Part of me jumps up and down and want to scream .

Lets go! Now! Wahoo! My city! The place where my child was born! Hooray for Illinois and Chicago.  When is the next flight out?

Then I feel a sick feeling in my stomach and something says “Whoaaaa. Hold on there.” Chicago? With a bunch of adoption people? Talking adoption in the location that you surrendered your first-born, only daughter, to strangers? That stanking rotting nest hole for the Kurtz adoption agency? Have you really thought about what that will mean and feel like?

Well, uh, yeah, I guess. Sort of. Maybe? But hey! That week is also my first wedding anniversary. I got married in Chicago a year ago. How cool would it be to celebrate in the city we got married!!! Lets go.

Uh, okay, so are you celebrating your anniversary, mourning/grieving/ the child you surrendered, or protesting?

Uh. All? None? One.

And what about those people who will be there that you don’t like or they don’t like you?

Oh, please, I don’t need to like people to support a cause. Nor do they have to like me.

Will you take your hubby? If you are framing this as a part anniversary celebration, what is he to do while you are standing around protesting (or crying in a corner?)

Oh, but he is wonderful, he would stand around, protest, get me a tissue.

Yeah, but does he want to celebrate anniversary that way? Is he giving in to you? How much of your life and his has to be consumed by your adoption trauma and related activities?

But, but, I have to. It is MY state, my daughters birthplace, my well, thang. I have to show my support. My peeps are there.

Okay, what if you have surgery just before then? How will that work out? Will you be recovered enough to travel?

At this point, I tell that inner voice to shut up and I procrastinate about making hotel and flight plans and confirming attendance.

The joys of being a Gemini.

The tweet on my twitter feed read:

“Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.” -Rebecca West (b. December 21, 1892)

The quote struck me as it reminded me of Jane Edwards post on First Mother Forum. In her post she writes about the newly published book by first mother and author, Denise Roessle titled Second-Chance Mother.  As is to be expected with any book about adoption, particularly one that paints a negative picture of the sacred bovine, First Mother Forum posters challenged Denise. They objected to her sharing such personal details about her reunion story and her son’s life-long challenges. They questioned her integrity, her love for her son and her morals.

The critical commentary did not surprise me. I was around Denise’s adoption blog, Write-o-Holic, when she was eviscerated by several adoptees for sharing parts of her reunion story along with a picture of her son.  At that time, Denise retracted several of her posts, edited a few others and removed the picture.  With the book now being published, I found myself wondering, what, if anything she would do in reaction to the commentary on Jane’s post.  I realize all works of art are subject to criticism and personal interpretation. However, adoption related media (photos, blogs, books, etc.) seem to attract more negative attention and generate more arguments over what is appropriate to share and what is not. The thought of arguments over adoption blogs, memoirs and the like once again took me back to Rebecca West.

Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, is the pen name for Cecily Isabel Fairfield.  Rebecca was an author, journalist, travel writer and literary critic. While she wrote in many genres she was most committed to feminist and liberal principles.  I had no idea that West had a thread run through her life that was very similar to the challenges faced by those of us who dare to speak candidly, and publicly, about adoption and the state of our reunions.  West and author H. G. Wells had a son, Anthony Panther West. Anthony, also a writer, published a fictionalized auto-biography titled Heritage. In the book, Anthony West highlights a relationship between an illegitimate son and his world famous unmarried parents. The mother in the story is portrayed very poorly and it is assumed by Rebecca West and others that Anthony was referring to his own mother when he developed the character. The depiction of the maternal figure in Heritage so wounded Rebecca she broke off all relations with her son. Their relationship was rocky from that point until her dying day where when asked if she wanted to see him, she refused, citing his apparent hatred for her.

The similarities between West life story and that of those of who write about adoption, particularly difficult adoption reunions should be self evident.  A mother lost her relationship with her child due to the publishing of a story. The mother was upset about the way she was portrayed. The mother tried to block the book from being sold. The parent child relationship remains strained until the mothers dying day. 

Individuals outside of adoption, those that have never written about a personal relationship, or had text written about them, probably cannot relate. Adoption bloggers, writers, we can. Consider the following scenarios (totally made up, btw, they do not refer to anyone I know personally. Any similarity to real life persons is coincidental.):

• Adoptee writes long scathing nasty blog with details of reunion. Posts include references to natural mothers bathing habits, housing (or lack thereof), alcoholism and more. It is all true and from the adoptee’s perspective she is venting, looking for support from the adoption community and highlighting for others what reunion might mean for them.  If you are an adoptee, even a general adoption blogger, you may understand. You may say been there, done that. What if you aren’t? What if you are the dirty, housing project drunkard being written about? What if you are the kept child of that parent, the half sibling of that blog author? Will you be able to forge a relationship with the adult that wrote the blogs?
• Mother writes about reunion and shares intimate personal details about reunion including mental illness, drug use, and prison sentences served by adopted adult. She is confident her reunion is over and that her now adult child will never speak to her again. She bases this assumption on the behavior; written correspondence and the fact that child has taken a restraining order out against her for her repeated attempts at contact. It has been many years since she has heard from her child. Mother feels others, particularly those considering adoption, should know what adoption might do for their child and what it may mean for their life. Mother is compelled to change adoption for future generations and uses her own experience and life story as an example.
• Adoptee in reunion makes up a lengthy completely false blog about natural parents. Blog is found by natural parents and half siblings. Natural parents are startled as they had no idea their child was feeling this way about their reunion.  Moreover, the accounts were so grossly off base the natural parents begin to question the adult adoptees mental health. When confronted the child (really, adult) denies the blog and later deletes it.  Adult adoptee then turns the tables on natural parents and calls them liars because the blog can no longer be found. Adult adoptee tells all extended family members and even goes so far as to mail a letter to natural mother’s employer, a banking institution, that she is dishonest. Natural parents are not technically savvy enough to disprove the statement.  Lacking ability to produce it, they appear to be liars. Adult adoptee rages at parents for years for not only abandoning adoptee as an infant but for making up lies about the blog,  a blog that a more technically savvy person could have retrieved via archive.org or other service.

Venting, blogging, looking for support, activism. Call it what you will. What are we doing and what is the price we pay for doing it?

Lorraine Dusky alludes to a similar topic in her January 5 posting on First Mother Forum. A post on the blog generated much commentary and the focus of the commentary seemed directed at Lorraine’s grand daughter. Lorraine, much like Denise, was criticized by others for her statements.  After some thought, Lorraine removed certain comments.  She acknowledged the possible pain the commentary could cause her granddaughter. She also acknowledged something that is the real point of my post here.

How can we, adoption reform activists, illustrate the need for massive change if we do not show, discuss, share, how it damaged us?  If blogging is not acceptable, is it acceptable to speak at conferences? Conferences are often recorded. No? Perhaps writing books is okay? Maybe under a pen name? Oh, but wait, individuals who have pieces of their identity stolen from them tend to be resistant to changing names.

Our silent voices brought about this mess.  Silence should be no more.

Or should it?

Does it depend on your situation and personal motivation?

I don’t have any answers for these questions nor am I am innocent myself of the possible emotional crimes I am referring to.  While I have taken care (frankly, too much care in my opinion) to keep my daughters identity a secret (at her request), I know for certain she is not happy about my being so “out” about adoption. She has visited here at least three times that I know of and while she has never told me to stop writing, or threatened me if I did not do so, her discomfort was obvious. 

She told me this blog made her puke. I tell myself it is her cognitive disequilibrium. What she might read here is completely at odds with what she was raised to believe. Therefore, she prefers I not write about it. She wants me to support her version of the story. She believes one thing about adoption and I believe another. Can our differing opinions co-exist? Can we not agree to disagree and still have a relationship? I want to think so.

Would closing up my blog make a difference in my reunion? Zipping my proverbial trap, effect any change?  Would ceasing all efforts I undertake to help single mothers, have any positive correlation to my reunion? I believe, strongly, the answer is no. My blog is not the source of the contention or difficulty. The topic of it, what generated the need for it, is.  My blog is a symptom of the larger dis-ease affecting my reunion. I firmly believe, at this time, there is nothing I can, or more importantly, should, do. So I continue on.

Holding that belief so firmly, I do blog and I do speak and I do share (with some degree of reservation). While I feel I can effect no change be it positive or negative with her, I do feel I can make some change for others. Shouldn’t I do that? How can I not? How do I do that, establish credibility, if I don’t use my own story as the backdrop? If I wish to sway the oppositions opinion towards single mothers and adoption, the burden of proof is on me, no?

And yet, in doing so, I cannot help but wonder at what cost? What if I am wrong? What if there was something I could have or should have done differently?  What if I my work that I thought was so well intended actually ends up leaving me on my deathbed with someone asking me if I want them to call my daughter? Will I say “no” because I don’t believe she would care?

Or would I say “yes, please do”.  Will I reflect on all the mothers and children I helped or will I still long to meet my daughter?

I winced when she stated this. Part of me feared hearing the rest of the story as I suspected I knew what was coming. I did. He got angry. Very angry. Told her off. Made a public scene.  Called her awful names. She left. I wondered why she would set herself up for such disappointment yet even in my wondering I knew why she would. I can relate to the need, that never ending hunger to be in your child’s presence, to  feel their breath, to see the way sunlight glistens in their hair, to listen to the unique cadence in the way they speak, to determine if you birthed a demon child as your parish priest suggested you would or if you added a decent individual to the human race. For even if you did not raise that human, the reason he or she exists is due to you choosing to give birth. I understood those primal motherly needs.

Mother friend seemed okay with the result. I would even go so far as to say she seemed to glow. She was not upset he yelled at her, called her names, ordered her away again. She got to see her son and be in his presence. She felt his breath on her. She saw the color of his hair up close and personal and smiled when she realized it was the same color as hers. She said she felt like her emotional load had been lightened. There was a pink to her cheeks that had not been there weeks before. She said she felt better. She felt somehow healed – even though her son raged at her in anger, pointed his finger towards the path she should take and told her to never, ever, contact him again. She finally got to meet her son even if he was a hostile witness in the action.

I have been musing about this woman for a few weeks and her actions made me wonder about the behavior of mothers in reunion and why we do the things we do, why we agree even passive aggressively to the things we agree to and the effect it has on us.

Let me use my own story as an example.

I won’t recycle old stories but I will offer that after a spotty, sporadic multi year correspondence with me, my daughter told me to go away. Told me she did not want any kind of relationship and would appreciate if I never write her again, never comment on her online sites and essentially disappear from the face of the earth. (Recall Death of the Author).

What did I do?

I politely said (not in this many words, but you will get the point) “Okay, dear, whatever you want. You are an adult. I need to respect your feelings and be proper and do what you told me to. You are the conductor of this reunion train. I will hop off as expected and role to the side of the tracks. I will be okay. It is really okay. I will be a good little birthmother and go away. Again.”  I bowed my head, curtsied and rolled away, as instructed. All the while I smiled and pretended it was all perfectly okay with me and I was at peace with going away, again.

If I take me out of that equation, at least the dutiful proper me, I am left with a person that says “Seriously, Suz, WHAT.THE.FUCK? When will you stop being so proper and well behaved? This is your child. Not your mother. Not your father. Not that black clad priest babbling every Sunday at St. James Church. When are you going to stop leaving her?”

I did not want to be proper when she told me to go away. I did not want to smile in amusement at her literary reference to Death of the Author, something she knew I would understand. Rather, I wanted to refuse. I wanted to yell, holler, debate, argue, and engage in a heated exchange with my own child. I wanted to hop the next train to Brooklyn and be like my Mother friend. I wanted to show up at her doorstep and demand she meet me.  I wanted to tell her I felt strongly that we needed – both of us – to be in each others presence and get this shit out and over with. I wanted her to rage at me in person, to show me face to face that she is really as cold and unfeeling as she came across in that message to me. I wanted to hug her and hold her and tell her it was okay to be angry, okay to cry, okay to do anything she wanted for I would never leave her. I would always be there for her even if history had dictated otherwise.

I didn’t of course. Good mothers don’t do that, right? Good mothers, do what they are told. Properly functioning people in modern society respect boundaries when they are set. Be the adult, be the parent that society says you aren’t but holds you to the standards of. Do not show any emotion to your child for that parentifies her and makes her feel responsible for fixing you like she was responsible for fixing the infertile woman who adopted her. Proper. Proper. Proper. Be proper. Your emotions are not for her. Not even your loving emotions.

And that brought me back to the mother I referenced above. She clearly was a bad mother by violating the emotional restraining order her son had placed against her. He told her to disappear (much like society, the adopters, and others had told her to do) and she did, at least for ten years.  Nice girls do what they are told (like give away our babies).  Our children know there is an established pattern of beating us into submission.  Doesn’t matter what book or stick or belief system we were beat with, they know we can be beat into submission and so they jump on the train – consciously or not.

Let me be clear here. I am not advocating a rush of mothers go show up where they are not wanted. Rather, I am wondering, questioning. Have we been overly conditioned to be good, be proper, do as others tell us that we forsake ourselves?  Have we been socialized in such a manner that we have become overly accommodating to all – including our children?  And if so, what is the effect on our children?  All of our children – surrendered and parented.

Pretend, for just a moment that at least one of those adult adoptees was “testing” their mothers.  If the adult adoptee was consciously or subconsciously testing the mother, to see if she would go away again, what further damage do we cause when we do as we are asked, and walk away from them again? Do we at least tell them the truth, that it is very hard for us, we don’t want to leave them again, we welcome them at any time, we hope they change their mind? Or do we keep that to ourselves because our feelings are too much for them, too much for everyone in fact.

Further complicating this torrent of emotion is the very real fact that that proper social behavior mandates that if someone says “go away” you do exactly that, vamoose, vamanos, hasta la bye bye baby. We are doing not only what our child has asked, no, demanded, but we are also following societies rules of proper social behavior. Those of us who have horribly violated those rules (by opening our legs when we shouldn’t have) learn all too well the punishment associated with such transgressions.  We lost our children.  Dare we violate another social rule? What might happen then?

After some thought, I found myself proud of that Mom that showed up on her sons doorstep unwanted and unannounced.  Good for her I wanted to scream. Good for her for standing up for her, for herself, and for her motherhood.  What did she have to lose? She already lost her son. He already told her to stay away. What was he going to do? Tell her again? She got to meet her son, finally, and in doing so, I suspect she met a part of herself she also lost many years ago, the part that feels that her feelings matter too, the part that contained her voice.