| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Industry | Communications or Media |
| Occupation | writer |
| Location | Sag Harbor, New York, United States |
| Introduction | I relinquished a daughter for adoption in 1966, and have been involved in adoption reform since the Seventies. My daughter and I reunited in 1981, and had a relationship that spanned more than a quarter of a century. She committed suicide in 2007. With Florence Fisher, I was a founding member of the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association, the first large-scale adoptee-rights organization. In 1979, I published the first memoir from a natural mother's point of view, Birthmark, and took the heat that ensued. I am also the author of Still Unequal: The Shameful Truth about Justice for Women in America and The Best Companies for Women. I have written for numerous national magazines about everything from hot air ballooning to PMS to vision and the mind. My husband Anthony Brandt and I previously had a humor/relationship column in Glamour. I have won several awards, including two EMMAS (Exceptional Merit Media Awards) from the National Women's Political Caucus for political journalism on women's issues. I started First Mother Forum in 2008, and manage it today. |
| Interests | Design and fashion, art, ballet, literature, backyard birdwatching, gardening, yoga, Pilates, feminism, politics, stories of revolutionary women (and men), the environment |
| Favorite Movies | Not Juno. Fav adoption movies: Mother & Child, Rabbit-Proof Fence. Other movies: Dangerous Beauty, The Fighter, Say Anything, The Palm Beach Story, Born Yesterday, The Nasty Girl, Cabaret, Million-Dollar Baby, Bullworth, All the President's Men |
| Favorite Music | Adele, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mary Carpenter, Billie Holiday, Igor Stravinsky, early English and Scottish folk music, baroque, some country, such as Lady Antebellum |
| Favorite Books | Greek tragedies and comedies, the Jane Austen oeuvre, An Answer from Limbo, Wolf Hall, Some Roth, the Diary of Anne Frank, read when I was her age, influenced my work and life greatly |
Try making up the rules to a game where you tie knots in a yo-yo string just to see if you can get them out:
Who would ever do such a stupid thing?
