Thursday, December 24, 2009

Something To Think On This Christmas Eve

Some things have been brewing in my head this holiday season concerning family and friends. Something someone once said to me was "your friends are the family you choose". And of course, when this particular little thing popped into my head tonight I thought of all the friends I've made on Facebook and the things we have in common. For those of us that are adoptees or first/natural moms we have a unique view of holidays and the difficult emotions we deal with each year; however, something else occurred to me that goes along with the friends and family and adoption.

We, as humans, do NOT have a choice in the family that we are given, whether our families are made "the old fashioned way" or provided by an adoption agency. I do not mean to negate or dismiss our unique position, but I would like to put some perspective on it. There are some great families and some totally dysfunctional families. There are some adoptees that have wonderful upbringings and some that have terrible childhoods. And the reverse is true also; there are some "natural" families that are horrible and some that make "Leave It To Beaver" look dysfunctional. No matter what, we really don't have any choice in the matter; we're babies, children, people that don't have any legal rights until we're 18 (at least in the US).

As we grow up we decide, we choose, what is important to us, what we're passionate about, and what we can shrug off. We as adopted people and natural moms that have realized the complete inequity of the adoption process have chosen to educate ourselves, to investigate this thing called adoption. I believe that the choice we have made is a good one, but I think it's good to keep in mind that no matter how our families were made or broken, in the beginning of all our lives, adopted, fostered, natural, NONE of us has any choice in how our lives begin. What matters is what we DO with our lives. Do we make our world better or do we bring others down? These are all choices we make.

What choices will you make in the year to come?

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Open Adoption is a Euphemism

I know this may sound like a no-brainer, but for me it's a bit of a light bulb going on over the head. There is no such thing as "open adoption". It's a lie, a fallacy, a euphemism, a trick to lure young women into an office in order to summarily plan the future of her unborn child: without her.

Let's start with an examination of just exactly what "open adoption" means. First, there is no ONE definition for the term. For some, an open adoption could simply mean looking through binders or websites of couples or families seeking to adopt and choosing a particular set to place their child with. While others see open adoption as an opportunity to remain an active part of their child's life, with the adoptive parents permission, of course. For most, open adoption is anything in between these two extremes.

In my own experience, as an adoptee born in the '60's, there was no such thing as open adoption. I doubt the term or idea had even truly been used until the mid 1980's. When I lost my first son to adoption, we were supposed to have an "open adoption". We met with my son's adoptive parents a week prior to his birth for about two hours; we were on first name basis only. The agreement was to have pictures and an update letter every 3 months in the first year, and then just twice a year until he reached 18 years old.

Unfortunately, this is not what happened. I should have known that within the first year of his life and the pictures and letters only arrived a few times what the future would hold. But there were health issues going on with my/our son; life and death matters that, until my son's adoptive parents wrote the first time, I had no idea about.

My son stabilized, though he continued to have health issues that I was not to know about until far after the fact. And being adopted myself, I had no recourse, no ability to pass along pertinent information. And except for one medical condition, which I knew for certain was directly related to his birth father which wasn't life threatening (and something that we had passed along to the adoptive parents), I had no idea why my baby was having such difficult health issues.

On the whole, I have varied responses about this. Knowing now what I know, the intellectual, perhaps more mature side of me understands why the pictures and letters stopped; eventually, there were health reasons that weren't my son's that riveted the attention of the family. And I will admit that I didn't keep the adoption agency up to date on my where abouts. But when I did, there weren't any pictures or letters awaiting me after about my son's 7th or 8th birthday. But deep down, in my heart of hearts, I am hurt beyond words.

Beyond my personal experience, I read day after day of adoptions that were supposed to be open, only to end up closed due to some reason within the adoptive, and controlling, family. The rare circumstance is the adoptive family that doesn't close adoption these days. No matter what is told to the mother or parents seeking to place their child for adoption, there's always seems to be "something" that gets in the way of keeping the adoption open. Whether it's health issues within the family, or insecurities within the adoptive parents, all the good intentions to remain open with the first family, the family of true origin, fall away with the years.

There's the old saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", yet adoptive parents don't seem to realize that when they close the doors to the first family the hell they create is for the person or persons who was supposed to love their child so much they were able to "give them away", to "give them to a loving family who could provide what she or they couldn't". And depending on the life of the adopted child, the adoptive parents end up creating a hell for the person they were supposed to love unconditionally, even if that child wasn't "of their bodies", but "of their heart".

Sunday, December 6, 2009

For Adoptees, birthdays = deathdays

Last night, I read Linda Gambino's "Birthdaze" to my fiance and daughter. For years, I didn't realize that I hated my birthday because of being adopted. I never really even realized that the anxiety that gripped me a week or so prior to my birthday wasn't about what crappy presents I might or might not get, or who would even remember my birthday. And as I write this, I'm looking back at my birthdays as a child, and I'm realizing that I really did hate my birthday early on. Nothing was ever quite right with my parties; I can remember one where I didn't win at one of the party games, and ran off crying.

I reminded Ron of the first birthday of mine that we had together; the day after we got into a fight, and Ron thought I was angry at him. My birthday is in July, and for him, work and therefore money, is tight in the summer. He was only able to do a minimal amount for my birthday, but it was really wonderful and thoughtful, and I loved him for what he was able to do. But I was still anxious and crabby and I really didn't know why. So, we fought. I wasn't angry at Ron, and I told him that at the time, but he was very confused by my emotions; heck, so was I! Here was a great guy who did his best to give me a happy birthday and we get into a fight the day after for what seems to be no reason.

After reading that post to him, and I reminded him of the fight, the light bulb just went on and he looked relieved that there was some explainable reason for something so strange.

It took 40 years and another adoptees' musing on her birthday to realize that it wasn't my family or even lack of funds, or even lack of friends that made my birthdays suck; it was being adopted. As I talked with my fiance a little more after my daughter went to bed, he told me that really, for adoptees birthdays are synonymous with celebrating a deathday. I asked him to explain and here is what he told me. For those of us who are adopted we are always aware that our first family, our first mother, isn't there. But on our birthdays it is a force-able reminder of our loss, and we grieve. Most of the time, we grieve for the death of someone, and in a sense the birthday for an adoptee is really the day of their first mother's symbolic death, the day that we are given life, and taken away from the life giver. That "primal wound" that is spoken of for adoptees is replayed over and over again every year; this is the day that my mother died to me.

I am grateful (in the good way) for Linda's post. That really opened up my eyes for me, and I appreciate it so very much; so, thank you Linda. I owe you. You gave a sense of relief to my fiance and daughter and with that information, have empowered them (we'll fill my youngest in later). :)

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

A reply to "What's in a name?"

What's in a name?

Recently, I read a blog of a friend of mine who is both an adoptee and a first mother who asked just this question. And it got me thinking...again.

I'll address what could perhaps be considered the first question; what's in a name?

Once upon a time much power was attributed to a name. If you knew a persons TRUE name you held power over them, so your true name remained a secret only known to you and whoever you chose to tell, which was usually your mate; and possibly one of your parents knew. It was thought that if you knew a person's true name that you could even kill them with just a simple word.

My ex-husband is attributed for naming his sister. The story goes that his parents had a hard time coming up with a name for the new baby, and he suggested both first and middle and so to this day that's what she is called. During their childhood, and even until fairly recently, brother and sister shared a very close bond. Would they have had that bond if he had just let his parents to hash things out? Who knows? But, in my opinion, I believe that his naming his baby sister was a very significant deed; maybe even a weighty responsibility.

In the Jewish religion, children aren't named after living family members, or anyone the family knows, because it is felt that to give a baby the name of someone living takes away life force from the other person.

The questions in my friend's blog are a bit more adoption specific. The answer to the first one she asks, for me, is: well, since I haven't found my first family yet, I don't know what my first name was. Her question being if there were any adoptees that had changed their name back to their original name.

I do know that the foster family that kept me during the interim time between being relinquished and being adopted called me Margot. Since I grew up in the era that had the original Superman movie with Margot Kidder, whom I did NOT like as Lois Lane, I can't say that I'm overly fond of the name Margot. Wouldn't the irony be if that's what my first mother wanted to name me?

As for how would I feel if my first son changed his name back to what I named him, I would LOVE it! But I don't see it happening at all. No matter what, in my heart of hearts I will ALWAYS refer to my first son by the name I gave him; but TO him, I call him the name his adoptive parents gave him. I can't feel too terribly bad with the name he was given, however, because it happened to be my second choice for him.

For the record, I have ALWAYS hated my name! I doubt I'd change it "back", but you never know. Dana is who I am now, it's how my children know me, how my mate knows me. I think at this late stage in the game, it would just feel strange to be called something different now.