Did you ever hear that saying? “If wishes were horses then beggars could ride.” My mom used to say that to me and I thought of it today when I read this week’s open adoption roundtable prompt:

Share your wish list for your open adoption(s).

It’s timely, too, because I’ve been thinking about Nicole’s recent post as well as a question at Open Adoption Support. Nicole, coming off a 4th of July visit with Moonbeam wrote about an outburst of anger she had over something seemingly unrelated. And she finishes her post with a plea to other first parents:

So I am begging, pleading, how do others of you do this? How do you maintain contact with your children–either in open adoptions or in reunions–and handle the upswell of emotion or the retraumatization that brings–without scarring your other children?

This was hot on the heels of this question at Open Adoption Support:

What do you do when she just won’t respond? I just don’t know when to give up.
My daughter’s first mom just doesn’t respond to questions especially regarding visits. We don’t talk on the phone often, never have. I wish we did but we’re all not very big phone people so we have done lots of emailing. I’m trying to set up a visit which requires booking flights and arrange for the visit and she just will not respond with dates. I’m a planner so it does frustrate me but also the prices of everything go up the closer you get to travel. She has said that she wants us to visit. I just don’t know how hard I should press. Any advice/opinion?

We just had a visit with Pennie last night (and hopefully she’s coming over again tomorrow!) and you know, it’s just hard. I thought it would get easier and in some ways it does but in some ways it gets harder.

Pennie is out-to-here pregnant (she looks great!) with Roscoe due to arrive mid-September. Her pregnancy is bringing up a lot of stuff for her and for Madison. Even though it’s not my stuff, I certainly feel it because I love them both and I struggle to figure out how to support them. I’m walking blind here, people. I’m making it up as I go.

Madison is needy — so so needy! — about making sure that Roscoe isn’t going to replace her. Of course Roscoe could never replace her but he will certainly be a reminder to her (and to Pennie and to me) of what might have been. Madison wants to know: Why does Roscoe get to breastfeed? Why does Roscoe get to live with Pennie? Will Pennie still think she is cute? Will people like Roscoe better? She pats Pennie’s tummy and talks to Roscoe and then the next day she cries and cries about it.

And Pennie? She’s got her own stuff going on. Pregnancies are hard on a person, especially a person with a job that keeps you on your feet umpteen hours a day and with full-time school and hey, it’s summer so it’s hot and she has a lot to do to get ready for the baby.

Plus she’s recently begun looking critically at her adoption experience, which is GREAT to my mind, but is not without it’s own pain. Especially because as she looks critically she’s like, “Hey, what the hell. No one told me this. Or this. Or THIS.” I remember at the panel we were on together, Jenna said something about rights and Pennie said sarcastically/not-sarcastically, “No one told me I had any rights. I had rights?”

Recently we were talking about this — because the big thing to her is that she wasn’t told that she could put her baby in foster care while she revisited her decision until she was sitting there with the papers. And she said, “Why doesn’t anyone CARE about this?” And I said, “They do. That’s the adoption reform stuff I’ve been trying to talk about.” And then I was like, “Jeez, Dawn, you’re going to lecture her now about adoption reform? Shut up and listen, for godssakes!” Like I was the expert or something. Like I’m going to tell HER about the need for reform.

I’m getting off track.

What I mean to say is that I have thought about the times when Pennie has clearly needed distance from us and I don’t know that she always knows that this is what’s happening because she really is very busy. But there have been times when we see less of her and I know both that she’s busy and that she’s in an emotional place where taking that extra effort to see Madison was just more effort than she could take.

I know that myself, I don’t call my dad sometimes for days and days. I just don’t return his calls (I’m avoiding him right now as it happens but I am cognizant of this — sometimes I am not). I’ll have lots of reasons I’m not calling him but any of those reasons would fall apart if I looked at them closely. The truth is I’m just not up to calling him. I’m just not in an emotional place to handle the burden of talking to him.

I might look uncaring or neglectful or ungrateful but the truth is, I just can’t do it.

Sometimes open adoption is like that.

So my wish list today is that the people who I love so much (Pennie and Madison) would have the strength to accept each other’s limits even when it’s hard. Even when it’s painful. And that they would give each other — and themselves — the space and time they need and that they would trust in their love for each other even when things are hard.

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Now playing: Jon Brion – Little Person
via FoxyTunes

Every Tuesday she’s writing about the book Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes and blogging about the insight it gives her into her son’s behavior. (For those who haven’t had Julia on their blogrolls, her son had a kidney transplant over a year ago and her daughter is facing one in upcoming months.) She picked up the book after AmFam blogged about it in the context of her daughter L’s adoption.

If you have a child who has experienced trauma, it sounds like this book is a difficult read but an important one.  Julia’s blog posts are heart wrenching but I also see them as hopeful because behind them is a mother who will do anything to help her children no matter how hard it is for her. 

That Julia — she’s a good egg. And an inspiration.