Tonight: In Celebration of “Fancy” Families

“Sunshine is a refreshing and compelling self-portrait of an adopted woman driven to search for her pride and identity while reconnecting with her biological mother.”   -Wellsphere.com

“Profoundly affecting. Even resistant guys will find themselves melting in the sunshine.”   -Austin American Stateman

Has your life ever taken an unexpected detour?  Just in time for Mother’s Day, filmmaker Karen Skloss reunites with her biological mother to tell a personal story about adoption and life as a single mother, while grappling with the definition of family. Young, pregnant, single, and unprepared, Skloss struggles with incredible ironies — that history has repeated itself, and that efforts to protect family can sometimes do the most harm.

Sunshine premieres tonight, Tuesday, May 4 at 10:00 on Independent Lens on PBS (check local listings).

Tags: adoption, Austin, mother's day, single mothers, single parents

A Mother’s Day message from Sunshine’s Karen Skloss

Karen Skloss, producer/director of Sunshine (premiering May 4 at 10 PM on Independent Lens on PBS, check local listings), shares the process that brought her to find her biological mother and to carry her pregnancy to term, as well as the social stigmas that subtly color our view of single parenthood.

Karen Skloss and her birth mother Mary return to the Home of the Holy Infancy

I suppose anyone who is adopted wonders about their natural parents. When things are kept secret, questions are all you’ve got. In the back of my mind, I’d always thought about what life might have been like growing up with my biological mother, but I was afraid of what I might find if ever I met her. I was also afraid that she wanted to forget all about me.

When I turned 19, my adoptive mom told me that if I wanted to, I could go back to the adoption home and ask my questions. It turns out I had ridden my bike past that place a million times, The Home of the Holy Infancy, right down the street from the biggest sorority at the University of Texas in Austin, where I had been going to college. Waiting for me in the files there was a letter from my biological mother. “I just need to know that you are okay,” said the letter. It had been waiting there for five years.

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Tags: adoption, gay parenting, mother's day, single mothers, single parents