this woman’s work

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.

Tags: adoptive-parenting, open adoption, round table

Behavior I regret

Mar 30, 2009 Adoption

So someone on facebook asked this, “I wonder, do you feel bad when Pennie buys her Maddie her first bike, does it take away from you when she is at the party, does it hurt you when Tommy buys the birthday dress?”

And to answer that I have to tell you a terrible but true story about myself.

I have always been a jealous person and when Noah came along I was a very jealous mother especially when it came to my mother-in-law. She was so happy to have a grandson (she has three boys so a new baby boy was a special joy to her — plus he was the first grandchild) and they flew out to meet him when he was six weeks old. She couldn’t get off the plane and over to him fast enough — she was in love with him before she ever met him.

And I hated it. I didn’t want her to hold him. I didn’t want her to cuddle him when he cried. He was mine mine mine mine and I wouldn’t let her forget it.

When we moved back she bought him a hand-made wooden ark (’cuz he’s Noah — get it?) for Christmas. It was much more of an ark than we could afford and I was insane with jealousy because *I* was going to get him his heirloom quality wooden ark. *I* was going to give him the beautiful toy that he would hand down to his children. ME. His MOTHER (oh and his dad) and I was PISSED. I mean, I was so mad I could barely look at her and eventually things came to a head and there was yelling and tears and misery. And she said, “I’m just so afraid you’re going to take him away from me!” Which was, of course, exactly what I was trying to do.

I don’t know why I was such a selfish, insecure mother but I was. I saw her caring for him as some kind of competition that I might lose and I’m not sure what changed — it was too gradual for me to point to one thing — but it has and now I’m really ashamed of the hell I put her through those first couple of years.

Thing is, I didn’t grow up around grandparents so I didn’t really have a model for sharing. My dad traveled and my mom was our be all and end all and I guess I thought it wasn’t possible for my son to love me and anyone else (particularly any other mother figure). I wasn’t as jealous with my mom because she was MY mom but Brett’s mom? I couldn’t get it through my head that even though I wasn’t related to her, Noah was and that getting in the way of their relationship was denying him access to his family.

But it did sink in. My mom talked to me (she felt so bad for Pam!) and Pam was patient. Brett did the best he could but I am a force to be reckoned with when I’m having a fit. Still, I couldn’t ignore how much his grandparents meant to him. How important it was to have these other allies while he was growing up — people who could also love him unconditionally and, unlike his parents, weren’t invested in making him rinse his dinner dishes or put his socks away.

I came around. Eventually. And when I did, I realized how much I’d tried to take from Noah by getting in the way of his (emphasis on HIS, NOT MINE) relationship with his grandmother. Because, as much as I couldn’t bear the thought at first, it had nothing to do with me.

It seems so stupid now — I don’t know how I didn’t see it. But now it’s so obvious to me that more love is more love and that even if I’m not the one handing over the big gift, I get to witness the joy it brings and that memory lasts a lot longer than any credit I was trying to take before.

Sure, I have twinges. I do. The first time my inlaws did an egg hunt that dwarfed our own I winced a little. But then I watched the kids running around with their baskets and got over myself. That night, tucking them in and listening to them wax on about the Best Easter Ever, I just felt lucky that I got to be a witness.

Likewise with Pennie. Have I winced a little before? Yeah, sure. She does things differently than I might do them and sometimes I catch myself making note of it but I’ve got enough experience in this mothering gig to know that sometimes the most loving thing you can do for your kid is get out of the way and let other people do the loving.

Once I let myself see the rewards, I wondered how I could have missed them before. The grandparents? No one could love my kids more except the youngest one’s birth mother. It is a beautiful thing to catch the eye of someone who is as crazy about your kid as you are and to exchange a smile because the little one is so damn cute. Watching Madison laugh with Pennie does my heart good — it fills it up in places I didn’t know were empty. Because it fills Madison up and I’m no longer the kind of mother who is petty enough to resent that.

The other thing is that in the intricacies of adoption in particular, that filling up seems even more vital. To be able to say, “My birth mama bought me my very first two wheeler” seems a thing of special beauty and importance. *I* can’t give that to her. I mean, I could buy a bike for her but only Pennie can give it to her with the special weight of her particular love. I know how blessed our family is to have that love present and how fortunate Noah, Brett and I are to get to be a part of it and to be witnesses to it. (Even Noah gets what a big deal it is.)

So to the bike and the dress — no, both those things were more than cool with both Brett and me and in fact, our pillow talk that night was an awful lot about how good it is to see Pennie and Madison celebrate each other. When we realized Madison had grown out of her bike, we gave Pennie a heads up since we felt like since she was the one to get her the first one, she might want to be the person to get her the upgrade. And the dress was a surprise but a happy one. It was a beautiful dress and honestly I’m so dang cheap that I wouldn’t have thought of it (because I would have bought something more practical).

Fortunately Madison got me after my mother-in-law did the hard work of breaking me in because the woman I was when Noah was small? She couldn’t have adopted in an open adoption. Ask my mom — she’ll tell you!!

Tags: adoptive-parenting, jealousy, open adoption

Madison imagines another life

Feb 26, 2009 Adoption, Favorites

I am writing this without the benefit of a second cup of coffee. Be forewarned. And this is a baby book entry.

Madison now says she is excited about Pennie’s baby because she is excited “to be a big sister to an actual baby.” She often plays at being a big sister to dolls and to her friends but having an actual baby is definitely more interesting. She had a lot of questions for Pennie this last visit and was very into patting and snuggling into her belly. She did get a little tired of us talking about the baby so much but that may have more to do with her getting tired of me hogging Pennie since sooner or later she does get annoyed with me about that. She also got out her photo albums and they spent some time talking about Madison being a baby. Madison talked, too, about how the doctor helps pull the baby out (in a c-section) but reassured Pennie that she will have medicine so it doesn’t hurt. Pennie said she remembered this and they looked at the photos of brand new, just born Baby Madison.

Then last night Madison asked again about why Pennie chose adoption for her and I gave her the answer I give her, which I hate to write down here because of privacy issues but also because dumbing down Pennie’s choice for Madison is a good idea but dumbing it down and putting it on the internet seems wildly inappropriate (since I’m afraid it will paint an incorrect picture). Anyway, I gave her the answer I give her and she had some more questions about that where basically she was poking holes in the argument and I was trying to give her perspective without dismissing her arguments. And that is hard, people. Because when I give her the dumbed down version of Pennie being fairly alone, she wants to know why Pennie didn’t call up her parents and once we’re getting into the whole extended family dynamic, well, it’s hard to get that kind of complexity into a discussion with a preschooler.

Plus, let’s face it, it’s painful to talk about it and even though I’m not afraid of talking about painful things, I’m also not a total go-getter about it and so I have to drag it out of myself when what I’d rather say is, “Hey! I have an idea! Let’s go make cookies!” So sometimes I just have to take a deep breath and say something that I know is not easy to hear but is what she is asking to hear and I hope that I say it right even though sometimes — as you’ll see below — I don’t.

This time, too, she asked about us.

“How did Pennie even know about you?” was the exact question (note the slightly flabbergasted “even know”). So I told her how Pennie called the agency and how the agency gave her profiles (I told her a little bit about the profiles) and then how she met us and chose us.

At ever step I would tell her, “Pennie said, ‘I am having a baby who is Madison Michael and I love her so much…’” then details to our “why Pennie chose adoption” story. I wanted her to hear Pennie’s deliberate plan and that it was a plan made in love and commitment to Madison. I wanted her to hear that Pennie was parenting her while Madison was in-utero and that she was not alone during any of this.

Then she asked, “What would it be if Pennie didn’t say I will be the birth mama?” I don’t know if I have the quote just right but I asked, “You mean if Pennie chose to be the mommy mama and not the birth mama?” and she nodded. It’s the first time she very concretely acknowledged wondering about her life if she hadn’t been adopted. Now this child won’t be five for another month and I didn’t expect her to verbalize that this soon.

I always talk about how articulate Madison is, which is a way of dancing around talking about how smart she is. I feel weird talking about smart kids on the internet because of my formerly gifted child issues and my “we do not brag” cultural issues. But Madison is really smart* and she is very articulate and so our adoption discussions/her adoption journey has been different than I expected and more challenging than I expected. I don’t think it’s typical for a child to work through so much so young and I’m grateful that she does have the language to share because if she had the smarts but not the language, it would be a very frustrating world for her.

But on to what I told her. First I asked her what she thought it might be like and she mumbled and said she didn’t know. And then I mentioned that I thought likely they would be in New Orleans and she went, “Ewww! Noo Or-LEENS! I don’t even KNOW that!” Which is when I realized that trying to discuss a realistic parallel world is not what she wanted at that moment (because I forget sometimes that she is only a very little girl and that her cognitivie development is sometimes at odd with her language development even if she is so awfully smart) so I went another way and said something about how it’s normal to wonder but mostly I was mumbling trying to figure out where to go while she pulled faces and went “Noo Or-LEENS! I don’t even KNOW Noo Or-LEENS!”

I thought it just seemed too scary and overwhelming and here I’d taken it in a direction she wasn’t ready to consider (because this parenting through adoption thing? Sometimes you hit and sometimes you miss it something awful). So I pulled her onto my lap and said, “This is what I know for sure, Madison. I know that YOU, Madison Michael would be the same person. I know that YOU, Madison, are exactly who you should be and if Pennie didn’t choose adoption, you would STILL be exactly who you should be. Because YOU ARE, Madison. And the other thing I know is that it is normal to wonder what might have been but what we do know is that you are HERE. THAT is the true thing. You are Madison Michael and you are here and that is always true even when we are wondering.”

I don’t know if that was what she wanted to hear but when she was being horrified by New Orleans, I felt like she needed a constant (like on Lost! Like when you’re time traveling on Lost! Not even being facetious here!) and the constant is going to have to be herself. That is the resiliency of the adopted child.

Then I said, “Of course sometimes you will wonder how your life would have been different and if you ever want to talk about it, we can talk about it.”

And she said, “I don’t want to talk about it now. I am DONE talking about it.”

I said, “It’s hard to talk about.”

And she reiterated, “I am DONE.”

So we were.

Tags: adoptive-parenting, Madison, open adoption