Lynn (who is my friend in real life) wrote:
I was just wondering if it ever makes you second guess having an open adoption…..any of you. I recently got to talk to my daughter and then her parents wouldn’t let me anymore. We found eachother on facebook. She said she always wondered about me. If she had brothers and sisters and if she looked like me. If we would be the same or different. But I have to wonder how things would have been different for her had we been able to talk all along. Would it have been hard for her to know she is the only girl, would she feel like Maddie and want to be with me. Would she be the same as she is now. I wonder…. I envy first families who are able to talk to their children. But is their a disadvantage to it?
Obviously I’m only answering for myself as an adoptive mother in THIS particular adoption and do not pretend to speak for anyone else.
I never ever ever ever second guess our open adoption. Never. There is not a doubt in my mind that openness is what’s right for Madison. Any of the hurt that seems to come from openness is part and parcel of adoption in general only with closed adoption, I think it’d be easier to pretend like none of it was happening. And there are so many GOOD parts about openness.
Like Madison gets to see people who look like her. Just look at this picture! (as always, click to see bigger)
That’s Pennie and Pennie’s little sister and Madison. Stuff like this? Priceless. And without openness in adoption, impossible.
Yes, Madison is sad about so much but what she’s sad about is the adoption part. What she’s HAPPY about is the openness part. Look a the smile on her face up there! She loves seeing Pennie. She loves her birth mama. She loves Destiny and honestly, she loves Roscoe, too (or is learning to love him). Loving them does give weight to her missing them but I don’t think less love (less contact) is the answer.
I love what Zunzun had to say:
I guess I’m just saying that although I realize those against open adoptions would probably feel validated by what you wrote I think it actually proves that it works…the child will feel these things anyway…but in silence…I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be for a little kid to try to process all this without being able to discuss it (or air it out by yelling). I know for a fact (since mine is now 11) that had it not been for the openness we have with her first dad and the amount of communication with her biomom (her own term) our own attachment process, bonding, and ability to be open and honest with one another would have been diminished.
I think she nails it right there in that last line. She needs her whole story. She needs these relationships. I believe she is strong and healthier for having Pennie in her life even if it means a different texture to her sadness or being more in touch with her loss.
When I try to imagine life with this child without Pennie in our lives? I can’t do it. It’s too much missing. It’s too much gone. Ignorance would NOT be bliss, no. Besides the simple fact of PENNIE, of not knowing her (any of us), Madison gets so so so much out of having a real life, in-person relationship with her. She is so much more … she’s so much more present because she has access to her roots. I can’t explain it. But I do believe that she is a more secure child because of the openness in her adoption. I know that that is counterintuitive to some of the anti-ish open adoption people who worry it’ll make a kid feel less secure but I’m telling you — the more Madison has owned her story, the more secure and confident she has become in her relationships with Pennie AND with me AND with herself.
I was just thinking about that the other day because it seems like every time there’s a big grief breakthrough (from this day to this day), I see a developmental leap in herself and in her relationships. This tells me that processing her story — while difficult and sometimes painful — is a good, healthy thing for her to do. And I believe with all of my heart that openness helps her do this.
Related posts:
As you know, I’ve experienced difficulty at the hand of open adoption. I can’t make a final call, really, as to whether it would have been easier to have had a closed adoption and found out about my daughter’s parents divorce and her mom’s subsequent remarriage when the Munchkin turned 18 or if this is the easier path. I assume, living this life, that processing it all as it comes is the easier way for me.
Similarly, I assume that it is easier for the Munchkin to process the changes in my life as they come instead of being sideswiped by two brothers and a marriage later in life. I assume this with a sense of leaning towards the positive because, while she asks hard questions at times, she loves the heck out of her brothers. I think love is good, no?
I don’t quite know if anyone can answer the question. Even if an adoptive family had two adoptions, one open and one closed, the family issues and other things are so unique with each case that I still don’t think we’d see a true comparison. Similarly to a birth parent relinquishing two children to two different families, one open and one closed. It really comes down to a case of circumstance.
I ramble. For you.
My daughters are adopted from China, so the adoptions are as closed as can be. I’m so envious of open adoptions — that photo is priceless! At Chinese school tutoring this afternoon, my oldest had to answer a question in the book, “Who do you look like?” Zoe has no way of answering that question truthfully.
It’s true that things are no easier with closed adoptions, as in our case adopting internationally. I think they just process their losses differently and at different times, but so many questions remain unanswered. My oldest (also very verbal) has definitely been very expressive about her own adoption story. And it breaks my heart that I can’t give her the answers to many questions.
I wanted to say, Dawn, that even though the circumstances of our children’s adoptions are so different, that I’ve learned a great deal from you, especially about removing your self and your own feelings from our children’s process of understanding their adoptions. Big smooches to you – and Maddie and Pennie and Roscoe. Smooches all around.
But I wonder if, especially at this time, anyone is wondering if Madison could actually go and start living with Pennie …. That comes to mind because I know a DI child of lesbian mothers who at 13 decided he wanted to go and live with his donor (not far away from his mothers) – and he did. As a younger child he’d not had much to do with this donor, who wasn’t really in his life as a ‘dad’, but as the child got older, he instigated a revision of the relationships. Credit to the mothers that they went with the flow but also heartbreaking for them.
Suz, I think that likely at some point in her teens that we will explore that in earnest.
Dawn, I’m guessing that THIS is the piece that scares the heck out of some adoptive parents. Because if that’s one of the possible outcomes of openness, that Madison might go live with Penny someday, whether for a summer or a year, it puts a TON of work on you and Brett (and Noah) to figure out, really, a new definition of parenthood (and family). And not just in the future, but right now.
I mean, actually, there are plenty of models for expanding the ways we think about mothering, and family, but this is still a path that I think would scare me. I would hope that I wouldn’t live by fear, but — wow. It takes a lot of trust to walk your path.
Well, I’ve always thought that my kids might want to go live with extended family at some point. Maybe and maybe not but it’s one reason we’re back here. I think grandparents can be especially useful when kids hit their teens. I mean, if someone is going to run away from home or something, it’d nice if they run to someone we (parents) know and love. And the way this open adoption has happened, Pennie is simply a reasonable option. Sure, it scares me. My kids growing up and going away scares me but they do that anyway and I think one reason it scares me as that they are 5 and 12. I think by the time either of them WANTED to do that (or was at the age where they MIGHT want), it will scare me less.
Now I wouldn’t even contemplate allowing Madison to go live with the paternal side of her birth family so I get absolutely that in other families this isn’t even an option. It just might be in ours. (Lisa V’s daughter has been spending extended time with her birth mom and Lisa V is my model of what our open adoption might look like because I think a lot of our circumstances/relationships are similar in Mallory & Madison’s adoptions.)
This Christmas is the first holiday Mallory has asked to spend with Noelle. I expect it won’t be the last. I think it’s a sign that she truly feels like a real member of Noelle’s family and not just a visitor.
My prediction is that as an adult we will share her pretty equally. Noelle and I will be grandmothers together (if Mal has kids). I would love that.
I wouldn’t change a thing about our openess. I think the joy and reassurance it’s brought has far outweighed the complications.
*standing and clapping*
Yes. Even in the less-happy relationships we have with some of the kids’ first parents, I’ve never yet doubted that having everything out there and present and real in the now–where the kids can process it in their own time and in their own way as they develop–has been right for our two.
Thank you for this, Dawn. I needed it.
Children deserve to know their biological parents, whether the parents raise them or not.
Closed adoptions are EVIL. Sealed & altered birth certificates are EVIL. No one should have their beginnings, their origins, a mystery. No one should have their nationality and ethnicity and family tree deleted from their reality and from human history. Our (adoptees) cultures and ethnicities and connections to our biological families are just as important and valuable as for people who are not adopted.
It is so disgusting that people have the rights to violate the civil rights of minors due to a legal process called “adoption” where the person being adopted has no say in ANYTHING. Where are the court appointed special advocates (CASA) standing up for the rights of relinquished children? Nowhere. Relinquished children have NO RIGHTS in this country. None. The hole only gets deeper when we’re adopted because even when we become adults, we still have NO legal RIGHTS to our own IDENTITIES.
What do you suggest people in my situation do then, when I would love to tell my daughters about the woman who birthed them (as she is one of my best friends) but she has strongly requested against it? She doesn’t want to know them, doesn’t want them to know her, and has specifically asked that we do not tell our children about her until they are much older (like teenagers or so).
Where do you draw the line of enough information and too much information? No, having a relationship with their biological mother is not a feasible option per her request. But this is a person I literally have known since the very first day of my life so I could tell my daughters every single thing about her, so what do I tell to respect her wishes and also respect the right of my children to know these things about their history?
And how do I tell them about the biological dad that beat them and their mother? How do I tell them that the reason they have nightmares and are afraid of closets isn’t because of scary noises but instead because they lived through hell for the first two years of their life. How much is too much and how much is appropriate? Where are the guidelines for this?
I agree that it’s criminal that people can make these decisions for children but there are no clear cut guidelines for every adoption or every child or every family. It’s horrible to say but for the most part, I believe adoptive parents are in this doing the very best we possibly can with our individual circumstances.
Is this a rhetorical question or are you really asking? Because I can tell you that my loyalty would be first to my kids although I’d give my friend a heads up so she was prepared and could have the opportunity to be a part of the discussion. Also if it were me and my mom hadn’t told me and then it came later in my life (like in the teen years), I don’t know if I could forgive her for keeping it from me for so long.
So those are my thoughts on it. And as far as the bio dad, I think there are age appropriate ways to begin that discussion, too and I might look to a knowledgeable, thoughtful therapist to help me especially if my children had two years in that environment because I would assume that there might be some issues coming out of that that maybe I’d need help around.
(I do agree that most of us are doing the best we can.)
this is such an excellent post. I love how the openness can bring to light those feelings, and help her process them with guidance and love.
I see my thoughts reflected in Suz’s comment… personally, I find it very hard to read to read these accounts of Madison’s pain. I’m more of an action-oriented person, not a particularly process/feelings oriented one, so I immediately think of what I would do to ease that pain and “giving her back” seems to jump to mind.
I’m aware the situation is more complicated than that. Nevertheless, that’s my immediate gut reaction. And it reinforces why I would never, ever ever want to do a private adoption.
I am dealing with some of the same issues in terms of openness (with my son’s maternal relatives and foster family) but there is no path back that he sees, that I see, or that anyone else sees. If there was one, I don’t know if I could deal with the situation at all.
It’s not the temporary nature that disturbs me. I’m considering fostering later on. It’s the idea of something that starts off as permanent becoming temporary, based on the reasoning that maybe it should have never been permanent at all.
I understand your situation might evolve into co-parenting, and I’m glad you are confident that you can navigate everything. And I’m sorry if anything I said comes off as judgmental, I just don’t see how to express myself otherwise.
No, I get that and I have a hard time looking at domestic infant adoptions the same way now. But I’ll also say that there’s a whole lot I leave out here per details of the situation and also that giving Madison back wouldn’t undo the adoption — it would just be a new loss on top of loss. We can’t turn back the hands of time and what was true then is still true. HOWEVER, we can navigate our current reality to the best of our abilities and not be limited by outside ideas about what adoption should or ought to mean.
So this part: “It’s the idea of something that starts off as permanent becoming temporary, based on the reasoning that maybe it should have never been permanent at all.” Is a very simplistic view of a very complex situation because every adoption is complex, you know? I have deliberately NOT given lots of details around Pennie’s life then or now or her situation then or now or her beliefs/experiences/etc. then or now so the picture I’m sharing is necessarily incomplete.
The part I want people to hear is that adopted kids are not blank slates, period. That openness may mean there is more apparent pain but that adoption is loss and so there is pain and openness is a healthier way (and by openness I don’t mean a particular number of visits or anything — I mean honesty and respect for a kid’s origins) to handle the reality of adoption.
I apologize for the simplification.
No need.
I think if we didn’t have the struggles that openess brings (Noelle had more kids, Noelle moved far away), we’d have different ones. “Did my first mom love me? Who do I look like? Where do I belong? ”
Adoption itself causes grief, no matter how it is done. It’s not openess.
Speaking as a closed-records adoptee, my gut reaction is that I would be so weirded out by having my birth parents around. But interestingly, I always expected and planned to adopt through open-adoption. I guess we’re more comfortable with what we know…
As an adult, I’ve kept my relationships with my birth parents (I found them at 25) and adoptive parents separate- they’ve never met. I really like having that control….I DO NOT want them on the phone exchanging notes about me. And now as I write this I’m laughing out loud. Adoptees, control issues? Nah…
Excellent post, Dawn. I wonder about many of the same things written here. I think if nothing else openness does help my children not being blindsided as an adult, and will help, as the are older and have questions. Instead of speculating, we’ll be able to call Jane and met for lunch.
Are there uncomfortable moments? Sure. But isn’t that life?
after reading abou what you said about madison possibly living with pennie, i think you must be the most selfless mother (and father?) ever.
These are all hard questions to ask. We have a mostly closed adoption (not by choice), and sometimes when I read your account, aspects of the triad seem very painful and confusing. But then again, intimacy is always painful. Perhaps it is a “pay now or pay later” kind of situation. My son has little interaction and therefore very little feeling in regards to his birthmom, but maybe that will mean he grieves more later, as he understands more.
Maybe this is coming out of defensiveness, but I want to address Mara’s comment about closed adoption being EVIL (all-caps hers). While I would agree it is not ideal, I think it is dangerous to vilify the practice altogether, because sometimes it is the only option. Sometimes children are abandoned at orphanages with no documentation, sometimes birth parents refuse contact, and in other cases, contact is restricted by the courts out of safety concerns. Maybe I’m too optimistic about it, but I think very few adoptive parents enter into a closed adoption with the motive of erasing history, denying culture, etc. I think that most of us are just trying to do right by our kids with whatever unique situation we are in.
I think your “pay now or pay later” metaphor is accurate. Learning some significant facts about my family of origin in my late teens, I felt betrayed that this information had been kept from me, for what I saw as the benefit/convenience of others. Now, 20+ years later, I can appreciate that while the info came as an upsetting and life-redefining shock, at least I hadn’t spent my childhood dwelling in the negative place that the news brought me to–by the time I found out, I had the maturity (such as it was) to see it as part of my history, not my whole history.
Either way, there are pros and cons. To err on the side of honesty seems like the nobler choice.
As a parent in an adoption from foster care (partly closed? poorly closed? one-sidedly closed?– not sure how to label it) sometimes it feels like my choices are bleak or bleaker when it comes to openness and honesty. It’s good to be reminded that there isn’t a pain-free way.
Maybe because we just dropped our daughter off at college, this really hits hard – not because we’ve shared the challenges you’ve faced and met in open adoption, but because her departure marks a dividing line between the possibility of a more open adoption and the reality that it will not happen, at least not for our family.
It may still happen for the kids themselves one day, and I’ll continue to pray for that to happen. But how I wish we’d had the opportunity to know our kids’ families throughout their lives, so they could have become a part of them in a far more concrete way than they are now or may ever be.
Yes, there would have been challenges. But I have to believe, from what you have written here for so long and from what others say, that they would have been worth it a hundred times over.
Its so validating to read what you wrote here, even though I am an adoptee of a closed adoption. You articulate your daughter’s processing so well. Thank you for this.