When my daughter cries at night because she misses Laura....
when she asks me why her birth father doesn't want to know her....
when she wonders what life would be like if she lived with her brother and cousins rather than here with just the dog for a pretend sibling...
when she worries that Laura and I will have a fight and she'll have to choose between us...
when she asks me if it's really OK that she says she loves Laura...
when she feels guilty because we have more money than Laura....
I wonder about this whole open adoption thing.
Wouldn't it be easier if we didn't have to deal with this? Wouldn't it be simpler if we said "we are your parents" and left it at that? Isn't this all just more confusion?
And then I remember that "not dealing with it" isn't an option. Even if we'd never reached out to Laura, even if our only connection to her was the picture from our first meeting, before Eve was born, even if we'd continued to use the agency as a go-between, Laura would still be part of our lives, and Eve would still be asking questions. She might not be asking us - she might realize we didn't want to hear. Eve is very good at figuring out what the adults want from her. She's a rule-follower. If she thought talking about Laura was against the rules, she wouldn't talk about Laura - but she'd still be asking, somewhere deep inside.
I was going to say that we set our feet on this road when we made direct contact with Laura 8 years ago, but then I realized that Eve could just as easily have asked to be in touch with her through the agency, once she was old enough to realize what we were doing and to read the letters they passed on to us.
Not dealing with it wasn't an option. We had to be open to Eve's questions, and once she started asking to see Laura, we had to respond. If we hadn't done our best to make that happen, Eve would have been deeply, abidingly furious with us.
Now, when I start to feel overwhelmed by the complexity and grief and conversations, I remember what the options really were, and I am grateful that we are not facing the onset of adolescence with a child who feels betrayed and alienated, who believes that we are denying her a piece of herself. As hard as it is to hear what she's saying, it would be much, much worse if she couldn't say it.
In the end, we had no choice. This was what we had to do for our daughter, because she is our daughter, and we are her real parents, and we will not cut the baby in half.
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11 comments:
Beautifully said. We are going through a rough time here since Pennie moved away and it's given me a lot of compassion for adoptive parents who don't feel equipped to handle open adoption but I do still think we all need to. Because it's better that Madison process her grief now with it all out in the open then to hide it or deny it and then get sideswiped as an adult, which I think can happen in closed adoptions. Relationships are tough and open adoption is no different.
I'm Facebook friends with a writer whose parents hid her birth truth from her--she found a letter beneath the liner in her mom's dresser drawer that said she'd been born to a woman in prison and asked that her birth certificate be altered to hide that fact. The girl grew up to be an angry young woman addicted to drugs and living dangerously. She eventually straightened out (and now travels to women's prisons nationwide as an inspirational speaker, meeting women like the birth mother she hasn't seen since her first year of life).
Your respect for your daughter's questions and needs will hopefully spare her from the identity torment my friend went through.
Beautiful, powerful post!
The part about Eve being a rule-follower who wouldn't ask (out-loud) if she thought the adults wouldn't approve was especially moving for me. I was that adoptee, in a closed adoption years back. I was almost 30-years-old before I could bring myself to speak the questions. I'm glad your daughter doesn't have to wait. And you are absolutely right ... even if you weren't dealing with it, you'd still be dealing with it.
Regardless of how you choose to handle things, the birth family is still part of the equation.
Thanks, Rebecca...it means a lot to hear from people who've been there. And yes, Dawn, relationships are hard. They just are, and that perspective helps, too.
Thank you for writing this! Just dropping by from production not reproduction and am so glad i did.
I love love love your last line: "...and we will not cut the baby in half."
You nailed it. The whole reason why we do well by our kids when we encourage them to love their first parents.
Glad to have you both! Thanks for your supportive words.
Wow that is so hard. My son is only 2.5, and we have a very open adoption with regular visits from his birthparents but the reality is my son does not really know that he's adopted yet (too young to really understand). I can't believe (despite being PRO PRO PRO open adoption) how much I'm dreading him actually realizing what it means. Anyway, I barely know you but I feel for you.
Harriet, thanks for the comment...for Eve, the realization has happened in slow stages, which has made it more manageable for me, anyway. It's hard to watch our kids suffer - I wrote this as a reminder to myself that the suffering is there anyway, whether I'm watching it or not, and it would be harder for her to suffer alone and in isolation.
this is such an important post. truly a must-read for adoptive parents.
our daughter is not yet 3 and we have a very open adoption with her birth mother and her family, but the questions have not yet begun. some day I'm sure she will ask (as she does with everything else), "because WHY?" and that will only be the beginning.
thanks for sharing this one.
That really sums it up for us, parents who chose to have a family through open adoption ... I love how your written perspective if from your daughter's point of view ... that is how we as adoptive parents should always see it ... thank you for your honesty! We are glad to be part of such a wonderful community whether we know you in person or through the blogosphere ....
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