My original plan was to use this month to do some soul searching only I haven’t had time to do any soul searching, which is one of the things I wanted to search my soul about. I have not been happy, oh dear internets, for what feels like a long time. I’m not sure when exactly it changed. I just know that sometime this summer I tipped into misery. I haven’t had time to write and that’s been making me very very very unhappy. So-o-o-o-o unhappy. And bitter. And headache-y. And prone to believe the world is a sad, ugly, ungracious and unkind place (the economy laying off my friends and their partners has not helped in this regard).

But I felt trapped. I knew what would make a difference and that difference didn’t seem like something I could right now. (I still feel trapped but I’m trying to think of this in the past tense and this is my first decision in a series that I’m going to have to make.)

There was a trajectory to my misery that went like this once I was well and truly sad:

• Assuming that my sadness was an attitude I could change just by wishing it away. Or pretending I didn’t feel that way. Or giving myself a stern talking to about how my life difficulties were nothing — nothing – compared to a million other lives that are 1001 times worse.
• Lambasting myself for being such a dumb stupid selfish loser who can’t be happy with what she has and think of all the ways other people manage and tell myself that if I just tried harder and quit whining it would all go away. (This is a subtle shift from the first step where the first step is more like, “C’mon, sport! Get yourself together!” and this one is like, “Shut up, you stupid whiny loser!”)
• Making small but doable changes, some of which helped a bit but none of which addressed the bigger issue. Basically succumbing to that women’s magazine mentality that if I could just find the perfect time management system, diet and/or work-out video that all of my problems would fly away.
• Giving up and being miserable. That coincided quite conveniently with what was apparently the flu. I was sick. I was unhappy. Life appeared bleak. All the things making me sad were standing out in stark relief and I felt consumed by flu and exhaustion and every morning I woke up and wondered how soon I could take my Nyquil and go back to sleep again. And yet life ground on and there were still meals to make, brochures to design, rugs to vacuum, etc. etc. and so the hamster wheel of my life suddenly seemed even more unbearable than before.

Fortunately that last bit? That was mostly the flu talking and now that I’m well again what I’m left with is a determination not to let my life kick my ass like that again.

Now there are a lot of things in my way and the gist of this I can’t blog until I’ve moved them out of my way and gotten on to what I need to get onto but I do know this: Life is too short to feel this frustrated. And while it’s true that lots of people are way worse off than I am and it is perhaps a character flaw that what another person could cope with in her sleep is turning me into a blithering, sobbing idiot most weekends (and some weeknights) but it is my character, nonetheless, and I do have to live with it, flaws and all.

I am what I am. I can do what I can do. And I am at my best when I accept my limits. It’s taken me time to understand (who am I kidding — I still don’t quite understand it and am going to have to do some of Madison’s patented self-talk to work it) that challenging myself doesn’t mean banging my head against brick wall and telling myself that I should just bang harder. Challenging myself means when I hit a wall, I turn around and try something new. I mean, there’s only so much I can learn about myself by contemplating my failure to manage in circumstances that I personally find impossible but appear to work on paper.

Now I need to figure out how to get what I need despite some fairly daunting obstacles and I’m not sure quite how I’m going to do that but I do think it’s likely that now that I’ve figured out that I have to do it, I’ll find a way. Right? Of course right.

Skila and Tatjana both asked about openness in international adoptions in regards to my Roundtable post. Specifically, should adoptive parents push for openness? Tatjana said:

This is very much the predominant point of view re searching for birth families of internationally adopted children here in NL due to *very vocal* adult adoptees who fight for adopters to leave this up to their children. I’m very sceptical but very alone with my view … Most adopters seem very impressed by the adult adoptee stories.

Skila added:

I struggle with this because on a personal level all three of our adoptions are closed. (Closed because they were international adoptions and open adoptions weren’t an option.) As much as I’m in favor of open adoptions, I’m not sure about opening a closed one. I see both the pros and cons of this and can’t make up my mind about what is really best for all parties involved. My searching for their first parents now could cause a great hardship in the lives of the parents and of my kids. (It could also bring a lot of peace as well. But I just don’t know.) And so I’ve deferred to “I will let the kids decide to search for them when/if they want to.” But I still waver on this.

When it comes to international stuff, I look to Amber most of the time. I know how much research she does (the blog doesn’t tell you half of it!) and I trust her. So here’s part of what she said that really resonated with me (I emailed her to ask her to blog this further sometime this month if she runs out of daily topics!):

There are people who disapprove of our decision to search.  Some people strongly believe that we should leave searching for L to handle on her own, years from now, when the trail may be cold.  I can’t in good conscience make that choice for L.  In this case, doing nothing is making a choice to make things more difficult/impossible for L in the future, should finding her family be important to her.

So here’s my thinking on it as influenced by Amber and some other internationally adoptive parents who have searched: It depends on a whole lot of stuff.

Some questions I think parents ought to ask (not by any means definitive):

• What are the circumstances surrounding my child’s relinquishment as I understand them?
• Do I have reason to believe that searching could in any way hurt the family or my child long-term?
• Can I do anything now to make my child’s search easier later?
• If I don’t do anything now, will it impede my child if s/he does want to search later?

One of the things Amber said (and I can’t find that post — rats!) is that China is changing very very very quickly and some of the information she could get for L. now will be gone if she waits much longer. Therefore, she’s getting it now, period. I think that makes sense. I think that it makes sense to get as much as you can while the proverbial trail is still hot. I think this is helping make way for a possible search without stepping on your child’s agency.

But I think it’s much like any other closed adoption (including ones that are technically open but where the first parents have disappeared for whatever reason), our job is to do what we can to give our child access bearing in mind the reality of that child’s particular story. So for us? I’m not going knocking on Madison’s first dad’s door AT ALL but I do track him. I do have what information I can get (not much but I have it). There are a million and one reasons — none of ‘em bloggable — why I’m not forcing openness there but I’m gathering the info I can to give Madison agency when she’s older.

I’d love to hear from international adoptive parents on this though (it’s a question that comes up at Open Adoption Support and I always value the folks that share there).