Comments on: Too young? Naw

By: shannon

shannon — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 03:43:46 +0000

I have to agree with Debbie.

We have little birth mother contact, but we have three photos hanging over Nat’s bed, one of each of her moms holding her as a tiny newborn and she has developed her own ritual of pointing to each before bed and having us name them: “Mama Shannon and Baby Nat, Cole-Mom and Baby Nat, Mama Rose and Baby Nat” and we say “God Bless Mama Rose and her family” first in our bedtime prayers. She knows Rose is a mother to her because we call her mama and she knows what a mother is because of our mothering her.

Lately she’s really developed a special interest in Rose and in seeing her “life book” which tells the story of how we prepared for her adoption and how Rose prepared for her birth with pictures of everyone.

She may be too young to really know what adoption or birth mean (though we are already talking vulvas and uteruses too–sharing your philosophy) but she does know what a mama is and that Rose is one of hers. And I am so glad she has that as a matter of fact, right from the start.

By: Debbie Squires-Lee

Debbie Squires-Lee — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:54:10 +0000

You can NEVER be too open or too truthful. Questions need to be answered and feelings validated or children feel invisible. Period. Too much adoption talk? I have friends who STILL in this day and age ask me if we are going to tell our daughter she was adopted???????? I think you handled the situation with Madison beautifully and I only hope I can do as well (my daughter is almost 2 but with no birth mom around no real catalyst for those feelings. I have noticed she LOVES the book HUG because it is about a monkey looking for his mommy. I always say where’s your Mama - she points to me and we hug and then I say — whether she gets it or not - and you have a birth Mommy in China. Too much? Maybe but why not?)
DS-L

By: Ally

Ally — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:45:45 +0000

I’ve been following this discussion with interest because of the long-lasting emotional fallout I experienced due to my parents’ divorce. Not so much their divorce but the particular set of circumstances. Between the ages of 2-4 I lived with my mother. My pot-smoking, drifter mother. Who sent me to my grandparents’ house alone in a cab when I was 3 (that’s when they started making arrangements to take her to court for custody).

Anyway, for years and years and years I had this big hole in my life and in my heart. There are very few baby pictures of me. My mom would disappear for years from my life, only to show up high, two months late for my birthday party, with a car full of stuffed animals she got from who-knows-where.

I’m 36 and have only gotten over all of this in the past 5 years (yay therapy). It wasn’t so much my mom’s idiotic behavior that was difficult to deal with, I’d pretty much made my peace with that. It was feeling as though I didn’t exist until I was 4 years old.

It’s not a direct parallel, but what you’re writing about primal wound theory is striking a chord deep within me. One of the things that made my feelings so difficult to deal with is we never, ever talked about my life before I lived with my grandparents. There are no wedding pictures from my parents’ wedding (shotgun, of course). No birth picture of me. Maybe 6 pictures of me with my parents. And no context from my grandparents. In contrast, I think you’re handling all this openly and wonderfully.