List post! Because I’m busy
Jun 30, 2009 Adoption, Race, The Story of My Life, work work work
1. The other day Madison told us that sometimes she wishes we (her family) were all black. Noah and I were talking about this book, (which was excellent). It’s a slim middle reader about a white boy confronting his own racism and Noah asked me to read it. So we were talking about it and I said something like, “I bet Madison gets sick of being the only black person in the room almost all the time” in the context of talking about Daisy scouts next year (we’re looking at a couple of troops where most of the girls are black) and Madison, “Oh yeah I do!” and then she said, “I get tired of being the only black person in this FAMILY! Sometimes I wish you were ALL black!” Then she posited that we adopt a baby sister to be black with her but Noah told her she’d have to share her room so she decided Daisy Scouts was good enough IF they serve snack.
2. I am not surprised that Madison gets tired of being the only black person in our family and I’m freaking proud as hell of her for being able to say it and say it without hesitating. I want her to OWN her feelings because lord knows she has a right to them. I told her that sometimes I wish we were all black, too, and I’m sorry that sometimes it feels lonely in the family. People don’t think she notices but she does. I can see her noticing at every family BBQ. I can’t fix this for her (because I don’t have the emotional fortitude to adopt again even if I could scrape up the money) but I can hear her and believe her and affirm her feelings.
3. I thought of this affirmation bit when I was watching the trailer to this documentary: Off and Running. There are several parts that broke my heart (I can’t wait to see it) but there are two bits that really stayed with me. One was where her mom says, “I’m going to tell you who you are…” and then proceeds to define her daughter only within the context of her adoptive family. Now I don’t know what she said before or after so I’m not talking about this particular mom here but I was thinking about how so many of us adoptive parents don’t see our kids in the context of their whole lives including their beyond-adoption existence. I mean, we don’t see them beyond the context of us. The other part that got to me was when the interviewer asks the young woman if she feels black and she says, “I don’t know what that means.” I want Madison to know what that means.
4. We’re out of coffee but I found a lone diet coke in the ‘fridge. It’s totally not the same but it’ll get me through the morning before I can head to the grocery store. I mention this in case there are embarrassing typos here. It’s the weakness of the diet coke caffeine.
5. Running has improved except that the last time I ran I ended up with a really bad shin splint that was swollen and throbbing. I’ve been icing it for two days and hoping that I don’t have to stop. The thing is with shin splints is that you have to rest but also your legs won’t get stronger if you don’t work them so it’s a balancing act. (I hear shin splints a’re caused by weak ankles, which makes sense to me.) Running has improved my mood, insomnia and occasional headaches. I only noticed the headache part last night when I was taking an ibuprofen for the shin splints and realized I hadn’t hit that bottle for a headache in awhile. But see I just typed that and I have a headache now. I think that’s the diet coke.
6. Last time I ran I was thinking about how I would decorate the waiting room in my office when I have a counseling practice one day. I was thinking about how I wouldn’t want to have glossy magazines because I think glossy magazines do more harm than good so I was thinking about what reading material I would have. It was very pleasant. Until my shin splints started acting up.
7. I get so excited when I think about this new career path! It has so many possibilities and so many different directions. I’m also really grateful for the time I spent full-time freelancing for helping me understand where my strengths lie and what kind of work environment best suits me. Honestly, even with the networking and the late-paying clients, that time spent full-time freelancing was the happiest I’ve ever been work-wise. Seeing a way to getting back to the great parts of it makes me really happy.
8. I’d love to dip my toe back in the freelance waters but can’t figure out the time to find work (it’d have to be really the right kind of projects because I’m so busy) and also what exactly I’d do. I keep doing these speaking engagements and speaking is the best way to find clients, right? (It really is the best way to drum up business.) I do the speaking because I love it but then I have nothing to offer to anyone who wants more after. I don’t have a business, I don’t have a product. So I’ve been thinking about very small consulting — what would that look like? Nothing too big because I don’t want to get back into the whole mess but just something where I could say, “Yes, I could do this for you” because generally after I talk people approach me looking for something and I have nothing to share. It’s too lazy of me. But I have time to think on it because I don’t have any speaking engagements coming up.
9. I recently gave a very touchie-feelie talk about blog narrative that I enjoyed even though the audience was slow to start. I had no idea what to expect (it was at PodCamp Ohio) and we were rushing through my presentation so I kept stopping to try to egg people into volunteering info. When they did I was impressed by how much people shared — it was a really brave audience. I’m getting in touch with my touchie-feelie side professionally. Now that I don’t have to be all selling and stuff. I’d much rather ask how people are feeling than ask about their expected ROI (return on investment). I hate talking in acronyms and jargon.
10. So they cut Brett’s hours at work yesterday. It’s a temporary thing (probably — unless it isn’t) and I’m worried but not just for us. It’s a family business; we know and love the family. I’m worried for all of us. It means we can save on childcare, which is good but things are tight around here and we don’t have a whole lot of wriggle room.
11. It shouldn’t but for me it adds some tension in our open adoption. Pennie honestly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about money as long as her daughter is fed and clothed decently. We were both raised by single parents and we have a similar class background and our values around money are also very similar. But I still feel like I’ve let her down when we can’t whisk her off to dinner when she comes over. She would never expect it. Never ever. And she’s made us dinner tons and tons of time, too, so it’s not like being the blustering big shots is even a dynamic in our open adoption but still I feel it. I want to shower her new baby with gifts and spoil her rotten and I hate that I can’t. Even though I know she understands, I still hate it. I just hate being broke and I hate being ashamed of being broke because I know (theoretically) that there’s no shame in it — we’re working as hard as we can and then a little bit harder (because not only is our A/C broken but so is our dishwasher). And it’s not like we’re alone in our current economic struggles but still.
12. Again with the plus side — I keep thinking about this. See, if I’m a counselor than all of these trials and tribulations? It’s a good thing because it breeds compassion. If I get a client in an economic crisis or struggling with career choices? I’m there, full of empathy.
13. Not that I mean to end on unlucky 13 but looks like I have one more thing to add. I’m short-term pessimistic (very worried about hanging in there until the economy creeps back — did I mention the severe state funding woes that make me a touch nervous about the state of my own job???) but I’m long-term optimistic. The reality is that Brett and I could both lose our jobs and there’s not a whole lot out there to replace them. That’s just facts. But other than keeping my eye on the big picture and trying to keep a lot of crazy-ass balls in the air, what can I do? We know our jobs want to keep us around and that the powers that be there will do what they can to keep things going so we’ll just keep doing the best we can and keep cutting costs (although there aren’t a whole lot left to cut really — we’ve always been frugal and there comes a point where there aren’t really many extras to go) and hold on to each other when we get scared. At least we’re paying our bills.
14. Ok, I’ll end on 14. I’ll end on an up note. I have great kids. I have a great husband. I have fabulous, fabulous friends in real life and through the magic of the computer. I’ve got a job I like with co-workers I adore and long-term plans that make me giddy. And I’ve gone from not being able to jog one lap around the track to running a mile plus without stopping. (Ok, PLODDING a mile plus but still!) I just had to mention the money stuff because the anxiety is an underlying hum in our lives right now and it’s a blog of my life, right? Right. So there you go.
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Now playing: Samamidon – O Death
via FoxyTunes
Tags: budgets, counseling, Madison, money, transracial adoption
New site, roundtable and openness
Jun 8, 2009 Adoption
First off, the new and way improved Open Adoption Support site is up. Now you can create a social networking profile, register a blog, set up a friends list, private message your contacts and set up groups or join existing groups. It’s a little like Facebook for Open Adoption. My hope is that it makes it easier to find YOUR people — the ones who will help you in your adoption experience. And I hope this also makes it easier for people to find each other in real life (eventually) because ultimately the goal is to give people the opportunity to create real life relationships and support. Because online is good but in-person is better.
The site uses BuddyPress, which is a set of WordPress plugins, along with BBPress, which is the WordPress-centric message board software. Setting it up is very nit-picky and I had to uninstall and reinstall eight or nine times to get everything working right. The software is all still pretty young so improvements are coming all the time.
Jenna is co-administrator and Heather is on board creating the definitive Open Adoption Bloggers list. Heather has also launched an Open Adoption Roundtable and her first discussion question is,
As with so many things in life, thinking about open adoption without having experienced it and actually living it out are two very different things. What do you know now that you wish you knew then? Has the reality of open adoption as it’s looked in your life matched your expectations? What one thing about open adoption would you tell your past self, if you could?
When I first started reading about openness it was in tandem to reading about adoptee grief and so my first reaction was dismay. I was used to thinking about adoption as an unadulterated good thing — for everybody. I believed the myths about birth moms who were able to move on (grieve, sure, I never doubted the grief but I thought it was compartmentalized somehow) and adoptees who never suffered more than curiosity. The more I read — adoptee stories, birth parent stories — the more I realized that adoption was never that simple.
So when I first read about openness, I felt threatened. I had to rethink my ideas about my role as an adoptive mom. I began to realize that I couldn’t simply replace my kid’s first mom and so my kneejerk reaction was immediate posessive jealousy. But at the same time my emotions went straight to fear, I also knew that this response was all about ME and that this selfishness was understandable but still selfish. And once I realized it was selfish, I could also see that it was unnecessary.
I’m trying to think of how to explain this. But I started to understand that this is the reality of adoption — that legal contracts don’t undo family ties. And once I had this epiphany, I quickly began to leave behind my preconceived ideas about how parenting an adopted child had to look and arrived in a place where I no longer needed adoption to be “just like” having a bio child. Frankly, everything got easier.
I still didn’t expect our adoption to be as open as it’s become but we grew into it. It wasn’t something I planned or that Pennie planned — it just made sense for our family. And I do think that open adoption relationships need to grow organically and need to suit the individuals involved even as I believe that they all need to come from the same place of respect for our children’s origins.
So the one thing I would tell my past self is that it’ll be ok. That mothering my adopted child will be just as wonderful, fulfilling, rewarding and fun as mothering my born-to-me child even though they are in many ways different. I would tell my past self that having Pennie in our lives would enrich my parenting experience instead of taking away from it. I would tell her, too, that seeing Pennie in our daughter would be just as moving as seeing Brett in Noah’s eyes. Finally I would say, trust your daughter; she will lead you. It’ll be ok.
Look alikes
May 23, 2009 Adoption
The other day Madison said to me, “Lucia looks like you.”
Lucia is my niece and Madison is right — Lucia does look like me. She looks exactly like my sister and my sister and I don’t look that alike but we must a little because Lucia looks just like my sister and a little like me. She definitely has my coloring. So I agreed with Madison. Then she said, “And I don’t like it! I want to look like you!”
I told her the truth.
“Well, I’m glad you don’t look like me because you’re prettier than I am.”
“Oh Mommy! You’re pretty, too,” she told me.
“I am,” I agreed. “I am very good looking but you are better looking. You’re downright beautiful. I love having such a beautiful daughter.”
Then we hugged a bunch and she seemed satisfied.
She’s sensitive to how her friends look like their mothers. Of course she looks like her mother, too — she looks just like Pennie — and she knows this because she announces it to people sometimes. She tells them this is why her skin is brown and why she has brown eyes and why her hair is curly.
I think most of the time she doesn’t mind not looking like me but then sometimes she does. It’s just how things are sometimes.
Tags: Madison, mothers, open adoption
