Writing out loud
I need to see if I can work this out here. I find it easier to free-write with an audience (creative exhibitionist that I am). I’m working on an essay that I hope to turn into the first chapter of this book so I can hurry and get the proposal on out like NOW and I’m stuck, as always. This is really long and mostly pointless rambling (I’m typing this sentence after putting 900-ish words of freewriting below the cut) so feel free to skip it. And if you go ahead and read — welcome to the disjointed, babbling, back and forth process that is me free-writing.
I jettisoned the idea of using the bit about naming Madison for the chapter and instead I decided (while I was at the conference listening to first moms reading their poetry and essays) that I wanted to write it about not writing about why Jessica signed the surrenders. I wanted to start the book that way for these reasons:
To establish that I won’t be crossing this explicit line. I’m going to say, “Ultimately it’s none of your business and it’s none of MY business because this is between Jessica and Madison.”
To say right off that my story is mine, that it’s incomplete because it’s missing the voices of Madison and Jessica and my inferences are mine. I want to sort of say, “Hey I’m a spectator in a lot of ways, too.” Because even though it’s a memoir about adoption from an adoptive mother’s point of view, I really believe that our experiences (adoptive parents) are kind of the least important. I mean … what do I mean. I mean that our experiences are less … they’re less IN it. Because I kinda, I think, I want to show that birth motherhood is a worthy issue for feminists, kinda? Like … hmmm. Like show that even though I’m a self-centered, navel-gazing adoptive mother, I recognize that I should be the least of anyone’s worries. Because (epiphany alert) maybe one of the points of the whole book is this sort of wake-up that a lot of adoptive parents have (reformist minded parents) where they go, “Oh my gosh, look, we were making this all about me and jeez, it shouldn’t be about ME at all!” So maybe I’m going to show that trajectory, that waking up I had. Like starting from going to the agency and being concerned about me and the shift further and further as we went through where it wasn’t about me and now living with it — living with the realization that the process was top-heavy. Like trying to fix something retroactively only I didn’t know it was broken until I’d already gone long past it.
And to confront stereotypes about first moms. I want to be able to explore why people want to know why. Are they trying to excuse Jessica? Are they trying to make themselves comfortable with something that people instinctively struggle with (women who leave their children) by creating a happy ending reason? Which is to say, to address that madonna/whore complex people have about first moms. I think both of those concepts (madonna — the woman loving enough to leave, whore — the woman who didn’t deserve her baby anyway) are important to get to right up front.
To say that whether any woman is a madonna or a whore is irrelevant when we’re talking about ethics. Which is to say that every woman deserves to have certain rights around her reproductive future. I think (I’m really having a hard time expressing this part, bear with me) I’m talking about understanding that it’s this total unknown because we can’t say with certainty what Madison’s life would have been like had she stayed with Jessica. That best guesses are still guesses.
To introduce the idea that we are all unreliable narrators of our own stories. I want to talk about the nature of memory, of hindsight, of the importance of being flexible when we’re part of someone else’s story. I want to explain that it is both possible to absolutely trust the words of a person describing their experience while at the same time knowing that their interpretation of that experience can and likely will change with time. And to use this as a vehicle to talk about letting Jessica and Madison experience the adoption differently than I do and how that’s hard and how that’s easy.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I’m probably not going to get all of this in there, which is fine. Now that I’m scrolling back down through it maybe the big thing in this chapter is establishing myself as spectator (I came back and bolded this because I think that is the point) because I’m wanting to set the stage for the book. For a personal memoir about my struggle to make sense of ethics in the course of adoption Madison. (I do believe this is the book I’ve been avoiding that’s finding me anyway.) So that first chapter — I want to set up the rest of the book but I also want to come back to the person. And I want to go ahead and directly address the reader the way I do here on the blog because I don’t want to be lecture-y; I want it to feel like I’m dialoguing with the reader. So I don’t want to say, “And another thing … you with your crazy-ass adoption ideas!” I want to say, “Hey, listen, I’m not going to talk about this but I understand that you want to know. But I’m not the one to say and truthfully, I don’t even know even though I’ve had these discussions with Jessica because I’m not going to hold her to that. I’m going to give her room to rewrite the whole thing.”
That establishes my values about openness, too, doesn’t it? Because then I can say that this is something for Madison and Jessica to discuss privately, showing right off that their relationship is theirs.
Here’s my dilemma — I don’t have anything to hang this on. I don’t have any narrative. There’s no structure to it. I do know that I want to start with an anecdote about Madison and bring it back around to it but I don’t have any stories to illustrate this. I’m brainstorming though. Hey, maybe I could write it about the Katrina coverage because if Jessica had parented, she and Madison would very likely (but who can say really) been in New Orleans. Except we can’t say. Still, I was haunted watching it and I went back and forth, “Thank goodness Madison is here! Thank goodness Jessica is here! THIS must be why the adoption happened!” You know, I wanted a happy ending, too. I wanted proof that our family’s story was written in the universe before we ever showed up to live it and that it makes everything all right. So maybe I can use part of that story. Only I want to be careful and not slip too much into anything that bleeds into “not mine to tell.”
Now I don’t want to argue any of my points above right now ‘cuz they’re fragile in my very tiny head. I’m just writing to give you the jist of my struggle.
Dawn- don’t know if this will help but…one of the most memorable things youv’e written about the adoption process for me–was in a way about your start with Jessica– the time you met her in a restaurant and how nervous you were and how right off the bat she blew your stereotypes/expectations. That she was the center of the story, and not you, came across in that first piece. That you had gone in thinking about what you would wear, how your pages seemed to her, and realizing that it all started with her decison, not your doubt or guilt,, etc.
From the perspective of a reader, I think you want to begin with a really gripping and powerful chapter about a beginning. As an outsider who’s been reading youg blog thoughout–and as someone who’s learned a lot from you about writing and adoption etc etc I know there was no one beginning. But it seems to me that you could use that first meeting as a jumping off place because really, it was then that she, Jessica, became real to you, and that you both began the process of a respective and open adoption. I think you can do that and show how your wake0up evolved throughout without speculating on Jessica’s movitations/reasons/other realities or what-ifs. If you go down that road, then it does become about Jessica’s story rather than your shared path.
anyway- obviously toss if this isn’t helpful. I don’t want to intrude on your writing process. But was glad to be “asked” with your writing out loud.
alison
Thanks Alison, your perspective here is really helpful! One of my free-write starts was about seeing Jessica across the street for the first time so maybe I’ll go back to that and see what I can make it. Thank you!
Just brainstorming -
I do think of of the biggest clues to where you are going is the “sliding door” theory - if/then. If she had parented Madison, then maybe they would have been in Katrina. If she had gone with another couple, then where would your story have taken you?
And that all leads into the ethics, which is respecting the stories of everyone - only, it’s “Rashomon” - every player has a different perspective, and you can only tell yours.
It doesn’t have to be a traditional narrative, if that’s blocking you up. You could open each chapter with an anecdote that highlights something - Madison’s primal mommy sobbing, you seeing Jessica, etc, meeting her extended family, Noah’s mention of skin color and how that also shows that this adoption is open to everyone, etc. There are moments that highlight pieces of the larger story.
I like Barbara’s idea of opening each chapter with an anecdote — it doesn’t have to be historically linear, either. The Katrina idea is especially interesting because we all witnessed the horror and the mistakes and the suffering on television. Plus it is your p.o.v. — it’s totally a “what if?”scenario and ultimately unanswerable. Which is one of the essences of adoption, the unanswerable “what if?” Don’t know if I’m making much sense, but it sounds like a gripping way to start the story, and you do want to grip your readers right at the get-go — the reality of meeting Jessica, seeing her across the street, could go along with the epiphany — “Hey, it ISN’T all about me.”
I like your description of trying to fixing something retroactively, btw. Sounds like the story of my life!
This is just to say that I really understand what you’re trying to get at. As an adoptive mother, I don’t feel like I even HAVE my own story; my small experiences feel so peripheral to the story of my daughter and her first parents. So that idea of your narrative position of spectator is right on.
“A personal memoir about my struggle to make sense of ethics in the course of adopting Madison”
That sentence stands out for me as the clearest indication of what the book will actually be about–once you’ve established your narrative position.
But what I mainly want to say is Yes please, write this book. For me, “waking up” about the ethics of adoption is an experience that has been totally enmeshed with becoming a parent, and it’s hard to make sense of alone. For me, the moment you describe in “Open Adoption, Broken Heart” captures the conflict between the “ethics” and the “parent” narratives:
“She’s beautiful,” I said to my husband. He glanced into the rearview mirror. “I know,” he said. We sped through the gray morning, heading home.
“I feel like a kidnapper,” I told him.
“I know,” he said.
——————————
I think that “waking up” is a story that really needs to be told. I wish I could have read something like that when I was going through it so I wouldn’t have felt so crazy and alone, and so I would have had a model for how to hold those two opposing forces in some kind of balance. I’m glad I eventually found your blog and others like it to help me navigate.
i also like the idea of a personal story that illustrates various different issues involved along the way.
the only thing about the katrina thing specifically that strikes me the wrong way is that it gets back to you somehow ’saving’ madison, and the stereotype that she clearly would not have survived or managed or had a good life had she not been adopted, which, if i’m correct in how i’m reading the above, is one of the things you want to take on as a myth and/or ethically irrelevant.
you could use it to illustrate just that, i suppose.
i think the spectator ideas, and the humility involved in that, and the ethics of it, are important and are part of what keeps me reading your blog.
Chanie, EXACTLY! If I use that, I’m going to use it to illustrate MY need to absolve myself. When it was happening (Katrina) I just felt grateful that both of them were HERE (because if readers recall, for a short time no one knew where Jessica’s little sister was — she was fine but it was scary). When someone said, “It’s a good thing you adopted her” I tried it on and it still didn’t feel like a reasonable justification.
You already know this and it’s pretty clear throughout your writing, but I maybe want it in bold letters three feet high (because a lot of your readers aren’t going to be thinking this way) that it NOT being “about” you (or about adoptive parents–and I wholeheartedly agree) doesn’t mean that you (adoptive parents) don’t have pretty much ALL the power in adoption. Most of the time. Mostly. While Jessica and Madison’s relationship is theirs (and not yours) you have the power to help or hinder it which really complicates things.
And I realize that’s not your main point, or it kind of is–inversely presented here, I think. But I think it needs to be really explicit. You can’t ever just give up that power. Even when you give it up, it’s your choice to give it up, to take it back, etc. So the relationships–the family–you create in adoption (adoptive parents create when they adopt) are always-already inflected with unshakeable power differentials that challenge intimacy.
This is all very stream-of-consciousness too. Sorry. But that’s what popped into my head reading through your brainstorm.
Okay, I was really half asleep when I wrote all that. I was trying to write my way around to a point and now I have it: It SHOULDn’t be about you, but in adoption, it typically IS the adoptive parents who are most taken into account by everyone (including your imagined audience, which is why you feel the need to explain why you aren’t explaining, right?). So what you’re needing to do is set the thing up right away to overturn adoption assumptions that dominate our culture. It SHOULD be about Jessica and Madison, at least first and foremost, then a distant third comes you. Yet law and social policy and practice tend to put you at the center to J and M’s detriment.
You are probably so beyond this point by now. But since I’m always trying to articulate this stuff myself, you got me all caught up in it!