Julia | this woman's work

Open Adoption Roundtable #17: Secrets Not Kept

Jun 242010

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.

Julia's Turn

Support for Special Needs No Responses »

Jun 232010

Issues big and small are issues among our kids. While I sure wouldn’t wish kidney failure on anyone and most people won’t need that kind of support, I can sure commiserate and hopefully offer and receive support about behavior and caregiver stress and how being out in the world advocating for my kids seems overwhelming a lot of times. There’s more in common than separates us and SfSN is a safe place to share what is common (which turns out to be a great deal no matter the diagnosis or issue). There is no level of special need that isn’t important, especially to us parents.

What it’s not? Is a place for exclusion. It’s not a place for blame or self-hatred. It’s not a place to compare and feel guilt about what we’ve done or are or aren’t doing (because really, all parents could have a list, right?). It’s a place to come and receive support and share resources and hopefully in the process, we’ll move better in our space and help our kids more. Because isn’t that the point?

via The Site Grows : Kidneys and Eyes.

Kids will be kids

Parenting 23 Responses »

Jun 012010

My generation of parents, we struggle. We’re worried that we’re over-involved or that we’re not involved enough. The media demonizes us either as thoughtless and materialistic abandoning our kids to disinterested “other care” providers or else as helicopter parents who are cutting our kids’ meat into their teens. People debate whether we should take our kids to the park and leave them there or not let them play outside in the front yard without supervision.

I lean to the benign neglect side of things with a dash of hovering, like homeschooling my kids to keep ‘em close but sending them out to play where they won’t give me a headache. It’s true that I didn’t wean Noah until he was just about ready for kindergarten but it’s also true that by nine I was sending him to the neighborhood corner store to get me a Diet Coke.

So far the balance hasn’t been all that tricky. The kids kinda lead the way and what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other and I’ve felt pretty good at our ad hoc planning.

I have been thinking about this as my son has begun his journey through the teen years and I’ve been searching harder than ever for examples and encouragement from parents who have been there and who are there now. But I know that really I won’t know until my kids get there and they’re sure not there yet.

Katie Granju’s unfathomable loss is tragic and it is terrifying. It’s tempting to say “There but for the grace of God” but let’s face it, God’s grace has nothing to do with it. The truth is, that could be any of us and it could be any of our kids. (I think about Julia who has wryly observed that hers is the family that makes other parents feel safe, as if her kids’ incredibly bad kidney luck somehow protects the rest of us from ending up in the ICU, holding the hands of a son or daughter who might die. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we think, full of compassion and horror, nevermind that what we’re saying is that God’s grace is keeping us safe but has left another family out in the cold.) I dread the Monday morning quarterbacking that was already inching along when she first wrote about his addiction, assault and overdose and is sure to get worse now even though I understand it. We want to comb through her story to reassure ourselves that it will never be our story, that our children are stronger or smarter or that we have relationships that will defy whatever tragedies threaten our families.

Honestly, it’s not bad parenting and it’s not the inattention of God that sends some of our children away from us. Bad things happen. They happen in strict, religious families. They happen in open-minded, open communication families. They happen when parents stay married and when they divorce. They happen whether our kids are troublemakers or the ones who sit still and listen. THEY HAPPEN. It’s horrifying. It’s almost too scary to contemplate. But even the best advice is looking at families in hindsight and there are no crystal balls when it comes to raising kids. For every family whose child is proof that THIS is the way or THAT is a mistake, there’s another family ready to prove just the opposite.

“I talked to MY kids about drugs!” says the parent whose kid is card-carrying straightedge. And at the same time another parent of a child in rehab says, “Yeah, well I did, too.”

So how do we go on? How do we let our kids get on the school bus or bike to the community pool or go away to college or overnight camp? How do we let go when there are no guarantees that we can keep them safe? How will we live with ourselves if something awful happens and all we have is a rearview mirror? God, I don’t know. I don’t know. And I hope I never have to know.

Last month I interviewed Dick Hoyt for Support for Special Needs. I know you’ve seen his YouTubes; he’s the guy who pushes his disabled son through marathon after marathon. He’s a pretty unassuming guy and frankly, it was a tough interview. Not because he wasn’t lovely and friendly and happy to talk but because he’s a man of few words and most of those words are the ones he’s used to saying in interviews. It was hard to get him past the soundbites I’d already heard in other interviews and in reading his ghostwritten memoir. But the guy, he is terrific and very very kind. I interviewed him to be the inaugural guest in a series of articles we’re calling Future Glimpse, which are articles from parents who have raised their kids with special needs to adulthood to give some much needed perspective and encouragement. So my questions centered on Dick managed to let Rick be a kid. How did he let him head off into the neighborhood in the day before cell phones? How did he let him live in the college dorms without full-time care? Especially when Rick started partying too hard or when he had a caretaker who didn’t bother to show up on time leaving Rick to nearly suffocate. (Note: Rick began drinking heavily in college but he quit when he realized he was risking his life. Why he could quit and Henry couldn’t is not something we can ever really know.)

I’ll tell you, Dick was stymied at my questions. He didn’t understand why people might not understand. The way he saw it, his son had a right to a life that he, Rick, wanted to live and as the dad, his job was to help him get it. So Dick and his wife, Judy, stifled their fears and they fought for their son’s right to be independent.

I look at Dick, 70 years old today, still pushing Rick in their racing wheelchair and I look at the pictures of beautiful Henry, lost forever to the world and I think you just can’t know. You just can’t know. Some of our children will succeed beyond our wildest dreams because we let them fly and others, oh god, others will fall and our hearts will fall with them.

I can’t make sense of it. But I do know that I don’t look at Katie and wonder where she failed because the undertoad haunts all of us. I asked my mother, “Is there ever a time where you can say, ‘Oh I got them there! My children are finally in the place called Safe and I no longer have to worry!’” And my mom said never because life is unpredictable and it keeps on happening.

On the email list I was on way back when where I first met Katie, we’d have .sig lines, you know, in our emails. And one of my favorites was that quote from Elizabeth Stone, “Having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside of your body.” I thought it was hard watching my baby toddle away from me. I thought the worst was the sleepless nights when I worried about SIDS and unseen chokeables. My mom is right; it never ends. You just learn to live with it, that awful fear but it’s always there waiting to bubble up when your kid climbs a tree or goes on his first date or gets caught smoking cigarettes.

I will take Katie’s advice to heart, to never brush off drug experimentation as nothing serious but I will also be inspired by Dick Hoyt who refused to let fear guide his parenting. And I will accept that my heart will forever be walking outside my body, carried loosely in the hands of these two kids I’ve been blessed to parent. May the world be kind to them!

Why you want a weighted blanket

Parenting 7 Responses »

May 032010

Gage says, “I like it how I like it!”

Our first giveaway at Support for Special Needs is something that may not be familiar to folks so I wanted to explain it a bit more here.

A weighted blanket is like a regular blanket (in this case a fleece one) only it has weights sewn into it — light weights — so that it has more of a “hug” feel. So it gives you the pressure you might find from piling a bunch of comforters on your bed but it won’t get you overheated. Children (and adults) who crave that extra stimulation find a weighted blanket more soothing than a typical blanket and many people with sensory issues or anxiety are calmed by lying under one. (A friend of my sister said that she really likes the feel of the weighted lead apron you get at the dentist when they’re taking x-rays — she would like a blanket like this!)

Julia discovered the blanket when another blogger told her to get one for Gage and he does indeed love it (see pic!) and they just traded up to a heavier one as he’s gotten bigger.

This is a great giveaway and it’s also set the standard for the kinds of giveaways we’re planning to do: Useful, helpful, supportive and will actually make your life or your kids’ lives better! We plan to do at least one formal giveaway a week (and we’ll do mini giveaways, too) to keep things hopping and fun over there.

The site also offers live chats and support groups with message boards. Any site member can create a group, which can be public or private. We hope to also reach out to smaller organizations who need a way to share information with their members and invite them to create private groups that will let them do this without challenging their resources.

We are also working hard on creating great, useful content and have lined up interviews with a diverse list of professionals, experts, activists and authors. Julia’s goal is to create a place where parents can get answers and support whatever their children’s specific challenges. We created state groups to encourage people to reach out beyond their children’s diagnoses and begin thinking of themselves as part of a larger movement advocating for their families.

Please check out the site and tell your friends, families and acquaintances who might be interested. We would also love for you to follow us on Twitter or on Facebook!!

Meandering Sunday

Adoption, Parenting 3 Responses »

May 022010

I’m tired enough to do a bullet list.

Some of you likely know that Katie Granju’s son recently suffered a devastating attack and drug overdose, which she is writing about on her blog and on facebook. Henry is doing much better now but still has a long road ahead and like many of us, I can’t get it out of my head. It’s also making me think a lot of a friend of mine who is also caring for a loved one in similar circumstances and I am thinking again of how we (parents) can cause trauma but we can’t always prevent it. By which I mean that obviously there is such a thing as bad parenting (abuse) but as to that indefinable good parenting, well, it is no guarantee that we can protect our children from the world or from themselves. Bad things can happen to our kids and so much of it is out of our control and sometimes the best that we can do is love them anyway.
I have been thinking about this, too, because I’m doing interviews to expand the disruption article I’m writing (Jennifer talks about it here and by the way, they just won the Utne award for social and cultural coverage!!). And I’m thinking about what it means to be a “successful” parent. Because the successful parents I interviewed are not using the traditional measures of success like good grades or high achievement. They’re creating expectations based on the reality of their children and the parents who can do this, are better able to serve their kids.
This makes me think about Support for Special Needs, too. Because parents whose children have special needs are off the beaten path and it seems to me that the parents who are happiest as parents are the ones who accept this path and define it instead of allowing it to define them. Instead their focus is on celebrating THEIR child, THEIR child’s achievements and they are not hemmed in by other expectations or preconceived limitations.
Someone shared some information with Katie about “harm reduction” in addiction treatment, which sounds similar to what we sometimes did in shelter. Which was to recognize that most of the women we served were not going to be able to escape domestic violence at that time. Some of them might never escape. But you meet people where they are and give them tools for that time and place. So one thing that every woman got from her case manager was time to work on a safety plan so that she was better prepared to survive the reality of her situation.
And that reminded me of a parent I spoke with who has an adult child who is mentally ill and who is not always med compliant and so her parenting is harm reduction parenting, really, because she cannot make him med compliant but she can do things within her sphere to help him be safe. But her measures of parenting success are so different than what we traditionally think of as success and she is indeed very successful because she is able to love him even at his most unlovable and accept him even when she must reject certain behaviors. And that, to my eye, is some amazing parenting.
Which also makes me think about our family philosophy of adoption, which is not to assume that it must be judged against the standard of giving birth and caring for that child you gave birth to or in being cared for by the person who gave birth to you. In other words, it makes no sense to try to make Madison’s experience as much like Noah’s as possible than it does to make Noah’s experience as much like Madison’s as possible. It is a sort of “harm reduction” to appreciate and understand Madison’s unique experiences. And that is why it was easy to smile when Madison snuggled up to Pennie on the couch on Sunday and smushed her face up into Pennie’s shoulder, heaving a contented sigh then saying, “Mommy! Look at me!” because she expects the acknowledgment she deserves of her reality of being an adopted child in an open adoption with her loving birth mom.
Sometimes Julia will write “Spoken in the Mutant Family Household” entries on her blog. I love these entries. I love them because they are usually funny but also because I like how she uses the word Mutant. It’s true, for one. Their kids have mutated genes, which is why they have ARPKD. I also like the way these entries symbolize her acceptance of her kids’ abnormal status without creating excuses or defenses. They are who they are and the truth is that they are not normal and Julia does not love them in spite of their mutations or love them because she can see past their mutations or love them BECAUSE of their mutations. She loves them. They are who they are and they are lovable.
See, that was what struck me about one family in particular who I interviewed about disruption. This mother is able to see the reality of her child’s challenges and also loves her child. The child is not the sum of her challenges. She is who she is and she is lovable because her mother accepts their experience off the beaten path.
Those of us with “typical” children could learn from this. Because if we can’t see who our children ARE beyond the expectations, then how can we care for them well? Sometimes terrible things happen. Sometimes those things are temporary. Sometimes they have permanent repercussions. Will we love our kids anyway, even if they “fail?” (Even if bad things happen? Even if the bad things are their fault? Even if they make the mistakes that are the stuff of parental nightmares?)
I believe that the beaten path is an illusion anyway. I think most people end up wandering away or getting sidelined. Life is difficult and we’re here (I believe) to learn from it, which means that most of us have to make “mistakes.” How do we love our kids through the mistakes? How do we love them unconditionally? How do we hold them responsible for their own lives while still being steadfast in our support? Oh this parenting thing — it is forever a challenge.