Month: May 2009

True to My Soul

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“The authentic self is the soul made visible” – Sara Ban Breathnach

I dont typically write a post in response to a comment but I believe this warrants it. It is good stuff.

If you are reading this, go read Conversemamma’s comment first so this makes sense to you.

Conversmama’s comment is long and full of lots of typical adoption myths and challenges and questions and concerns and generalizations. I could comment on many parts of it but I want to comment on one aspect. It is something I hear often.

What I take from conversemamas comment is this (and these are my words, not hers):

“Perhaps if you shut up about what happened to you and pretended you were happy about it all your daughter might like you. Perhaps its your anger, your honesty, your raw truth about the surrender of your child to a baby broker that makes her not like you. Maybe you need to be something you aren’t and she would like you. Frolic among the daisies and sing a song of adoption and she might come running across the field to you. The bluebirds might even land on your mutual shoulders and sing with you.”

Um. No.

Again, my words not conversemama’s but my interpretation. I have heard this before. I think it even came from another adoptive mother, Mary. (The fact that adoptive mothers seem to say that most often to me in itself is interesting but I wont go there right now).

It is likely true that my daughter is put off and uncomfortable with what happened to me, what caused her to be adopted. While I have no proof of that, I accept that it is quite possible.

It is an ugly story, as so many adoption stories are. It is not easy for me to digest and I lived it. I cannot imagine what it like having to reconcile the fact that your mother always wanted you, was pressured, threatened and locked up so that you could be taken from her and sold to the highest bidding prospective adoptive couple. It must not be easy to reconcile that possible love you have for those parents that raised you when contrasted against how you came to be. How do you look at your parents all happy and giddy and frolicking in that field of adoption daisies with them and then look the other way at your mothers life that was irreparably damaged so those daisies could bloom.

It must suck like whoa.  It is not a position a child (even an adult one) should have to be in. But she is.

I get that. (Although again I have no idea if any of this is a challenge for my daughter any more than conversemama does. Lets just pretend it is for the sake of this post.)

But see, the struggle I have with the mentality that tells me to shut up and be a good girl and pretend I am someone I am not so my daughter will like me is that it is a lie. It living a lie. It is living adoptions lie.  I am done with that.

For even if my daugther is unable to reconcile how her possible fabulous field of daisies came to be, I must move on. I must live my life. I must live my truth. I must do whatever I can within my power to recover from what was done to me and as part of that effort I do whatever I can to make sure it doesn’t happen to other young mothers. This blog happens to help with both goals. It helps me and by being public it helps others.

Equally important is that if by some stretch of the imagination, she is not frolicking in a field of daisies and is struggling with this, I want her to find the strenght to be true to herself. To her feelings, just like I am to mine.   Perhaps by seeing that I am open about my anger and feelings, she will find a way to be too. 

The long winded point I am attempting to make is that I will not lie or be someone I am not so that my daughter will like me.  I want her to know the real  me. Not the adoption indstury approved version of me.

I am willing to risk that she may not be able to handle that real version in order to live my own authentic life.  I will no longer give away my soul for the comfort others. It is not the type of person I want to be.

It is not the type of persons I want my children to be.

My Personal Prozac

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“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition” – Graham Greene

So, I have been trying to take an adoption vacation. I wanted to go away in my mind and focus on all the pretty things in my life. My fiance, my fabulous boys, my soon to be new and equally fabulous house.

I wanted to think about Waverly curtains and Klimt artwork and oxblood colored walls in my family room. I wanted to shop for pool and patio decor for the in-ground pool and wander through a sporting good store for a new basketball hoop and board. I wanted to investigate pavers for the patio I envision. I want to look for horseshoe pit stakes for the slightly buried, but soon to be uncovered, pits in our yard. I wanted to shop for leather couches for the TV room and pottery barn type kitchen farm tables for the dining room. I wanted to buy graph paper and do a space plan. I wanted to think about paint colors for the master bedroom and I wanted to debate reasons why it is NOT a good idea for my 12 year old son to paint a wall in his room the color black.

And I wanted to do all of this while pretending that I am not one of the many victims torched by the American adoption industry. I wanted to frolic around my .75 acres of grassy lawn, Japanese maple and and weeping cherry trees and pretend for at least a few months that it doesn’t bother me that I am four years into reunion with a child that wants nothing to do with me. I want to weed the flower beds and smile when I think about the emails that go unanswered. I want to giggle with joy when I am asked by my son why his sister did not thank us for the birthday donation we made in her name.  I want to roll down the front hill of our property with my six year old and scream in delight at the massive numbers of babies separated from their mothers. I wanted stick my leg through the tire swing that hangs on the large tree in the back yard, let my multicolored red hair fall down my back and sing a happy song of adoption separation. I wanted to fool myself into believing it was all good. I wanted to  ingest adoption koolaid by the tank full with the hopes that drinking adoption koolaid would give me a break.

I wanted to pretend. 

I want to be avoidant.

I want to deny who and what I am and what was done to me and my child.

I wanted to act like those adoptees who say the woman that parented them are their REAL and only mother.

I wanted to breathe like mothers who found the ability to erase their surrendered children from their minds and act as if their subsequent children are their real and only children.

I wanted to sleep like an adoptive parent who believes that separating mother and child is a good thing for after all, babies are blank slates and mommies can be replaced.

I wanted to conduct business like a baby broker who finds nothing wrong with selling babies to the highest bidder.

I wanted to be…not me.

I just wanted to focus, for a few months on all the good stuff and not have the icky stuff invade every waking moment.

And I cannot seem to do it. 

At my fiances sons high school graduation ceremony, I choke up because I am reminded that a year ago my daughter was graduating from college.

At a family party over the weekend where I discuss an upcoming trip to Prague with family members, I have to turn away for it reminds me that my daughter once studied in Prague.

As I lay in my bed with my fiance talking about the effect of divorce on children and how difficult it is to blend families after divorce, I am reminded of how reunion brings about blended families (or should).

As I color my hair a bolder, brighter, odder shade of red I find myself wondering what color red my daughter is currently sporting.

As I am wander through Urban Outfitters in North Hampton, Mass in search of a necklace I have coveted for months, I am reminded of UO shoes my daughter purchased and the photo of same she posted on her tumblr.

As I plan a trip to Brooklyn to take photos of my mothers childhood haunts, I feel fear that I may run into my daughter that also lives in Brooklyn. After all, that kind of cosmic shit has happened to me before. I find myself thankful the weather was unpredictable and I did not go to the Brooklyn.

As I pick my sons up from their fathers home over the weekend, and my thin youngest son runs toward me, images of his equally thin sister flash over him and I see her, not him.

And I push the thoughts away. I tell them they are not welcome.

I smile again. I pretend I am a normal mother, fiance, woman. I am not a mother without her first born child. I am not a mother whose child was taught she did not exist and does not matter. I am not a women traumatized by adoption. I smile and frolic some more.

And all the while I know I am fooling myself. All the while I know how much difficulty I have with people who deny and avoid reality. All the while I reflect on what a harsh realist I am known to be, the realist I am proud to be.

And I become angry at myself.

And I read adoption related tweets, and I am even angrier. I find myself much less tolerant of the varying views. I find I want to scream at the 40 something yo adoptee who is clueless to her mothers pain and reality and simultaneously I want to choke and bitch slap the mother that is rejecting her child. And dont get me started on entitled prospective adopters who feel that having a baby doesnt make you a mother. (What does it make you then? A birther? An incubator?) and that only wealthy people can raise children properly. As if money guarantees parenting ability.

And my anger frightens me.

There seems to be some connection.

My avoidance and my anger makes me think that I must keep on blogging if only for anger management purposes, for therapy, for some semblance of sanity.

The written word is my prozac.

And so I write.

 

ETA: Looks like I tried to take a break about this time two years ago. Seems to be a theme with me. Interesting.