Month: August 2009

Just Sit There

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Every so often, meaning a few times a year, I will get an email from a stranger feeling the need to preach to me all the good that can happen with adoptions and that things just don’t happen “that way” anymore.

In all cases the writer has slurped my blog for a period of time, often many hours and days straight. Upon completion, they feel the need to write me and essentially, tell me how good adoption is and again, it is not like it was when I gave birth to and lost my daughter to the Kurtz network of baby brokers, cough, I mean adoption agencies.

I will be honest. I dont like receiving these messages. I dont like them because I dont understand their intent and even more candidly, I find them a bit rude and tremendously invalidating. 

Why do they feel the need to so strongly tell me, a virtual nobody to them, how great they are as parents or agency workers? Forgive the snark, but as I am a no one to them, they are a nobody to me. Do I care that they are adoptive parent extraordinaire to their three kids adopted from Russia, Guatamela, and China?  Why send me your superdeeduper ethical caseworker CV?

I dont get it.

Is that really supposed to make me feel better? Or is it about making themselves feel better? Are they seeing something, perhaps something negative of themselves in my experience and to counter balance it, they need to throw out their own white light to me? 

Why do they feel the need to tell me over and over again that my experience doesn’t happen today?

First, I disagree because I can provide reams of data that support it does happen. And second a nd perhaps more importantly, the point of this blog is that it DID happen to me.  Get that? Sit with that for a second.

It happened to me.

It happened to my daughter. I live with it every day. It has effected my marriage, my subsequent children and all relationships I have and “THEY” KNEW IT WOULD.

Again, yes please, take a moment, sit with that a second time.

Groovy toodles that it doesn’t happen in Godforsaken, YourState but IT HAPPENED TO ME. Me, red headed (albeit bottled), green eyed, pierced nose, big boobed, funny, INFJ, emo, tattooed, professional, parent, daughter, sister, writer, new media professional, gemini, ME!

Writing me and saying:

“I am Adoption Caseworker Extraordinaire. I have held the hands of an outrageous number of birthmothers as they gave birth [note: that is more appropriately called an expectant mother, mkay? good.] and I have watched  them happily and peacefully give their children that better life. I have read your blog for a gajillion years. I am so sorry to read your story BUT….”

The BUT is followed by paragraphs of self righteousness and adoption koolaid.

This is called emotional invalidation. 

You are discrediting me, my feelings, my life, my trauma. You are labelling me the “one” person that happened to, the one oddball mother that did not “get over” leaving her child with strangers, you are categorizing me as different, or weird or better yet, the exception to the rule.

Invalidation goes beyond mere rejection by implying not only that our feelings are disapproved of, but that we are fundamentally abnormal. This implies that there is something wrong with us because we aren’t like everyone else; we are strange; we are different; we are weird.

You are justifying your existence at the expense of mine.

Invalidation is to reject, ignore, mock, tease, judge, or diminish someone’s feelings. It is an attempt to control how they feel and for how long they feel it.

So yeah, rude.

For the record, I am not anti-adoption. I am pro-family of origin. I believe children should be raised by their mothers and fathers. And if for some reasons, they cannot be, the extended family of origin should be consulted, all attempts to preserve natural family ties should be made. Should the need arise for the child to be raised by virtual strangers, original ties to the natural family should be preserved.  Adoption should be about open records and  legally enforceable open adoptions that find homes for babies and not babies for homes. Adoption should be about respecting the child, not replacing the family.

I believe, correction, I know, first hand and with the research and documentation to support it, there is massive corruption in adoption in the USofA and beyond. I know that what happened to me still happens today. If you doubt me, I can provide you with many case studies and news articles to support it.

Get out of your little adoption utopia in the Somewhere, Iowa and read the newspapers, the internet or other.  Adoption happens outside the doors of your office. It is not a one size fits all solution nor can you be assured that your one ethical agency means all are ethical.

I believe that adoptive parents are no better than natural parents – long term. Sure, at a given moment in time, an adoptive family MIGHT be better off financially than that single mom that is lacking support but over the long haul? They have equal chances to succeed or fail at parenting a child.  They are human not seated at the right hand of their own God. Adoptive parents divorce, die, molest, abuse, lose jobs and more.  JUST LIKE NATURAL FAMILIES.  Giving birth to a child when you are young and single does not stunt your growth, did you know that? You can still go on and go to college, get married, hunt and gather for your child.  How do I know that? Becuase I did it. Becuase I do it. And you know what? I could have done it in 1986. I wasn’t a bad mother. I had never been given the chance to mother. I was told by others I would be. And I believed them. That is my only crime. One of ignorance and blind trust in those that were supposed to have my interests and those of my child in mind.  In a word, people like YOU.

Adoption is far too often a long term solution to a temporary situation.

My daughter did not NEED to be adopted. She was born to a mother with “high potential” (but not in mothering apparently) who could have, should have  and wanted to parent her. She was born to a mother that was raised with strict catholic values that she horribly violated by having sex outside of wedlock. She was born to a mother labelled unfit to parent due to that sexual activity. She, the child, could only be SAVED by being taken away from her mother. And me? That mother, the only way I could be SAVED and allowed back into the fold, back into mainstream society was to leave my baby girl with strangers.

“When a mother is forced to choose between the child and the culture, there is something abhorrently cruel and unconsidered about that culture. A culture that requires harm to one’s soul in order to follow the cultures prescriptions is a very sick culture indeed. This ‘culture’ can be the one a woman lives in, but more damning yet, it can be the one she carries around and complies with within her own mind…..” — Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Do not tell me again that it different, or better, or not happening.

It happened to me.

It happens in our society today and it happens, over and over again, every day, in the darkened halls of my own heart and soul.

Sit in that hallway for a little bit with me and then send me your emails telling me how great you are and adoption is.

Just sit there.

College Daze

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Life is my college. – Unknown

91 North spread out in front of us. Clouds overhead, just a few, cast a shadow over the roads in front of us.

I was gloomy. I was angry at myself.

It was my fiances day. I was here for support. He had just left his eldest son at his college campus for the first time ever. He was emotional, conflicted, feeling lost and unsure.

And so was I.

But for different reasons.

I squashed my personal emotions. I was here for him. He needed me. We had spent countless hours debating whether or not it was appropriate for me to be in attendance today. We debated too frequently if it was better for me not to be present at the move in of his son to his college dorm since his ex wife would be there. Would my presence be welcomed or a bother? Would I be intruding?  How do you blend families if you don’t start with events like this? We vacillated back and forth for days.

In the end, we decided I would go and after so much thought and planning (and consulting with the ex and son in question), I was comitted to being here for him in every way.

Yet my heart was pummelled with days gone by, with days never lived. I thought about how much I craved the college living on campus experience. I envied his son and everyone else that got to do what we did for him today.

My mother never sent me off to college.

She put me on a plane to a maternity home.

As I swallowed the lump in my throat, I looked over to him and saw his pained expression staring at the windshield.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He mumbled something in response. Something about mixed feelings, joy, sadness, emotion, protection, and how hard it is to let your children go out into the world.

I smiled a weak smile and continued to talk to my inner self and tell her to shut the fuck up. This day is not about you!

“You know, of all the things they tell you about parenting in general, about parenting after divorce, they never tell you how to stop missing your kids, you know?” he says as a tear falls down his cheek.

“Yeah, I know” I respond weakly as talking any louder would reveal the shake in my voice and likely divert his attention from his own feelings to mine. That could not happen.

It was a ridiculous statement in a way “how to stop missing your kids” but I understood his intent. It was more a reflection of his pain rather than a statement of a reality he wants to achieve. He wants to hurt less not necessarily miss his son less.  While he was referring to divorce, and more recently to seeing his eldest son off to college, my mind was drawn to adoption.

I have missed my child for 23 years and they never told me I would. Quite the contrary they told me I would get over it, go on, be just fine. Peachy in fact.

They lied.

I have missed her every day since May 19th, 1986 and I never ever got over it.

My mind was drawn to the person I lost before I lost my daughter. Me and the person I was intended to me. Me, the young student council president, honor roll student, destined for college in New Hampshire. Inside I cried for her. She never saw that dorm. Instead she saw the cold sterile walls of the convent turned home for unwed and unwanted mothers.

And then I cried for the mother I became instead of the college student I should have been.  I saw myself sitting on the bed in St. Joseph Hospital cradling a beautiful baby girl in my arms.

And I cried for the motherhood I lost. I cried for myself missing my daughters college move in days.

I silent cried and next to me, driving north on Interstate 91, my fiance visibly cried. He is the light to my dark. The yin to my yang. The good cry to my bad cry. The audible to the inaudible.

His tears mixed with speckles of joy.

Mine dark with pain.

I took his hand and squeezed it tight.