Reality T.V. Reunion "Starting Over" - Cassie and Her Son Meet!

Ooops! Sorry - I forgot to post this - but, watch the show anyway. They did meet and are now working on their relationship! Okay, I promised not to talk about coercion in my next post, right? Instead, I am talking about an upcoming reunion between birth mom and son due to air on Monday, May 1, 2006. Nearly a year ago, I was asked to be part of a CUB adoption support group to speak with a birth mom interested in reuniting with her son. Cassie, the birth mom, was in the "Starting Over" house and one of her goals was to reconnect with her son who had recently turned 18 years old. "Starting Over" is a daytime reality t.v. show which airs all over the country. The premise is that 6 women at a time go to the house, and live their for a time to get their lives in shape and "start over". There are life coaches who work with them and the SO staff provides them with a variety of counselors, lawyers. They have a wide variety of resources at their disposal - personal trainers, make-up artists, therapists, etc. As a birth mom, they decided Cassie needed to speak to other birth moms about search and reunion. That's where we came into the picture. It was a cool experience. We were taped for an hour meeting with Cassie. A few months later the episode was aired and they had edited it to about 3-4 minutes. There were four of us who met with Cassie. Each of us appeared on the episode for long enough for us to say a few sentences. I hoped that I'd like what they chose to air and I did. Vain creature that I am, I was hoping they'd do our make-up. But, nooooo, it was reality t.v., right? My son's adoptive mom had someone record the show for her - she said my hair looked great - the only thing she didn't like was that they didn't give us enough time!