Aug 5, 2006 Adoption
It has come to my attention that I come across as perhaps just a touch holier-than-thou at times on this here blog in regards to adoption. I don’t mean to (honest) but having come across some, shall we say, snarkiness on other blogs directed towards myself and other adoptive families of my acquaintances I heaved a sigh and decided on another entry.
Because I’m lazy and tired, I’m just going to make these bullet-points instead of trying to actually string this all together with a beginning, middle and end.
I am horribly, miserably uncomfortable when people tell me how “good” I am or (in the case of family) how “proud” they are of our open adoption. I am not all that good. As far as I’m concerned, gushing over our relationship with Jessica is a bit like gushing over my relationship with Brett. Sure, I think we have a nice marriage but it’s not the BEST marriage (at least nobody has come along and given us an award yet) or better than YOUR marriage, which likely looks different than our marriage does. There are lots of ways to have a good marriage and lots of ways to have a good adoption. Besides which having a nice marriage is a lot of dumb luck because I might have married someone else by mistake. So when people perhaps assuming I’m gunning for approval, this would be a wrong assumption. Approval I like, I’ll admit, but I don’t make my life-decisions to try to get it. (If I did I wouldn’t be homeschooling. Heh.)
Also focusing on what I’ve done in our adoption kinda leaves out JESSICA who deserves way more credit than I do. More than you know I’ve just followed her lead in all of this. (Some of you may recall this story of Jessica speaking at a training for our agency. I think it’s a good illustration of her open-minded strength, confidence, and expectations for adoptive families.)
And may I add that the first time we met her we were open to talking about openness and at one point I said, “I know some families meet in some neutral place like, I don’t know, a mall or something.” (I was talking about a family who told me that they met their child’s first mom at an outlet mall located between their two towns.) And Jessica gave me this look and said incredulously, “A mall?!” And I hurridly said, “I don’t know, we haven’t talked about it really much…” She could have dropped us right there but she agreed to talking with us more about all of that.
More on that: Jessica gave us her last name right away (she gave us copies of Madison’s ultrasound and her name was on them) but we (and when I say we, I mean Brett) were nervous about sharing ours. One of her friends asked, “What pregnancy magazine do you write for?” And I hesitated because then they could look at the masthead and figure out my last name so I leaned over to Brett and asked if I could share it before I told them. Also Jessica gave us her phone number and I had to check with Brett again before I gave her ours. (I hissed, “She’s talking about giving us her baby so the least we could do is share a number!”) We were very nervous and Jessica was more respectful of our nervousness than I think I could have been if I were her. See how much credit she deserves????
Had we done an adoption with another woman who’s to say what would have happened? Jessica is Jessica and I love her. If I were fifteen years younger, we’d probably hang out together. We have a lot in common (similar backgrounds, similar interests, similar likes & dislikes) and that makes these 1001 times easier. Like she and her boyfriend are into cleansing fasts and raw foods. When we were around the same age Brett and I were going on juice fasts. Sounds small but it’s not — think about it. Our values are really similar (although Jessica says she would likely be stricter as a parent than I am). It’s easy for us to find things to talk about because we find the same things funny and we like the same kinds of music and then she tolerates my tendency to put my foot in my mouth pretty much constantly.
(You guys have no idea what an idiot I am pretty much all the time. I forget other people have boundaries because my own are so loose and am constantly bringing up issues that might make people feel uncomfortable. Like the time I said to Jessica’s current boyfriend, “I remember you calling Jessica on her cell phone and you were saying XYZ! You’re so crazy!” and there was dead silence then Jessica calmly said, “Dawn, that was my boyfriend before this” and I just sat there and turned pink before she patted me on the knee and said, “It’s ok.”)
If I had read my own blog way back when it would have freaked me out. I wasn’t ready to think about any of this yet — I just wanted a baby. I read some other waiting-to-adopt blogs and I admire them so much because they are way WAY ahead of where I was at that same point in our adoption journey. It would have terrified me to read about all the openness, all the adoption talk, pictures of Jessica up in our house — eek! I wasn’t ready to consider any of that. Really, it’s a good thing our wait (from when we contacted the agency on) was long because it gave me time to figure this stuff out.
Also, I don’t think our adoption is better than anyone else’s adoption. (I’ve said this before; it bears repeating.) A great adoption can look a lot of ways and I don’t think more openness is a sign of moral superiority because there are lots of good reasons people have less openness, whether it’s by preference or a concern for safety or what-have-you. Adoptive parents, first parents — we’re all human beings goodness knows and our needs, wants and wishes are all different.
The qualities that I think make for a moral and ethical adoption are honesty — on both sides — and flexibility — on both sides and willingness to revisit things as the child gets older and needs change — on both sides. A friend of mine has several children with a variety of adoption stories: One has lots of openness, one has none (and her child’s first mom will not consider opening it further), yet another has been carefully opened because of some first family issues that are a safety risk for her child. She has managed to balance three very different situations with the needs of her children and the wishes of birth parents with terrific respect and thougthfulness. Her adoptions don’t look like mine either but they are great adoptions. If any of us were to follow the blueprint of any other adoption, we wouldn’t be following the trajectory that is meant to lead us through our own situations.
Possibly related posts
August 5th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
I think people often jump to criticism when they are insecure about their own choices and ability to handle certain situations.
I don’t feel you come across as sanctimonious at all. To me, you come across as someone who is externalizing (through writing) the way she is coming to terms with a complex, ever-changing issue.
August 5th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
I agree with other poster. People who challenge you, question you, are most likely jealous of you and your strength and openess. You are a threat to them because you are open in your adoption experience and they lie in theirs.
I gotta be honest. This post annoyed me. Its your blog. Your life. Your and Jessica’s daughter. Dont let the people who criticize you bug you.
Consider the source.
August 5th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
I don’t read you as sanctimonious. I don’t think you need to explain yourself, either. Some people will always feel attacked by other people’s differing choices :-/ I got a lot of flak from some people that DH and I weren’t considering aggressive fertility interventions because it didn’t fit with our personal philosophy and ethics - they had to assume that I had called them unethical if they chose IVF … What a load of BS!
August 5th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
I don’t see you as sanctimonious. I do admit I often swear to myself I will never ever overthink the whole adoption thing as you do. It seems so exhausting. To me, when I adopt, I want to just say “okay I am mom now and someone else was before but this is how it is and well let’s get on with socks and sippy cups and violin lessons.” I mean I will of course talk about it with my kids as they grow but I can’t imagine thinking about it in my own head as you do. It would drive me nuts. I do however enjoy reading you thinking about it, for some reason. Even if I sometimes get exhausted watching you think.
Another reason I probably won’t is the same reason I have no desire to join any pregnancy rings or baby rings no matter how any future kids of mine arrive: I have a group of moms I talk to and for the most part I don’t really give a crap what anyone else thinks of me. I’m just not compelled to even put it out for discussion, yk?
On adoption related note: Spent happy day today with bio-MIL
August 5th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
No, I don’t think you’ve been sanctimonious at all. I admit I can be the teensiest bit snarky
but that’s in anything I’m writing.
I am jealous of the comfort level that you and Jessica appear to have had from the very beginning. I’ve written before about the rough, tentative start our open adoption had. We started out as semi-open, and M (daughter’s first mother) wanted more openness. The two of us, M and I, had a hard time with visits and communication at various times for various reasons. But things are slowly working themselves out.
Nobody will be completely happy, and it’s your blog, so write what’s true for you and your family. The heck with the rest of it.
August 5th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
When we met M and Noelle they once said they wanted to be us when they grew up. I think it’s the same with us as with you and Jessica. I would have been good friends with Noelle if were co-workers instead of linked by adoption. We clicked. It’s not that way with everyone, and I never forget how lucky we are that it did. I really think this is a good reason for prospective adoptive parents to be honest in the profiles they submit to agencies and pregnant women. Warts and all, you will have a better chance of meeting someone who can truly become family.
August 6th, 2006 at 1:20 am
Definitely, you have a unique experience. Definitely, you are a vocal woman who is unfettered by the unspoken but harshly demanded societal norms for both life choices and verbalization. But I like that. It helps me open up too.
To say you are sanctimonious? Well, aren’t we all just a little proud of ourselves regardless of our individual accomplishments? And what other reasons do we use our blogs for than to boast a bit?
Our open adoption is regrettably challenging. It’s not going how I wanted it to at all and I am increasingly frustrated by the choices we’ve made and the choices the birthfamily as a whole has made, some of which have literally harmed our children’s welfare. When at once I was shouting from the mountain tops that open adoption was the best and only good way (published consecutive articles in Adoption Today in 2002 on the subject) I am not rethinking and retooling our situation, trying hard not to pack my bags and run away from the children’s birthfamily altogether.
Life is what it is, for whoever isliving it. I don’t walk in your shoes, but I like the way those shoes look on your feet. How’s that?
August 6th, 2006 at 8:53 am
Jessica gets treated better than I did.
August 7th, 2006 at 1:53 am
i love this - this is so very true for me:
“If I had read my own blog way back when it would have freaked me out. I wasn’t ready to think about any of this yet  I just wanted a baby. I read some other waiting-to-adopt blogs and I admire them so much because they are way WAY ahead of where I was at that same point in our adoption journey. It would have terrified me to read about all the openness, all the adoption talk, pictures of Jessica up in our house  eek! I wasn’t ready to consider any of that. Really, it’s a good thing our wait (from when we contacted the agency on) was long because it gave me time to figure this stuff out.”
ps - may be in ohio soon…
August 9th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
I would imagine it supremely frustrating to watch others put your (and M’s and J’s) experience on a pedestal … only to witness what happens, of course, to anything put on a pedestal: Someone attempts to knock it off… or it simply falls … because nothing is meant to be up on one.
That said, I don’t “know†you intimately, but I consistently see these things when you post on this topic:
Willingness, vulnerability, humility, and (most importantly) empathy.
These are good things. I hope you hold onto them even if employing these qualities in your writing makes others uncomfortable. Maybe some who read them are having some entrenched paradigms shift — and that is always uncomfortable.
So true, this adoption “thing†is evolutionary; a process. Like you, my own words now would have scared the shit out of me ten years ago — as did other’s words: (I attempted to read “Giving Away Simone,†eight years ago … and was so horrified I had to put it down. Now I see it through altogether different eyes.)
Now, looking back even on some articles I wrote two years ago, I would change portions of them.
So, with a degree of fear and trembling, we hopefully continue to tentatively reach out, to learn and question and attempt to understand … and even change our minds, be wrong, be human.
It takes guts to do this work at all, Dawn, let alone in public space.
As a hopeful pessimist, I still believe wrestling with this stuff will, ultimately, leave our kids with a smaller pile of “baggage” to contend with.
I am so glad you keep writing. I believe people are being educated as a byproduct, even as your intention is simply to understand your own experience (and M’s and J’s).
Geeze, I don’t comment often … so I tend to ramble when I do. Your words are important here; imperative in some ways. I hope they keep coming and I thank you for them.
Terri