Sister Moms

I haven't been motivated to write for a while. Our open adoption has become so "normal" to me that I feel less and less motivated to write about it. I'm still an avid reader of open adoption blogs, and they keep me thinking and exploring and (hopefully) preparing me to deal with issues that may arise as Lily gets older.

We recently got together to celebrate Lily's paternal grandmother's birthday, and after the meal, Lily, Fiona, and I walked with Fiona to her place of employment. (Her shift was starting shortly.) We walked down the street, the three of us hand in hand, Lily in the middle, talking about things going on in our lives. When we walked into the place where Fiona works, people smiled and said hello. Many of them know who we are. Lily and I hugged Fiona good-bye and then continued with our plans of the day.

On that day, it hit me again how close Fiona and I have become over the last few years. It feels like we're soul sisters, kindred spirits ... we call each other "sister moms." And when we walk hand in hand with Lily, the best word I can use to describe how I feel is "complete" -- three pieces of a puzzle joined together.

Rebecca Hawkes (one of my favorite bloggers) recently wrote about the fact that ultimately, her daughter will be the one who decides whether Rebecca (her adoptive mother) "hit the mark" in terms of the way in which she handled her open adoption. Rebecca also has a very close relationship with her daughter's first mother. I also read a recent post by Amber, another one of my favorites, who also is very close with her son's first mother. Amber wrote about how an adoption agency told them to "tone down" how open her open adoption is when she and her son's first mother spoke to prospective adoptive parents. I'm fairly certain our adoption agency will never ask me and/or Fiona to speak to anyone (as we'd give them a terrible review), but no doubt we'd be asked to do the same thing if we were invited to speak. I could hear them telling us, "Don't mention that Fiona lived with you guys for a couple of months."

So today I'm writing as yet another voice in the "very open adoption movement" who also believes that Lily has the final say in how this relationship between me and Fiona affects her, and that I will not "tone down" our closeness to make anyone else feel more comfortable. Because my closeness with Fiona and Nate and both of their extended families makes many people feel uncomfortable. And after four plus years, I'm finally starting not to care. That's their problem, not mine.

Gaining a Family

About a week after we picked up Lily from the hospital, we got a call from the agency social worker who told us that her parents wanted to meet us. We had not met yet - everything had been communicated through the agency - and now they wanted to meet us and talk about having an open adoption. The social worker told me what she had conveyed to Fiona, Lily's mother: "I told her that she wouldn't be losing a daughter; she'd be gaining a family."

I shuttered when she said those words. I knew that commentary was wrong and inappropriate on a million different levels, levels that I couldn't even articulate at that time. I wasn't nearly as educated about adoption back then as I am today.

Ironically, the social worker was partially right. Someone in the mix did gain a family -- me. It hit me the other day that I really have become part of Fiona's family. Her parents, aunts, uncles, cousins ... they make me feel like I am one of them. My comfort level with them is as high as it is with my own family of origin, if not even higher at times. They are my people. They are people I can count on. They are people I can sit with and be with without having to say a single word. We have inside jokes, a familiarity with each other's quirks and shortcomings. And sometimes we get on each other's nerves. Just like family.

When we adopted Lily, it never occurred to me that I also would be "adopted" in a new family. It goes to show you that open adoption is full of unexpected surprises.

Four

Four years ago today, G and I met Lily for the first time. We picked her up from the hospital and brought her home, having no idea what was in store for us.

It's hard for me to put into words the joy that Lily has brought me. In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined having such an amazing daughter. I also could not have imagined the way in which Lily's first family has become my family - people I love with all of my heart. I really can't imagine my life without them in it.

I recognize that everyone who enters into an open adoption takes a leap of faith, and every open adoption is different. I am one of the lucky ones who hit the jackpot. As Fiona said to me recently, we could be the poster family for open adoption. Our families have melded so incredibly well.

Every day that goes by, I become more baffled by the idea that adoption would erase one family and replace it with another. It makes absolutely no sense. Let's stop erasing families and start integrating them.

Society's View of Blended Families

People don't miss a beat when I tell them my parents are divorced and my father is remarried. Divorce, remarriage, step-parents, half-siblings are essentially non-issues in society today. But mention that you're in an open adoption and your family includes your adopted child's biological relatives -- eyes pop and jaws drop and questions come fast and furious.

I do believe that my role as a step-child has somewhat shaped the kind of adoptive mother that I am today. The relationship between my divorced parents and the step-family that evolved on my father's side were both highly dysfunctional, more so that I ever realized as a teenager and young adult. Any situation that involved the presence of my father, mother, and step-mother brought me high levels of anxiety and panic. My mother and step-mother called each other horrible names, and constantly told me that the other one didn't love me and had no place in my life. I was part of two families, and each one despised the other. I didn't feel "at home" anywhere. Every special event in my life (and in the lives of my sisters) has been overshadowed and tarnished by the hatred between my two families.

I often marvel when I meet people who tell me that their divorced parents are friends - or even friendly. I can't even picture that kind of relationship between my parents and step-mother.

I recently was talking with someone about my relationship with Lily's biological relatives, and I said that in some ways, they are the family I always wanted. At the beginning of our relationship, they embraced me because we loved the same person. And over time, we developed a true, loving relationship with one another. Had it not been for the mutual respect and compassion that we showed for one another at the beginning, I don't think our individual relationships would have been given the chance to flourish. Given my experience as a child, I can only believe that Lily seeing the love between her two families will make her a happier and stronger person, free from the anxieties I still carry with me in my 40s.

Ultimately, the adults in any blended family set the tone, and that tone generally (but not always) dictates whether the children in the family flourish or spend a good part of their adult life on the couch of a therapist. I do hope that adoption becomes more and more about the integration of families rather than the erasing of one to replace it with another. I hope that as society begins to accept this approach as the norm, more adoptive parents will choose the path of family integration. And I hope that all adults who find themselves in a blended family will recognize the critical role they play in creating the audio that will play in their child's head for decades to come.  

Funny Things That Happen When You're in a Very Open Adoption

Fiona and Nate, Lily's first parents, are still together as a couple - year six and going strong. Despite the fact that both of their mothers live locally, they had never met each other. Until recently. When I introduced my daughter's grandmothers to one another. Fiona and Nate weren't around. It was just me, introducing two other people's potential in-laws to one another.

The weather was beautiful the day we all got together and we went to an outdoor event in the neighborhood. Nate's mom ran into one of her co-workers who looked completely flabbergasted as Nate's mom's introduced all of us to her. We're all different races, so it's wildly confusing, and I tried to alleviate the awkwardness by asking her to guess which one of the grandmas was my mother. To which Fiona's mother said, "You really look more like your dad." The poor woman looked like she needed a drink.

Another friend who was at this event commented that I now travel with Lily's entourage. When this friend's mother - another grandmother figure - took Lily to go look at a petting zoo area, we laughed that just what Lily needs is another grandmother in her life. I've lost count of how many women identify as Lily's grandmother (or great-grandmother, or great-great grandmother). I think we're up to 9 or 10. It's truly astounding.

My family is getting bigger and bigger, and it makes me smile when I think about the amazing and unusual relationships that have formed through our open adoption. I've written recently about the hard parts, and there are many -- especially for Fiona and Nate -- but it's important to focus on the positives, too. Lily's 4th birthday is approaching, and I'm fairly certain that there will be more biological relatives than adoptive relatives at her party. In fact, I would venture to say that Lily will have more face-to-face interaction with more biological family members that I, a non-adopted person, had while I was growing up. Fiona and Nate and G and I now have mutual friends and mutual friends of friends and our lives criss cross in multiple ways. Fiona's mom and my great-aunt just became Facebook friends.

When people see me out and about with "Lily's entourage," they often ask me how I do it. The truth is - the socializing part is easy. However, my hat goes off to those adoptive parents who have two and three very open adoptions - there does come a point when there's just not enough room in the house, the car, restaurants, etc. to fit everyone.

Are there words of comfort?

I am not, nor will I ever be, an adoptee or a first parent. But as an adoptive mother in a very open adoption, I voraciously read the writings of adoptees and first parents with the hope of better understanding their experiences. My daughter is almost four, so I have yet to fully see how she processes her adoption, but I do have a close relationship with her first parents and extended families in which they feel open to express their feelings of loss and pain to me. This is not to say they don't support me or my role in Lily's life. I feel that they like me, think of me as part of their family, and believe that I am a good mother to Lily. In fact, a person who I lean on a lot when I'm struggling emotionally is one of Lily's (biological) grandmothers. She is among my closest friends.

I've written recently that we're going through a tough time in our open adoption right now. I don't feel like writing about the details, but basically new members of Lily's extended first family just found out about her existence. So in a sense, we're back at day one in terms of them processing their feelings, which in turns brings all of us back to that time with them.

I have experienced deep loss and pain in my life. I've experienced dark periods that I wasn't sure I would ever come out of. But when I reflect back on the times I fell into the abyss of despair, what I remember -- who I remember -- are the people who stuck out their arms and pulled me up out of it. How did they do that? Of course, they listened, and I felt understood. But it was more than that. They spoke words that gave me encouragement and hope, hope that better days were ahead, hope that as awful as things felt at that moment, that there was a path to healing, and over time, the pain would subside. Had I not believed that the pain would ever subside, had I not seen a ray of hope, I'm not sure if I would have grabbed their arms and let them help me out of that abyss.

I am not a parent or a grandparent or an aunt who has lost a child to adoption. I only know a kind of loss that is different than their kind of loss. I can listen, and I can do my best to put myself in their shoes and try to understand. And I have. But beyond being there and listening, I struggle with what to say. I certainly know what NOT to say, but I wonder if there are right words for an adoptive parent to say to a first family member who is feeling sadness over the adoption.

The Hard Parts

This week I was reminded that open adoption can be hard. For everyone.

As the adoptive parent, open adoption requires me to witness the pain, the grief, the sadness, and the regret of my daughter's first family. The emotions I bear witness to are strong and real and messy and overwhelming. In a closed or even semi-open adoption, these emotions would not be within my realm of consciousness. I would not see them, hear them, respond to them, and think about them during my daily life.

But I believe that as Lily's adoptive mother, I have to learn to hear and hold those raw emotions without letting them consume or swallow me. I have to listen, to be there, to let her first family know they are understood. And I have to consistently remind them that our hearts and doors are open, and then embrace them tightly when they walk through.

Open adoption is not easy, but I do it because I can do it, and I believe it is what is best for my daughter. And each time I walk through a dark tunnel with Lily's first family, I find that as long as we hold on to one another, as long as we approach each other from a place of love, respect, and compassion, that we come through that dark tunnel, and the light shines on us once again.

Too Good to Be True

I've written a few times about our first meeting with Fiona and Nate, Lily's first parents. However, I recently remembered something new -- something that Fiona said to me at the end of our first meeting. She said, "You guys seem too good to be true."

Let me back up a bit. The local agency that did our home study facilitated very few domestic adoptions. They encouraged us to pursue other avenues - sign up with more active agencies - but G and I were very clear in what kind of situation we would be comfortable with. (And at the time, I was not nearly as knowledgeable as I am today in terms of how most infant domestic adoptions come about.) We told the agency that we did not want to meet any pregnant women. We did not want to be part of anyone's decision-making process. We would only be interested in starting the adoption process after a woman had a baby and decided she wanted to place. We were told many times that it almost never works that way, that if a woman is going to place, she's going to want to meet us before she gives birth. We maintained that if it didn't happen, then it didn't happen. 

I was completely floored when we got a call from the agency social worker telling us a baby girl had been born the previous day and her mother wanted to place her but did not have an adoption plan. Then floored again when we were told that her parents wanted a closed adoption -- that we would know very little about them or them about us. When we picked up Lily at our local hospital the next day, what had happened didn't seem real. It was as if the mythical stork had flown by our home and dropped off a baby. As I was falling in love with this baby, I had so many questions about her first parents. And a little more than a week later, I would start to get answers.

That was the first time we met Fiona and Nate. We were still within the revocation period. And that's the day when I went into the zone -- the place where I wondered how I could go on if we lost Lily. Not only were G and I in love with Lily, but so was Ferb, our then five-year-old son. My life had been turned upside down. I had become a new mother with less than 24 hours notice. I had taken unplanned leave from work. I wasn't sleeping. I was mentally and physically exhausted. I was feeling a lot of confusion, just trying to keep my head above water. And then Fiona and Nate wanted to meet us -- they wanted to talk about having an open adoption.

Something inside of me kicked in during that meeting -- a force or energy that is hard to describe -- and I said all the right things, all the things that Fiona and Nate wanted to hear about the open adoption we would have, one that involved visits and birthday parties and holidays and sporting events and so on and so on. As Fiona told me, it sounded too good to be true.

But here's the thing. When I looked into my daughters' parents' eyes and told them that they would be a real part of our lives, of Lily's life, I knew I had to find it in me to live out that promise. How it all would work seemed complex and confusing at the time, but I was committed to sorting it out. Because never in a million years could I live with deceiving my daughter's parents. Never. Hurting them in that way would be simply unbearable.

That's why I get sick to my stomach when I read about far too many situations where prospective adoptive parents make promises to mothers and fathers about being a real part of their child's life post-adoption, and then totally renig on those promises. And even though I'm not one of those people, I don't even like sharing the title "adoptive parent" with them. Hurting your child's parent is hurting your child. Period.

Of course, our adoption has opened wider and farther than I ever could have imagined. What seemed so confusing and complex at the beginning is second nature to me now. Fiona has lived with us. Both Nate and Fiona have had keys to our house for various reasons. They spend time with Lily with us and without us. Fiona's mother has volunteered at Lily's school. There have been visits and birthday parties and holidays and soon there will be sporting events, too. Fiona and Nate are among the most important and special people in my life. Turns out that it wasn't too good to be true - for all of us.