woman make these kinds of choices daily—perfectly.

Think of our poor sisters in China, Vietnam, Korea, Russia, Africa, here in the U.S., and countless other countries, imagine their children, and see how we, as a race of supposed higher beings, chose not to take action. We look the other way, we speak in generalities and platitudes and in some cases we pluck the babies from the arms of another and say "ho hum" she is too poor, too ignorant, too too too, in order to get what we want—a solution to infertility.

Let me state, emphatically, that there are children who need to be adopted and there are good, no remarkable and enlightened adoptive parents out there who place the needs (and sorrows) of their adopted children first. This is true. And there are others who don't give a nit for the fate of the original mother who bore their child or the deep sorrows contained in the child herself. In far too many cases the original mother has been forgotten, psychically annihilated and in some cases legally obliterated. The child is assimilated, adapted and called "lucky" for her new family and worse is often denied access to ancestry.

It is time to talk, with heartfelt candor, about adoption. So bravo Oprah. Bravo. But this is not a time of two-minute video snippets cushioned between commercials for movies and laundry detergent. It is a time for deep and lasting healing that honors the birth mother and the adoptee and speaks with true knowing about both. With more than seven million adoptees in this country, healing is necessary. Truth is vital.

I make this earnest effort in my own writing and teaching. I work to be true to the truth and truth be told, my life is not measured by appearances on talk shows. I am a writer and I have this medium of the word, which is far more lasting and resilient than the flash of the video frame. I am glad to be Jennifer Lauck, home from my quest and I am most eager for the release of this good and important book Found.


As a writer, artist, truth teller, how much would you do to get on Oprah? And how much more valid do you believe your work would be with that kind of public recognition?