this woman’s work

Party girl

Mar 31, 2007 Adoption

Madison’s birthday party is this afternoon! It looks like rain, which is a shame. Jessica’s house is big enough for the enormous number of people she’s invited but she also has a great backyard and it would have been nice to release the hounds (i.e., children hyped up on sugar) at some point.

The adoption blogosphere has grown so much lately. It was making me think of how heavily I leaned on LisaV and how grateful I was/am to her generosity.

At the beginning, thinking about Jessica meant thinking about adoption — all adoption, all the time. I felt very self-conscious and my expectations of her were … unrealistic. I expected her to behave this way or that way because I only saw her through this film of BIRTH MOTHER (I’m using this term deliberately because I’m trying to share that I was letting these institutional ideas about adoption get in the way of our relationship). So if she called at this time instead of that or visited here instead of there, I’d be surprised. I kinda had this idea that Jessica only existed in context of our (particularly Madison’s) relationship to her. Not overtly, mind you, but my life had become Madison-Madison-Madison (by virtue of new babyness) and so I was having trouble separating my experience from Jessica’s.

I’m not commenting here about Jessica’s grief or her inner-life at that time (because I’m not privy to those details); I’m talking about how my expectations could have gotten in the way of building a relationship with Jessica beyond Madison’s adoption.

Then I’m trying to think about why they didn’t.

Well, for one Jessica is someone I genuinely like and we have things in common so we have other things to talk about. And the other is that it’s (fairly) easy for me to ask questions and if something confused me or if I was unsure about something, I could ask her. Also she is someone with confidence who is comfortable correcting my assumptions.

I leaned on Jessica as we worked on boundaries. She has lots of good long-term friends so I knew that meant she could handle the inevitable screw-ups on my part. Anyone who has good long-term friends knows how to accept people despite their flaws so that made me feel more secure. I didn’t worry as much about making some big, gigantic mistake and making her hate us.

Also I figured we were in it for the long-haul and that conflict was something we would need to learn to handle. It’s something we talked about at the beginning.

LisaV is parenting teenage Apple in a fully open adoption so she’s been through things I’m just starting to think about. Anytime I was worried about getting it wrong and doing it right, I could email her and get her gentle, encouraging perspective. And Apple’s first mom has also allowed LisaV to pick her brain on the blogosphere’s behalf.

I’m really grateful to them both. And I’m thinking about it all today.

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