Inspired
I just got off the phone with Sharon Kaplan Roszia and I need to make an apology.
Deanna, I have to publicly apologize to you. I have been frustrated by some of your posts (on boards, on blogs) and last night I couldn’t figure out why I was getting so upset. Your situation is not mine and it has nothing to do with me so why was I getting so revved up about it? I realize that I’ve been projecting on to you and instead of seeing you making a decision for your family, I’ve been thinking about Jessica and about me and I’ve been coming at you with misplaced hurt. I’m sorry that I visited my frustrations on you. I’ve been a lousy advocate.
I feel so strongly that openness is what our kids deserve that I allow myself get angry when I see people throwing up barriers and I need to remember that most of us are doing the best we can. I know (and was reminded in this interview) that adoption professionals generally do a poor job of advocating for us — all members of the triad — and leave us to flounder around ourselves in the making of new families. I think my standards are sometimes unrealistically high for what I expect people to be able to take on emotionally. Instead of crabbing about adoptive parents, I ought to be crabbing about the adoption industry that tells us openness rocks and then abandons families once the papers (and the checks) are signed .
I really really really do want to encourage adoptive parents who have the possibility of openness to do some research as they make decisions about what right their child has to their first families. Since the support we get is often openness-ignorant, we’ll just need to build our own resources. We can do this like this:
–Please talk to people who have successfully navigated open adoptions (as an aside, I’m only two years into this thing but am happy to share more privately than I can here on the blog; I could not have done this without my adoptive mom mentor who walked me through some of our challenges and it’s a karma thing). Someone out there has been where you are now and has good advice for you. I know I make this seem like a peaches and ice cream adoption and it’s been more complicated than that. That is to say, there’s a chance I know where you are, too.
–Please don’t look to advice from people who have little or no personal involvement with adoption. My own experience is that people outside the adoption community sometimes rush to judgment without really understanding all of the issues.
–Please take the bad stories with a grain of salt. Too many people don’t have help, don’t have support, and don’t have encouragement. It’s no wonder adoptions close when there is no one to help us navigate the inevitable challenges. But if you are looking to stay committed to openness, these are not the people who can guide you there. (I’m not dismissing their experiences; I’m saying that if I wanted to know how to stay married, I’d talk to someone who’d been married for 50 years or to someone who despite a divorce still valued marriage. You want to know how to have an open adoption? Talk to people having open adoptions.)
You have to remember that we’re doing this for our kids. Sharon said, “You have to think what will I tell my 16-year old when he asks me why I kept his birth family from him all this time?” This is a woman who has been doing this for thirty years; she knows whereof she speaks. And her educated opinion is that open adoptions are more successful for the kids than closed or semi-open ones are. (Because it’s about relationshps — it’s about building relationships; not sending letters and pictures to a postoffice box. Who can have a relationshp with a post office box?)
(Another thing, she says that openness is about being open — sometimes it’s one-sided. I told her about having no contact with Madison’s first dad and some of the details around that. She said, “What would you do if he contacted you?” I said, “We would have to explore that if it happened.” She said, “Then that’s an open adoption because you’re approaching that with an open heart.” This is what Shannon’s been saying, too; she correct me once about it.)
Sharon told me this great story about “the birth family of everyone’s nightmares.” Dad in prison, mom in and out of rehab, untreated mental illness that left the parents homeless. The child comes to the family and they create openness through the bad times, through the good. They manage it by getting help and staying committed and it’s not easy. It took a long time but now the first parents are getting their lives together as much as they are able and all this time the adoptive family is helping the way you help family. They’re setting boundaries and offering a hand now and then. They do it because that’s what you do for family and they never want their son to say, “Why does your family deserve it but mine doesn’t?”
At the 13-year old son’s bar mitzvah this past spring the whole family is there. And it’s a huge family — the first family, the adoptive family, the family of another child who was also placed. There’s a part in bar mitvahs where they raise the boy-becoming-a-man in a chair.
“Now this kid is a big boy,” she told me. “It took everyone to hold him up. So there was his birth dad with a long pony-tail and piercings and there’s his adoptive dad. And there’s his three brothers by birth and by adoption and they’re all holding him up; they’re all supporting him. And I thought to myself, ‘Now if that’s not a picture of what adoption is all about.’”
We want to hold our kids up. That’s what it’s about.
I feel very encouraged after talking to her. I’ll have more tomorrow.
You remind me of something one of our pre-adoption workshop facilitators told us. She said her adoptions (two of them) had been done back in the closed days, but that she had “opened” both of them (with private investigators) as her kids got older, because they started to need that and as a mom, she needed to figure out how to do it for them.
She said her older son was 11 when he asked her something about his bio-family she didn’t know. “Ask my birth mom,” her son suggested. “But how could I do that?” the adoptive mom said. “Doesn’t she call you to check on me?” her son asked.
And this was a kid adopted at birth. He just assumed that his mothers were in touch about him. And that’s when the adoptive mom started searching to find his first mom.
I think of that story a lot when I think about Nat growing up.
Just when I think none of us can say anything new- wow Dawn. I can’t wait to read this article.
The last week or so seems to be pretty productive in producing all sorts of new thoughts and ideas and viewpoints in this little corner of the blogging world.
I so agree with you on support after the adoption. Our agency has been really wonderful to us, but I think it’s because I approached them, no one ever calls me or says “How is it going?” Are those resources out there? My adoptive families group was merely a social organization that met for a Christmas party and summer picnic. Do we need to start creating these kinds of systems and not wait for agencies to do it for us?
And you know you make me blush.
I’m glad someone finally brought up that everyone says open adoptions are better, but there isn’t much counseling and support on making it work.
We’ve had to do some hard soul searching for situation, luckily with the help of Baby R’s social worker. Our agency social worker has been friendly but there hasn’t been much support a long this.
This is a lot of new territory of everyone and each situation is different but just having someone held us face our concerns and fears really helped. She never told us what to do but wanted us to question ourselves before making any decisions for the very reason that Sharon stated. What would we tell him when he asked why we kept him away. Were are reasons sound. Without help and support we are going to open our adoption up slowly. We do have some concerns and we want to make our decisions carefully. In fact we meet with the Grandmother tomorrow about visits post adoption. We are going to try and keep her in our lives. I really like her so far, she’s made bad choices in her life but she is so good with him and is supportive of us so far. We are hoping for and working for it, but I also know how hard it will be to stay dedicated to the concept of being open without the support.
One of the things I’d like to see from more agencies.
Fantastic post. And, yes, Lisa … as a birth/natural mom I believe it is imperative for enlightened/educated adoptive parents to form the support systems where agencies and facilitators do not.
I agree that both birthparents and adoptive parents are left to navigate what amounts to an uncharted wilderness when it comes to open adoption, once the papers and checks are signed.
I know “our” agency had only alumni adoptive parent picnics, without inviting or including the families of origin — the supposed extended families created by the open adoptions they facilitated. Furthermore, they warmly embraced adoptive parents who had closed open adoptions, no questions asked.
I can’t help but wonder, had my oldest daughter’s adoptive mom been amidst an open adoption support group, if she might have been both educated toward and held accountable in keeping the adoption open for our daughter’s sake.
I wrote this long comment on the previous post and couldn’t get it published…ugh..lets try it here.
I agree that we are left floundering about after adoptions go through and that in order to get information it is better to talk to people who have/are doing this instead of those outside of the adoption world.
I adopted through the foster care system (was not our intention as we didn’t sign up for fost/adopt but the situation presented itself and if we had not agreed to adopt she would have been given to a waiting couple/person) so after termination of parental rights we were not legally bound to keep in contact with anyone but we chose to keep in contact with birthdad (could call or visit whenever he wanted) and birthmom (we lost contact with her). A few months ago I sent her a letter and tons of pictures. I opened a door I was not altogether sure I wanted to open, but I realized that my jealousy and her initial reasons for removal were not enough to keep her apart from our daughter. My first letter was awkward and probably a bit self-righteous as I was not sure she was “ready” (can’t go into details) so I wanted her to know that I wanted to do this but I was afraid/concerned. I’m glad that as poorly written as it was that I did it anyway. They write to one another now and hopefully will do visits in the future if she wants. Don’t get me wrong…jealousy still rears its ugly head..specially when our little girls signs of her letters with “I love you too!” - I just wish I had had someone helping/guiding me through this. I would have been nice if the county offered a post adoption program/resource where someone could have mediated for us…would have been a lot less awkward for me.
I’m not saying that this should be the norm for post foster/adopt type of contact as there are many different degrees of neglect or abuse or reasons why a child is removed but just wanted to show that even in these type of situation there can still be room for openness if appropriate.
I could have hung on to the initial reason for removal as a very valid reason to not initiate contact between them but I knew in my heart of hearts that this wasn’t the “real” reason. It was my jealousy, my unresolved infertility issues (although this was not the reason I adopted which is why they are probably still unresolved), my anger at her for losing her child, and the fact that I didn’t want to share her. But these were “MY” issues and not valid enough reasons to make it my daughter’s problem and her first moms’ burden.
as they make decisions about what right their child has to their first families.
I like the whole post except for some reason this line grated me.
Can we change the word “right” to “access?” Because to me one doesn’t decide “rights” for any other human. Else it’s a privilege, not a right.
I don’t have a choice when it comes to having an open adoption.
Not just because I am adopting older children but because I don’t even see the keeping of this kind of information away from people I love as being an opition.
I have put up with a lot from the family I was born into and from the family I married into, so doing the same with the family that I adopt into just fits the bill.
It is all about long range planning isn’t it?
Thankyou to all who go before me and pave those roads I have not yet travelled!
I just found this post, I haven’t been here for a day or so. To be honest the converstations of this past week have drained me.
I want to address the adoption agency subject and funny enough I have just written a very long post about that. I’ll probably put it up on my blog next week. For now, not being a writer, I need to sit on it and re-read it a time or two to make sure I’ve captured my thoughts properly.
As to our son’s adoption and its openness. Part of me would like to have visits. Part of me is worried it will hurt my son (for a variety of reasons). Part of me is worried it wil hurt his natural mom. I used to be worried about how I would feel about visits. But now that I have him and I have been a mom for nearly 4 months, well I don’t worry abou that. There is nothing or noone who could make me feel like less of a mom to him. If I thought visits were best for him, if I truly believed his life would be better, not worse for having visits, we would do it in a heart beat. I love, truly love his natural mom. Not because she gave birth to my beautiful boy, but because of who she is. She’s chaotic at times and immature at times, but her heart is pure gold. She doesn’t want visits at this point. She brought this up to me, long before she had heard our reason for not wanting visits. Maybe she has changed her mind. I won’t bring it up yet because I don’t want to mention something I’m not willing to do.
Thanks for your post. I think everyone involved in adoption needs to work towards changing the system. It is a terrible, terrible system as it stands now and thank goodness we got educated about it before we met our son’s natural parents. I can honestly say I have no regrets about the way I handled his natural family or the adoption proceedings. Even after he was born I made the same difficult statement you made to Jessica, “you know, you can change your mind”. I held my breath while I waited for her answer. I don’t think I really heard her words, it was the look in her eyes, the smile on her face that told me that this was our son and she (at least for the time being) was content and happy with her decision.
I looked up where Kinship Center is located. About two hours south of San Francisco. A bit far although I’ll keep them as a resource. We’ve kind of decided to try and be a catalyst for our agency. We are very fortunate in that our agency has set up a monthly group for it’s families. It is a support group were we discuss all the joys and challenges of adopting and parenting. We hope this will be a source of support and if not we’ll keep that fire burning for them. Sometimes you only get help when you ask for it.
We know we will need the support to keep to our goal of openness. We are cautious, I’d like to say we have no concerns and are 100% committed to it. The reality is different and we want help addressing our concerns as they come up. We want to do this even because we do think it is best, but we also know some days will be hard and some days will be easy. Like any journey we’ll take it slowly and deal with it, both joys and struggles, as they come.
[...] I think this is what we have in our bloggging world, really, don’t you? We’ve built a virtual support group and it’s damn nifty! And it works! We have really helped each other to see things in a new way, appreciate different points of view and stretch our ideas about what our kids need. Sadly, all the luddites in the world don’t get to benefit from our blogs so let’s take it to the streets! And another thing, The Kinship Center? Their primary interest is special needs adoption through the foster system so they are a great resource if you are trying to figure out openness from the perspective as a foster parent. (Bacchus, they’re in California! And Angela — who commented — is awesome. Hit her up!) [...]