A couple of great bits of information have come my way recently which will help you to get your copy of ‘Beyond the Red Door’ closer to home.

I had an email from someone in the UK who had searched everywhere for my book. His father-in-law had been on a cruise around the Scottish Isles where he’d spied my book on the boat and started reading it. But he never finished it before leaving the boat, and asked his son-in-law if he could find the elusive book!

Luckily, the son-in-law found my website and bought a copy. We exchanged emails and I soon discovered that the major bookseller in the UK, Waterstones, has my book listed as ‘unavailable’. So the mission began. With this guy’s help, I finally discovered who in the UK could change this status on bookseller’s websites. I’ve now sent an email to Nielsen’s BookData, and hope that very soon, UK residents can order through an online bookstore like Waterstones. I’m assuming that they would order the book in for you, which would reduce the postage costs. Let’s wait and see.

The second fantastic thing that I learned is that I can list my book on amazon.com. Yes, it is there already,and some of you have bought it that way, but have you looked at amazon.com lately? There are three copies left, two new and one used. The new copies are hugely inflated in price. I can only guess it’s because they believe there are no more copies anywhere in the world.

So I’m rectifying this by placing my reprinted copy on their site. Again, this should bring prices down for people overseas, as postage costs will be lower. I’ll keep an eye on this one as well.

It’s great when you stumble on these things. Oh, and the gentleman in the UK who wanted my book actually phoned me to thank me for sending it over! Now that was a real buzz.

In Australia, not much hits the headlines on the subject of adoption. But in the last couple of days, the West Coast has erupted following the revelation of a child being adopted by a male couple.

In Western Australia, we have open adoptions. This means the birth mother - and the birth father, if he is a willing partner - chooses the adoptive parents for the child. These prospective adoptive parents have undergone intensive education and assessment on their ability to be parents. But being an adoptive parent is different: these parents must understand the issues of adoption, that the adopted child has unique needs which can’t be ignored or covered up.

I’ve been astounded by the huge response on talk-back radio shows, mostly against this particular case. From past experience in adoption, I know full well that emotions run high in the adoption debate, that it triggers strong feelings.

I’ve been very saddened by the attitudes of the majority of people towards same sex couples taking on the adoptive parent role. For me, it’s shown a terrible ignorance about parenting and sexuality. Callers have stated that the child will become homosexual because he is being brought up by homosexuals. Nothing could be further from the truth, but people with such a strong belief won’t listen to reason or science.

I think the bottom line here is that people who respond so negatively, firstly to gay couples being parents, and secondly to the whole notion of adoption, have their own issues and experiences that have shaped their thinking. Comments such as, ‘the best interests of the child can only come through living with the birth mother or birth father’, and ‘adoption should be outlawed’ ignore the fact that sometimes, the natural family is the worst place for the child to be brought up in. Is it better for a child to live in a domestic violence situation, rather than be adopted into a safe environment?

I didn’t come from that sort of background, but I am glad that I’m adopted. Yes, it’s sad that I’ve lost my connection with my natural family, and yes, I wish such things didn’t have to happen. But sometimes, it’s unavoidable. And sometimes, life can be better in an adoptive family.

I suppose I am lucky because I had a good adoption. I don’t want to insinuate that bad adoptions don’t occur, because they do. And maybe that’s why some people react so strongly against adoption.

In this current controversy, the birth mother’s mother approached a radio station to reply to all the people who were maligning her daughter. She stated that the baby is ‘thriving’ in his new home. This was her daughter’s choice, backed up by her family, and she said there would never be any regrets. And this little boy won’t be deprived of his natural family down the track.

Maybe my own personal experience is behind my support for this adoption. I acknowledge that. I’ve seen all sides of the fence and I know just how hard it can be for a single mother contemplating bringing up a baby alone.

Have I been avoiding summarising this chapter? Wel, not consciously, but now that I’ve re-read it, I think maybe my subconscious mind was steering me away from it. It actually brought fresh tears to my eyes.

“I had always promised myself that if I ever went blind, I would kill myself.”.

That’s the opening line of this chapter in ‘Beyond the Red Door’. But that’s not what made me cry. It was reliving the terrible day when my eye ruptured, a crisis that I’d never dreamed could happen to me.

I cried because of the many emotions I went through in the subsequent months as I battled to save my sight and my eye - fear, shock, despair, anger, hope, hopelessness. I’ll never forget the terror I felt when I went to an eye specialist, knowing something bad had happened to my eye. He said, as soon as he saw me: “My god, what have you done to your eye?” And that’s when the avalanche started.

At the end of the chapter, I’m facing the biggest decision of my life. You’ll have to read it to find out what it is.