But I’ve been wanting to write about this week’s adoption angst for the past few days and Madison is down for an early nap. The dusting will have to wait. (As will the laundry, the sweeping, the cookie-baking — but I digress.)

Over at Infertile Me the anti-adoption zealots continue to harass her for being 1) an adopted person who is not unhappy that she was adopted; and 2) an infertile person who is considering adoption. (This isn’t the only post they’ve targeted.) I’ve visited the anti-adoption sites before (as my archives will attest) but I hadn’t since Madison arrived and it hit me at a particularly weird time adoption-wise. I can’t get into the specific event that made me start feeling squirrely — just know that it’s mostly all in my head and not an actual event at all. But this isn’t my typical mindset. No, it’s one that comes out of hiding when poked with emotional sticks.

The more that I fall in love with Madison and the more cemented she becomes in our lives, the more vulnerable I feel in our adoption. My feelings of loving desperation were similar with Noah but there was nothing on which to hang my neurotic hat. Loving a child is, for me, bittersweet. If we raise them well, they leave us. And their lives are ultimately their own to live well or to waste. We do our best then let them go and we can only hope hope hope that we have given them whatever it is their little hearts and bodies needed but it’s impossible to plan for every contingency. I look at my children and wish I could throw my body down in front of whatever bad thing will be theirs to contend with someday. But in Noah, I trusted that his beginnings while physically traumatic (he had a rough birth), were spiritually whole.

With Madison, my particular sorrowful focus is on those 72 hours in the hospital because — say it with me now, we’ve heard it a zillion times before — adoption is predicated on loss. I wish her life had begun in a riot of unequivocal joy. Instead I think of the yawning chasm of grief that was her first introduction to our planet and I feel so afraid.

Our version of the lurking “under toad” that haunted the Garp family is that the adoption has scarred her forever and that she will spend the rest of her life trying to make up for it.

I don’t really think that this is true because I believe that Madison — god willing — is more resilient than that. I believe that her adoption marked her but that whether or not it marked her in a negative way will ultimately be of her choosing. I imagine that there will be times when she will grieve and perhaps even allow her grief to engulf her (adolescence) but I also think that she will find a way to incorporate her adoption in much the same way that I’ve learned to incorporate my infertility. In other words, to find the beauty that is the consequence of loss.

Reading the anti-adoption sites is heartbreaking because underneath the screaming tirades is a world of pain. Their fury — those who rail against “adopters” and “infertiles” — is like a heavy, ugly dividing wall, which makes dialogue impossible. There’s no logic there, no ability to see past their own situations and recognize that other people have a right to experiences that may be very different.

Myself, I have a hard time learning to balance my strong belief that birth ties are meaningful for us — adopted or not — with my conviction that this does not have to negate our family ties through adoption. I hear myself getting stuck in an either/or kind of thinking.

“Adopted children often yearn for their birth ties when they create their own families,” I think. “What if I’m not welcome after Madison has her first baby? I’ll want to be there and maybe she’ll only want J.”

(Never mind that it’s a bad habit to worry about things that — god willing — won’t be an issue for decades; I’m a professional worrier about things in the way off future.)

But it’s far more likely that she will want J for what J can give her (stories of J’s pregnancy with her to compare with her own) and she’ll want me for what I can give her (stories of Madison herself as a baby). Whatever the anti-adopters might say, it’s not a competition unless the grown-ups in her life turn it into one.

Sometimes, at my lowest moments, I feel inadequate to the task of loving her enough. I want to not only fill up any empty spaces caused by her adoption but also to “win” a non-existent contest. In those times of insecurity, I don’t want to share her. I want to pretend that it’s all ok and that I will always be the only mother that she needs. When I read the anti-adoption sites, those are the ugly feelings that overtake me. Or when I find a second-hand book that’s all about a woman’s search for her real parents. My mom, who loves me and wants to save me from pain just like I want to protect my own kids, would say not to read ‘em. But I have to read them. Not always and not even that often, but enough that I remember that adoption is complex.

I believe that openness — or at the very least, the opportunity for openness — can help Madison (and J) avoid some of this angst. But this is not a perfect system. I recognize that Madison’s yearning for connection, which will surely come, does not have to come at my expense. She can love both of us. She can love us both for different reasons. It’s not my job to fill up those empty spaces or to be so great that she never needs J; it’s my job to love and mother both my kids. I don’t have to believe in the under toad because under toads are like fairies — they get stronger when we start clapping our hands and chanting about how real they are.

Adoption — like all of life — is complex and full of paradox. I try to remind myself that the best I can do is stand in place and let it wash over me. There is our beautiful daughter, standing in a halo of trust and love and there are her parents — by birth and adoption — who adore her in the best way that we know how. I hope that we are all doing right by her.

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