Are there any things that you don’t want the other members of your triad to know—or that you don’t want to know about them? I’ve heard first mothers talk about not sharing their birth stories with adoptive parents because those are for the adoptees and for themselves only. Ive also heard of adoptees concealing their reunions from adoptive parents so as not to cause them pain. What don’t you want shared in your adoptive relationships?
via Open Adoption Roundtable #17 : Production, Not Reproduction | A blog about open adoption.
I was just talking about this to Julia today.
As most of you know, I’ve come by my adoption politics first very generally, picking around what I was learning about adoption and thinking about it from the context of my feminism. Then, after we adopted Madison, it all became more deeply personal for me because my relationship with Pennie grew and strengthened and I was forced to reconsider some of what I believed. For me, the result has been that I look back through a critical lens that I simply didn’t have access to at the start of our journey.
I am not antiadoption. I do not regret being Madison’s mother by adoption. I do not believe that I have the right to decide whether or not Pennie’s decision was ultimately the “right” one or the “wrong” one. I’m not saying any of that. I am saying this: I would not want my daughter to have the experience that her first mother had and if I had known then what I know now, my participation would have looked very different.
This isn’t a surprise to any of you, not if you’ve been reading. And it may not mean what you think it means because for me to detail what I would have done differently would mean I would have to share things I can’t share (that I have no right to share). It also doesn’t mean that I extrapolate my experience to anyone else’s experience. My feeling are specific, wrapped up in my participation in THIS story and in THESE people’s lives.
Here we get to the prompt.
When I first started reexamining Madison’s adoption, it was very scary. It was a lot of long conversations with Brett and sleepless nights. It meant confronting things I wanted to leave alone and it meant (means) a struggle not to let myself fall selfishly into guilt. I was also worried about talking to Pennie about it. I was afraid to tell her any of it because I was afraid she’d be angry. At the same time I felt like there were things I needed to say to relieve some of HER burden. (Again, can’t get into too many details here and I apologize for that because I don’t know how much sense this will make.)
See, as I was thinking critically about the adoption industry and more critically about my experience in it, of course I was thinking about Pennie’s experience. Now I’m not going to define her experience but it’s pretty easy to point to X and say, “That was not OK” but then I wondered, should I tell Pennie that I thought it wasn’t OK? Should I not?
There were a lot of reasons not to like:
- She didn’t ask me. If she didn’t ask, did I have to answer?
- She has different opinions than I do about lots of stuff including adoption. Couldn’t I just hide behind her more positive opinions?
- She might get mad about adoption and then get mad at ME.
That third one, that was the one that really got in my way because I could answer the other two. The first one? Yeah, maybe. I mean, it’s one thing to foist an unwelcome point of view on someone and it’s another thing to be a part of conversation and not hold back because of #2 or #3. And second? Pennie and I have discussions about a lot of things, including politics and moral values. Sometimes we agree and sometimes we don’t but I’m always honest with her. Also there’s a difference between being bombastic and having a dialogue.
So were three (maybe lame) reasons I should not to talk to Pennie about it and one really good reason I should: Pennie was beating herself up.
I remember when I was a slutty little teenager but I wanted to believe that I was an empowered young woman. I thought sex was power (thank you, Madonna!) and that to be sexy and to do sex was to be powerful and exercise my power. Actually I was a hungry sad small thing desperate for love and acceptance and willing to trade on my body to get it. For awhile I held onto the idea that I was empowered but that didn’t allow me to grow and move past this image of myself as a slutty little teenager. It also meant that I continued to be slutty even though this made me sad. (I met Brett when I was twenty and I’d been in therapy for awhile then — I remember my therapist brought me a cupcake for my 20th birthday so I was re-examining my slutty teenage ways while I was still barely a teen.) I had to think critically before I could change my image of myself and that was painful but freeing. Does that make sense? I didn’t want to admit that I’d been HAD by the patriarchy but I also wanted to stop sleeping around, which meant I had to be honest with myself about it. If it was so FUN to be slutty, why was I so sad? But if I admitted that it wasn’t working for me, then suddenly all those boyfriends kinda lost their glamorous sheen. (Eventually with therapy I was able to see that nothing is all this or all that and that I could own my history and my experiences without shame but also allow myself to grow past them and into something better.)
I have no desire to define Pennie’s adoption experience, ok? I said that and I mean that. But I do desire that Pennie know that she is one rocking woman and a fabulous mother and a survivor (not a victim) of her circumstances (just like my own formerly slutty little self). I also want her to know that regardless of how she feels about her surrender of Madison and my adoption of Madison that there are still things that were wrong. Even if she feels that placing Madison with us was an awesome decision worthy of zillions of high fives, there are parts of the process that were not good to her. That’s just true.
We didn’t talk about it for a long time but every time we had an adoption discussion, I’d get squirmy. I’d want to change the subject to something more general (adoption generalities, please! Cut the specifics, thanks!) but I felt like I was lying because I was not interrupting Pennie’s willing assumption that any pain she got was just what she deserved.
So eventually we talked about it. I don’t remember what I said (it’s an ongoing discussion anyway) but I do remember the first time I said something that I felt light-headed and that I was probably talking too fast. I usually clean my kitchen or do laundry or other fidgety things when I’m on the phone so I remember pacing in the kitchen with a wet sponge on my hand and at one point looking outside the kitchen window at the roof of our garage with the tree branches waving over it and crying. And I do remember the end of our conversation, which was loving and warm and full of “I love you, too.”
Wait, I’m thinking back and I do remember one thing I said. I do remember I said, “But would you want Madison treated like that? Because I don’t. And I wish you hadn’t been either.” Because whatever self-hatred we mothers struggle with lord knows that we want better for our daughters.
I didn’t want to share that. I didn’t want to share my complicity with Pennie. I wanted to leave well enough alone and let her work through it however she needed to and hold very still and hope that somehow I would avoid her critical gaze but that would have been fundamentally dishonest. Pennie was all too willing to shoulder any blame she might uncover and that isn’t fair.
One day I told her that eventually she might be angry with me and that I’d understand if she was and I’d love her anyway and never ever ever punish her by withholding Madison and she laughed and said, “Oh I love you, Dawn.” She is a better woman than I am, I’ll tell you that now.
She’s in Mexico right now visiting Tommy’s family with Roscoe and I miss her.


















