Ten years ago, I sat in an auditorium listening to an
adoptee share her top 20 list of things she wished her adoptive parents
knew. She was going on and on about
creating a grief box and putting something symbolic inside representing each
loss an adopted child experiences. A
grief box? Doesn’t that seem a little, I
don’t know….depressing? Morbid? Sad? I
left with a slightly skeptical response.
It was heavy information. I liked to think that she had a difficult
adoptive experience. Perhaps her parents
didn’t tell her they loved her enough.
Maybe she wasn’t affirmed or accepted for whatever reason. I stored it away (not too much) as
interesting and maybe semi-relevant but probably for someone else.
We adoptive parents sometimes ( most times) think that
the “issues” will show up in someone else’s family, because we will just love
and hug our little ones through the yucky feelings. It will all be just fine.
I wish I had paid closer attention.
As a young 20 something, I just preferred living in adoption
La La Land. We will role play with dolls
and speak of the gift of a family and the love of a birthmom’s choice and we
will all just get it.
Well, that was a nice idea.
Today my feet are wet.
I’ve traversed some hard conversations with the agility of an
elephant. I’ve tackled the tears of
rejection and loss feeling ill-equipped, like a mumbling, keep-it-together mom. And I’ve maybe even googled “grief box.” Luckily, said speaker put her ramblings in
a book and I’m willing to take notes this time.
These adoption conversations are hard to navigate. And I’ve found that it’s because there are no
easy answers, no reasons that are good enough, no simple fix to knowing your
first year of life started with someone deciding not to parent you. Having met each of my children’s birth
parents, I can whole-heartedly say that they were well-intentioned people
making a decision based out of love or necessity. And
my kids range from clueless about adoption (insert toddler) to really
struggling to make sense of it all (insert oldest). But somewhere in the
narrative, my children have started to understand that the” love reason” for
relinquishment just doesn’t make complete sense. Sometimes relinquishment love gets
reinterpreted into…not wanting me, not fighting for me, NOT LOVING ME.
I didn’t get the loss until we set up a meeting with one of
our birthmoms. We went into it feeling
like we were really good adoptive parents.
One of our kids had expressed repeated interest in meeting her birthmom and
with the push today for open adoptions, we felt like this would help her answer
some questions. We spoke with experts,
set up guidelines, and tried to make it feel low-key. I
anticipated smiles and hugs and the showing of pictures… and that
happened. But my little one moved closer
and closer to her until she was on her lap, arms around her neck, leaning in,
eyes starting to glaze over. And then
when it was time to go, she clung and wept to a woman she had met one time for
one hour. She had to be carried to the
car. I sat in the back holding her hand,
tears streaming thinking “What just happened?
What did we do? Why is she so
upset? WHAT DO WE DO NOW? “ The feelings of biological connection,
belonging, pain, sadness, rejection, fear…they all came bubbling up and pouring
out in a deluge of tears. They were feelings
I thought weren’t even there yet. And to
be honest, I was a little confused, a lot panicky, and ready to flee hoping an
ice cream would help us all JUST CALM DOWN.
But that moment was important and inevitably going to
come. It snapped me into reality and
the responsibility I have as a mom to walk beside my children through those
dark emotions, fold them onto my lap or in my bed and talk about it over and
over, to bring “it” up, to stick my chin up when the anger comes pouring out,
and to understand that for now, they just can’t understand it all. And that’s OK. When I put myself in their place, I can only
get a bite-sized portion of what it actually feels like and it doesn’t feel
good.
I wish these kiddos could process their stories with
the intellect of an adult. Maybe with
the life experiences to understand the stigma that can come with an unwanted
pregnancy, the difficulty of provision in a place of poverty, that sometimes choosing what’s best for a
child means making the ultimate sacrifice a parent could make.
But they don’t.
When we sit down for dinner and a little one says out of the
blue, “Why didn’t our birthmoms want to keep us?” as though this is a
conversation that every family has over green beans and grilled chicken, my
heart hurts for the hearts of my children.
What a thought to have so early in life.
What a difficult question to be asking when you aren’t even old enough
to tie your shoes. To the rest of the
world, we show up and are a happy, loving family. We’re so cute and diverse and lovely and we
are those things on most days…happy, loving, cute, diverse, and lovely. But we’re also real and some days are raw and
ugly and sad and angry. How could they
not be?
This adoption journey for many is defined by the homestudies, the numerous papers, the approvals, the background checks, the trips to far places, the fingerprinting, the waiting and waiting with the culmination coming on the day we finally come home together as a family. Thank you, Jesus! We did it! Adoption journey complete! Check and double check.
Um....not so much. This so called journey is just getting started.
But here’s the thing. I’m
willing to take the trip. I’m willing to
take the “You’re not my real mom,” the
“I don’t even belong here,” the “I hate being adopted,” the “I wish I lived
with HER” because I can recognize where the words are coming from.
And
I’m hear to listen
and say, “I know. That is really hard to
think about.”
I’m here to be a safe
place to land.
I’m here to let it
come out instead of avoiding or pushing it back down.
I’m here to set boundaries for what we can say or do when
we’re mad.
I’m here to say, “I think we should pray about this.”
I’m here to remind them HOW MUCH I WANTED THEM.
I’m here to kiss the tear-stained cheeks and whisper "I love
you no matter what and I WILL NEVER GIVE UP ON YOU."
And I’m here to speak of the love of a Father who has
adopted us all into his family. He takes
hold of our right hand and says, “Do not fear.
I will help you,” who hears our prayers and changes our hard stories and
makes them HIS stories.
Because that’s what real
moms do and we don't let our kids journey alone.
Today I heard my oldest say to her little sister, “You are
in our family because you’re birthfather loved you and he thinks about you
every day .” I knew that all the times I
felt like I’ve messed it up, wished I could have said something differently,
wanted for more advice…some understanding that love can be a part of
relinquishment is slowly seeping in and
I’ve done something right.
