Writing My Wrongs

I realize the situation is different, very different, but there are times, inconvenient, unexpected, annoying little times when I forget it is different.

There are times the hurt 18 year old in me still kicks herself to the surface of my skin to be seen, heard and acknowledged. There are times when she (and yeah, I, since we share the same body much like Melanie Stryder and Wanderer do in Stephanie Myers book The Host) she demands attention. I give it to her. For even if the situation that provoked her does not positively correlate to what we are feeling, we are feeling something and it must be acknowledged.

The latest emotional kickboxing match happened a week or so ago with my mother. My fabulous amazing niece (born a few short years after my daughter — out of wedlock –  and acknowledged in the family as the FIRST grandchild, cough cough) is moving across the country. She graduated college last spring with her Bachelors in Fashion Merchandising. Since graduation she has been hunting for a job in her field locally and has been unsuccessful.  She is working (this woman works many jobs, put herself through college and is an all around amazing, independent, mature young lady) but not where she wants to be.

A few weeks ago she was offered the opportunity to work for an upscale national department store chain at their corporate headquarters. The company was listed on the Forbes Top 100 Companies to work for and has offered my niece a job in the field she studied to work in.  One might be prompted to utter a squeal of delight, right? Do a happy dance for her, slap her a high five, and holler “way to gooooo girlfriend!”.

I did.

But other members of the family did not.

Why not, you ask? Why wouldn’t her family be happy for her?

The job requires her to relocate 3K miles away from us to the employers headquarters located in Seattle, WA.

The family was not happy.

As the young woman attempted to make the decision to accept the job, looking into costs of moving, deciding to fly or drive, discussing apartments, she reached out to her loved ones for guidance.  Nearly everywhere she turned she was met with barriers, discouraging messages and negative emotions.

It infuriated me, for two reasons.

First, the adult me reason,  speaking as her aunt, my niece is amazing. She is doing exactly what she has been groomed to do, what she worked so hard for during her four years of college, semesters in Paris, internships in NYC at Bendels and more. She is bright, ambitious, focused, forward moving. Why would ANYONE that loves her NOT support her? How do you look a 20 something year old young lady in the face and refuse to answer her questions, refuse to help her?  How do you answer her questions with negative responses? I don’t get it.

My mother and I bickered about it. I told my mother I disagreed with her behavior (and that of other family members). If they love niece, and I know they do, deeply, they should be supporting her. I realize they speak from a place of love (they will miss her, wish she found a job more local) but sometimes we need to put our own selfish desires aside and HELP people.  I cut the conversation with my mother short as I knew it was going  nowhere good.   Yet, inside myself, the bickering continued and managed to get to a slow burn.

When the slow burn started I found myself a bit startled at its intensity and took to my usual self reflection.

Here comes the 18 year old.

My mother, my family, had NO PROBLEM putting a pregnant eighteen year old member of the family on a plane to IL (yeah, only 1000 miles away) to give birth among strangers. No problems abandoning her and encouraging her to abandon her first born.  I realized my slow burn was rooted here.

They throw up barriers and roadblocks and hang onto darling 22 yo niece that is fully equipped to take care of herself, college educated, employed, has friends in Seattle and yet they were able to easily put ME on a plane to Chicago to strangers?

It hurts me, even all these years later, it stings.  Sandpaper dragged across my heart.  Me and my inner 18 year old? We are kinda pissed off about it.

Where was all that love and clinging family nature in 1985?

Yes, different situation, different person, I know that. I do.

I am working on educating the 18 year old mother to that fact.

I have discussed the concept of collateral damage in adoption several times on my blog. My experience highlights that my sons are collateral damage to the surrender of their sister to adoption. I use the term collateral damage as the military does. Specifically, that it is damage that is unintended or incidental to the intended outcome. In the military sense, a targeted action is directed to a specific victim or resource but someone or something unexpected happens to be in the line of fire.

My oldest son has expressed what I perceive to be evidence of his personal collateral damage experience. He has asked me, on more than one occasion, why his sister doesn’t want to know him. He seems to understand why she might be mad at me or at my mother, his and her grandparents. Yet him? He is befuddled. He did not even exist when she was born.   He has directly asked me “What did I do to her, Ma?”  Needless to say, my heart cracks a bit each time he expresses this.

What did he do, exactly? Have the misfortune of being born to a mother who gave away her first born? Express a desire to know his half sister? Find her to be beautiful? Find that she reminds him of his mother? Find that he cares for a sibling he was not raised with but desperately wants to know?  Why should he feel obligated to comfort his mother for feelings provoked by his sister?

I have no answers for him.  Years ago (see normalizing) I would try to give age appropriate explanations of adoptee psychology. It was crap. It was me trying to explain the unexplainable. Trying to make the insane seem sane and the cruel seem kind. I don’t do that anymore. Now, when he asks, I simply respond with “I don’t know why your sister doesn’t want to know you”.  For that is the only truth I do know. I do not know. Only she does. He deserves an explanation from her not a made up wild ass guess from me.

Jenna has been talking about this collateral damage surfacing in her own home, in her open adoption. My heart aches for her too. And for her little guys who are dealing with this younger than my sons did in a completely different way – they see and KNOW their sister via an open adoption.  Jenna could use some hugs and loving. Feel free to send here or here.

For mothers who read here, that are in reunion and had subsequent children, would you consider sharing evidence of collateral damage in your family? How have you handled it? How have your children done so?

Equally, if not more important, were you told at the time of surrender that future children would be effected?

ETA: The links in the first paragraph take you to some of my older posts where I discuss collateral damage in my home. You can also use the Categories pull down on the right of this screen and select Collateral Damage.

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple” – Dr. Suess

Saw the lady doctor today. You know, the doctor that checks your lady bits?  Its been a while. I have been a bad bit checker. Chalk this up to my divorce, house sale, moving, etc. My own personal health tends to take a back seat on my ride of life. I am working on improving that.

Anywho, bits checked out just fine.

But I must state, again, it never gets any easier answering questions on medical forms.

For example, the question “How many children do you have?” consistently sends me reeling. I have answered that question a gazillion times over the years (always honestly, I have three children) but it always sets me off kilter.

Answering (honestly or dishonestly) tends to lead to additional questions.

“How old are your children?” the lady bit checker doctor asks.

I gasp for air for a second, stutter and respond.

“24, 12 and 7″

“Wow, quite an age range” remarks lady bit checker.

“Yeah.” I mutter as I secretly pray the questions stop there.

They do. 

Questions turn to my rather frightening family history of colon cancer and my own recent scare. My breathing gets easier. My heart rate slows.

Sad when you are more comfortable talking about colon cancer than your children.

Thank you adoption.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. – Carl Jung

My son hurt my feelings last weekend. Deeply.

It’s the first time he has.  During and following the event that lead up to it, I sat in my car, parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot and cried.I was due home but my emotions were running so high, the tears welling up at a furious pace, I felt it unwise to drive. And so I sat and cried and thought about my son, my own childhood, angsty teenage years and more.

I wont go into much detail about the event. I will say that it occurred after my son had spent a week away with his father and brother. He was due to return home to our house the evening this happened and was being difficult about coming home. He wanted to stay longer with his father and his father’s girlfriend. I refused. I missed him. I had dinner and evening plans for him and his brother and I wanted him home (never mind the fact it was technically my custody time).

Situations like this probably happen all the time with divorced and blended families. Transitions are hard for the children particularly a transition that comes at end of a fun vacation.  I was taught all about this in the state mandated parenting education class I attended prior to divorce.  My son was not expressing anything extraordinary.

And yet, for me, it was slaying, crippling really.

For something interfered on the phone line while we were talking. Some filter got placed in between my ears and his mouth. When he uttered he did not want to come home what I heard, again, LOUDLY, was another one of my children not wanting to be with me. I felt his fathers words and influence much like I felt that of my daughters adoptive parent who kept my letters to her hidden from her. Someone was keeping my child from me. My child wanted to be with someone else. My child did not want to come home

I wanted to make it about him, his actions. I wanted to understand his feelings and be supportive, understanding and yet still authoritative. And the entire time I was trying to calmly explain to him why he had to come home, something inside me was clawing at my heart. I felt as if some evil being had reached into my intestines, twisted, yanked and pulled them outside my body. Doubled over due to the pain in my stomach, I leaned my head on the steering wheel and cried.

The sound of his voice faded, my heart ached and I had trouble separating out the words and actions of my first-born child, my daughter, from my first parented child, my son.  The confusion, the soul noise, was deafening and all-consuming. My daughters father’s voice ran through my head from days gone by. “You are punishing me for another mans crimes”. In that moment, daughters father was suggesting that I was being difficult with hm when I really wanted to be difficult with my father.  Twenty four years later, the cycle is at risk of repeating itself. Will I punish one child for the crimes committed against my heart by another child? It was all too much to bear.

And all I could do was cry.

My daughter doesn’t want to know me and my son doesn’t want to come home. Vastly different circumstances yet for me, at that time, it FELT THE SAME.

And it emotionally crippled me.

I sat in the parking lot for almost a half an hour.  During that time it occurred to me (thank goodness) that I could very easily be doubly hurt by son and that was unfair to him. I was at risk, in my opinion, for transference.  I thought about the possibility that sons word triggered not only feelings for him, but feelings for his sister. I felt that his words towards me hurt me but also, in his words, riding in on a few of the consonants he uttered were his sisters words as well.

I could not separate the two.

Thankfully I realized this then, and now, for it is incredibly unfair to my son.  My son is entitled to be angry about his parents divorce, about the transitions, about having to leave  his father and come home to his mother. I get that.

What I don’t get? What I am struggling with?

How do I separate these two children? These circumstances, these similar, yet not, situations? How do I insure that my sons never have to pay for the “crimes” of their sister? How do I fortify myself so that I never feel the need and I am always able to separate my children and see each one as the unique individual he or she is – for both their good and their bad qualities?

This has shaken me. It has shed light onto another part of my wounded soul that I had never seen. I don’t like what I see.

I have since called my therapist.