I have to say that any digging, no matter how slight, into my adoptive past is usually done with an equal mixture of interest and dread. I have often thought about the White Shield home, imagining it as something along the lines of a dark, awful orphanage (think Jane Eyre). I imagined strict, nun-like disapproval of the young girls and women who found themselves pregnant and in need of a place like White Shield. However, I just finished reading your story about your visit, and it has eased a burden on my heart that I have carried for my birth mother.
Archive for the ‘1960's’ Category
Ease My Heart
Posted in 1960's, Children of White Shield, tagged adoptee, adoption, birth mother, first mother, Salvation Army, White Shield on May 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Checking In
Posted in 1960's, Children of White Shield, Mothers of White Shield, Reunions, tagged adoptee, adoption, adoption history, adoptive parent, birth mother, first mother, Mother's Day, Salvation Army, White Shield on May 8, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day – for adoptee, first parent, and adoptive parent alike, a day that stirs up a complex stew of emotions. It is also, coincidentally, my first mother’s birthday, and with that in mind, I thought it appropriate to share with you a little window into my own story – a portion of [...]
The Girl Next Door
Posted in 1910's, 1960's, Friends of White Shield, Searchers on March 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Caitlin M. ~ 60.100322 Dear Friends, What a wonderful project – I lived at 3115 NW Thurman in the 1960s, and when we were kids we used to see the beautiful pregnant girls taking walks. Our house has the fountain on the corner, just over the bridge. It was many years later that I had [...]
Dishes & Ice Cream
Posted in 1960's, Searchers, Siblings, tagged adoption, Salvation Army, Siblings, White Shield on November 13, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Laura M ~ 68.071113 Back in 1968, at the age of 18, my mother gave birth to a baby boy at White Shield in Portland. She remembers the routine of her daily duties, a dishwasher was her chore she chose to do. She was in a room with 5 other girls and she remembers that the [...]
Salvation
Posted in 1960's, Children of White Shield, Returning to White Shield, tagged adoptee, adoption, Portland, Salvation Army, White Shield on February 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
63.070208 I’ve lived in the Portland area all my life and I know my way around this town. I grew up on the eastside in the Roseway neighborhood, went to college on the Bluff above the St. John’s slough, and then moved westside to the suburbs in my early twenty’s; in the last four decades, [...]
Our Stories
If the path of your life passed through the doors of the White Shield Home, as mine did, you have a story to tell. Whether you were a birth-mother or a White Shield child, a Guild member or a social worker – your story is the story of White Shield.
Read our stories.
Then tell yours.-
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