Checking In, Still Here

Posted by Suz in About Me on 2010/07/12

I am here and yeah, I have been a bad blogger.  I have oodles of personal stuff going on and the past few weeks have been challenging. My sweetie underwent surgery for a torn Achilles, my mother suffered a “cardiac incident” (heart attack ruled out but docs are still trying to determine the root cause of her erratic heart rate), my sons wrapped up their school year, started in camp and oh yeah, I left my job.

I won’t go details out of respect for my former employer and myself but I will state that this was emphatically my choice and I don’t regret it. As alluded to in other posts here on this blog, my job had changed dramatically over the past few years due to corporate downsizing, resizing and reorganizing. I was presented with the opportunity to leave and I accepted it – right in time for sweetie to have surgery. Funny how life works out.

I am blessed with the love of a wonderful man who supported my decision.  He also supports my decision to enroll in school in the fall and I have put those wheels into motion as well.  I hope to take at least 2 classes (six credits) in the fall.  I am pretty much over the moon about this for, now, finally, at 43 years of age, I am studying what I want, what I have a passion for, and not what other want me to study or what “pays well”.  At the most basic level I am pursuing a multimedia studies degree.  More complex is my desire to define, develop and implement technology that enables “a-ha” moments. I am fascinated beyond measure with using technology as a tool to aid communication, education and more.  To quote the degree of a young woman I adore, I am particularly fond of language and expressive media.  I want to use words, pictures and technology to make things happen for people.

To support this goal, I am actively pursuing job opportunities (be they freelance, contract or full time) in the web producer/developer spaces. I feel as though I have been given a gift (by my fiancé and my former employer).  They have given me the gift of choice and the opportunity to pursue my dreams.  I shall seize the day.

I have a number of adoption related blog posts brewing; one in particular focuses on Adoption and Aryanism. It’s an emotion packed post for me so it is taking me some time to craft it.  The painful posts always do.

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For Maybe – Normalizing

Posted by Suz in Adoption Baby Brokers, Reunion, Trauma Recovery on 2010/06/30

Normalizing a behavior or response is a social processes through which ideas and actions come to be seen as “normal” and become taken-for-granted or ‘natural’ in everyday life. In my case, in relation to my reunion, I worked very hard, perhaps too hard, at making the situation “okay” “natural” and “normal”.

I put my daughters pictures out in my home, I openly spoke about her, I gave my sons regular updates on her status and what she was up to (even though those news items came from my creeping on her blog sites and not from her). I tried my best to pretend that I was okay with the situation, i.e,, that my reunion was normal and an everyday matter that every one understood.

Of course, everyone didn’t.

People often found it strange that I would display my daughters pictures. Others became quiet when I would mention something about her. Still others asked direct, often hurtful and probing questions.  And yet I carried on with my inward dialogue that it was all good, and it was all understandable, and all typical adoptee psychology. I would regularly quote Verrier, or Lifton, or Burns Robinson in relations to others questions. I would educate them on why what my daughter was doing or how she was reacting to our reunion was “normal”.

And while I was doing all that explaining and all that defending of her and the actions of others, I was quashing my own very really feelings. I was crying in silent, cursing her to myself,  wincing at her pictures, stomping my feet and raising my fists – all in the privacy of my own mind.  Outwardly, I was good. I was fine. While people raised their eyebrows and snickered over my love of a child that I a) gave away and b) wants nothing to do with me, I tip toed through the emotional mindfields (intentionally spelled that way) and smiled and explained. For to do anything but that was to risk triggering an explosive response that others, and most importantly, I,  was not prepared to handle.

It is not normal.

There is no normal in adoption.  My reunion is not good, or happy or acceptable. My reunion is not something the average person ever has to deal with and frankly. should they have to, I want them to be able to scream and stomp and FEEL what they feel. I don’t want them to ever pretend that there is anything NORMAL about giving away your child and years later find that child, only to be told to go away. I don’t ever want society to find that to be normal. So why should I perpetuate such nonsense?

If I met another mother, or adoptee, in reunion, I don’t want them to pretend for one second that adoption reunion is normal or worse yet, that their own feelings don’t matter. The industry, the social wreckers and the brokers do that.

I don’t.

Their feelings matter.

And so do mine.

So I ceased that normalizing behavior. I pulled in the reins, I put away the hope along with the pictures.  Now when people ask me why my daughter doesn’t want anything to do me or her brothers,  I respond with a simple “I don’t really know.” Because that is  the truth.

I don’t know.

I no longer make up stories, or fantasize solutions or explanations.

I just let it be.

I let it be…abnormal.

And it actually feels better to let it be what it is rather than pretend it is something that it is not.

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5 Year Anniversary

Posted by Suz in Healing, Reunion, Trauma Recovery, Triggers on 2010/06/28

Five years ago today I received an email from my daughter for the first time.

Five years ago today she wrote me back.

Not much has changed in the five years.

Least not in relation to our reunion.

I don’t hear from her anymore, not that I ever heard much.

I don’t check on her as much these days.

I have put away some hopes, got rid of a heart load of expectations, and learned a great deal about myself.

I have ceased trying to “normalize” my adoption experience with others around me and my subsequent children. I have put her pictures away and have ceased regularly sharing her status with my sons.

I no longer have contact with her father. (I did for the first few years following reunion).

I no longer make care packages or get excited for holidays and the possibility of sending her a gift.

I ceased making my life plans with her in the side car.  I drive ahead alone and I am doing okay with that.

Well, sort of.

I am still working through a great deal. There are still triggers. Dark periods can creep up on me and I battle them as best I can. As my old posts (see below) say, I still get sad, almost daily. I feel conflicted, angry, confused, lost and more.  Yet I carry on.  I must.  I may never have her in my life. I will always have me. I must take care of me and those that are in my life.

I reread some old anniversary posts.  I find them interesting. They naturally make me cry.  Still, I read and still I find them oddly fascinating.  The more things change the more they stay the same.  I have the first two years offloaded to a file. I was on a different blogging platform then and in fact, did not even share my reunion publicly. I did that on LiveJournal with a few select friends. Now THAT is an interesting blog to read. I do have the last three years here and well, now, year five.

I wont say much more. I would be repeating myself.

But I will say what I always say. I wont say it to her of course. But I will capture it here.

Happy Anniversary M. I love you and miss you.

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