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.

Adoption Blogger Interview Project

I started my blog last year because I wanted to participate in the Interview Project organized by Heather at Production not Reproduction. I had a great experience last year, and another fantastic experience this year. I was very fortunate to be paired with the blogging pioneer who writes American Family. I had read her blog before and thoroughly enjoyed her writing style, insights, and humor. She is one of the few bloggers I know who has an open adoption with her daughter’s birth family in China. Her blog and her answers to my questions should be read by anyone considering searching for their child’s birth family in China. She tells it like it is and doesn’t gloss over the hard parts. She writes about M, her daughter through birth; L, her daughter through adoption; and Mr. A, her husband. You can check out her interview of me here. Happy reading!

1) In a blog ("Today") from April 2011, you wrote this: "I was afraid when we met [L's first parents] I would feel jealous of their biological bond. I was afraid she would feel more theirs than mine. Now that we know them, it turns out that I don’t feel jealous at all. In Reunion, I feel their loss magnified by my everyday life with L." Is this still an accurate reflection of your feelings? How does knowing L's first parents impact your day-to-day life?

I don't know. It has been about a 1.75 years since we last saw L's family and nearly 2 years since we located them. Things have...settled down, I guess.

2) What is one piece of advice you would give to other adoptive parents who want to search for their child's Chinese parents?

This is a hard question because I am torn between thinking most adoptive parents should not search and feeling it is a massively bad decision if they don't. (Yes, I realize this is completely hypocritical!)

Given how hard building this relationship has been for *me* and the ways our situations is a best case scenario, I tend to think that maybe it is best to leave things be for most American adoptive families. In our case, Mr. A speaks some Chinese, we are already somewhat used to dealing with Chinese culture in our extended family, the birth family loves and accepts L and our family, we all want what is best for L, their exposure to western culture, their (lower) middle class status...none of these things are necessarily typical and all of them have a huge impact on our ability to manage our openness.

Opening L's adoption has been incredibly emotionally challenging for both families. To get through the hard times, it takes unwavering commitment. So many adoptive parents start searching without thinking through the long-term ramifications, it makes me very, very worried. If we are a best case scenario and I was as prepared for openness as I could be (we are and I think I was), what will happen in the worst-case scenarios where adoptive parents are not at all prepared?

We owe it to our children to not screw this up for them and screwing it up would be very, very easy to do. Open domestic adoptions are difficult enough, but openness when you are trying to bridge language and culture and class? It is a massive undertaking.

On the other hand, if we don't search early, the odds of our children ever finding their birth families drop drastically. If our children happen to be the ones for whom Knowing is a burning desire, what if our delay or reluctance to search costs them that option? This conflict is something I try to talk about when I get asked to talk about open international adoption. Adoptive parents don't necessarily want to hear it.

My best advice is EDUCATE YOURSELF. You have to believe without a doubt that openness and knowledge is better for your child. You have to commit to the long-term even though the short-term is hard. You have to know that searching won't take away the pain and loss of adoption, it only adds different losses. You have to know that you will be responsible for maintaining contact and building a relationship on your child's behalf, even it if is hard for you. Then when your child gets older, you will have to get out of the way.

Another thing adoptive parents need to know is there is no easy way to search. You can't just pay someone to search for you and expect to be successful. It has happened a few times, but it is RARE. If you want the easy way out, you probably shouldn't search at all because the search is what prepares you for what happens next. You need to build local contacts and begin dealing with actual Chinese people. If you aren't comfortable putting yourself out there, how are you going to build a relationship with total strangers who are also your child's parents?

Finally, my advice is also that the adoptive parents' choice to search does not make them the owners of the information they find. This information belongs to our children. It is *their* story--even the bad parts. There are people who are profiting from searching in China who promote searching and then withholding the information that is found from adopted children until they specifically request it. I find this appalling on so many levels.

One reason we searched was because I wanted L to know she could trust us. I wanted her to know I our love for each other does not depend on the removal of her first family from her heart or her life. My love is not conditional on me being her only mother. By sharing her history with her, I am telling her there is nothing shameful about her story, the way she joined our family or where and who she came from.

L's place in our family is not what keeps her from her birth family, she is the person who brings us together. Her family is OUR family.

Sorry for the very long response. I can't really give one piece of advice, because I have too much to say about this topic.

3) You are raising one child who came to you through birth and another who came to you through adoption. How has this impacted your view of the nature v. nurture argument? Has meeting L's first parents helped you better understand your daughter in any ways?

M, my biological daughter, has always been very much like I was at her age so I can see the nature written all over her. L (adopted daughter) has always been her own glorious self which comes from somewhere or someone other than me. M reads, L draws. M is uncoordinated, L runs like she has been training since she was two. L love sparkly girly clothes, M is pushing the envelope if she wears a tshirt with a picture on it. They are just very different girls. Then again, my sister and I were always like night and day and we shared genes and grew up in the same house, so who can say what the real reason is?

I do wonder how different L would be if she were raised with her birth family or with another adoptive family. Is she naturally this funny or do we bring it out of her because funny is clearly a quality we value? If she grew up in a more athletic family, would she be some kind of peewee league phenom? Her mom was pretty quiet when we met and her dad was obviously very charismatic. I can see both those qualities in L.

While it isn't exactly what you asked, I will admit that meeting L's birth family gave me a lot of peace of mind about her size. She came to us in the 50%ile and she was quite chubby. After about 6 months, she started falling down the growth chart and ended up around the 10th%ile after wearing size 3 clothes for three years. (She is barely a 5 slim now at 6.5). I used to fret about this, because who comes home from an orphanage and shrinks?? Now that we met L's parents, I know for a fact she gets her body type from her baba. He is small and wirey and terribly handsome, just like L. Her little brother was also a chubby cheeked guy when we met him. I haven't seen pictures lately, but I would be willing to bet he has slimmed down in the past two years too.

4) You are a blogging "pioneer," having written your first blog post back in 2003. You write that you are now considering ending your blog. How has blogging impacted your life over the last nine years?

By far, the most important thing I got out of all this blogging was really great friends. I have friends both here and far away who I met through my blog. When you meet someone in real life who has already read the nitty gritty deep dark secrets of your psyche, it cuts through the bullshit formality pretty quickly. Most of my good post-childbearing friends are somehow connected to me through my blog (or through someone else who I met through my blog). I am never would have predicted it, but the people inside my computer have changed my life for the better in immeasurable ways.

5) What are some of the highlights and low points of yor blogging career? What will you miss most if/when you stop blogging?

The low point was the time my homestudy got put on hold because some jerkface called my agency to say I was inappropriate on my blog. Those were fun times. (http://american-family.org/2007/03/23/backtracking/)

I think this post was one of the highlights ( http://american-family.org/2011/01/30/answer/ ) It is moments like that will make me miss blogging. I wouldn't remember that moment so clearly if I hadn't written it down.

That post changed lives too. When I wrote about the reunion and showed that photo of L in her mama's arms, things started to shift. My blog is only read by a small number of people, but it only takes a few seeds for a movement to begin. Sharing our story has been hard, but I hope my honesty has helped those searching be prepared for what happens next.

6) What are the most challenging aspects of raising children of a different race? How have you dealt with these challenges?

I think the hardest part is knowing I can't walk through this world for my children. They have to go on this journey in the skins they were born in. Sometimes the world is not going to be kind to them and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. I try to give them the tools they need to feel good in their own skin, to fit in with others who share their experiences and help them be proud of who they are.

I also lean heavily on Mr. A's experiences as an Asian American and follow his lead when I can. For example, today we were listening to Gangnam Style in the car. We all talked about how amazing it is to Mr. A that a Korean song is on the radio in America in his lifetime. The girls were surprised to hear that Asians were not so common where Mr. A grew up. We talked about some of the reasons that was hard for him and how he got through it. I am so grateful the girls have Mr. A to relate to. He can give them something I just can't, no matter how much I try.

7) Has anyone or anything ever made you question whether you made the right decision in searching for L's parents? If so, how did you deal with the uncertainty?

When I was struggling with the ways open adoption changed my life, I regretted searching. Honestly, though, that was just me selfishly wanting my life to go back to normal. Now that things have settled down, we have a new normal and I don't regret it at all.

Even in my darkest, complainingest days, I knew we did the right thing by searching. I believe that our decision might have changed the whole trajectory of L's life. It also gave comfort to her parents who had no idea what might have happened to her. As a mother, the idea of not knowing where my children were or if they were safe haunted me and was one reason I searched.

Both L and her family still have the burden of distance and loss, but now they have the peace of mind of knowing at least they are all safe. L will know the Whys of her story, even if she can never understand them. She will deal with one heartbreaking story rather than 50 possible heartbreaking stories. I hope L will not be afraid that wanting to know her birth family or loving them will cause pain to Mr. A or myself.

I know it was the right decision to search because we were successful. Knowing what I know now about the path we followed to find L's family and their personal circumstances, I know that a successful search would have been much much more difficult in 10, 20 or 30 years. The decision to not search could have sentenced her to never knowing her family or why she didn't remain with them.

Most of all, I know that it was the right choice because L's parents love her. She has a right to know it. More than anything else, that is what searching gave us all. They love her and miss her. She deserves all the love in the world. I am glad we could give them to her while she is still young enough to accept their love, without the complexities that will come from negotiating adoption issues later.

8) If you had a day all to yourself and could do anything you wanted to do, what would your day look like?

Since both girls are finally in school full-time, I am pretty much left to my own devices on a typical weekday. As an introvert, I feel like I have died and gone to heaven now that no one is up in my business all the time!

I like to get up and have a nice long cup of hot coffee and listen to NPR. Some days I run on the treadmill. Then I generally putter around the house and get stuff done. I also really like to read (mostly nonfiction) and watch TV (documentaries or British TV seem to be on heavy rotation lately). On a really lovely day, I convince a friend to go out for lunch. I am a simple girl who likes peace and quiet.

If we were talking about a fantasy day, this would all take place in a hotel room where I was able to sleep in a giant bed comfortable bed all by myself.

9) I love your attitude of "live and let live" and "to each his/her own" ... it comes across very clearly in your writing. Is there any position on an adoption-related topic that makes you feel compelled to tell someone they have it wrong?

I think I must come across as "to each his own" on my blog now because I have been doing this for so long. I have long given up trying to make people in the computer understand why I think I am right. It is just a waste of energy!

In real life, I am pretty judgmental. I am an INTJ personality type. I was reading about my type and came across this: " Thinkers usually have trouble interacting with people who are inconsistent or illogical, and tend to give very direct feedback to others. They are concerned with the truth and view it as more important than being tactful." I am logical and I research obsessively. Once I gather information, I decide what I believe based on evidence and that is that.

People on the internet are illogical and it is true that I am not always tactful when I believe someone else is wrong, so it is easier to not say anything. I read other blogs and see adoptive parents making the same stupid mistakes and making terrible parenting decisions. They have been doing the same dumb stuff for the past 10 years. When you blog, people come to pick arguments, people are critical, people write all kinds of stupid stuff in the comments that are annoying. (Other people are also wonderfully kind and supportive in the comments, too.) I can be that person or I can just move on with my life.

I am too tired to fight those kinds of battles any more. I am also at the point where I know that what I don't know is huge too. I would say this is part of the reason I am done blogging. My attitude is "Go ahead, screw up your own kids. I am too busy trying not to screw up mine to care!"

I do kind of miss the good old days when I could fire up a big rant about someone else, but I am just not that into it any more.

10) In "My 122 Things" (which I love!), you end with these three items:

120. So now I am trying to figure out if there is another Big Thing in the future.

121. I don’t feel like a need a Big Thing so much any more, so maybe not.
122. All my Little Things, they might just be enough.

It looks like you last updated this list in March of 2011. It's now November 2012. Are all of your Little Things turning out to be enough? Is there another Big Thing?

Oh, I think there will always have to be a Next Big Thing or maybe several smaller biggish things for me. I don't know what the heck I was thinking when I wrote that! I think I was mourning the loss of moving to China as a possible Next Big Thing. It wasn't meant to be and I was bummed.

Right now, the Next Big Thing is definitely building our new house. We bought our last house because it had an attached vacant lot in the perfect location. I spent two years updating the old house and we sold it this summer. Now we are living in a rental house while we save up a wad of money to pay for the new house. Building is apparently very expensive (!).

This is the boring time of the Next Big Thing for me: the preparation. I have a jar of 600 stones and I get to remove one each time we save $150. Once the jar is empty, we get to start building. The beads are still at the top of the jar, so it will be a while! In the meantime, I obsessively draw house plans and look at house building information on the internet and in books. Mr. A is not looking forward to the building process at all. I kind of dread it myself, but this is the house I want to live in until I am old and in a nursing home, so we will try to get it right.

Open Adoption Roundtable #40

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. Click here to read other responses to the prompt.

What were your reasons for choosing open adoption? (Or, for adoptees, what are your reasons for continuing to invest in your relationships with your first family?)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I didn't choose open adoption -- it chose me. However, I have embraced open adoption more than I ever could have imagined. Our adoption agency presented us with a closed adoption when they first contacted us about Lily. The social worker indicated that this is what Lily's birth parents wanted when they decided to place Lily the day she was born. Seven days after we picked up Lily from the hospital, we were asked to open the adoption, and we agreed. I had wanted an open adoption from the start, but agreeing to one after placement created a lot of anxiety for me -- I was agreeing to start an intimate relationship with a family I had never met. I didn't even know their names, and the open adoption being requested involved multiple visits a year until Lily was 18 years old.

We began with an agreement to have two visits a year and send pictures and updates once a month. After our first visit, something changed inside of me, and I started hoping that the number of visits would grow. The fear that I had seven days after Lily was placed with us was gone and replaced with an intense desire to keep this relationship between my daughter and her first parents going, and going strong. They needed her, and she needed them. I believed that my job as Lily's mother was to create an environment where that relationship could grow and flourish.

As the number of visits grew, so did my relationship with Fiona and Nate and Fiona's extended family. Lily is what connected us, but our friendships took on dimensions that extended far beyond sharing a daughter. I blogged last spring about the fact that Fiona lived with us for five weeks. I recently held a birthday party at our house for Lily's biological great-aunt. I see Lily's birth grandmother several times a month for drinks, brunch, or zumba. They are my family and friends, and my life is so much richer because they are in it.

There was no way for me to predict how open adoption would unfold for our family. Like every other family in an open adoption, we took a leap of faith. I embrace open adoption because I believe in its value for Lily, for Fiona and Nate, and for me, G, and Ferb. It's not always smooth sailing - nor is any relationship - and I recognize that it's easiest for me and G, the adoptive parents.

I've read the writings of people who are anti-open adoption, and they seem to think that open adoption means that someone will always be looking over your shoulder and judging your parenting of their child. I can't say I have never felt this way ... there are times when I wonder what Fiona and Nate think of something we've done with regard to raising Lily ... but it would never cause me to close the adoption. That attitude seems incredibly self-centered. It seems like dealing with our own insecurities and a little discomfort now and then is the least we can do for people who have suffered the great loss of placing their child.

Biology, heritage, roots ... these things do matter. I don't believe those elements in and of themselves guarantee a good relationship between two people who share them, but they are elements that help form our identity. I can't imagine keeping Lily away from her family, people who love her and are connected to her in this very special way.

Round Hole, Round Peg?

I haven't posted in quite a while - not because nothing was new in my adoption world, but because I was thrown off-kilter by my own family (of origin) issues. I am part of a step-family, and with step-families and families formed through adoption, we become "family" to people with whom we don't share a genetic link. Adoptive parents (for the most parent) choose to parent a child. Step-parents don't make that choice. Simply by marrying someone with children, a person becomes a step-parent -- at least in name, and often in expectation.

My step-family is not new. My father married my step-mother almost 25 years ago, when I was still a teen. The relationship between my step-mother and me was dysfunctional from the start. And while I learned to manage the relationship over time, the foundation was never strong. We were -- and are -- very, very different people. Me trying to mesh with her was like the old cliche: trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I really did try to adapt. And I became pretty good at it. But it was never good enough, and an incident this summer caused everything (and everyone) to unravel terribly. I'm not sure if these relationships will ever be repaired, and I'm coming to believe that is for the best. Some relationships just don't work. And sometimes, there are so many hurt feelings -- so much emotional damage -- that the relationships are beyond repair.

It was my experience as a step-child that made me very anxious about getting into an open adoption when we adopted Lily. I was opening myself up to relationships that were based on another person - my daughter - and I feared bringing another set of problems into my life. What I didn't consider at the time (pre-adoption) was how my daughter might feel. Pre-adoption, I was a big believer in nuture. Three plus years post-adoption, I think we're 90% nature. What I should have considered is ... what if my daughter feels like fitting in with our family is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? I know that process well, and it's pretty miserable.

I'm certainly much more aware of significance of "nature" now, and I constantly remind myself that I need to give my daughter room to grow as an individual -- to be who she is, even if it is nothing like me, G, or Ferb. Ironically, the benefit of having such an open adoption is that I get to see older versions of the people with whom Lily shares her genetics. And I feel lucky that we all connect on such a deep level. I have become close friends with Lily's first mother and grandmother, and it amazes me how similar we are -- we love to laugh and joke around, we're all sarcastic, we have similar views of the world. We don't share the same race or religion, but we are remarkably similar in spirit. We talk about it all the time. Perhaps, by chance, we will be one of the lucky ones, and Lily's round peg will fit easily - at least most of the time - into our round hole. As I know, only time will tell.

Happy Birthday, Lily

We celebrated Lily's third birthday last weekend. It was her biggest birthday bash yet. In attendance from her biological family: her mother and father (Fiona and Nate), grandmother, great-grandmother, great-grandfather, great-aunt, and three cousins (all from her mother's side of the family). From her adoptive family: her mother and father (G and me), grandmother, three aunts, two uncles, and two cousins. Lots of little friends came, too. The party was in our backyard and the weather was nice. Everyone mingled; everyone gazed at Lily in amazement; it was crystal clear that Lily is one loved little girl. And Lily loved everyone right back. While she may not understand how we are all connected, I believe that she does recognize in some way that she has connected us all. Lily has enriched our lives in more ways than any of us could have imagined.

Lily's birthday party also represented a day when (I think) a lot of people outside our open adoption began to understand how open adoption works. Families are formed in many different ways, and ours is no different.

As the adoptive parents, G and I had the responsibility of setting the tone for our open adoption. We opened our arms and our doors, and Lily's first family felt welcome to come in. It wasn't something that came naturally to us from the get-go, I admit that freely. But as Fiona helped Lily open all of her gifts while Fiona's mother wrote down who got her what and I took pictures, it felt just as natural - perhaps even MORE natural - than that type of event has felt with my own extended biological family.