Reflecting: A Strange Paradox

My parents married when they were 21 years old and my mother got pregnant with me on their honeymoon. When I was born, I had four grandparents and seven great-grandparents, all of whom lived nearby and were a big part of my life. Two more girls followed -- one three years later, and one seven years later -- and outward appearances showed a perfect little family. But the inside story was much different. My mother was depressed. When she wasn't angry at me or my sisters, she was by herself in her room with the door closed. My father was sweet to us but passive aggressive toward my mother, and the two of them fought constantly. I often turned up my music to drown out the yelling. I was relieved when my father finally left my mother when I was 16 years old. I wanted to escape, too.

What I didn't realize at the time was that my father had found another family to join, and there wasn't room in that family for me. My parents were only in their late 30s at the time, and each decided to start a new life. My sisters and I couldn't find a place in either one. Our large extended family split in half -- there was anger and resentment on both sides -- and the people who I always believed loved each other suddenly hated each other, and they let me know about it. I couldn't spent time with either side of the family without someone trying to convince me that the other parent was a monster. I don't think my brain knew how to process this sudden rip in my world, so I turned to food to get me through it. As long as I was eating, I wasn't feeling. It wasn't until my mid-20s when I finally dealt with my grief and began the process of forgiving my parents for what I now see as their own shortcomings. The little me thought it was all about me. The grown-up me learned it was all about them. I stopped turning to food for comfort. I found healthy ways to deal with stress.

I was in my early 30s when I first learned about our major fertility problem and first started exploring adoption. Open adoption wasn't as widespread as it is today, but it was becoming more and more the norm. When I first heard about open adoption, I was brought back to my own childhood. I imagined an adopted child that would feel torn between two families, each family resenting the other, each family looking for more loyalty, each family finding new reasons to feel betrayed. That was my life, and there was no way I was going to put a child through that. No way at all.

Then, when I was 38, I unexpectedly found myself in an open adoption a week after Lily was born and placed with us. That probably sounds weird, but the circumstances that led to our adoption and then our open adoption were unusual and unexpected. At the beginning, the 16-year-old inside of was begging me to stop. Don't do it. We can't go through this again. But I was a different person with more resources, more experience, more insight, more determination. I would find a way to make this work. When I couldn't find anyone in my real life to give me guidance, I turned to the Internet and found the people I had been looking for. Heather at Production Not Reproduction wrote about the concept of family integration -- the idea that birth families and adoptive families could become intertwined, a different but equally important kind of extended family. I believed I could make that work, and I started at it. We're two and a half years into the journey, and while it hasn't been easy, it's been the most rewarding experience of my life. It's a work in progress, but we do make progress, and I see it.

We saw Fiona and Nate, Lily's first parents, last Saturday. They came to our house for a visit, and I'd have to say it was our best visit yet. It was comfortable and fun. We played, we ate, we talked about silly things and important things. We found more areas we have in common. We watched Lily in amazement. We listened to her contagious laugh. We watched Ferb and Lily go from playing to fighting to playing again. It felt like family, only better. The bond I feel with Fiona and Nate - in some ways - is even stronger than the bond I feel with my immediate family. Their hugs and the things they said made me believe that their love for me is real, too.  I was filled with happiness when they left.

A few days later, I found one of my all-time favorite movies on HBO -- "Crimes and Misdemeanors." It's a story of questions about morality with no finite answers. Interspersed throughout the movie are a series of interviews with a fictitious professor who is based on a real person, and something he said really caught my attention. I was able to find the exact quote online:

“You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that when we fall in love we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand we ask of our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted on us. So that love contains in it a contradiction, the attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.”

I've written before about my intense desire to keep our adoption open and healthy. I believe that is what will make Lily feel most whole and complete. However, after hearing this, I started to wonder -- is my desire to sew together so tightly Lily's adoptive family and birth family also an effort to undo the hurt I felt as a child?

I know I want the best for Lily. I know I would walk across hot coals for her. I know my love for Fiona and Nate is real. And I know that - like many parents - I don't want to repeat the mistakes my parents made. I want to protect Lily from the pain that I felt as a child. But we are the sum of our experiences, and perhaps I also need to make sure I don't project my own past into the situation. It's different, and I need to remember that.