Childhood

Childhood 

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Hand print ghosts in blue and green

fingers curl around colors

brows furrowed in concentration

making pictures never to be seen

ABC's

watercolor strokes

tulips and bees

orange suns and lollipop trees

 adorn the fridge

footsteps pitter patter

paint splatters

childhood goes on in another universe

locked away from the dreaming heart

Sorry We're Closed

This is a must share post from Lorraine at First Mother Forum. She's talking about the situation with the adoption agency that closed and left thousands of mothers hanging with no information about their children. When I lost my daughter to adoption there was no option of open or semi-open adoption. If it was adoption, it was closed - that's all there was to it. You were severed from your child, sometimes for life. You go through your life not knowing if your child is alive or dead, healthy or sick, well cared for or abused. When I first heard about open adoption I thought, surely that must be much better for the mothers emotionally. Boy, was I wrong.

I don't know how anyone or any agency can claim that what they're doing is open adoption or even semi-open. I think semi-closed is probably more accurate. The openness only seems to be on one side. In so many cases the a-parents know the full name of the mother and where she is but the mother knows nothing about the a-parents. Only first names (if they're the real first names) are shared with the mother and she has no idea where they are. She also has no control over contact. They can talk about agreements in the "planning" stages but it doesn't mean a damn thing. How can anyone even pretend that a mother has any control over the situation when she has to depend on the agency to forward any correspondence to the a-family and has to wait to hear from the a-parents? Even if she has some contact info on the family she still has to wait for return calls, letters or texts. If they're failing to live up to their end of the bargain the mother has to be careful to not be too pushy for fear of pushing the a-parents away. There is always the risk of the a-parents closing the adoption and there's nothing she can do about it. Again, she has control how?

I read over and over again, the heartbreaking stories of mothers and fathers who sit and wait, who had open adoptions that closed. The wound of adoption is bad enough but then to feel the betrayal of everyone involved from the agency to the a-family after promises of contact have been made just means the wound gets ripped open over and over again with each picture that never arrives or letter that's never sent. With every "open" adoption that closes there's another mother who has lost her child all over again. Infant adoption shouldn't be happening the way it is anyway, but then to do that to the mother AND the child is just pure evil.

Reel to Reel

Sometimes I see speculation online about natural mothers and how we feel. Others speak for us. They make assumptions about what we're thinking. They certainly make assumptions about what kind of people we are and it's usually based on someone they knew who adopted and "their" mother feels this or that. Sometimes people speak for us out of sheer meanness but sometimes it's just because they don't know or understand the position we're coming from. The public has been fed a line about us for so long and many of us were in the closet for so many years that there was no way any other perception could have developed. If we're not there to tell people the truth, how are they going to know?

As a mother from a closed adoption, the emotion can be so devastating and overwhelming that it can be hard to explain. It's a lifetime happening whether there's a reunion or not. For most of us it's not something that we move on from or get over. For me it's like a constant reel of questions that keeps playing in a loop over and over again. There are actually 2 reels. The pre-reunion reel and the post-reunion reel.

What are these questions and what do natural mothers worry about? I don't know about you or anyone else but this is my list. For those who have not been in these shoes, try to imagine all the emotion that goes along with questions like these.

Before reunion: 
Where is my child?
Is she alive?
How is she? Is she ok?
Is she being treated well by the people who are raising her?
Did they tell her she's adopted?
Does she wonder about me?
Does she like school? Did she go to college?
What color hair and eyes does she have?
Does she live near me or did they move out of state?
Could that child I saw this morning be my daughter?
Would people think I was weird if I asked about their child's birthday?
How does dealing with this affect the children I'm raising?
When do I tell my other children about their sister?
What about the rest of the family, when do I tell them?
How is this going to impact them?
How is it going to impact my relationship with them?
Is the trauma of my firstborn's birthday causing pain for my hubby or my raised children?
How do I get through the day at work on my child's birthday without falling apart?
Are they worried about me?
How do I hide this pain?
How do I duck out of conversations about adoption without giving myself away?
How do I deal with the family who did not welcome my firstborn when they're so excited about my second born and third born?
Who do I tell?
Why do I have to keep saying I have 2 children when I really have 3?
How do I cry without anyone seeing?
How do I get through another Mother's Day?
How do I get through her birthday year after year?
When should I start looking for her?
What will she think of me when I find her?
Is she looking for me?
Will she even want to see me?
Does she have siblings?
Will she be excited to find out she has a brother and sister?
Is she opening Christmas presents right now just like her brother and sister?
What is her other family like?
Is she happy?

After reunion:
What is she thinking?
Am I going to fall apart in the airport?
Is she going to like me?
Is she as excited about meeting as I am?
What will her adoptive family think?
How do I deal with this new role of mother to a daughter I haven't seen in 22 years?
How do I jump into being grandma to two little ones I've never met?
I'm her mother but at the same time I'm not. Where do I draw the line in this new relationship?
Do I act the same way with her that I do with my other two children?
Do we take it slow and just develop a friendship first?
What is she thinking?
How do I endure her adoptive mother when she's overly critical of my daughter?
How do I deal with things that are done that I strongly disagree with?
How do I get close when we live so far apart?
What is she thinking?
Why haven't I heard from her?
Why did she sound different on the last phone call?
Did I say something on the blog that bothered her?
Could I lose her again?
How could I endure that?
How would she feel if I started a blog about adoption?
Sometimes I'm talking about us on the blog, will that bother her?
Did I overwhelm her with my own emotion when we met?
Am I putting too much pressure on her?
What is she thinking?
If I back off will she think I don't care?
How do I deal with close family members who adopted a newborn and are shopping for another?
How do I deal with family who, when I tell the truth about adoption, tell me that what I say is total crap?
How do I now deal with this new feeling of loss when I see the entire childhood I missed?
How does she really feel?
Why didn't she answer the text message?
How long before we see each other again?
Am I just being paranoid?
Am I over-thinking?

Being a mother can be overwhelming at times when you actually get to raise the child. Imagine being a mother who had a child taken away at birth. Imagine what it would be like if your child were kidnapped. That's what it feels like - a kidnapping. There is no end in sight. The questions are always there no matter what is going on, no matter how many other children are born, no matter how happy a life may appear on the surface. Open or closed adoption, makes no difference. The open could close at any time resulting in another kidnapping.

This is the life of one natural mother.

History Waiting

History Waiting

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It's universal. We make family trees, we talk to and honor our ancestors, we trace the people that came before us, it's important enough to make reality shows about it - Searching For..., Who Do You Think You Are. We have websites about researching our ancestry.

Why is it that in adoption the biological connection isn't considered very important but in the rest of society it's huge? The adoption industry wants people to think that it doesn't matter how the family is formed - a person's roots are meaningless, what matters is who is there to change diapers and play ball. Of course parenting well is important, but many times adoptees are expected to consider their history to be from their adopted family. Good parenting should also include being honest with our children about who they are. I grew up thinking I was half Cuban. I thought my history was in Santiago de Cuba and Cayey, Puerto Rico. I thought I was a combo of the two islands - Cubarican if you will. Well, turns out the Cuban side was the adopted side. That's not actually my history. I love my dad and I do have an interest in where he came from and what that means but it's not the biology of who I am.

The biology of who I am makes me wonder if I look like Aunt Shelley. Do I have any of Uncle Tommy in me? When I look at photos of my children I see the same chin on all 3 of them and I see it in 2 of my grandchildren. There's a thread of continuity there that's important. Maybe some of the features that I passed down to my daughter lost to adoption are the same features from the father and family I never knew. When my daughter's first son was born she was looking for the very first time, into the eyes of a person who was biologically related to her. That's huge because her roots had been cut off from her. And, when her first son was born I wasn't there. I had no idea I was becoming a grandmother for the first time. I now have 4 grandchildren, 3 of them live in another state but I have contact with them, they're part of my life. The youngest is almost 9 months old and lives nearby. When I look at her I wonder about the grandmother that was taken from me when I was a baby. How did she feel knowing she had a grandbaby out there that she couldn't see? When I look at my little granddaughter I can't imagine being cut off from her. What did it do to my grandmother to be cut off from me completely. Was her grieving similar to the way I grieved when I lost my daughter?

Some of these broken links were the result of family decisions and some were because of the adoption industry. It's not ok for people in a money-making industry to make decisions about who we connect with and who we don't. Closed adoption is not ok. Closing an open adoption is not ok. It's not ok that I found out about my own adoption when I was 26 yrs old. It's not ok that my daughter had to wait 22 years to find out her own history.

There are still a lot of histories waiting.