It’s not usually that I’m on the other side of so many people who I usually agree with but here I am, totally on the other side.
The comments to that last post are really interesting and a good reminder to me that everyone has different limits. It’s a lesson I need an awful lot so I appreciate it.
Speaking of our own adoption, I am privvy to a lot of Pennie’s pain and I don’t think that’s hurt my relationship with either Pennie or Madison. I won’t get into specifics but this bit from Mia?
Let’s say she tells me she has collected all her favorite Disney movies for him, and she feels sad every time she watches them without him. Then I will feel sad every time I watch a movie with him, because I know his mom is still sad that she isn’t. Who is that helping? Surely the first mom doesn’t intend to have that effect, but knowing that specific pain of hers, I can’t just *not* feel it. If she hands it to me, I’ll have to carry it.
That’s pretty much exactly the kind of thing Pennie has shared with me and I do carry it but … I don’t feel like that’s been a bad thing in our situation. I could see how it might be for someone else.
One thing though, I don’t know how any person could look back on placing a child and not have some regrets. We all revisit big decisions and wonder “what if” and lord knows that placing a child in an adoption is pretty much one of the biggest decisions any person can make. I’m sure there are men and women who blithely go through life never ever looking back but I’d say that most people stop sometimes and wonder. What they DO with that wonder depends on so many things like the circumstances surrounding the adoption, the situation immediately after, the adoptive parents, etc. etc.
Here’s something else that Mia said that I wanted to address:
Or maybe she tells me she placed him during a period of financial terror that turned out to be temporary, and now that her work life is stable, she is sad that she created a permanent loss because of what turned out to be a temporary problem. Well, how in good conscience could I keep him–and explain that to him later in life? He’s not a prize with a deadline for entries–he is her son!Am I going to take advantage of her months of fear, and just say “ah, too bad you took too long to figure that out, hard cheese for you”?
Well, you know that’s the rub. I think this is going to be a wildly unpopular post but I’m going to dive in. Know that I’m speaking of my own experience.
All we’ve got to do is troll the internet a bit and it’s clear that some of the best open adoptions are due to truly fabulous first parents who are stable, intelligent, thoughtful and responsible. You know, the kind of people who make good parents. Some of the very best open adoptions like ours are maybe adoptions that never had to happen. I know that ours is the classic permanent solution to a temporary problem (or rather a temporary situation). None of us really knew that at the time. We took Pennie at her word. We believed she was empowered in her decision. She believed she was, too.
As we’ve grown into the adoption Brett and I have most definitely confronted the reality that if we had to do it all over again, we would have done it differently and yes, it chills me to my bones when I sit with that. The first time I really let myself realize it the world pinwheeled around me for a minute and I had to hold on to the kitchen counter for a minute to get my balance back. (Epiphanies often come to me when I’m loading the dishwasher.) And yes, it’s something that Pennie and I have discussed in round about and in direct ways. Let’s just say that posts like this from Jenna hit me in more ways than one.
But Madison is here now in her family. And while she’s not a prize, she is a person and the irony is that likely due to losing her first mom she is rather more terrified than the average non-adopted kid about losing us (Brett and me). So giving her back wouldn’t solve anyone’s problems or undo the adoption but would re-traumatize a child who is so far blossoming where she was planted albeit with some additional challenge. As Pennie has said (relating a conversation where someone asked her if she ever thought about trying to get Madison back), “I would never do that to her.”
Pennie, being Pennie, doesn’t dwell on regret. Like Jenna, she picks herself up and soldiers on. I know she doesn’t share every hurt with me but she does share and sometimes she shares more than she realizes. She is terrific at looking on the bright side and when she is most decidedly about the bright side with me, I can sometimes tell it’s because she’s determinedly working her way out of someplace sad.
For a fairly long time Brett and I could convince ourselves that Madison’s adoption was ultimately a good thing for everybody but recently I said to him, “What if we all made a terrible, terrible mistake?” And Brett said, “I don’t know if I could live with that.” And I said, “We will have to live with that.”
Here’s the thing — it has happened. Madison is here. Her life is definitely far different than it would be had she stayed with Pennie but it’s not necessarily better. We all of us — Brett and me included — did the best we knew how at the time and we have no idea how it would have turned out if we had made different choices. I’d like to tell myself that the successes Pennie has built, the good life she is creating, is possible because she placed Madison but the truth is I don’t really know. I don’t let my mind go there often because it serves none of us — least of all Madison — to dwell on what ifs but it’s natural that sometimes we go there. How could we not?
What the three of us work to do now is build the best life for Madison in her here and now. We work hard to create our inclusive family and we put our daughter (and her brothers) first. We put aside our petty differences. We make allowances. We remember that we both love her more than anything and we trust that love to see us through. It’s the best we can do because we can’t go back and hit “do over.”
Anyway. I always think this is rumbling underneath most of my open adoption entries and I’ve addressed it obliquely before but never directly.
There’s more to say but I think I’ve said enough.
I can’t think of any way to respond that doesn’t sound cheesy, but as I was depressed and miserable in college and finally ready to leave my abusive relationship, my professor/mentor kept telling me (about other things, but she knew it was bigger than she knew) “Time only moves in one direction.” At the time, I wasn’t very open to that thought, but I hold it a lot more now.
There’s no undoing things. I’m not a computer file I can take back to some earlier saved version and try to do better; I’m just the result of my experiences and I am who I am because of the good and the bad. The same is true of Maddie and Pennie and you and Brett and all of us, but as I said I can’t think of any way to say it that doesn’t sound hokey.
I was also struck by Mia’s comment about the Disney films because I think if I were parenting from an infant adoption situation I might always have that response anyway. I know with every thing we do with Rowan that he’s never done before my heart aches for him and for his broken, damaged family that cost him so much of his childhood. I guess I’d assumed that parenting adopted children had this element no matter what (at least for overthinkers like me) but maybe it doesn’t.
Rather, what I’m trying to say is what you said already, that there’s no undoing things but it’s also human to think back about what might have been. I’m not sure there’s a way to make dealing with difficult things both easier and better. Making them better takes a lot of work and pain, making them easier means a lot of ignoring, which I’m opposed to on principle.
I never have nor make the time to write anymore, but have been trying to follow along…
My views on this have so changed over the last almost 5 years of adoptive parenting. Early on, I felt a huge benefit of open adoption (for me) was that I could be assured of the ethical nature of our adoption.. and also that my son’s first mother didn’t regret it. God forbid! That seemed like the worst case scenario for me. Now I see that part so differently. You can never safeguard against regret, ever. Its just part of life, sometimes- in big (and adoption must be one of the biggest) and little ways. This last post of yours describes so eloquently how you move on regardless, when decisions can’t be undone… and I do agree that you can’t or shouldn’t undo an adoption years in.
Now, when someone looks at my boys and muses, “do you think their birth moms are sad? Do you think they regret it?” I always say that I imagine they must some of the time.
This is one of the many reasons why, after a lot of consideration, my husband and I have decided that adoption of any kind is not the solution to our secondary infertility problem. I really appreciate that you write about all aspects of open adoption so that those of us who haven’t adopted yet can walk toward it (or in our case, away from it) with our eyes open.
” I have decided that adoption of any kind is not the solution to our secondary infertility problem”
AMEN SISTER! I wish so many other people knew this!!!! I never conceived but even in the throes of infertility crud, thoughtless people would say, “you can just adopt” OMG! Even then, before I knew the nuances of adoption, I would glare at them. Adoption is NEVER a plan B to parenting. It is just another avenue that has SO MANY other complications. If I could be God, I’d restore all the first mothers so they could parent the children they felt obligated to or were forced to (by CPS) surrender their children.
FYI – my children are a sibling group removed by the state from their mentally and emotionally impaired first mom
I’m a little miffed right now so I won’t say too much. (Not at you.) But I was one of those birth mothers who was having a financial crisis due to the kidney disorder putting me on bed rest at EIGHTEEN WEEKS. I couldn’t save money. I couldn’t make it to appointments with state assistance and they kept kicking me off. It was a nightmare.
Three months later I was working in my chosen career field.
And I’m not the only one.
I am a fabulous, stable (though quirky, yo!), responsible, loving mother. I am an upstanding, voting, active citizen. I have morals. I have a budget that I stick to (when I want to). I speak well. I teach my children to speak well.
And I’m a birth mother. Who sometimes has regrets.
What of it?
(Seriously though. Miffed. Do people just blatantly ignore stories like mine so that it makes adoption easier to swallow? For Pete’s sake.)
One more quick thing: Was I supposed to keep my successes a secret? Was I supposed to make my daughter’s adoptive parents believe I was still struggling to make it? Was I supposed to live a lie just to make them think that they saved someone from the depths of poverty?
What a crock.
When N and I discuss regrets (and yes she does wish M had been born at place in her life that she could’ve raised her), N always looks at the domino effect of keeping M. If that had happened then she would’ve had to continue in a relationship that wasn’t healthy for her or M or the other person, she wouldn’t gotten the job she did when M was 4 weeks old that ultimately led to her career path, she wouldn’t met her husband, had her other daughters… etc. (Now this line of thinking is problematic, M is the sacrificial lamb for the life N got).
M was raised in an intact family (she wouldn’t have been) and was spared a lot of the drama her early years (at least) would’ve had.
Even with regret, N still 18 years later voices that she made the right decision.
Personally, I also believe that N was working out some of her own adoption trauma of being an adoptee by becoming a first mom. I don’t think she was aware of it. But who knows.
I went on to have other children, I would’ve been a parent even if M hadn’t become my daughter. I can imagine a happy life without having known her.
M is a different person than she would’ve been if she had been raised by N or even adopted by a different family. I sometimes worry to speculate about this is kind of insulting to her, to deny who she has become, you know? Though I know she speculates about woulda coulda shoulda, herself. Her speculating seems more valid than me for some reason.
We all did the best we could with the information we had at the time. We CAN’T go back. I believe we acted as ethically as we could. Openess really did work for us, M has a real relationship with her first mom, not a surface one. Her sisters are growing up knowing her as a sister. N, Bert & I adore each other. I cannot express the kind of relationship I have with her. I think that relationship has made it easy for us to be wide open- even talking about regrets.
I honestly think that is the key, that the parents find a kinship with each other. I love N not just because of her relationship to M, but because of her relationship to me. I always tell people to try and bond with each other if you feel the spark.
I think it’s much harder to hear about regrets and process them if you don’t have that kind of relationship. I don’t think every adoptive/first family relationship can hold that kind of information. Though I think it gets easier the older the child gets for nearly everyone.
One thing here regarding the in tact family comment. While it worked for your family, mothers considering relinquishment need to understand that placement out of a “broken” home and into an “in tact” family is not a guarantee that the adoptee will be raised in an “in tact” home. My daughter is now an adoptee AND a child of divorce. I have no hard feelings against my child’s (adoptive, using title only for clarification) mother because she did what she had to do with that situation. (I do have hard feelings toward the adoptive dad which is an issue in itself.)
But just in case an expectant mother happens upon this thread, I hope that they realize that adoptive families are not immune from divorce. Or death. Or bankruptcy. Or any of that jazz.
Oh yeah Jenna, I totally agree. I was speaking to our situation uniquely. M’s first parents did not stay together, but Bert and I did. I was speaking as someone looking back over 18 years.
And I know three families (out of 10) from an adoptive parents class we took have divorced over the last 18 years. It’s a real possibility.
I should talk about financial stability. Because right now M’s first family is more stable than our’s. Life changes for all families no matter how they are formed.
I don’t believe you can be both an adoptee and a child of an “intact” family. Adoption at is very core is about separating a child from his or her parents.
“I don’t think every adoptive/first family relationship can hold that kind of information.”
True that. It’s like any other family relationship where it depends so much on the individuals and on the family. My family is great at airing our differences (loudly, tearfully and painfully) and Brett’s family is great at keeping the peace. Both ways work in some ways and don’t work in others but it’s taken time for Brett and me to figure out how to understand our different ways of doing things.
It’s sometimes hard for me to remember that the rest of the world doesn’t do things the way I do them, which is why sometimes I stumble on my blog (and off it).
I call codswallup on the idea that we all did the best we could with the information we had… especially from a relinquishing mother in critical crisis mode. The word best is insulting, hurtful and dismissive.
What we mothers did who willing relinquished was do the unthinkable with the information we had. The word best when it comes to choosing relinquishment is a big honking trigger to the coersion of that moment.
magicpointeshoe, I actually meant the best we could with adoption. I don’t mean in the decision to relinquish. I’m talking, here we are, N made this decision, we became part of that decision, how can we do the best in the situation for M. Not that I was better or best over N, but how do we figure it out after that decision.
It sure wasn’t how it read though considering that just above you are stating and including her opinion of that time and then sum all of it up with “we all…”
This isn’t one of those poke my pain over reactions either, but more of realizing that looking back at one’s actions (like my own for example) doesn’t need to be amplified with lousy descriptors like “best” especially when it is the phrase of choice used by others to exploit the crisis.
Thank you for clarifying.
Magicpointes, I’m really sorry that somehow I’ve offended you with my comment truly it was not my intent. Maybe the limitations of the written word and a bad writer?
N and I have spoken at length about regret, about adoption, about M. She’s written on my blog before, and I feel like mostly I have a good grasp and paraphrase her words. I’m obviously not doing it well here.
I in no way think that M being placed in with us as parents was the best thing for her. I think her life is completely different and it’s hard to judge better or worse objectively at this point. I do know that being “open” was the best thing we could’ve had done with her adoption. I’m safe in saying that M and N would agree that openess really has been a wonderful, wondeful thing for us. N was raised in a closed adoption and she has said again, and again she thinks this is better.
BTW, N is one of the best mothers I know, to both our daughter and the daughters she is parenting. She would’ve done a wonderful job had she been M’s only mother. I believe that will all my heart. I made her guardian in my will of not only M, but my other children because I have so much faith in her mothering.
No worries, you clarified what you meant. I wasn’t meaning to offend either, it was more of an attempt to how much we (as in those are participants in adoption and relinquishment and those who are drinking the adoption koolaid) have to justify our actions as being what was best. For years and years I clung to it too, because saying otherwise was a denial of accepting or apprecating who my son is, but wishing that he essentially someone else.
I am content with saying what’s done is done, and krinkle my nose when I hear that I did the best I could. It’s a cop out of my own personal responsibility.
Anyway, no worries.
I had to step away to think on this because I recognize your hurt here but I also think we’re missing some of this ‘cuz of different interpretations of the words.
I do not necessarily think adoption was the best choice Pennie could make (ultimately only she and Madison can weigh in respectively and with authority on that and then only from adoptions impact on their own lives). But I do believe that Pennie absolutely was doing all she possibly could given the information, support and experience she had at that time and in that place.
Likewise I believe that Brett and I could have made other, better choices but I can only say that in hindsight because I didn’t know then what I know now.
Thank you for these posts. They have been stirring me, angering me, enlightening me and making me cry. Like alot.
Yeah. Huh. Permanent solution to a temporary problem.
The ultimate irony in my own story is that a month after surrendering my child to baby brokers, I was on my own, in an apartment, working full time and getting myself in college. One might think I should be proud of this. This resiliency. For me it just smacks me in the face and shows me how if ONE person believed in me (and that includes me believing in me) my daughter would have been raised with her family of origin. If someone, anyone, had told me that yes, I WAS a high potential, honor studetn, good catholic, college accepted girl and THAT was good mother material, I might have thought twice. I might have resisted those threats of lawsuit. I might have walked out of the maternity home and never looked back. I might have carried my baby girl with me in my loving arms instead of handing her over at three days old to virtual strangers.
But I didnt.
I believed what was told to me and I left my daugther with strangers and I went on to have a really fabulous life (for the most part.
As it stands, her high potential, good catholic girl mother, went onto have a high functioning life – without her. Did I do that in spite of her? Becuase of her? Or could I have done that all along? Does it really matter at this point?
Its tough stuff for me. I agree with not living in the past, with regrets, etc. but when that pain, that agony, that loss hits you in the face every single day, when you see it on the face of your subsequent children, it is very hard to put to rest. When you see the same crimes being committed against other mothers, it is ever present. And adoptive mom may get hit with it every so often. I live with it every waking, breathing moment.
My current coping mechanism is to invite that regret along for the ride. To let it sit next to me all cozy like and to go on, ahead, forward with it. It hasnt stopped me but it hasnt helped one bit.
It just is.
it’s tough stuff for the kids too. I know one adoptee that was placed by the mistress of her adopted father’s employer. Yeah, you got that right. Boss got his intern pregnant, needed to cover it up so he asked his infertile employee if they’d like to privately adopt. This adoptee grew up in the same community as her first mom (who soon after, was happily married). To make it worse, the adoptee’s kid brother attended grade school with her biological sibling … and she never knew about it but her adoptive parents DID!!!! She now lives 3000 miles away from her adoptive family but is working on her relationship with her first mom and half brother.
HORRIBLE. just downright dreadful. (((((((HUGS)))))) I wish my kids’ first mom was a functional adult that was successful, I’d willingly embrace that! My kids’ firstmom is mentally impaired … so are my kids. Oh, DNA.
**I’d willingly embrace that! My kids’ firstmom is mentally impaired … so are my kids. Oh, DNA.**
Jennie,
I sure hope this was some kind of weird twisted joke. Or some kind of ironic comment that I just didn’t catch on to.
rereading my original comment, I realize it probably didn’t read correctly! so sorry!!! Let me restate.
In my story, I thought it was horrible that the adoptee’s adoptive parents kept her first mom’s successes a secret (it reads as though I think it’s horrible that she’s rebuilding a relationship with her first mom and biological brother finally)
And to clarify our situation, I really wish my kids’ first mom was stable, mentally and emotionally healthy, able to create a relationship with ANYONE, let alone the children she placed with us. And even if she was healthy, my kids are also impaired (some of her issues are genetic) so it’s a real struggle to help THEM understand proper relationship. Double whammy for us in our adoption story. I envy Dawn and Pennie’s story because it would be such a relief to me for my children to have a connection with who they are (we strive for openness with first mom’s healthy extended family members)
I think what might have sounded like a weird twisted joke is the irony in my voice. by nature, I’m often very sarcastic and cynical.
Sincere apologies for any offense I created, none was intended!!!
I welcome the open adoption for our two children and am committed to maintaining it because I know that when they are older, they will have questions that only their birth mother (what she prefers to be called) will be able to answer.
Our children have the same birth mother. Seven months after we adopted our son she called to ask if we could adopt another baby (our daughter was born when our son was 13 months old) . We would not be surprised if we get an additional request to adopt a child and do not know what our response would be.
You are correct when you say it is best to have stable individuals on both. Because I fully recognize the time may come when I have to protect my children from their birth mother and may need to limit contact during her more volatile periods. Because unfortunately, she is not stable. She calls frequently to tell me about her life. She generally asks how the children are, but barely listens to the response before launching into an account of her current drama.
Even if we limit direct contact with our children, we, as the adoptive parents, will still maintain contact with her (and her mother, an older version of her with similar life history) because it’s just too important not to. I wish, for our children’s sake, that she was capable of becoming stable. However, a long history of mental illness and substance abuse makes that very unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, we do know that our children are far better off because of the adoption. I am quite certain that if she had not chosen adoption, it would have been a matter of time before her children were taken from her and placed in foster care. This way they have had stability since birth and that is better.
Gretchen, it’s heartening when I hear about adoptions that work as adoptions are meant to. Where parents who really cannot parent are able to have some autonomy in choosing their children’s families and there is contact with the kids’ needs in mind first and foremost.
this is exactly our story. The children have a relationship with their extended family (we are very well blended – often times the kids get confused by who is whose and which are bio and which aren’t and the halls are lined with three groups of family photos … it’s crazy) but first mom is unstable, impaired, our kids are impaired … visits with her DO NOT benefit anyone. Emotionally, first mom is only about 10-12 years old.
I was talking about these kinds of regrets recently with another friend who is also an internationally adopting mom. In both of our cases, we really thought we were thoroughly educated about the ethical issues involved in our adoptions long before we met our daughters.
It was only after we had to look into those girls’ eyes and imagine how we would answer the questions about the circumstances that brought them to use that we really understood in a very primal way the pain we have contributed to.
I will live with that realization and responsibility the rest of my life. I would also make very different choices knowing what I know now.
I can’t undo L’s adoption (nor would I even want to imagine the additional damage that would do to her), now I am just trying to do what I can to undo some of that damage to L and her family.
It is my greatest wish to find L’s parents, so at the very least I can give them the peace of mind that she is healthy and safe and loved. As a mother, I can’t bear the idea of my selfishness causing another mother a lifetime of wondering and worry.
Thank you for writing this very powerful, honest and truth-radiating post.
And I want to commend you for being so publicly honest on this paragraph, “For a fairly long time Brett and I could convince ourselves that Madison’s adoption was ultimately a good thing for everybody but recently I said to him, “What if we all made a terrible, terrible mistake?” And Brett said, “I don’t know if I could live with that.” And I said, “We will have to live with that.””
This is a really timely and thoughtful post–just yesterday, my therapist was telling me that Mr. Book and I are the scary kind of birthparents because we’re stable, together, etc. Her point was that our son’s parents won’t be able to tell the favorite adoption myth, won’t be able to point at us and say “Obviously you needed to come to us! They couldn’t keep a cat alive!!”
I had some problems with what she was saying that I couldn’t articulate, and I feel that they’re answered in your post: Thoughtful adoptive parents know that their kids belong with them even as they’re able to acknowledge that the adoption industry is a wee bit broken. I’m not putting this well.
I really appreciate what you had to say today.
So you say if you had to do it over again you would have done it different. How?
I am curious. Because (as you know) I am fairly new to this. Our adoption is semi-open, but I doubt it will stay that way. Our daughters birth mom has no interest.
She’s older, has raised 6 kids and given up 7 and 8. She’s done. She made that clear when I met her. I can’t make her be interested. She’s just not. And how do I tell my daughter that?
I realize this is the opposite problem you have- I just don’t know.
Elisa, I told Pennie this at the AAC conference. I wish that we had done something so that Pennie had had 30 days to sign the papers instead of signing them in 3. I wish we’d given her more time to change her mind.
I know there are other parents here and on OpenAdoptionSupport.com who are in the same boat you are and it’s come up a lot in the questions on the site. I don’t have good answers but I think that as your daughter asks questions that you will have answers because you’re thinking about it NOW. I don’t think they will be easy answers or ones that aren’t painful but sometimes the best we can do is lovingly, age-appropriately tell our kids what we know and then love them through it. We can’t force the other players into relationships but we can still approach our kids’ adoptions with an attitude of openness and I truly believe that makes a difference.
(We have a similar situation with Madison’s birth dad and it just plain sucks.)
Mr. Book and I are the scary kind of birthparents because we’re stable, together, etc. Her point was that our son’s parents won’t be able to tell the favorite adoption myth, won’t be able to point at us and say “Obviously you needed to come to us! They couldn’t keep a cat alive!!”
Susie – I relate to this so much. I wonder if my reunion would be better if my daughter found the mythical crackwhore birthmother instead of a successful professional with a nice home and other children. Amazing how even being a successful productive member of society can hurt you in adoption relationships and in my case, reunion after eighteen years of closed reunion. Hugs to you.
I’ve wondered too Suz if my husband and I had been the “stereotypical” screwed up First parents who had accomplished nothing would our reunion with our son been different.
Not in his reaction but in his adoptive mother’s reaction which in turn affected, and still to this day does, my/her son.
I honestly don’t think she expected to find his first dad and I married, living in a typical middle class life in a typical middle class neighborhood.
I don’t think she expected either one of us to have earned our degrees or built careers for ourselves. And I wonder, because of some of the struggles she faced in her own life, if that contributed to her telling my/her son on that very day, as they were leaving our house that she didn’t think he should see or talk to us anymore.
And she couldn’t even really use the argument that I was able to achieve anything because of adoption because she knew that my second son was born only two years after I lost my oldest son. I was only eighteen, and my life was actually in a worst spot than my previous pregnancy because I was struggling with the loss of my oldest son.
And yet, my husband and I still shattered all those stereotypes we were branded with and there are so many times I wonder, with the struggles she faced and the ugliness she made my/her son a part of during his childhood if that simple fact of what we had acheived changed everything in her opinion of being “okay” that my son and I would again share a relationship together.
Because, in honesty, there is that one thing I will always know. A fact that nobody can ever make me doubt. In the world of adoption offering a different life, if I had kept my oldest son, his life would have been much different in the plain and simple fact he NEVER would have faced the physical and mental abuse he did through his childhood.
I try not to play the “what-if” game either because it’s a place I could truly lose myself in and never come out in one piece. But I know, without question, that one of the answers to “what-if” would be that if my husband and I had kept our oldest son he would have never faced abuse of any kind from either one of us.
On that one point, I never have a doubt.
It was Divine Intervention you wrote this today Dawn.
Just today my husband is struggling with the loss he feels because he doesn’t have custody of his children from his first marriage and they physically live far from us making visitation difficult. He speaks to them every day, but he is struggling with the feeling that “if only I had done _____ when we got divorced, then things might be different”.
I think this idea of “what if” and loss are so closely intertwined and universal.
Thank you to everyone for your helpful comments.
Dawn,
I want to be just like you when I grow up.
Honestly, I envy the relationship you and Pennie have. I dream of my son knowing the care and love of both his moms in the same way Madison has.
Yes, my son is now an adult and yes there is a LOT of water already under the bridge in his past, my past and his adoptive mom’s past but I would give anything to be able to reach that point where all sides in my son’s life realize you can’t go back. That you can’t change what has happened. But can make a difference in what is yet to happen.
Like Suz pointed out in one of her earlier comments, I do live with regret every day of my life. But I also believe, if my son’s adoptive mother ever gave herself the time to heal and work past her own struggles, she too would find herself living with her own regrets. Regrets for the addiction she battles. For the abuse she did to our son.
I HAVE to believe that at some point she will realize her own hand in my son’s childhood and will come to accept as well that the past can’t be changed but that together we could make the best future possible for our son.
I will NEVER accept what she did to our son and I will never accept that adoption was, in any way, the best thing for him.
But I can’t change what happened anymore than she can. All I want. All I wish for is a point where there is that acceptance that you so clearly illustrated in your post of having to move on and understand that good or bad, the past exists but it doesn’t have to control our future if we don’t want it to.
Cassi,
I can relate to the regret of my son having grown up with an abusive and paranoid adoptive mother like yours did. He dealt with it by moving, leaving no forwarding address, and having no contact with his adoptive mother or the remaining family (Dad had died) for many years. Recently his adoptive sister got his work phone number and left a message the adoptive mother had died. He did not call her back or go to the funeral. I wish he had gone but it was not my place to say anything.
I wish his life had not been this way, but he seems to have a very good life now despite it all, a loving marriage and good job. No kids though and an arm’s length email only relationship with me, for which I am very grateful after years of no contact.
I think most surrendering mothers have some regrets even in open adoptions, and for those of us where things did not turn out well for our kids, the regrets are mulitplied. But we all have to go forward with what we have, not keep looking back.
Why looking back is important.
Looking back is probably BAD for us on an individual level. Really, we can’t survive if we sit around acknowledging our deepest traumas all the time. And some people have experienced so much trauma, that they will not really be able to have the kind of emotional freedom that people without trauma have.
But if we don’t look back, what will happen to the future? Is the unexamined life worth living? What will happen to all the women who come after us exploring the option of adoption, and all the biological parents are in happy bubbles and say it’s wonderful.
And what if the future could be different? We can never change what we have gone through. But WHAT IF WE COULD HAVE? Dwelling on what that means FOR US will not get us anywhere. Because we can only go forward.
But what if we could save thousands of human beings from unspeakable suffering? What if we could find cures for cancer? What if we could learn new ways to prevent alcoholism?
What if we found ways to support women in being really amazing parents, even when the pregnancy is unplanned?
What if we could save women from this pain? What if being the peaceful submissive lamb might be beneficial for US-mothers who already lost our children, but telling new women to lay on the sacrificial altar of birth-martyrdom, what if it wasn’t the right thing to say?
What if as a community, we could make a difference into how the world perceives unplanned pregnancy, and the kinds of support that are offered?
What if we could get more research sponsored into ways that adoption may cause pain, complications, and in fact potentially trauma and PTSD issues in the lives of biological parents and adoptees.
There have been SO FEW real studies done.
There is so much more to do to clean up this mess, so that adoptive parents aren’t suddenly looking at situations where if they TRULY open up their hearts they are seeing that they aren’t really sure the adoption needed to happen.
That is a devastating thing to witness. And to feel regret for. When it was something you had no desire to participate in, when you really genuinely thought you were acting out of love and compassion and making things better for another human being, or maybe even two human beings… and then to find that that may not be the whole truth.
I imagine it is devastating.
And in truth, it is so hard that it will be very rare that people will acknowledge these kinds of truths.
Apparently, people with depression are more accurate in their assessments of themselves and their lives. The truth, in it’s full raw form, about ourselves, our actions, what we have been through, and the reality of other humans lives… well there is a lot of pain there. And there is enough pain to debilitate and impair daily life in a real way.
On the one hand, I think depressive people DO tend to be more intellectual, more aware of the world around them, and more self aware and honest.
But they also suffer.
So do we LIE? Do we make it sound better? Making it sound better in our hearts and souls in a skill that is in fact healthy. It’s good for us and our lives and apparently, it boosts our neurochemistry and makes our emotions stay up and overall we have better health.
Or do we stay with the truth even if continuing to acknowledge it may in fact psychological destroy us?
Most at some point, choose to nestle safely into the peace and happiness of letting go of social responsibility to the world and simply “trusting in god” and believing everything in the world is “for the best”
I don’t really think you can “balance” the two concepts in some perfect smooth sort of fashion we think of when we think of balance. It’s more like a teeter totter. Some of one, a little of the other.
The truth can save people in the future. But it can never save our selves from things we have been through in the past. Going into a peaceful spiritual sanctuary is in fact what most people need.
Becoming an activist may not be a particularly healthy state of being. But if we don’t do it, who will? Some of us have to be willing to tread into that really scary place, face things that NO ONE EVER wants to face, in order for future human beings to be protected from huge amounts of suffering.
That place where we can say, what if we could have saved a lot of these women from this excruciating pain, and what if a lot of the children of these women, didn’t even really need to be separated? What if there was really no need for the pain?
Asking that question, is actually probably NOT necessary for your own life.
But what if thinking of ways it could have been better, what if that could change things for other human beings? What if this horrible pain that keeps happening to so many people… what if there were huge quantities of people we could save from it.
It may very well be worth it, for some brave souls to open up and really be willing to say… is adoption the way it’s happening now, is it really how things should be happening? Could we do it better?
Even if asking those questions does ultimately lead the thoughtful person to a place where they may feel pain, over what they did or didn’t do in the past.
I don’t know if knowing the truth really will help you. I know that it may in fact help Pennie. And it may help Maddie. But you opened yourself up to something that will ache. And I hope that in knowing that having that awareness, well it literally changes peoples lives across the world that you don’t even know.
Like it matters to me.
Um…. I’m really tired and should go to bed. REALLY BAD. Night. : )
Rox, looking back is what inspires this blog.
You are so brave. Honesty is so powerful. Thank you for writing this.
Roz wrote:”Looking back is probably BAD for us on an individual level.”
That was what I was referring to in my previous post, the individual level. I did NOT mean that people should not be activists or try to change what is wrong with adoption. I have been an activist for around 35 years.
Collectively, historically, yes, we have to look back to point to injustices that need to be reformed. Individually, in our own lives, we start by looking back, but need to move forward is we hope to have as good a reunion as possible and some happiness in the rest of our lives. Being stuck in the past is a horrible place to be, and on a personal level it helps nobody.
The two things are not mutually exclusive.
our son’s birthparents very specifically have kept our adoption closed, so we don’t know them personally at all. we do know that micah has two older birth sisters, and that his mother was planning to go to college in the fall after he was born. don’t know if she did. we also know that she had three months in which to change her mind, and she did not. i have not idea what sort of grief she has lived with in the aftermath of placing micah with us; i don’t know if she went to college; i don’t know if she has regrets. i just don’t know. but i do feel somewhat confident that at the time when micah was born, and in the two weeks he was in the nicu before he was placed with us, and in the three months before her rights were finally terminated — she had a pretty good sense that this is what she needed to do for her family and for her life. for her to look back and have regrets would be perfectly understandable, but for me to look back and say “we shouldn’t have done this,” seems almost patronizing. i guess that’s on of the many difficulties of a closed adoption — you can’t really process the past with nearly as much information….
one of the things i’ve learned about grief, too, is that you can’t really look forward from a loss and know how your life would have been without it. for example, when i imagine my mom still alive (she died 20 years ago), i always imagine my life exactly as it is, but just with my mom in it. but of course, her death set in motion so many things in my life, good and bad, that i simply can’t know what it would be like if she were still alive. similarly, i imagine that when we wonder what life for any of us in the adoption triad would have been like if the adoption would have happened, on some fundamental level, we just can’t know. who would micah be if he hadn’t been adopted? if he had been adopted by some other family? he certainly wouldn’t be the exactly the boy he is today.
i’m not sure what the point of this is. it’s not that we shouldn’t look back, it’s not that we shouldn’t look back with regrets, it’s not that we shouldn’t acknowledge ethical mistakes we’ve been part of in the past and try to make the best of them now …. i guess it’s just that there’s a whole lot of looking back and imagining “what if” that we simply can’t know.
You know, I think there are benefits on an individual level of opening up to great pain. I actually think that this is the best way, because it’s the only way that you can fully be yourself. However if huge levels of ongoing pain are happening, people often have not choice but to cut off from their feelings if they want to live in the world.
But the reality is still there. The pain is still there. Whether you dwell on it, ignore it, stuff it, revel in it, make peace with it, let it all out.
All the different things you can do with it, just don’t make it go away. Yes there can be peace within great pain. And you focus on the fun things.
I don’t think there’s a formula that is “the right way” to deal with ongoing grief. In fact I don’t believe there ARE experts in the matter. People who guide others through grief have their own issues and blinders on.
That being said, you can retraumatize yourself by reading about it and writing about it all the time. The line between carthisis and retraumatizing yourself is completely gray and I support people doing as much or as little as the they want.
People tend to be SO JUDGEMENTAL about the RIGHT WAY to deal with grief, the RIGHT WAY to live life in general. There are usually pro’s and con’s of any way of life.
But while the unexamined life may not be worth living, the examined life is goddam excruciating. Some people describing themselves and their lives positively may actually be accurate. Hmmmm…. I’ve going to have to write more on this as it’s been irking me… but for now I need to go watch saturday morning cartoons !! HAppy christmas
Ohhhhhhhh, I am getting sucked back into the blogging world. Here it comes…
Dawn, thanks for this post. You addressed exactly the comment that miffed me:
Or maybe she tells me she placed him during a period of financial terror that turned out to be temporary, and now that her work life is stable, she is sad that she created a permanent loss because of what turned out to be a temporary problem. Well, how in good conscience could I keep him–and explain that to him later in life? He’s not a prize with a deadline for entries–he is her son!Am I going to take advantage of her months of fear, and just say “ah, too bad you took too long to figure that out, hard cheese for you”?
The truth is this made me cringe to my very core. The way it reads is this: So what if SHE had to face the unthinkable, I won’t.
I mean isn’t that what it comes down to? So some aparents are perfectly willing to benefit from this horrific struggle, this abyss, that we as first moms have faced… and yet you are unwilling to do it yourselves?
It makes me cringe. Big time.
Also–Rox, if you read this–I love you. You rock.
I just find it odd that so many people try to make any sort of absolutes about anything involving adoption. I have one child,a daughter, through adoption, and I admit, I do sometimes find myself curious about the thoughts of people who have involved themselves in adoption. But it seem like every time I’ve finished reading some interpretation or viewpoint of adoption, I realize more and more that it seems almost ridiculous to try and pretend that anyone has any real answers to anyone’s questions about adoption. The truth is, not one single adoption story is the same, and what I find disturbing, especially when I read some of these blogs is that a lot of the time I read the words “we” when a single person is trying to produce an absolute. There is no “we” in adoption. Yes, we have similar stories, yes, some of us have VERY similar stories, but the stories are not the same, because the people within these stories are all individuals. Any one single thing you say in regard to adoption seems never to fit with the next person’s adoption story. For every birth mother who relinquishes their child and regrets it, there’s another who doesn’t look back for a second. To deny that some birth parents have no regrets is just as dismissive as denying that many do. How can anyone feel compelled or satisfied in making any declarative statements about adoption, when it is impossible to make the statement true for everyone? There is absolutely nothing that is definitive about adoption, nothing definitive about the way birth mothers feel, nothing absolutely true about adoptive parents. Nothing is ABSOLUTELY true about anything in adoption, for crying out loud, nothing is absolutely definitive about anything in life!
So what I’m trying to say is this: This adoption rhetoric I read about on occasion fulfills my urges to in fact look back and ponder the details of my own daughter’s adoption, and I’m not going to bother telling you our family’s story so anyone can try to peg us into some inaccurate category of the adoption community. We our individuals and we represent ourselves. But I will tell you that when I’ve had a thoroughly good “pondering episode” i come back to my reality feeling very much like I’ve wasted a crap full of time trying to come up with some definitive answers from what I instinctively know is unanswerable. The ultimate question for ALL of us involved in adoption is this: “Did I do the right thing when i adopted or relinquished?” And the truth is there are really only three answers to that question. 1) Yes, I did.. 2) No I didn’t 3) I don’t know. I have accepted that I will always have to answer number three. I answer number three because i realize that answering number 1 or 2 is simply me making a decision at that moment, and I could just as easily “unthink” that and slide right back into number three anyway, so why would I waste my time bouncing back all the time, better to accept that I won’t ever know. Maybe it’s healthy to continuously revisit the possibility of 1,2, and 3 , but it’s hard to even do that sometimes when you know you are just going to end right back to knowing that a real answer is impossible.
What I find in the adoption community is that nobody wants to say “I don’t know.” Everybody wants to have an answer, and even my not having an answer is having an answer, so here i am trying to be just as declarative as anyone.
I guess why I am really writing this is I just hope nobody out there is ripping their hair out trying to figure out whether they made the right decision in their contribution to adoption. The truth is, you’re asking questions that no one can answer for you, and you can’t really even answer for yourself. The only appropriate answer I can think of if someone were to ever ask me if I think my daughter would have been better off with her birth parent/s is ” I don’t know.” or “I can’t know” even if it would be easier to say “yes or no.”
As a mother by adoption, I must admit that although I like to indulge myself in the occasional adoption related story blog, I have to admit that I have always felt a kind of intense mother’s guilt afterwards. I think of the time I spend on a response, the time I spent after when i realize I never come up with any real answers to any of this stuff…and then I think of that beautiful daughter of mine, and all the promises I have silently made to her while she sleeps or as I comb her hair about how me and Daddy are going to give her the best life that we can give her, and I feel like total crap, because i know I could have been spending that time working or cleaning, or furthering my career, just basically doing something I KNOW would make my daughter’s life better, instead of wasting my time on questions I can’t answer. After too many read blogs, I somehow feel like I’ve been watching lifetime TV too long, or too many talk shows.
To end I will say this: I have dedicated myself to my daughter, and any of the questions I have as to whether I should have pledged myself to her or not are unanswerable. And, of course, irrelevant, because i am now her mother, and as my mother always said to me, that’s whether she likes it or not