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.

Fiance and I watched the movie Changeling starring Angelina Jolie.  The movie plot, as described by IMDB, features grief-stricken mother taking on the LAPD to her own detriment when it stubbornly tries to pass off an obvious impostor as her missing child, while also refusing to give up hope that she will find him one day.

There were several very triggering moments for me in the film. In my opinion, Angelina (and note I am not a fan of hers largely due to her womb raiding via adoption) did an excellent job portraying the grief stricken Christine Collins.  I intend to expand on some of the triggers in future posts.  It really should be watched by anyone that wants to understand how a mother can be railroaded by the authorities (in the movies case right into a psych ward when her only ailments were being female and a mother without a husband wanting to find her child).  It was particularly disturbing to read the movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, is based on a true story. Distrubing but so not suprising to me, given my own experiences with motherhood and authorities that want you to see things their way.

There is a moment in the movie where Angelina is clearly trapped by the doctor in the psych ward. No matter what she says or does, she is damned and the authorities have control of her destiny. Reminded me of the feeling I had when Colleen Rogers reminded me that I was in a maternity home, no job, no one to support or care for me and oh yeah, remember that promissory note my mother signed?  Really, HOW exactly did I think I was going to walk out of St. Josephs Hospital with my child was what she inferred.

In Angelina/Christine Collins case she had a powerful force on the outside supporting her.

If only.

The movie also brought to memory a song by Enya If I Could Be Where Are. I discovered this song right about the time I began my active search for my daughter.  Later, I made an animated photo college of her pictures through the years of her life, set to this song.  Its a tear jerker (I believe I shared with some of you. I dont post here as it contains photos of her that were shared with me and are not mine to share further with the internet).

In summary, I recommend the movie Changeling and also the song by Enya (which does not appear in the movie but certainly could have).  Oh, and if my blog post isnt enough to bait you, Angelina wears some rocking outfits in the movie. Wow. What a wardrobe. Made me want to live in the 20s so I could wear those dreses and have roller skates on at work.

Link to the movie details on IMDB.

Link to a video on youtube that features the Enya song

In one of her emails to me my daughter cited the literary concept/essay by Roland Barthes known as The Death of the Author. “Barthes’s essay argues against traditional literary criticism’s practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author in an interpretation of a text, and instead argues that writing and creator are unrelated.”

She cited this essay as a way to illustrate what she saw as the death of the mother (the author), that I had nothing to do with her (the text), that she had nothing do with me and that anything she was, is, ever will be had nothing to do with her “creator”. She did make sure to include her adoptive parents in there too.  Essentially she is her own being and has no relation, connection, or other to me, her father or her adoptive parents.

On one hand I can appreciate that. I was much like that at about her same age. I fumed with anger if my parents ever tried to stake claim to anything I did (particularly since in my case, my parents did very little for me and seemed only to want to claim my accomplishments but were never there when I failed or struggled) .  Yet I still claimed them as my parents and gave them credit for traits of mine (good and bad) that I had clearly inherited from them either via nature or nurture.

My daughter disregards the nature and nurture and wraps her belief up in literary essays as a way of explaining it all.

On the other hand,  while I find the explanation/connection intellectually interesting, it made me sad. To feel you come from no where, belong to no one, have nothing in common with anyone on this earth, to believe you are a single solitary being with no connection to anyone, feels so terribly dark and so horribly alone to me.

The trouble with lies is that they stick to the stories that give us meaning, they contaminate everything, make us doubt our own experience of what we thought was good and true. We stop trusting our memories, our ability to tell truth from lies. – Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Many know I am a big fan of Oriah Mountain Dreamer and her writings. The Invitation is one of my favorites. I read it, reflect on it, often.   I recently discovered her blog and am apt to scurry frantically over to it when my feed reader shows a new post.

The post today “Coming Up for Air*” resonated deeply with me in relation to the surrender of my daughter to adoption, the torturous years spent wondering if she was dead or alive, and my subsequent reunion/non-reunion.

I suspect others can relate as well.

Here is the link to Oriah’s most recent post. 

Coming Up for Air*