Shoot, I got all the way upstairs and wanted to add one thing to the post below so had to come back down.
Something I learned from working in shelter is that sometimes people in crisis need explicit instructions/promises/direction and I can’t think of a bigger crisis then losing your baby (even by choice). Before we left the hospital, after the papers were signed Pennie said she just wanted to focus on the visit before the concert. I told her she could see Madison sooner if she needed to and she said, no, she was holding onto that date of the concert. (I just checked the time stamp, Madison was about three weeks old at that first visit.) I told her she could call as soon as she needed to, whenever she needed to. I was explicit about this. I told her if she needed to call, to call. If she needed to come over, come over. I told her that she could take it one day at a time and that if today she didn’t think she’d need to call or visit sooner, that was fine and if tomorrow she felt different, that was fine, too. I told her that we wouldn’t hold to a schedule unless she needed the structure of the schedule.
Pennie took things very one day at a time and she took me at my word that she could call or come over. She told me when she felt like it would be too much for her and sometimes she called me because she wasn’t sure what she needed and we would talk. Sometimes talking to me was enough. Sometimes having another date in the future would be enough. But we did in many ways acquiesce to her greater need. Yes, it was hard to balance her emotions with my own; yes, it wasn’t always convenient to return phone calls in a timely manner with a new baby. But to our minds, her crisis was greater and while I did learn to honor my own boundaries, I also tried to stretch to accommodate what I felt was her greater need to come to terms with this new reality. I had my friends and family support team and she had hers but we also needed each other.
I understand that this wouldn’t work in every open adoption because Pennie is a pretty stable, emotionally healthy person who had a clear idea of her needs (even at her most muddled). I’d venture to say that this is true of most first parents. But that first year, it’s such a huge emotional and physical crisis and if I’d judged Pennie by her coping as if it wasn’t (as if the person she was in crisis was HER and not her in crisis) I would have sold her short. I mean, we are none of us bright and shining models of gracious behavior when we’re holding on in base survivor mode. The person Pennie was that first year is not the person she is now because the person she was that first year was a woman crashing hard. I won’t go into details because it’s nobody’s business but I know that any first mom who reads me knows exactly what I’m talking about. I have never ever ever experienced the kind of loss that Pennie has but I have had my own crises and I know that one day at a time, by the skin of my teeth I did what I needed to do to get through it and getting through it wasn’t always pretty. (I can remember a period in my late teens when I would wake up and start talking myself through the day, holding myself like I was thin glass filled with heavy water trying not to shatter or spill or drown. And I made concessions if it helped me get through things even if it meant sacrificing my pride or taking a step backward.)
The first year of an open adoption is about establishing yourselves and your caring for each other. It’s a time to be gentle with each other, especially we adoptive parents who need to understand that the mother (and perhaps father and perhaps extended family) before us is something that is not quite who they really are. Maybe some parents hide it better (from themselves, from us) and maybe some break out/act out more and are more self-destructive.
Maybe (I’m just suddenly thinking about this) we adoptive parents need a better understanding of what it means to be a person in severe crisis so that we can be more understanding and more flexible. (Like when the compliant woman who placed wakes up and becomes assertive. Or when the angry, pushy woman who placed is able to feel safe enough to not push so hard.)
My experience in shelter and my own experience living through a very bad time helped me because I knew we all just had to get through it until it got better and I believed — although I was afraid I was wrong — that it would settle down to what would be our new normal. And it has. For the most part, it has.
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Well said as usual.
Oh, Dawn–I’m so glad I read this–thanks!
First, as I’m reading this, maybe not anything specific you wrote, but the piece as a whole, it suddenly makes me wonder how my and N’s relationship would be different had we actually been in two-way contact that first year, where we were growing into things together as opposed to already having preconcieved notions about what that other person was doing, feeling, thinking. I STILL don’t know what that first year was like for her and we haven’t gotten into a groove, though I think it can definitely happen. We just picked up after a year with openness, neither one making concrete statements aobut thoughts or ideas or expectations. And then its so hard to go back as if we were “new” again. Does that make sense? Sorry–again making this about me, but the piece really made me think.
Secondly, I LOVE what you say about maybe adoptive parents need to do some education on effects of crisis! That is so smart!
Everyone should read this, not only potential adopting parents! People tend to be less gentle to those in a crisis, and not more gentle.
I’m glad that Pennie and you got through that time together and have stayed friends. Madison has two excellent role models in her life.
I left a comment on a 2007 (!) post, relating to the LA Times article (which I only just read, since I only recently discovered your blog.)
Just letting you know.
You are obviously a very smart and sensitive person, very atune to your daughter and even her mother.
I can’t help but be struck with the question though, why would you invited this kind of pain/drama into your life?
I am an adoptee and have strong feelings about the difficulties adoption leaves a child with, so maybe that really colors my ability to understand how people could want to be a part of something like adoption, actually pay money to be a part of it. Even without that aspect, if I could really believe adoption was good for children, what it does to their mothers and even the adoptive parents, it is not something I would ever invite into my life.
It is ironic that adoption makes more sense to me when it is done by people just blindly grabbing at a baby, lost in fantasy, I mean obviously that will be harmful for the child but smart people trying to do it “right” only brings into sharp relief how truly bizarre/harmful the whole situation is.
I mean Pennie sounds great, you sound great, how did this happen?
I hope this comment does come off as hostile, I am aware that I sometimes come off hostile because I lack a certain je ne sais quoi, obviously, or is it simply tact?
Anyway, the spirit of the question is deep curiosity.
Hi, been out of touch for a while….caring for a newborn will do that I guess. Once again, a beautiful post about caring for and honoring the woman on other end of our becoming a family. Thank you for the reminder. We hadn’t heard from T, our birthmom,since AM’s 2 month checkup and eye exam so we were giving her “space” thinking that was what she needed. Then one day, literally hours after I had commented to some friends how we hadn’t heard from her she phoned. She asked if everything was alright as she had sent me two text messages and I had not responded. I was horrified, I had not received those messages! I felt terrible for days, as I knew she had reached out via text when she needed a contact and I was unable to respond because I had not received them. I felt like I had let her down and didn’t want to do that knowing this was still a very, very fragile time for her with Christmas right around the corner.
Joy,
I don’t know how long comments are supposed to be, and I don’t to step on anyone’s toes, so keeping this short. But I’m another one of those crazy women who would embrace that situation. I’m not religious but believe strongly in “I am my brother’s keeper” or however it goes. Kids need families. Women are not always prepared to parent. There are good adoptive situations and there are abusive ones. Someone who goes into it with a realistic outlook and expects there to be raw emotions and is committed to making it work means a good adoptive situation.
I love kids, not just “my own” kids. I’d barely blink if someone handed me a baby or a toddler or even an older child and said “Ok. you’re this kid’s parent”. (I mean, other than the obvious legal reasons why that wouldn’t work). Yes, the pain of the adopted child and the birth mother who had to make the decision would be raw and difficult to deal with, but it also wouldn’t be beyond my ability to cope. And because the situations leading to adoption HAPPEN regardless of whether people are willing and able to cope.. I don’t see why I wouldn’t make the decision to expose myself to that, when I believe myself to be one of the people that COULD cope and be compassionate at the same time.. Does that make sense?