Love Is Not a Pie

Five for Friday: Siblings

2012-02-24T09:19:00.000-08:00

Adoption and foster care don't just separate parent and child; they also separates siblings. Here are five links to posts and articles looking at the subject of sibling separation from different viewpoints:

From the point of view of a foster alum: A Tale of Two Brothers
A New York Times article about a summer camp that reunites siblings separated in foster care
An adult adoptee's letter to the sister she's never met
From the point of view of two first moms: A Missing Sister and Big Brother Denied

I met my own biological brother when I was 30 and he was 15. This past summer, I joyfully attended his wedding.

My adopted daughter currently has contact with her youngest two siblings but hasn't seen the older group in years. I wish I could change this for her, but the circumstances are currently beyond my control.

Do you have a sibling story of your own? If so, I'd love to hear from you.

One More Reason I Love Openness in Foster Adoption

2012-02-23T05:08:00.000-08:00

I keep coming back to this post by SocialWrkr24/7. If you read my blog regularly you already knowthat I love this piece; I can't seem to stop mentioning it and linking to it.Today the part of it that is on mind is the following:

[Children who were adopted from foster care]deserve to know their parents are okay - even if that just means they are stillalive and have enough to eat. They deserve to know that their parents do thinkabout them and want contact with them - they weren't thrown away and forgotten.

This passage is personally poignant for me because those are infact two very important things that my daughter Ashley has received by way ofour open adoption arrangement with Erica, her first mom. A few months ago,during a visit, Ashley herself brought up the second topic, asking Erica,"Mom, did they say I couldn't come home ordid you not ... um ... um ..." She couldn't bring herself to finish thesentence with "did you not want me," but Erica knew that's what shewas asking. She quickly reassured her that she had always wanted her but hadn'tbeen able to get well in time, and an important (albeitage-appropriate) conversation about addiction and recovery ensued. (Ericawrites about that conversation powerfully here.)

As an adoptee, I got to hear my own mother say "I alwayswanted you" and explain the factors that came into play in my adoptionwhen I made contact with her as an adult. It was a powerful, healing moment.I'm so glad that Ashley didn't have to wait as long as I did to get herquestion answered.

But the part of the passage above that has really been pulling meback is the part about deserving to know that the parents are okay. This issomething people probably don't often think about in foster-adopt situations. Ididn't think about myself, until something happened that made me look back andrealize that this had been a concern for Ashley.

After one of our early visits with Erica (back when we were stillmeeting in public places), Ashley said to me with great excitement andemphasis, "Mom, she lives in an apartment. Did you know that? I asked andshe said she has an apartment." And suddenly it dawned on me that prior tothat day's visit, she really had no idea where Erica was, and it had been onher mind. And it's not just that she didn't know specifically where she was;she wasn't even certain that she had a home -- a roof over her head.

Her concerns were not unfounded; there was a period of time duringwhich Erica was homeless. Someone -- a social worker or former foster parent --may have said something about this to Ashley. Maybe she asked "Why can't Ilive with my mom?" and was told "She doesn't have a home for you tolive in." I don't know how long she was carrying this worry, and I hate tothink how long she might have carried if she hadn't been able to ask Erica thequestion.

Kids come into foster-adoptions carrying so manyburdens; one of the reasons I love open adoption is that it gives them themeans to set some of those burdens down.

Camp To Belong

2012-02-22T07:26:00.000-08:00

I LOVE this concept:

Please click here to learn more about about Camp To Belong.

How We Got Here: The Gradual Opening of an Adoption

2012-02-21T07:55:00.000-08:00

These days, my relationship with Erica (my daughterAshley's first mom) is very open. I love her as a friend and family member, Irespect her as a colleague in the work we do through Ashley's Moms, and I'm comfortable with her being the adult-in-charge for either of my children. She's been tomy house; I've been to hers. She has attended school events. She has my cellphone number, my work number, and our home number.

But it's important to note that we did not startout this way, and when I talk about open adoption in foster-adopt situations,this is not at all what I am recommending for others at the outset.

Each situation is different and every family will need tofigure out for themselves what level of privacy protection is needed. In somecases, protecting the safety of the child will be a bigger concern than inothers. Open adoption does not mean you have to bring the biological parentphysically into your home or open up all areas of your life to them. Rather,it is more typically a limited relationship that takes place in a structured, controlledenvironment, with the adoptive parents setting the boundaries.

In our case, we started with a legal agreementstipulating that my husband and I would maintain a P.O. Box where Ericacould write to us and/or Ashley. That was fine, but e-mail is easier so early onI set up an anonymous e-mail address. (Initially, we didn't reveal our lastnames.) Our early visits occurred in public places. At first, Erica was the only biological relative involved in the visits; later, we brought in Ashley's little brother Tyler, followed by other relatives (grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins).

Theagreement that my husband and I signed prior to the adoption givesErica the right to at least one visit per year. (Obviously, we have decided to do visitation on a much more frequent basis.) We havethe choice of supervising the visits ourselves or of having them supervised bya third party (our area has centers where supervised visits can takeplace). We chose to supervise the visits ourselves and this worked out great for us. The first visitfollowing Ashley’s adoption finalization took place at a roller rink andinvolved Erica, Ashley, and myself. A later visit, Ashley and Erica gotpedicures at a local salon while I waited in the lobby. Currently, "supervision" is no longer an issue for us -- we are comfortable with Ashley having time alone with Erica -- but we got to that comfort level by getting to know Erica over time.

We started with a bunch of protections in place and dropped them one by one as we became aware that they were not necessary for our particular situation. Erica's recovery and current level of stability has made it possible for us to move into a level of openness that would not have been possible otherwise. If her situation had been different, we still would have wanted to maintain some level of connection with her, but we wouldn't have the same level of openness.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Sibling Bonding

2012-02-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

This past summer, my older daughter Mackenzie spent three weeks in Maine. She stayed with my mom and dad and attended attended an arts camp in their town. She had an amazing time and wants to do it again this year, but, of course she missed me and her dad and Ashley. Especially Ashley. When they reconnected after three weeks apart, it was really sweet to watch them together, cuddling on the couch or walking arm-in-arm.

We are currently in another one of those sweet spots, but it didn't take a three-week absence to get to it: just a two-day play-date. Ashley had a friend over for a sleepover that turned into a double sleepover. She wasn't physically absent but she was completely engaged with this friend. Mackenzie wasn't able to work out a similar arrangement with one of her friends, so she spent the two days moping around the house, complaining about being bored and asking when the friend was going to leave.

After the friend did leave yesterday afternoon, we had some outdoor family time, walking around in a park (well, my husband and I walked, at least; the girls ran ahead of us); then we went out for dinner. When we returned to the house, Ashley and Mackenzie spent the rest of the evening with each other, laughing and having fun until they eventually fell asleep together on the pull-out couch in our living room. The happy harmony has continued into today, knock wood.

It's always especially heartwarming for me to see these two sisters getting along well because they got off to such a rough start. There was so much tension between the two of them in the months after Ashley moved in with us. I'm so glad to be in a different place now. In any case, this a nice way to start out a week of school vacation.

More Thoughts on Open Adoption and Foster Care

2012-02-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

When I met Erica, my daugher's original mother, the first thing I did was give her a hug. I didn't know then that she was in recovery. I didn't know yet know that she had made dramatic changes in her life and was in a very different place than she had been in when her parental rights were terminated. I only knew that she was my daughter's other mother and that my daughter loved her. That seemed like a good enough place to start.

I love the comment that socialwrkr_247 made the other dayin response to my latest family preservation post:

Too often foster parents assume that because a parent could not keep their child safe, it is unsafe to continue contact with that parent after adoption. In my 7+ years and nearly 100 children's cases, I have only known about 5 parents who would pose any physical threat to the foster family or child. I have known a few more where the child was too traumatized, or suffered from such a serious attachment disorder, to maintain in person contact with their biological parents. Some of those children could handle letter or phone contact, some couldn't. But in all but those most extreme 5 cases, I would highly encourage foster/adoptive parents to continue to maintain the relationship on the child's behalf until a time when the child wants and is capable of handling the interaction with their biological family again. A child will not be a child forever. A child will not always be at this point in their healing. Someday they may need that link to their past to move forward and grow to be a confident, self-aware adult.

Yes, there are those rare cases in which openness is not optimal, but don't be to eager to assume that your adoption situation is one of them. If the adoptive parent starts from a position of emotional openness toward the first family, and of understanding the importance of maintaining a connection to the biological family in most (though understandably not all) cases, the open adoption relationship is much more likely to succeed.

Five for Friday: Adoptee Voices

2012-02-17T14:44:00.000-08:00

Here are five posts thatspoke to some aspect of my own experience as an adoptee:

I'm "That" Adoptee - The"Hairdresser" Conversation

I likedthis one because it makes the point that an adoptee's inner experience may notalways be obvious in the way he or she shows up in the world. I am that adoptee, too.

That "Need To Know" Ican so relate to the strong emotions that came up for this adoptee prior tosearching.

Joy Siblings!For years I was a ghost sister in my brother's life. I met him when I was 30and he was 15. Here's something my first mother wrote recently about that firstvisit: "As I listened to you talk to each other, I thought, 'Wow. Ifthey had been raised together, they would have had a secret language, they areso much alike.'" I'm so glad to have him in my life now!

Why my [Amended] Birth Certificate isa Lie Itoo can remember being stunned and confused when I learned my birth certificatehad my adoptive parents' names on it. This is the first time I've mentioned theOBC (Original Birth Certificate) issue on this blog, but I will have more tosay about this in a future post.

The Adoptee's Healing Journey

Here'sa quote: "The more of us who involve ourselves in that personal process,write, blog, talk about it, make videos and films and in other ways challengethe myths, the attitudes and misconceptions of non-adoptees and tell it asit really is, calmly, with authority, confidence and certainty of the ground westand on, the better it will be for our future and that of the young adopteeswho will benefit from that groundwork, the foundations for a betterfuture for them and their lives as adult adoptees." Yep, that pretty muchsums up why I do this.

What I Mean, and Don't Mean, When I Say I Support Family Preservation

2012-02-15T16:12:00.000-08:00

Note: This post is focused on issues involving foster-care adoption. I'll look at the subject of preserving biological families versus infant adoption another day.

In December, I wrote some posts about family preservation (here and here). An anonymous reader expressed concern about my position, asserting that by adopting a stance in favor of family preservation I had aligned myself with ill-conceived policies keeping kids stuck in foster care. Here's a quote:

Please realize that this trend of promoting family reunification is literally stalling adoptions for YEARS so that half-siblings or step siblings who have never lived in the same home can be placed in entirely NEW homes together. Please realize that when you choose to emphasize heritage and biological ties OVER exiting from fostercare into adoption, you are ... stalling the most common form of American adoption: foster adoption.

In light of this comment, and as someone who adopted from foster care and promotes foster care adoption, I'd like to clarify my position. I do support family preservation (and I'll explain more about what I mean by this further on in this post), but that doesn't necessarily mean that I believe in reunification at all costs. I understand that children are not at all well served by being kept in foster care for long periods of time or by bouncing from home to home within the system. I also understand that the reunification-focused policies of the past were largely unsuccessful. Here's a quote from Adam Pertman's Adoption Nation:

For decades, the defining principle in the child-welfare system had been "family reunification" at almost any cost, a wonderful ideal that entailed putting kids in foster homes while their mothers (and fathers, when they were around) received help to deal with their violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, or other problems. Unfortunately, far too often, the children were shuttled back and forth between foster and biological parents for years.

Obviously, that didn't work; alternatives were clearly needed. I've said previously on this blog and elsewhere that adoption is a flawed strategy for a flawed world. The same thing can be said of family-preservation policies; it is crucial that we continue to look at such policies critically. But to admit that a particular set of policies was unsuccessful is not the same as tossing out the entire idea of family preservation. We can cast a critical eye on specific practices while simultaneously holding the understanding that, when possible, it is preferable to have some connection to one's biological family than to have none at all.

I write from the point of view of someone who was separated from her biological mother at birth and who lived for 30 years of her life without any connection to her biological family. My personal experience is that the loss of the biological family is no small thing. Does that mean that I value the biological connection over permanency and stability? Not necessarily, but I believe that it must continue to be a factor of consideration. When we shift our energies toward adoption as the only possible solution, we lose sight of the bigger picture.

I take a broader view of family preservation than the reader who commented on my blog post. I don't only associate it with reunification but also efforts to prevent children from entering foster care in the first place. In fact, if I were queen of the world, this is one place where I would choose to put a larger portion of resources. I'm encouraged when I read about programs such as the Harlem Children's Zone's Family Support Center that are highly effective at strengthening families and thereby keeping kids out of the system, but, unfortunately, programs of this type are few and far between. I believe there is a need for addiction programs that help parents, or prospective parents, get the help they need sooner rather than later, and that address the complexities of addiction, including the association with trauma. And while there are children in the foster care who have a legitimate reason for being there, such as abuse, there are others who have parents who are willing and able to care for them but reside in another country, and I believe such children should be reunited with their parents.

Biology is not the only factor, but I believe strongly that it must always continue to be a factor. And I am of the opinion that it should continue to be a consideration even in situations that do end up resulting in adoptions. Erica and I sometimes refer to our open adoption as "post-adoption reunification." This, too, is a form of family preservation ... one that is not in conflict with the child's need for permanency. Here's a quote from a post I wrote in July:

My own daughter is legally adopted but currently has relatively frequent visitation with her biological mother, and this works well for our family. I believe that both parts of the equation contribute to her well being. The adoption gives her permanency, something she desperately needed -- she was not thriving as a foster child bouncing from home to home within the system. Adoption is a legal agreement, but it is also a ceremonial contract between the parent and the child. To my daughter, it means that we will stick with her, even when the going gets tough. It means, 'no take backs.' But the connection to her biological family, and especially to her mother, nurtures her as well.

People often think of "open adoption" and "foster adoption" as things that don't go together. I understand that every situation is different; not everyone will find themselves in the circumstances that allow for the kind of open relationship that Erica and I have created. But I also agree with many of the points raised by the blogger SocialWrkr24/7 in her post Family Is Family (which I included in a recent "Five For Friday" post), including the following:

Children who were adopted from Foster Care deserve to maintain connections with their biological families. Many of these children lived with their biological parents for some amount of time and already have attachments (however disrupted) to these parents. They have memories of relatives and family friends.

Obviously, there are situations involving abuse in which it would not be beneficial for the child to have continued contact with the parent, but there are many other cases in which the parent was simply unable to care for the child, as a result of lack of skills, resources, or stability but not lack of love or desire to parent. In such situations, I encourage foster-adoptive parents to keep the doors open, so long as it is safe to do so.

"A border should never speak louder than a parent’s love."

2012-02-14T16:47:00.000-08:00

Please watch this video:

Please sign this petition:
presente.org

A Question for You

2012-02-13T05:56:00.000-08:00

Adoptees, First Parents, and Adoptive Parents:

What is the one thing you would like people who are not directly connected to adoption themselves to know?

Or maybe there's more than one; that's OK too. I'd love to hear from you.

Five For Friday: First Mother Blues

2012-02-10T07:08:00.000-08:00

Today I am highlighting five more posts by first mothers. The theme of loss and/or regret is more prevalent in this week's selections than in those of two weeks ago. These are not cheerful posts, but they are powerful and worth reading. This side of adoption needs to be part of the conversation, too.

Valentine's Day, Lincoln, and Anniversaries
The Things I Didn't Know
I don't get to be the one
It still hurts ...
This Is Not the Post I Intended to Write

There's No Expiration Date on Forever

2012-02-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

I was recently talking with a friend who adopted an older child through foster care; my friend's son has been with the family for years and is now a teenager. When this family became involved in this boy's life, he was just about to be moved off the adoption track and onto a plan for permanent institutional residency. Because of his challenges and behavioral issues he was considered "unadoptable," but he has thrived in his adoptive family and is now an honors student in high school. That's not what this post is about, though. It's about a story this mom shared with me during our recent conversation -- a story that may surprise you but didn't surprise me. The son had made some comments that confused his parents, and when they pushed a little further to understand the meaning, they became aware that he was under the impression that he would have to move out on his 18th birthday. And he was starting to feel anxious about that date looming in his future. He is legally adopted; this family is his forever family. But he thought forever had an expiration date.

When my friend told me this story, I nodded in recognition because we went through something similar with Ashley, though at a younger age. In a manner similar to that of my friend's son, she didn't express her concerns directly; rather, there were various hints that we needed to decode. She was asking a lot of questions about college. Did she have to go to college? What would happen if she didn't want to go to college? Around this same time she started asking a lot of questions about homelessness and how people end up homeless. Eventually it dawned on me that my eight-year-old was worrying about her own future. She was concerned about how she would survive when we ceased to support her. I turned to her and told her she didn't need to worry about that; she could stay with her dad and me as long as she needed to. I told her the day would probably come when she would want to move out, but it would be her choice when that happened. I watched her body relax. The anxious questions stopped after that, and on a few occasions in the coming months I heard her repeat the message in her own words: "I get to choose when I move out."

Now, if she's still living here at 35, we'll need to revisit this conversation. But I'm not really worried. She can't imagine it yet, but the day will come when she's ready to move on, knowing we've got her back if she stumbles. That's not something she needs to worry about yet, though. And when she was 8, and just starting to settle into our family, she needed to know that she could settle in for good. She needed to be told directly that forever means forever.

It's heartbreaking to think that former foster kids carry this legacy of anxiety with them into adoption, but I'm also aware that the two kids I've written about so far in this post are among the lucky ones. Forever may not have an expiration date, but foster care does. According to Fostering Connections Resource Center (2010), "in 2008, 29,000 youth or ten percent of the children exiting the system were emancipated from foster care (this is also referred to as aging out of foster care) at the age of 18 or older without a safe, permanent family."

I have heard it said by others within the adoption community that adoption should be about finding families for children, not children for families. If you are considering adoption as a way to build a family, please consider adopting from foster care. It's not an easy thing to do and I'm not going to try to tell you that it is. But there are kids out there who really do need "forever families."

The "A" Word: Let's Talk Abandonment

2012-02-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

Here's a statement that is so obvious that it doesn't need saying, but I'm going to say it anyway: all adoptees are not the same. When we meet, online or in person, we often discover commonalities, but we also discover differences. Language is one area that often highlights differences. Words are powerful, but a word that is triggering or resonant for one adoptee may not be for another.

"Abandonment" is one such word. It is powerfully meaningful to some adoptees and much less so for others. I fall into the second category.

Though my feelings about my adoption are not 100% positive, I don't tend to perceive myself as having been abandoned by my first mother. I tend to view adoption as something that happened to us -- to both my birth mother and myself -- rather than as something she did to me. It was the baby scoop era and powerful social forces were in play. My first mother, as an unmarried pregnant teen in small-town Maine, was relatively powerless. In my particular story, the more powerful player was my biological grandmother, but even she was swept along by strong social currents. In order to move beyond the mores of her time, she would have needed to be a remarkable woman. Can I blame her for being merely ordinary?

"Separation" is a word that, for me, has more significance than "abandonment." Simply put, I consider myself to have been separated for much of my life from something vital to my well-being: knowledge of and connection to my biological roots. "Identity" is also a big word for me.

All of that said, I can look back over my history of relationships and notice that for much of my life I tended to seek out partners who were unlikely to stick around. Was I reenacting a scenario of abandonment, working through my unresolved adoption issues through my adult relationships? Maybe. Though stability is one of the defining factors of my adoptive upbringing (my a-parents have been married for more than 50 years and still live in the house I grew up in, with my childhood bedroom more-or-less preserved for me when I return home), I have a hard time expecting that anything will last. I have been at the same job for almost 20 years and have never received anything but positive reviews, but there is a part of me that never stops expecting to be let go at any moment. Adoption-related insecurity? Maybe.

The thing with adoption is that it can be difficult to tease out which parts are adoption-related and which parts are just life. Impermanence is part of living; the only constant, it has been said, is change. Few of us (adopted or not) make it to adulthood without some form of damage. All of this is true. But it's also not too surprising that a person whose first experience in life was one of separation would experience ripple effects from that event.

I'd love to hear from other adoptees (and other members of the triad, for that matter) on the subject of abandonment. Is the word one that resonates for you, or not?

Five for Friday: Foster Care

2012-02-03T06:31:00.000-08:00

My focus this week is on seeing the humanity in parents whose children end up in foster care. The first post is from the point of view of a social worker. The three in the middle are by adoptive or pre-adoptive parents. The fifth (and my favorite, I think) is by a now-grown former foster child, written in the form of a letter to the author's young child who was placed for adoption as an infant.

Family Is Family
Questionable
[Birth] Parents
Open Adoption in Foster Care
Dear Isaac

Blogs, Movies, and Adoption

2012-02-02T12:02:00.000-08:00

When I first started blogging, I didn't realize how interactive it would be. I had an agenda and some things I wanted to say; blogging seemed like a good soapbox. I didn't know I was stepping into a community. I didn't realize how much other people's blog posts would get inside my head and swirl around with my own thoughts, sending me off in new directions.

Today, for example, there are several posts that have set my mind spinning. There's this one, from Jenn at "Insert Bad Movie Title Here," which has me thinking about my own partially written second-attempt letter to my biological father, whom I've never met. And this one, by Megan at "Earth Stains," which started me musing on my own struggles with chronic pain and the possibility of an adoption connection.

But the post that really reached inside and grabbed me today was this one, by Tonya at "Mommy Musings." This blog is a new discovery for me, and I'm glad to have found it by way of the New Open Adoption Blogs post at "Production Not Reproduction." Reading Tonya's thoughtful analysis of the book Found, I was at several points moved close to tears. I love how well this adoptive mom gets it ... or, at least, how well she gets me. She doesn't actually know me, of course, but in expressing her understanding of her daughter and of the author of Found, she is also acknowledging parts of me and my experience. I recognize myself in them.

I was particularly moved by the brief description of her daughter's tearful response to the movie Free Willy because it brought up a memory for me ... one in which I did not experience such understanding. I was in my mid-twenties and adoption grief was just beginning to surface for me. I went with a close friend to see The Joy Luck Club. At the end of the movie, one of the characters travels to China and meets her biological half-sisters for the first time. My friend is an expatriate who grew up far from the members of her extended family, and the movie struck a personal chord for her. It also struck one for me. As the credits rolled, other people left the theater but my friend and I remained in our seats, tears rolling down our cheeks. Eventually, she turned to me and said, with a note of irritation in her voice that surprised me, "I know why I'm crying, but I don't understand why you are."

"I'm adopted," I answered.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh right. I always forget about that."

I can't say for sure what she meant by that shrug. She was caught up in her own pain at that moment and probably didn't put a lot of thought into her response to mine. But I know that I interpreted it as a dismissal. It was as though she had said to me, "Well, that doesn't count. That's not a good enough reason for tears."

I was in the very early phases of figuring out that it did count ... that it mattered very much. I had grown up with the story that adoptive families are just like other families, only more intentional. I considered myself "lucky" to be an adopted person; it meant my parents had really wanted me. I was special ... chosen. I'd been with my adoptive family since infancy; nothing had been lost because they were all I'd ever known. (You can't miss something you've never had, can you?) I was just starting to figure out that there were pieces of my experience that didn't fit with this simplistic, happy story. During a different conversation, the friend who attended The Joy Luck Club with me admitted that she had a hard time remembering that I was adopted (and acknowledging that I struggled) because it didn't fit with her image of me. She saw me as someone who had led a perfect life, growing up in a perfect family. She didn't know what to do with any pieces of information that didn't fit with that simple view of things. I didn't know what to do with those extra puzzle pieces either either. I'm still figuring it out.

One thing I do know, though, is that I feel hopeful when I read blog posts like the one by Tonya. I love knowing that there are adoptive moms like her out there. I love that, through blogging, I have become part of a multifaceted conversation about the complexity of the adoption experience. I love that I am seen and that other adoptees are seen. Is there still work to be done? Of course. But I believe we are moving in the right direction.

Five for Friday: Birth Mothers in Open Adoptions

2012-01-27T04:54:00.000-08:00

Here are five posts by mothers who placed. Each isinvolved in an adoption that has at least some degree of openness. I don't meanto imply that these posts represent the full range of experiences from thefirst-mother point of view; they don't. They are but five of many voices, but they aremy "Five for Friday":

Tomorrowis the 25th and we all know what that means...

A Recap

My visit

HappyAnniversary C, T, & M!

"Our" Adoption Story... Happy 20th Birthday Hannah

Pictures! A Childhood Retrieved

2012-01-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

I heard my husband's car pull into the driveway, then the back door to the house crashed open and Ashley raced up the stairs. "Mom, Mom! I have a picture of D!" That was the first thing she said, but the picture of "D," her biological father who left the family before she was old enough to form strong memories of him, wasn't the only thing she had. Erica, her biological mother, had given her an entire stack of photos from Ashley's early years, with a request that we copy them and return them to her.

I pushed aside the laundry I was folding so Ashley could spread out the photos on the bed.

"Here's me on my second birthday! And here's me in a tutu. And brushing my teeth. That's me and H. And those are my brothers. And that's me wearing my grandma's slippers."

We went through the whole stack and somehow missed the picture of D, so we went back through.

"There he is, the one in the red shirt. I don't look like him."

"True," I answered. "You look more like your mother. Still, it's neat to have the picture. I have the same situation. I only have one picture of my biological dad, and I don't really look like him, but I'm glad I have it."

I've written about visit backlash and how Ashley responded to a visit in October by pushing me away afterwards. But that's the thing about open adoption ... you just never know what you are going to get; the adoptive parent needs to be adaptable, ready to respond to whatever comes up for the child. Ashley's response to this most recent visit was on the opposite end of the spectrum from that October visit. This time she wanted me -- intensively -- to help her process. After sharing the photos, she asked me to come into her room on some pretense, shut the door, and proceeded to talk for almost two hours while I listened, nodded, and, when appropriate, verbally reflected back her thoughts and emotions. Some of it was about her birth family, but a lot of it was about seemingly irrelevant things: her friends, school work, our adoptive family. She even shared a rare verbal expression of her feelings toward me: "It's really hard for me to say 'I love you,' but that doesn't mean I don't." A lot of it was about identity; she's figuring out who she is and how she wants to show up in the world.

The next morning I drove her to school. It was just the two of us because her sister was with my husband on the way to an appointment. Because we didn't have the scanner set up yet, she had taken pictures of the photos with her iPod and she was happily looking through them in the back seat.

"Look at this one, Mom," she kept saying, holding up the iPod. "Wasn't I so cute?"

"Yes, Ashley, you were adorable, but I really need to keep my eyes on the road when I'm driving."

But I also added "I'm so glad you have those photos now." And I meant it. I'm aware that a piece of her childhood has been returned to her. This is something that people don't often think about, but when kids enter foster care, they not only lose their families, they lose many of the things that connected them to those families: the homes, the furniture, the photos, the shared verbal memories. The photos give Ashley a part of that back.

"These pictures are bringing up so many memories," she said to me later that day.

"Good memories?"

"Yes!"

We tend to think of kids who enter foster care as having nothing but negative experiences prior to removal, but that's not always the case. It's not true for Ashley. Her mother's addiction began to spiral out of control near the end of Ashley's time in the home, and those were bad times, but there were plenty of good times prior to that, and the pictures attest to this. These are happy, smiling kids in these photos.

My kid is amazing. She's been through so much and has shown so much resilience. I'm so happy that she now gets to experience the simple pleasure that so many of us take for granted, of looking back at photos of her earlier years and saying, "Hey, that was me. Wasn't I adorable?" (And for the record, she was!)

Mrs. S. Was Adopted?

2012-01-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

My adoptive parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary a couple of years ago, and the party was the first time that many family members and friends of the family met Ashley. Her addition to our family was a natural topic of conversation, so it's not surprising that I found myself talking about adoption with one of my mother's longtime friends. The part that was surprising to me was learning that this woman was herself adopted.

How could I not have known this? I've known this person for as long as I can remember. Her son is close to me in age, and our mothers got together weekly for coffee when we were toddlers. I was often in her house, and vise versa. She strained the pulp out of my orange juice because I was too picky to drink it otherwise. Her boisterous laugh kept me awake on the nights when "the bridge group" met at our house. Later, in my middle-school years, our two families went on ski vacations together. She's adopted. I'm adopted. But never, in all those years, had we ever had a conversation about that.

I would have loved to have had that information about her earlier. I would have felt a special kinship with her. I knew so few people who were adopted when I was growing up. In fact, I can only think of two other kids in my town who were known to be adopted, and they were considered to be somewhat bad examples because they "gave their parents a lot of trouble." (I had heard it whispered that their bad behavior might have had something to do with adoption; I didn't want to associate myself with those adoptees.)

But Mrs. S! Mrs. S. was adopted? Why didn't anybody ever tell me this?

I don't even know if she even knew that I was adopted; most people in town didn't. We moved to town when I was about a year old and I look enough like my adoptive family to "pass" for biological. My parents told me that I was adopted from the earliest age but preferred not to talk about it publicly. "It's not something that people really need to know," my mother would say. "You're no different from children who were born into their families. We love you just as much." It sounds lovely and child-centered put that way, and she really did have good intentions, but she also never asked me how I felt about the matter. And, of course, the unspoken flip-side to the coin was "I'm no different from other mothers and don't want to be singled out as such." The unofficial family policy was as follows: we don't hide it; there's nothing to be ashamed of ... but we also don't bring the matter up.

And if a code of silence was the norm in my day, it was even more so when Mrs. S. was growing up. Did my mom even know that one of her closest friends was adopted? It's very possible that she didn't. If we in my family didn't talk about adoption, it's likely that Mrs. S. didn't either. It just wasn't something people talked about much in those days. Adoption was considered to be a private, family matter; it wasn't anyone else's business.

But however it came to pass, there we were, the two of us, standing in the middle of the banquet hall as the party swirled around us, completely wrapped up in our conversation, sharing our experiences and nodding in recognition as the other spoke. "Even my husband doesn't really understand," she said. "He doesn't get that I respond to so many things differently because of this."

In Adoption Nation Adam Pertman writes the following (and yes, I do in fact plan on quoting him every other post):

At a dinner party with a half-dozen friends, I once offhandedly cited a well-known statistic among researchers -- that only about 1 percent of American women relinquish their babies for adoption today, a precipitous drop from a few decades ago -- to which one woman at the table responded: "Are you sure it isn't much higher? Just about everyone I know with children adopted them."

Pertman's statistic refers to domestic adoptions and the woman who responds is almost certainly taking into account international adoptions, but the point he is trying to make -- that adoption is currently very visible in our culture -- is a valid one.

Ashley's experience of growing up adopted is very different from my own. Adoption is all around her. Each of my daughters has two friends that they consider to have "best friend" status, and in each of the pairs, one of the two is adopted. And they know of other adopted classmates as well. Adoption is very visible in their school, in our church, and in our home. And of course, all of these kids know that I am adopted; for them, there will be no big discovery moment about this years down the road. It's not something we have big discussions about, but they know.

Adoption doesn't define Ashley, and I certainly don't go around introducing her as "my adopted daughter," but there is a light that shines on adoption that was absent in my growing-up years. Other adoptees may have a different reaction to this, but in my case, the dominant emotion is one of relief. I'm glad to be out of the shadows.

And my adoptive mom? She has come out of the shadows, too. On a recent visit home I went with her and a couple of her friends to visit an art museum in another part of our state. One of these friends is an adult adoptee who was in the process of searching for her biological family, and she already knew, because my mom had told her, about my adoption and reunion. On the long drive to the museum the four of us chatted extensively, and comfortably, about adoption, reunion, and our understanding of the ties that bond the adoptee to both families. It's a good memory for me; I felt happy and connected to my adoptive mom ... more fully present in our relationship because I was no longer expected to hide parts of myself.

Participating in the online adoption community is another way that I now stand in the light. So I'll end this post with a shout-out to the many members of the triad that I have "met" online in the months since starting this blog. I'm a lot less lonely in my adoption status than I was as a child, and I'm thankful for the work that is being done by so many of you to bring all aspects of the adoption experience into the light.

Five for Friday: More Blog Posts I Love

2012-01-20T00:14:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd do this again ... except that last time was a Thursday and I featured ten posts. Also, this week I'm focusing on open adoption from the adoptive parent's point of view. Each of these posts is by a mother who has reached out to biological family members for the sake of her child. The first four are by adoptive moms in open adoptions. The fifth is not specifically about adoption, but makes a point that is certainly relevant. Please enjoy my "Five for Friday":

1) Minnie
2) Our Day with Ray
3) My Daughter's Mom
4) What Open Adoption Looks Like in Our Family
5) “Anyone Who Wants To Love You Is Always Welcome”

Adam Pertman Quote

2012-01-19T06:12:00.000-08:00

There's no clinical or practical evidence to indicate that adoptees or birth parents try to disrupt or interfere with adoptions that include contact. To the contrary, many adoptive families grow stronger, and all of the people involved become more secure, when their relationships cease to be based on fear and fantasy. -- Adam Pertman, Adoption Nation

I've been wanting to write something that would incorporate this quote, but it stands pretty well on its own. So I'll just add that my own experience backs up his statement; our adoptive family did grow stronger as we formed a real relationship with Erica, our daughter's first mom. Prior to opening things up, she was a shadowy figure lurking on the edges of our life. Now, she is a real (and loved!) member of our extended family. That's definitely a change for the better. If you are an adoptive parent who hasn't already made this leap, please consider doing so. Can it be scary? Yes. But the typical fears that come up around open adoption are largely unfounded, and the potential benefits are great. Taking that leap may very well prove to be the best thing you've ever done.

A Few Thoughts on Domestic Infant Adoption

2012-01-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

I recently wrote that I do not love adoption. That’s true.But neither do I hate it. I’m neither anti-adoption nor pro-adoption. Myfeelings toward the institution of adoption are complex because my own experience has been complicated. (Please note that when I speak critically of the institution of adoption -- or any of its branches: domestic infant, international, or foster -- I am doing just that: criticizing a flawed, human-created institution in need of reform. Please understand that I am not criticizing you or your family. I am not saying that you shouldn't have adopted or placed. I obviously don't know all the details of your specific situation. I do understand that there are cases in which, all factors taken into account, adoption remains the best option.)

I hold certain beliefs about adoption that are informed by both my own experience as an adopted person and by things I have read by birth parents and other adoptees. One of my beliefs is this: when a person(an adoption worker, a family member, a guidance counselor, etc.) tells a womanwho is dealing with an unplanned pregnancy that she is selfish if she is thinkingof parenting the child and that if she is truly loves her child she will do theunselfish thing and give that child a better life through adoption, thatperson, however well-intentioned, is making a statement that is inaccurate andinsupportable. Simply put: adoption gives a child a different life, but there is no guarantee that it will be a betterone.

Even if the adoptive parents have more money, moreeducation, more resources; even if they are married and the first parents arenot; even if they have no psychiatric diagnosis (that we know of) and the firstparents do, there is no guarantee that life with them will be preferable forthe adoptee. What we can almost certainly guarantee, however, is that whatever gains exist will be accompanied by losses: lack of genetic mirroring; struggles withidentity; confusion (how to make sense of the unbreakable thread that bindsyou to one family when law and custom and experience have bound you to another).Who can balance that account and say with certainty whether the adoptee willcome out ahead or behind?

Nevertheless, this is the decision that a parent considering placement must make. Without the benefit of a crystal ball, she must weigh the various factors and make the best decision she can in the best interest of her child. Parents who are raising children do this constantly; every day we make decisions that we hope will prove beneficial to our children without any guarantee that they will do so. For the birth parent, these countless little decisions are replaced with a single, huge, life-altering one: the placement decision.

A birth parent is first and foremost a parent. That may seem like a simple enough statement, but it is actually a radical one. Historically, birth mothers have not been viewed as such. My birth mother, during her pregnancy with me, was not considered to be a parent making a decision for her child. Rather, she herself was the child ... a child who had messed up and now needed the adults in her life to swoop in and and clean up her mess. She was told what do and how things would play out. Wheels were set in motion to make the "problem" (unplanned pregnancy) disappear.

Becoming pregnant did not make her a parent in the eyes of her mother and others; it reinforced her childlike status, proving her irresponsibility. For a birth mother of my mother's generation, an expression of a desire to parent would only have reinforced her "childish" naivety in the eyes of more "knowing" adults. And her case was not unique; certain social trends were at work and had been at work for a number of years: Here's a quote from Rickie Solinger's book Wake Up Little Susie:

Consistent with postwar [post-WWII] attitudes about single women, white unwed mothers became, by definition, unfit mothers, in fact, not mothers at all. By professional definition and diagnosis, white unwed mothers who wanted to keep their babies were diagnosed as particularly immature, or more usually, mentally ill.

I wish I could say that such attitudes are a thing of the past, but I've read enough first-person accounts from women who have placed more recently to know that many young and/or unwed women still face tremendous pressure, and in some cases, manipulation. Many are presented with an idealistic picture of adoption (with no negative repercussions for the adoptee or birth parent). In contrast, a negative picture is painted of the scenario in which the birth parent chooses to parent; in that scenario, neither the mother nor the child could possibly thrive. Birth mothers may no longer be given an official diagnosis of "mentally ill" if they express a desire to keep the child, but many are still told that they'd have to be "crazy" to do so. Crazy, and selfish to boot!

As an adult adoptee, I have a different perspective from that of most non-adopted persons. I speak up about the complexity of adoption because I believe that the decision to remove a child from his or her biological family to be raised in a family of genetic strangers is a serious matter. It should be an informed decision. I stand by my statement, radical as it may be, that a birth parent is first and foremost a parent and should be treated as such. I long for every birth parent to have the accurate information needed to make an informed decision, and then I long for each to have peace with whatever that decision turns out to be.

When Birth Parents Don't Want Openness in Adoption

2012-01-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

A reader of my blog contacted me recently asking what adoptive parents can do when they are open to openness, wanting to maintain a connection to the birth family for sake of the child, but the first parents are not open to this possibility. It's a valid question, and one I have been asked before. When I advocate for openness, I tend to write primarily for an audience of adoptive parents, hoping to persuade them of the benefits of keeping adoptions open. But sometimes, the a-parents are not the ones standing in the way of openness.

I thank my lucky stars every day to have been paired with Erica (my daughter Ashley's first mom) for my own experience with open adoption. One of Erica's core beliefs, which she came to as part of her therapy and healing journey, is that parenting doesn't end when one's parenting rights are terminated. Though her hands-on role is reduced (and this is even more the case in terms of Ashley's siblings, who were placed in families less willing to include her), she believes that it is her job to do whatever is in the best interest of her children. This can be a tricky balance of stepping aside (so that bonding can happen with the adoptive family) and yet still remaining available.

I know that there are lots of reasons why bio parents drop away; not everyone is going to have to inner resources to do what Erica does. And I also think that many b-parents don't realize that continuing to be a presence in their child’s life has a huge potential benefit to the child (in fact, they may have been told just the opposite). This understanding can be a key factor. When I read the blogs of b-parents in open adoptions, I often hear them express that there are things about openness that are difficult for them (the b-parent) but that they will continue the relationship because they believe it is in the best interest of the child.

But anyway, the question was about what an adoptive parent can do when such conditions aren't present. For anyone else who is interested in this, I recommend starting with my earlier post about emotional openness. I firmly believe that "emotional openness" is of key importance, whether or not there is actual contact with the first family. Emotional openness, for me, includes something I call "making space for mourning." It's not necessary to be heavy-handed about this; adoptive parents don't need to walk around all the time saying to their adopted children, “Gosh, it must be hard not having a relationship with your biological relatives.” But parents should try to be alert to those moments when their kids hint at feelings of loss.

The a-parent can validate the child's feelings, communicating something along the lines of “I understand that you feel that way, and it is totally normal.” One of the major issues often raised by adult adoptees like myself who grew up in closed adoptions is that we never got to grieve. That was what inhibited healing. And, for many of us, one of the things that prevented grieving was the belief that doing so was in some way disloyal to our adoptive families. This is a place where adoptive parents can really make a difference. You can communicated acceptance of whatever feelings come up around adoption and birth families (while recognizing to yourself that these feelings will likely change many times through the years).

The other thing I would suggest is to be open to the possibility of creative solutions. Genetic mirroring can happen with other relatives, too. Bmom and Bdad may be unavailable, but maybe someday a grandparent or a sibling or a cousin will show up wanting a relationship, and if you are open, you’ll be ready. Pictures. Information. Every little bit helps. Again, the hard part for many adoptees in closed adoptions was that we had nothing. We went through our lives without ever seeing our genetic selves reflected back in any way.

My Week in Review: Ten Adoption-Related Blog Posts That Rocked My World

2012-01-12T12:13:00.000-08:00

I typically read a lot of adoption-related material online, and this week was no exception. The blog posts listed below tugged at my heartstrings (or punched me in the gut), inspired me, or eloquently put into words something that I want the world to know. Some are older posts that I just discovered (through the Best of Open Adoption Blogs 2011 list or other means) and others are new postings that popped up in my reader this week. All three sides of the triad are represented among the authors. Taken together, these posts present a complex (and at times heartbreaking) picture of this thing we call adoption, a crazy quilt of experiences stitched together with threads of love and loss. Here, in no particular order, are my top-ten finds of the week:

(Almost Wordless) Wednesday

2012-01-11T04:31:00.000-08:00

Without open adoption, we wouldn't have had this moment:

Ashley welcomes her youngest brother to the world.

Good Morning Adoption World!

2012-01-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

I love being part of the adoption blogging world. I love waking up and reading this post at The Chronicles of Munchkin Land first thing in the morning. There I was, half asleep and wishing I could crawl back into bed for another hour or three, spending a few minutes with my computer as I waited for the goddess Caffeine to work her magic, when I found the magic without her help. Bam! Suddenly I was wide awake and inspired and (channeling my tween daughters) thinking, Can I get a woot woot?!

Jenna's posts often make me feel this way, but this one especially so because it taps into some things I have been thinking about myself. Can I just say that I love that judge! Or rather, I love the writers who created her and put those words into her mouth. I'll borrow from my daughters one more time: she is totally beast, man!

Or no, actually, let me use my own word, the one that came to my mind most powerfully as I read about her: authentic.

That's a word that's been on my mind this week anyway because a friend used it to describe my own writing voice, and I took it as the greatest compliment she could pay. It was significant to me because for many years I did not have an authentic voice. This is something I've been discussing with some other adult adoptees online. Many of us have had to overcome obstacles to find our true voice. We look back on things we said about adoption and being adopted in our younger years and recognize that we were not speaking our truth. Rather, we were parroting what others had said or formulating what we somehow knew others wanted us to say. This dissembling had effects that rippled through other areas of my life, and I plan to write more about that another day, but for now let me just say that I find myself in a very different place today, and I celebrate that. When I say things like "I have two mothers; I love two mothers and am loved by two mothers; that is my reality and nothing will ever change that," this is my hard-won truth. Such statements come from my own most personal deep place of authenticity.

When the judge says, "But you all need to get this. Right now. Those are the biological parents. You cannot change that. And you need to get this. This little girl has been raised, by them, since the age of two. They’re a part of her life. A big part. Like it or not, you’re all in this pot. One side does not get to erase the other. Do you understand me?" I recognize something similar. It didn't surprise me to read that the plot eventually reveals the judge herself to be an adoptee. I've never seen the show, but in this one instance I think the writers hit the nail squarely on the head. It rings true for me. This is something an adoptee would say.

As I said, I haven't seen the show, but Jenna's words hint that elsewhere in the plot the judge's emotions about her own adoption inhibit her ability to view the situation objectively. Perhaps. But until I've seen the show, my focus remains on the one part that Jenna herself chose to highlight. Those words. Those amazing words!

But you all need to get this. Right now. Those are the biological parents. You cannot change that.

Yes!

And you need to get this. This little girl has been raised, by them, since the age of two. They’re a part of her life. A big part.

Yes!

Like it or not, you’re all in this pot. One side does not get to erase the other. Do you understand me?

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Can I just say what a rare experience this is for me! More often, when I encounter fictional representations of adoption or adoptees, I experience a disconnect. The presentation on the screen or the page does not match my reality. But this one does! I can hardly express how exciting it is to find a little piece of my own truth, my own message, reflected in the words of fictional character.

Can I get a woot woot?

Something Different

2012-01-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

Well, here’s the story the best I can remember it. The firstthree weeks were horrible. Lonely. Here I was, newly arrived, and nobodywelcomed me. Occasionally, someone held me, briefly. There was milk from arubbery inhuman nipple. Voices talking around me, but not to me. Mostly, I wasin the box. Hard plastic walls. Above me, shapes and sounds. Confusing,unwelcoming. Then there was movement, and more confusion. I slept as much as Icould, to escape it. There was more color in the new place. More brown, lesswhite. And the light was different. More shadowy. The voices here were loud andlaughing. And I was a part of it. It was confusing, disorienting. But better,somehow than the other. I was both drawn to it and frightened by it. I wantedit, and it was too much for me. Flee, flee. Where? Into myself. Into sleep.

Then it was quiet. And dark. Darkness. For the first timedarkness. I didn’t mind that. It was comforting, almost. Like the womb. Thealoneness was okay, too. I was used to it. I cried, not from fear orloneliness, but as an experiment. And the arms came and the arms held me, andthere was a voice, and I liked the voice.

It took a while for her to emerge into my consciousness infull shape. At first she was just the arms and the voice, and something else,soft and cushiony. Sometimes, other arms held me, but mostly hers. His voicewas there, too, but not so often with the arms. Sometimes the world rocked, andhis voice rocked with it. Soft and deep and flowing. I liked it, when the voicedid that. Safe. A different kind of sleep than the other.

Safe. But not entirely. They came and went. The voices. Thearms. Still, there was the aloneness. The not-quite-sure-ness. Is this myplace? Do I belong here? I wanted to stay, so I made myself as quiet and stillas I could. Freeze. Invisible. Lizard stillness.

In me, there was a tight, silvery pain. It resided in mystomach, mostly, in those early years, and sometimes, also in the spot betweenthe shoulder blades on my back. Eyes wide. Shallow breath. Eventually, it came up through me in the night, andout through the scream of my mouth. And she would come to me. She had a bodyand name now. Mommy. Just a dream, she would say, and rub my back. Then shewould go away.

In the day time it was with me, too. It was the bears thatlived in closet, and more bears in the basement. It welled up in me when thegirl across the street yelled that I was no longer her friend, or when hisvoice not-singing spoke sternly and I heard this: wrong, bad, wrong, bad, me,bad. Welcome? Maybe not.

The time between awake and sleep was the worst. Wild animalssurrounded my bed, and even crept beneath the sheets. I curled my legs up to mychest, but I knew they were down there beneath my feet, always, with sharpteeth, waiting.

I grew, and over the years I became less conscious of it.The animals retreated, and I retreated, too, or escaped. Flee. Fly away intofantasy. Daydream girl. The mind learned to dance away. Eventually there werebooks. Solid rooms that welcomed me. Flee. Into books. To the spot on the endof the couch. Sit very still. Freeze. Don’t cause trouble. You can stay. Youmay be loved. Safe here. Quiet. Invisible. Good.

Do you think I have escaped it now that I am grown? No, itis here still. It is in my shoulders now, and in my jaw, and the teeth I grindat night. Tarnished now, and so familiar I almost cannot name it. Oh this, yes,I have always had it. Do you have one, too?

Is Semi-Open Open Enough?

2011-12-17T12:20:00.000-08:00

Erica and Tyler are sick -- horribly, no-fun-at-all, wishing-they'd-gotten-flu-shots sick. This is especially sad because tonight was the night that we had planned to drop Ashley off at their apartment for a few hours so they could have their Christmas celebration.

Is Ashley devastated? Heartbroken? No, she's fine. She's mildly disappointed, but she understands that this is not a cancellation, it's just a rescheduling. Our visits happen frequently enough that there is not an extreme amount of pressure on any individual visit. The Christmas visit with Ashley's brother and first mom will still happen, just later.

A few minutes ago I received an email link to this article. I really feel for these people, and I hope they get the photos and letters back. But at the same time, I found myself thinking, "Wow, how sad to have all your 'memories' of your birth mother fit into one folder." It's not my place to judge; I don't know all the circumstances. Maybe for this family and first mother, this was the best possible arrangement. And, admittedly, it's still a step in the right direction from the old, closed adoption model. I had no such folder when I was 24.

But I'm glad that Ashley's memories of her first family will be more plentiful, and that they will consist of real experiences, rather than pieces of paper in a folder. I understand that such openness and the possibility of real relationship isn't feasible in all cases, but it's what I truly wish for every child.

More Thoughts

2011-12-16T08:07:00.000-08:00

I grew up with amazing parents. I mean really, two of the most rock-solid people you could ever meet. They are the base on which I stand. I was loved, I was cared for, I was supported.

But it wasn't enough. I grew up, and I functioned. I passed in the world as whole. But I wasn't whole. I was nurture devoid of nature. I was missing an essential element that I needed for psychological health.

It is true that biology does not make a parent. There are plenty of people in the world who have no biological children of their own yet are amazing parents; my husband is one of them. There are also plenty of people who give birth or provide the genetic material for a child, but, for various reasons, don't seem to know what to do after that.

Angry adoptive or prospective-adoptive parents who comment on blogs (not so much this one, but others I have read), I hear you when you say this. I really do. I also hear you when you say that there are worse things than being adopted. It is worse to endure horrible physical and psychological abuse at the hands of a biological parent. It is worse to grow up without parents at all, raised by strangers in an institutional setting. I get that. I hear you.

But I am also begging you to please, please hear me when I say this one simple thing: if you remove a child from his or her biological family and completely cut off all connection with and knowledge of that family, you are doing harm. You are depriving the child of something essential, something necessary for psychological health and well-being. From the child's point of view, biology does matter.

Now, we can argue all day about where that harm falls on the scale of things, but that's not really the point. I'm asking us to aim higher than "better than terrible." I believe that, whether we adopt or not, the children of the world are our responsibility -- all of our responsibility. I know that many of you share my view. In fact, some of you feel so strongly about this that you have decided to forgo having biological children of your own and to instead devote your energy and resources to taking care of children who are already living: children who need parents, and in some cases, not only parents but parents willing to take on the challenges of caring for children with significant special needs. You have chosen adoption as your strategy, and I am not saying that you shouldn't adopt.

But I also believe that our ultimate goal should be for all children to have not only adequate food and shelter and love and care, but also psychological health and connection to their roots and heritage. If we can love children who are not our biological offspring enough to adopt them and bring them into our homes and our hearts to be raised as our own children, can we also love them enough to want them to have the whole package?

I think we can all agree on the goal of having happy, healthy, well-adjusted children. Disagreements happen on the level of strategy. I understand that we live in a world that is far from ideal and that my goal is a lofty one. Adoption is a flawed strategy for a flawed world. It is not in itself something holy. It is crucially important for all of us who are connected to adoption to keep this in mind, and to continue to have thoughtful, critical discussions about this human-created institution. Yes, there are many situations in adoption may be the best strategy under the circumstances, but there are also many, many situations in which it is not. Let us please all continue to explore alternatives when they are viable.

Family Preservation

2011-12-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

Adoption has shaped my life, from my very first breaths until the current day. I am an adoptee, an adoptive mom, and an adoption blogger. I think about adoption and its implications every day. And I am going to tell you something that will surprise some of you and will not surprise others at all. I do not love adoption.

There have been some fabulous conversations in blogland this week as a result of this post and responses to it, such as this one and this one. There have also been some hurtful things said.

There's a lot that I could write in response to all of this, and I may try to write more later, but for now I am motivated to try to briefly formulate my own statement of beliefs.

I advocate for open adoption because I believe that if adoption happens, it is absolutely essential to the psychological well-being of the child that some form of connection to the biological family be maintained. But I also believe adoptions should happen less frequently than they do. I believe stronger efforts are needed to keep biological families together whenever possible. I believe that, as a culture and a society, we are too quick to rush to adoption as a solution before exploring other options, and I believe that this failing is rooted in a common misconception: biology doesn't matter. But biology does matter. The bond between a child and her biological family is real, and anytime that bond is severed, whether in infancy or in a later stage of childhood, there is pain and trauma.

Sometimes I feel like I am standing on the edge of a cliff, shouting this into the wind: Biology matters. Biology matters. Biology matters. The words come back to me, unheard. But I will keep shouting.

Grief and the Adopted Child

2011-12-06T17:21:00.001-08:00

My adopted daughter is sad. Not every minute. In fact, for the most part I would describe her as a happy child. One of the great joys of being her parent is the way she expresses delight ... how she lights up over little things, like the small pink Christmas tree she bought for her room with her allowance. I love it when she smiles at me. I love it when she skips. I love it when she sings in the shower. And boy, does she sing in the shower!

But I'm not fully embracing all that she is if I don't acknowledge that sometimes she is sad. Lately she seems to be grieving the siblings she doesn't get to see. She hasn't wanted to talk about it much yet, but I know. I see that she has hung the sister's letters on her bedroom wall. I see that her eyes are red as she slips her family photo album into her desk drawer. She has two brothers and a sister, biological siblings, who were a part of her life when she was younger. She hasn't seen them in years, and because of circumstances that are currently beyond our control, she doesn't know when she will see them again. Think about that for a moment. Put yourself in her shoes. Imagine that kind of loss.

Adoption is complicated and hard. It almost always involves pain and loss and trauma. Yes, there is a joyful side of it too, but the joy is not the whole story. As an adoptive parent, my tendency is to want to focus on the positive, but it is my job to make space for the mourning. My daughter is sad because she has a reason to be. Yes, she gained an adoptive family, and in so many ways she is thriving and doing well. And yes, because of our commitment to openness, she has been able to maintain a relationship with her biological mother and to form a new one with her youngest brother. But she still lost so much.

She is grieving because she needs to grieve. This can be a hard thing for adoptive parents to accept, but it is part of loving a child who has come to you by way of loss.

I Eat My Words and Help Clean a Room

2011-11-26T06:49:00.001-08:00

Here's what you should never do: brag online about something your kids are doing well because of your amazing parenting skills, as I did when I wrote about my daughters keeping their bedrooms clean last month. Why? Because it is one of those inevitable laws of the universe that as soon as you do so things will begin to unravel. Ashley really had been doing well with her room when I wrote that post. For months, she had kept it in very good shape. Not perfect. But not bad at all for a 10-year-old.

By yesterday, however, her room had reached full-out disaster stage, as in can't-walk-from-the-door-to-the-bed-because-of-all-the-stuff disaster stage. In general, my philosophy is that my kids' rooms are their own spaces. I ask for -- and sometimes even get -- their cooperation in maintaining order in shared spaces, such as the living room, but I'm more relaxed about their bedrooms, because, well, they're their rooms.

Up to a certain point, that is. My tolerance, it seems, has a limit, and Ashley's room had reached it, becoming essentially unusable. (She actually slept on the pull-out couch in the living room on Thursday night because her room was such a mess.) Also, we needed to move the window air conditioning unit into her closet for winter storage, but the closet was full of stuff. Something had to be done.

As I wrote in that earlier ill-fated post, I normally expect my daughters to do their own room cleaning. That's the flip side of the your-rooms-are-your-own-spaces coin; I don't expect their rooms to be kept perfectly clean; I do, however, expect whatever cleaning is done to be done by them, not me. But rules are meant to be broken, and this situation clearly seemed to call for some parental guidance. I told Ashley I would help.

We spent about four hours working together in that room, and by the end of it all we had three bags of trash and five bags of old toys and clothes ready for donation, all parted with willingly. In some of her previous cleanings, various unrelated items had been shoved into bags and boxes; we sorted through all of those. Three categories: trash, give-away, keep. Summer clothes were put into the drawers under her bed and winter clothes were folded and put into her bureau. Dresses, shoes, and, of course, the air conditioner are now in her closet. Oh, and we bought a new zebra print comforter at the mall earlier in the day. The perfect (and seriously cool) final touch!

Is the room now completely neat? No. As the hours went on and she got tired, I noticed her shoving items into the cubbies of her desk with less than careful attention. Was the job fun? Uh, not exactly. In fact, at one point I got pretty cranky with her. (When I later apologized to her for my crankiness she said, "That's OK. I understand that you get that way sometimes." I love that both of my daughters seem to get that parental crankiness is not something to be taken personally. Parents are human. We get tired; we grump; and we still love our children even in those moments -- which isn't to say that I'm not working on reducing my level of crankiness.) But it was time spent together, and when we were done we both had a feeling of satisfaction. Her dad and Mackenzie were by that time watching TV in the living room downstairs, but we opted not to join them. "Don't you want to hang out in my amazingly clean room?" she asked. Why, yes, yes I do. So we ended the night on a cozy note, watching one of her favorite TV shows on a laptop as we sat on her bed under the zebra print comforter.

Mommy Page Interview

2011-11-24T08:44:00.001-08:00

Guess who's the featured blogger on Mommy Page today! That's right -- it's me. (I also stole the cookie from the cookie jar, in case you were wondering.)

I hope you'll stop by and check out my interview as well as other great content on the site.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Morning Musings

2011-11-23T04:52:00.001-08:00

I read a bunch of adoption blogs yesterday, as I do most days, and woke up this morning with an image in my mind of a plant pulled out of the soil. I think this image captures something that I hear many adoptees trying to express online. We sometimes find ourselves in discussions in which non-adopted people are talking about the adoptive family's ability to provide sunshine and water and Miracle-Gro, and we are saying yes, that is all well and good, but what about the soil? Can't you see that we need the soil? Can't you see our bare roots hanging there? And it can feel rather surreal at times, like we are pointing out the emperor's lack of clothes but nobody can hear us.

Visit Backlash, Part Two

2011-11-22T17:47:00.001-08:00

I want to share a bit more about what happened here this weekend, because it was difficult, but it wasn't, and isn't, all bad. In fact, all in all, it was probably an important step in Ashley's development and healing.

Erica and Ashley had a visit on Saturday, and during that visit Ashley asked some difficult questions about why Ashley and her siblings had been removed from Erica and why they didn't go back. Erica answered honestly, in age appropriate language, and an important conversation about addiction and recovery ensued. Ashley was reassured that nothing that had happened was her fault. She got to hear that Erica had always wanted her but just hadn't been able to get well in time.

It was a good conversation. As Ashley's other mother, I am OK with everything that Erica shared. More than OK, in fact. These are all things that I wanted Ashley to hear from her.

But it was a lot to process. And when an adopted child is processing difficult stuff, guess who usually bears the brunt of it? You guessed it -- the adoptive mom. So Ashley pushed me away, and then she reconnected. For whatever reason, that was something that she needed to do as she walked through this.

She needed me to be her punching bag for a while, and to see that I loved her anyway. She needed to push, and see that I respected her boundaries but wasn't going to disappear. She needed to take out her emotions on someone, and I was the safest person to be the recipient.

And then, bit by bit, she made her way back to me. She sought me out and found little ways of reconnecting. We are back on track ... for now. It seems inevitable that more stuff will come up for her through the years as she makes sense of her journey through foster care to adoption. When that happens, her dad and I and Erica will all do our best to guide her through.

Visit Backlash: Not Our Best Day

2011-11-20T17:23:00.001-08:00

In general, I tend to paint a pretty rosy picture of open adoption on this blog. That's because my experience really has been mostly positive. Adoption isn't all roses and sunshine -- it involves grieving and loss -- but the openness part, for me, has been rewarding.

So, in the spirit of honesty, I want to share that we have struggled today. Or at least, I have struggled. I've written previously about visit backlash, the period following a visit with the biological family in which the adoptive family deals with the fallout, but it's something we haven't personally experienced in a long while. Until today.

We had a visit this weekend that stirred up some things in Ashley. She's processing, and, unfortunately for me, a big part of that processing has involved distancing herself from me. Ouch.

I understand that visit backlash is part of the process. I know that it's temporary and it's something you walk through with your child. We've gotten through it before, and we will get through it this time. But that doesn't mean it's easy.

Open adoption isn't about easy. I've been lucky; as an adoptive parent I've found that it has had many benefits for me. But that isn't why I do it. I do it because it benefits my child. It may be hard to see it in this moment, but I know that it does. What's happening now isn't about me. She's making sense of things. She's finding her way. And though she may seem to be pushing me away, she actually needs me, and my commitment to this process, now more than ever.

Adoption Bloggers Interview Project 2011

2011-11-16T09:13:00.001-08:00

I am very excited to be participating in this year's Adoption Bloggers Interview Project, along with 119 other bloggers whose lives have been touched by adoption. The concept behind the project is simple: the participants were paired off at random and then spent some time getting to know each other's blogs before interviewing each other by email. Today is the day that we are all publishing the results, and I am honored to introduce you to Brittani of Loved_BE. Brittani is an adoptee, a foster care alumna, a birth mom, a scrap booker, and much, much more. She has a beautiful son named Isaac. She also has great insights to share, and I hope you will not only enjoy getting to know her through this interview but will stop by her blog as well. And I hope you'll check out the other pairings, too. I know I can't wait to do so! Many thanks to Heather of Production, Not Reproduction for organizing all of this. And now, here is Brittani in her own words:

1) Can you tell me a little bit about your history as an foster alumni and adoptee?

The first time that is documented of us being taken away from my mom was when I was 4. However, there were several times before that as the problems began when I was born addicted to methamphetamine. We were moved every 2 to 3 months from the time I was 4 to the day my mom signed the TPR when I was 7. I moved 16+ times in those three years. I was adopted and moved out of state shortly thereafter and I lived with them for three years. My amom was diagnosed with lupus and the circumstances led to me being placed back into foster care when I was 10. Between the ages of 10 and 18 I moved another 7 times before finally aging out of care. I lived with Bruce and Karman for my junior and senior year of high school and I consider them to be my "forever family". I continue to have a relationship with them and go "home" for holidays and family gatherings.

2) Did you later reunite with your birth family or part of it?

I found my birthmom when I was 12 but I did not have a relationship with her until I was 15. When I reconnected with her the second time, I also found my older brother and sister. I found one of my younger sisters when I was 18 and the youngest is yet to be located. I found my birthfather when I was 18 and learned that I have two biological brothers and two step-brothers all who I still have not met in person (I also have not seen my dad, although I am in touch with all of them).

3) On your blog you write that you could never have done a closed adoption as a birth mother. Was this something that you felt certain about right from the start or did you come to this realization gradually?

I decided to place my son for adoption when I was just over 3 months along. From the time that I made that decision I was sure I wanted a closed adoption. Then around month 7 I started to realize there was no way I could survive placement if I did not know how he was doing. By the time he was born I was confident I had to have an open adoption agreement.

4) Was your decision to place and/or your determination to have an open adoption in any way influenced by your own history as a foster alumni and adoptee?

Growing up in a cycle of poverty, instability, and largely without either parent, I have always known I wanted more for my family. Growing up I made it my mission in life to be everything my mother couldn't. I recognize that is not the healthiest way to deal with grief, unfortunately my attitude toward my pregnancy was no different. I wasn't about to bring a child into my life if I couldn't offer him health insurance, a college fund, a father, and a white picket fence. My opinions on all of those things are drastically different now that I'm on the other side of it but unfortunately there is no going back.

I know firsthand what it is like to "need" to know where you came from and who gave you life. I always wanted my son to have the security of knowing his roots, even when I didn't think I wanted contact with him - there was never a time when I didn't want him to know who I was.

5) Can you tell me, and my readers, a little bit about what your open adoption looks like. How often do you visit with your son and how do you keep in touch in between visits?

This one is tough because he is just over a year old. Before he was born we met with a lawyer and set up a contact agreement that stipulates we should have one visit per year for the first two years. Initially we had updates every month and that went to every other month after his first birthday. I believe after his 3rd birthday it goes to once every 6 months and once he is in school it is just once a year. I'm a little fuzzy about what we agreed on for those last few though as they are still so far away. The important part though is that we are in contact far more than that. We have only had one in person visit since his birth because they live out of state and visits are challenging. But, his mom sends me photos a few times a month sometimes, we are friends on Facebook, and have Skype'd with them several times. She frequently sends me videos and picture messages throughout the month and we have a relatively close relationship. I do not necessarily have a direct relationship with him yet but come on, he's only one :).

6) What thing do you most appreciate about having an open adoption?

The photos and videos. I love that I not only get to hear how he is doing but I get to see it too.

I also love the relationship that has formed between his mom and myself. I treasure her and greatly respect her.

7) What has been the hardest part for you about having an open adoption?

The distance. The fact that we live in two different states is very hard for me, although in choosing them it was a determining factor. Initially I did not want a local family. My perspective has changed on so many things post-placement.

8) How has becoming a birth mom affected your relationships with other people in your life?

My relationship with my parents (Bruce and Karman) is significantly better and significantly worse because I placed my son for adoption. During my pregnancy my dad and I became very close for the first time ever in our relationship. We have remained close since I placed Isaac. However, I have struggled with accepting the fact that they refused to support me had I decided to keep Isaac. For them, me keeping him was never an acceptable choice. They told me they would not help me if I decided to keep him and I'm not sure I will ever be able to forgive them for that.

It has also negatively impacted my relationship with several members of my birth family.

The only place it has really had a positive impact on relationships is online. It has allowed me to form relationships with other birthmoms as well as adoptive moms through blogging.

9) If you were having a conversation with an stranger or an acquaintance and happen to reveal that you are a birth mother, what is the one thing they could say to you that would be most supportive?

"I'm sorry for your loss." And leave it at that. Following it up with, "But you are so unselfish and he is so loved..." or something to that affect, just adds insult to injury. Acknowledging that it is the most painful thing I've ever done means far more than anything else that could be said.

10) On your personal blog, you mentioned impact of your job as a nanny on your healing process post placement. Can you tell me a little more about that?

I wrote more about that here: http://lovedbe.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/hindsight-isnt-always-2020/

I basically just talked about how it was challenging to care for an infant who is just one month younger than Isaac and how watching her go through various developmental stages was painful because it was a constant reminder of all that I was missing with Isaac. I wrote that post in May and I think now, 6 months later, I can also acknowledge that having this job has helped with the healing process. I am far more aware of my parenting inadequacies, as I spend 10 hours a day caring for an infant, than I probably would be if I didn't have a nanny job. I am also more aware that I could have done it. As I've said many times on my blog :)

11) Are there other things that have contributed to healing since your son's birth?

Scrapbooking is like really fun therapy for me. It is probably close to the same price (*wink wink) but you have the benefit of working through the emotions when you are alone in the comfort of your own home. And you end up with a wonderful keepsake of your child's life at the end of the book.

12) You recently spent time in Africa and you have written about some of the different cultural attitudes towards adoption and unplanned pregnancy. What do you see as some of the advantages and disadvantages of the different cultural approaches?

As a birthmom I am very fond of the East African cultural attitude towards parenting. They strongly encourage mothers to care for their own children and when a child is abandoned/orphaned the child will either go to live with biological relatives or close family friends. One of the advantages to their approach is that family bonds are highly valued as is maintaining cultural ties. One of the disadvantages to this approach is that there is no infrastructure in place to care for the overwhelming number of abandoned/orphaned children. There are more children in need than there are willing caregivers. Often times leaving children starving and alone living on the streets.

Adoptive Families and the Internet

2011-11-13T14:51:00.001-08:00

Another topic that was discussed during Karen Cheyney's presentation at ACONE's Adoption Conference this Saturday was the problematic issue of tech-savvy adopted kids making contact with biological families without the adoptive parents' knowledge. In today's world of social networking, it is often fairly easy for tweens and teens to find biological parents online. For me, this is one more reason why it is important for adoptive parents to build real-life, positive relationships with birth parents whenever possible, and as early as possible. It also highlights the importance of creating an atmosphere of acceptance in the home so that the adoptee will feel comfortable talking to the adoptive parents about the first family.

Because here's the thing: most adoptees are going to have a desire to reach out to the biological family at some point. It is natural for adopted children to desire a connection to their roots and sooner or later they are likely to seek that connection ... with or without the adoptive parents' support. If you are an adoptive parent, wouldn't you rather be involved?

Open adoption allows the connection to biological family to occur in a safe, supervised manner, with the involvement of the adoptive parents. It can help to demystify the birth family, rather than positioning them as the forbidden fruit. An adopted teen won't need to sneak away to try to meet up with her birth mother if that birth mother is already a regular part of her life.

Yes, you should monitor your child's online activity and teach about internet safety, but as your child gets older, he or she will have opportunities to access the internet outside of your home and it will become increasingly difficult to monitor all social-networking activity. Keeping the lines of communication open between adoptees and adoptive parents, and, when possible, between adoptive parents and birth parents, can also be an important part of creating safety.

Related Posts:
Being "Emotionally Open" to First Families
Let's Get Real: Embracing Duality in Adoptive Families
Are You an Attuned Adoptive Parent?

Adoption Conference

2011-11-12T16:35:00.001-08:00

Today I attended the Adoption Community of New England's November Adoption Conference. My favorite speaker was Karen Cheyney of Bright Futures Adoption Center who presented a workshop entitled "Healthy Relationships with Birth Families." I found myself nodding in agreement through much of her presentation.

Here are a few of the points she made that resonated with me:

*When adoptive parents show a willingness to be connected to the child's birth family, that communicates acceptance to child.

*Children in open adoptions can get answers to normal questions about their histories, which allows them to move onto other developmental tasks without getting stuck on adoption-related issues.

*It is important for adopted children to be able to talk freely about adoption without worrying about loyalty issues. It is important that they be allowed to care about both sets of parents without feeling guilty.

I'm hoping to write more about this conferences and some of the things that came up for me at it in the coming days.

Shattered Families

2011-11-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

My (biological) brother and his team at the Applied Research Center made this heartbreaking video about the separation of children from undocumented parents. Please watch:

Rambling Post Containing an Old Poem and a Lot of Love

2011-10-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

While I was digging through my old writing looking for the sea glass piece, I found a poem that I wrote a few years back about Mackenzie, the older of my two daughters:

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." -- Elizabeth Stone

Last night we cuddled, watching TV,

through the mouth of a tent pitched in our living room,
her adoration wrapped around me like a down sleeping bag.

She drank in my love, filling up.

Tonight she said, “oh hi,” and turned back

to her art project.

I celebrate both.

Lately, she’s taken to carrying around my heart
in the pocket of her winter coat,

with the collection of bouncy balls

that she buys for a quarter

from the machine at the Chinese restaurant.

And that’s okay.

In fact, it is precisely where my heart wants to be.

Mackenzie still has that collection of bouncy balls. (When Tornado Tyler was at our house recently he dumped them all out on the living room floor and then jumped onto them. Feet up; Tyler down. No injuries, thankfully.) She doesn't carry them around in her pocket anymore, but you know my heart is still there.

People often ask me how Mackenzie adjusted to having Ashley come into her life. The answer is "not well at, at least initially." Mackenzie wanted a sister. She really, really wanted a sister. Until that sister moved into our house. And then she really, really did not want a sister. The addition of a sibling to a family can be challenging even when the child joins in the more usual way as a infant, but when that sibling is an older child with a trauma history, the situation is likely to be even more problematic. Mackenzie had been the only child, wrapped in that cocoon of my love, and suddenly there was someone else around whom she perceived as competition.

I am happy to report that these days Mackenzie and Ashley get along better than the average siblings. The bond between them is actually very heartwarming to observe. And my heart ... well, they both walk around with it now. I know that metaphor doesn't quite make sense, but try not to get too caught up in the physics of it. Love is not a pie. When you have two children, they both get your whole heart. You don't take half of your heart from the one child and give it to the other.

It doesn't matter if a child comes to you by birth or adoption; the effect is the same. It's a love that cracks you wide open, leaving you forever raw and vulnerable.

But in adoption, there's another layer to things. The birth parent's heart not only goes walking around outside of her body, it goes walking around outside of her life. I urge adoptive parents to keep this in mind. As much as you love your child (and believe me, I know how much you love your child), always remember there is someone else who loves them too, with an equal amount of rawness and intensity, plus an additional element of grief. Please hold them always with care in your heart.

Adoption Reunions and the Magical Number 18

2011-10-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

The other night at a school-sponsored Halloween party, I had a conversation with the adoptive father of one the schoolmates of my daughters. I had shared a bit of the story of my open adoption, and he responded by sharing that the biological parents of his daughter had recently sent a letter and photos. His daughter hadn't seen the letter or the photos yet, but he and the adoptive mother were planning to show them to her soon. He seemed pleased about the letter but went on to say that he didn't think his daughter would meet her biological family at any point -- well, not until she was 18, at least. When she was 18, if she wanted to make contact, they would support her.

I like and admire this man, I know he has his daughter's best interest at heart, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't know all of the details of his daughter's situation. Also, on the surface, his statement seems perfectly reasonable, even child-centered. He is saying he will support his daughter in whatever decision she makes once she is old enough to make that decision. What could be wrong with that?

So why did his statement make me slightly uncomfortable?

One reason is that, somewhere along the line, I received the same message from my own adoptive parents, and it proved problematic for me in the long run. I don't have a clear memory of the exact conversations, but I know that I heard from them in some way that if I wanted to search for my biological family, I could do so when I was 18. What I didn't hear from them was that they understood the reasons why it might be important for me to do so. I also didn't hear that my decision to search or not had no bearing on their love for me, which was unconditional. Although they didn't add "but we kind of hope you won't" to "you can search when you are 18," it hung in the air between us nevertheless.

I didn't search until I was 30, and the main reason for the delay was that, on some level, I believed searching for my biological family would be a betrayal of my adoptive one. I thought my adoptive parents would not approve, not really, and the child in me equated disapproval with rejection and rejection with annihilation. Even as I grew to understand that I needed to reconnect to my biological roots to be whole, I could not take that chance. I chose security over wholeness.

In the end, I got them both. Ultimately, my adoptive parents were not only supportive, they were instrumental in my search. Their love for me is unconditional and they do understand my reasons for wanting a connection to the biological side of my family. So, why did it take me so long to come to this understanding?

Eighteen is the age at which the adopted person can technically search without the consent of his or her adoptive parents. And yet, I have often heard adoptive parents mention it as the age at which they will give consent and support, even in cases of semi-open adoptions like the one of my daughters' schoolmate. I have to admit, it's hard for me to interpret this message as anything but a stalling technique. An unspoken "but we kind of hope that won't be the case" still hangs in the air for me. If I'm hearing it, are their children hearing it too? And if so, what is the effect?

At what age is a child old enough to long for wholeness and to want the missing puzzle piece that biology can provide? At what age can they trust that their adoptive parents will hear them if they express such longings? Does something magical happen at age 18 in this regard?

If you've read my blog before you probably know how important I believe it is for adoptive parents to remain "emotionally open" to first families. I understand that actual contact with certain biological family members may be inadvisable in some cases. And I understand the reasons why some parents may wish to wait until their children are older, developmentally and emotionally, before bringing some relationships into their lives. But if you are an adoptive parent, please always remember that your child's biological family is a part of them. Biology isn't destiny, but it is a piece of the puzzle. Know that it is natural and normal for adopted children to long for a connection to their original family and an understanding of their genetic heritage. And most importantly, let them know, at every stage and every age, that you understand this. Sometimes adopted children will tell their adoptive parents that they don't have any desire to know their biological family; if this happens, I encourage you to take the child's word for it ... more or less. If that's where they are truly at, then fine. But I also encourage you to ask yourself one tough question: Is there any chance they are saying that because they believe it is what you want to hear? Regardless of what your adopted child chooses to express, you can let them know that your love is unconditional, and that if the desire to know the biological family should come up, at 18 or any other age, it will have no bearing on the strength of your attachment to them.

Sea Glass

2011-10-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Erica wrote the following in a post about her toddler: "Tornado Tyler has taught me life doesn't always turn out the way you thought it would, it can be better than you ever imagined." That put me in mind of something I wrote some years ago. Actually, I wrote it when I myself was the mother of a toddler, and though my daughter doesn't appear in the piece, the messiness and unpredictability that swirl around young children were certainly a part of my life at that time. On the surface, the piece is about sea glass, bits of broken glass that have been transformed by the motion of the sea and the friction of tumbling rocks into soft, translucent gems:

But on a deeper level it is about accepting the messiness and unpredictability of life. Here is the piece:

I sit on the pebbly part of the town beach at the end of theshore path, combing my hands through the damp loose stones looking for seaglass. I am looking for blue pieces, of course, but they are too rare and I’mnot having any luck. I don’t want to go home empty handed, so I begin to gatherthe white, the brown, the green. I study the subtleties of each piece. I lookat them the way some people must look at diamonds, noticing the unique way thelight shines through each one. I am a connoisseur of sea glass. I rub myfingers over the edges, judging. Is it soft enough? Is it ready for plucking,or does it need more time with the sea?

Two children, a boy and a girl,about 10 years old, possibly twins, begin to hover nearby. They pat my dog, then stand,unselfconsciously, as 10-year-olds will do, watching, waiting for me to takethe lead. I explain to them that I am looking for sea glass for two friendsfrom Massachusettswho have been especially kind to me lately. I tell them that I want to bring thesefriends some little bits of Maine.I don’t know if they understand the last part or not, but they don’t questionit. They sense that an important mission is at hand. Without a word, they beginto help. The girl, whose name I eventually learn is Krista, works beside me,putting the pieces in my hand one by one as she finds them. The boy, Cain,works a wider territory, wandering off on his own, returning periodically withhis finds. We work quietly, with reverence almost, with only an occasionalcomment about the beauty or uniqueness of a particular piece. It feels almostas though the three of us are participants in some sacred ceremony.

The children do not adhere to my standards for the seaglass, and soon they are also adding small rock, shells, and even pieces ofshell. My first impulse is to protest. “No, that’s not what I’m looking for.”But instead I relax. I decide to accept whatever gifts they have to give. Iwatch as the mixture in my hand grows increasingly messier, and richer. When mycupped hand is full, I tell them it’s time for me to go. I say my goodbyes,thank them for their help, and slip the collection into my jacket pocket. As Iwalk away, I look back at Krista and Cain. They sit, heads close together,still sifting through the rocks.

It's interesting to me to look back on this piece. It had been on my mind, even before Erica wrote that line about Tyler, because my friend Maureen recently started making and selling sea-glass jewelry:

The images in this post were taken, with her permission, from her facebook page Tidal Gems.

Maureen and I met in a prenatal exercise class when we were both pregnant with our first children. Now our kids are close in age to the two children in the story above. A lot has happened in the intervening years. Things have come into our lives that we would not have chosen or hand-picked, include a painful divorce on my part and an unexpected job loss on hers. Like me, Maureen is a "connoisseur of sea glass." She selects the most beautiful "gems" for her creations and even finds the occasional coveted blue piece:

But when it comes to life, I suspect that neither of us would exchange the crazy, messy, beautiful jumble we've ended up with for anything different. Krista and Cain, two 10-year-olds who came into my life for a few moments one afternoon in Maine, taught me that sometimes you go looking for one thing and find something that is unexpectedly better. Or, as Erica put it, though life doesn't always turn out the way you thought it would, it can be better than you ever imagined. It's the simplest of lessons, but one that continues to resonate for me all these years later.

Open Adoption Roundtable #31

2011-10-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

The current, Halloween-inspired, Open Adoption Roundtable prompts is: Write about open adoption and being scared. Here is my reply:

There is a monster that no one ever dresses up as for Halloween. She is a hateful creature who selfishly gave birth without caring about her offspring. She drank; she used drugs; she put her own interests above theirs. She was irresponsible and neglectful in countless ways. Her children have been rescued from her terrible clutches, but they are not safe, for she is always there, lurking dangerously on the edges of their lives, waiting for an opportunity to pounce and steal them back. She does not love her children; she is incapable of loving and unworthy of being loved.

I have never met one of these monsters, but I have encountered them on the Internet. I have read the descriptions of them that show up in such places as the comment sections on blogs.

I have never met the monster, and, truth be told, I doubt she is any more real than the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot. But I did meet a woman the other day who cried real tears and shared her pain with me, spoke of her heartbreak at being separated from her children, gave voice to her regret that she hadn't managed to overcome her addiction in time to keep her children with her. I also remember another woman who approached me in a parking lot years ago, identified herself outright as an addict, and poured out her anguish to me. Her children had been removed from her that morning, and she was beside herself with grief. "You must think I am a terrible person," she said, repeatedly. "No," I said, "I don't." And I meant it.

But here's the thing: as scary as the woman I described in the first paragraph may seem, there is something that can be even scarier to some parents who adopt from foster care, and that's the first mother who gets her life together. Why? Because it's easy to justify keeping a monster at arm's length. Surely no one would expect adoptive parents to interact with someone like that, or to invite her into their lives. But what if she ceases to fit the stereotype? What if she begins to emerge as human, capable, and even lovable?

The adoptive parents' fear of the first mother can take a variety of forms, but ultimately at the core of it is the deep fear that we will lose our children, that despite all our love and care and our insistence that raising the child makes us the only "real" parents, biology will trump all and we will be ousted. When fear rules us, we panic, cling to our children, and build up walls between them and their other family.

I am not immune to fear; I can be as insecure as the next person. But I refuse -- I simply refuse -- to let fear be the guiding force in my open-adoption relationship. I don't trust fear; it is a tricky master that sends me off track, away from my intentions. That's not to say that fear must be ignored completely for it often carries a message about something important that needs attention. I can let fear guide me to communicating things that are important to me, but I cannot let it trick me into building walls or running from relationship. My commitment to openness is foremost; whatever else comes up for me emotionally must be balanced against that. When fear flickers in me, it is usually because some small issue has come up, stimulating discomfort in me. But the small issues are resolvable. In my heart of hearts I know that openness is the right thing for me and for my daughter, and that is my guiding force.

Links to other bloggers' replies to this prompt are available here.

Quick Update

2011-10-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

Yikes! Has it really been more than a week since I last posted?

I've been busy off-line. Our open adoption continues to expand like a balloon as we gradually add more air in small increments. Since I last wrote, Erica and Ashley have engaged in a bit of texting, and Erica and Tyler (Ashley's little brother) came to our house for the first time. I want to write more about both of these developments, but right now I'm busy getting ready for a conference that Erica and I are speaking at tomorrow.

While I'm doing that, please read this post that I absolutely love by Tiruba Tuba. "There can never be too many people who love a child." My thoughts exactly.

Let's Get Real: Embracing Duality in Adoptive Families

2011-10-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

In her book Journey of the Adopted Self, Betty Jean Lifton addresses the sticky issue of the word "real" in adoptive families:

"The adoptive mother believes she is the real mother because she is the one who got up in the middle of the night and was there for the child in sickness and health. The birth mother believes she is the real mother because she went through nine months of sculpting the child within her body and labored to bring it forth into the the world. They are both right. The adoptive mother who loves and cares for the child is the real mother. And the birth mother who never forgets her child is the real mother.... By denying that adoptees have two real mothers, society denies them their reality."

These words are of particular importance to me as an adoptee because not only did "society" deny me my reality, I denied it to to myself. An important therapeutic moment happened the day I fully acknowledged myself as the child of two mothers, allowing myself to embrace that duality and all that it meant. I suspect I am not the only adoptee to internalize the struggle between two mothers. The day I gave up the belief that I needed to prioritize one definition of "real" over the other, something important shifted within me. I found wholeness.

Lifton also writes, "For me, a real mother recognizes and respects the whole identity of her child and does not ask him to deny any part of himself." By this definition, I am happy to say that my daughter Ashley clearly has two real mothers. The acknowledgment and valuing of all that Ashley is, including those parts of her that come from the other mother -- this is the core, the very essence, of what her first mother and I are attempting to accomplish through our open adoption relationship. Acknowledgment of the whole of an adopted child's self, writes Lifton, "is difficult to do in a closed adoption system that requires the child be cut off from his heritage, and that pits the original mother against the replacement mother."

I don't want my daughter to have to wait until she is an adult in therapy to discover wholeness. In traditional family situations, nature and nurture come in one package. In adoption, they are split, but they don't have to be pitted against each other. The more that I am able to embrace my child's whole identity, the better equipped she is to embrace it herself. Like me, she a child of two mothers and is loved, wholeheartedly, by both of us. We are each a part of who she is, and we are both very, very real

Confessions of a (Sort of) Slacker Mom

2011-10-05T11:55:00.001-07:00

As a mom, I'm not a total slacker. In fact, in some ways, the opposite is true. I parent fairly intensively, giving each of my two daughters as much one-on-one attention as I can. (As I wrote in an earlier post, they are tweens and I still do a fairly extensive bedtime routing with them.) My husband and I each bend over backwards trying to give these two children the best start in life that we can provide. They are the center of our universe and everything in our lives pretty much revolves around them.

But some ways, I have to admit that I am a bit of a slacker. I'm not the kind of mother who believes she has to do everything for her kids, and lately I've become aware of some of the surprising benefits of slackerism. We tend to think of parenting in terms of what we do, but sometimes it's actually more about what we choose not to do. When children are infants, they are completely dependent on us and we do everything for them. But as children get older, effective parenting sometimes means hanging back to give children the chance to rise to the challenge of taking care of themselves. So I stopped packing lunches in the morning. And then I stopped putting my daughters' laundry away (I sort it into baskets and put the baskets in their rooms). And then I stopped cleaning their bedrooms.

And in every case, these amazing children of mine have risen to the challenge. I mean really! Not immediately, but over time, with a little coaching and guidance, and, most importantly, my determination not to step in and take over, they got there. No, the jobs aren't done perfectly -- effective slacker parenting means letting go of perfectionism. The bedrooms are not quite as I might clean them and the laundry, well, let's just say we have a pretty loose definition of "folded." But for a 10- and 11-year-old, these kids are pretty darn neat. And we manage it without bribes, star charts, or threats of punishment. Not bad for a slacker mom!

Some Random Thoughts After Reading Various Adoption-Related Blogs

2011-10-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

1) Human-beings are biologically programmed to reproduce, from puberty on.
2) Throughout much of human history, most mothers have been young mothers. Youth does not, in and of itself, make someone unqualified to be a mother.
3) Our current culture is not set up to support young mothers.
4) Adoption does not make a child disappear.
5) Adoption is not a convenient fix to the problem of unplanned pregnancy.
6) Adoption does not undo a pregnancy or make someone not a mother.
7) I'm tremendously grateful that my birth mother told others about me (especially my younger brother) before I reappeared in her life.
8) Secrecy is almost always harmful.

Being "Emotionally Open" to First Families

2011-10-02T12:44:00.000-07:00

Back in July I wrote a post that included the following paragraph:

"I do believe that it's important for anyone who is considering adoption to understand that they are not bringing a single child into their life -- they are bringing an entire family. That's just a fact. The old adoption model, and even many current adoption arrangements, try to ignore this reality, but ignoring doesn't work. Even if the adoptive family has no contact with the biological family and rarely discusses them other than in vague, almost mythological ways (such as the 'your birth mother was someone who loved you very much' story), that family, and especially the birth mother, is still there, fully present in the child's psyche. They may exist primarily as an absence, as a longing (spoken or unspoken), but they are still there."

I'd like to to expand on that a bit today. For adoptive parents, the choice between closed, semi-open, and fully open adoption isn't really a choice between having the biological family in your life or not. The first family is a part of your life regardless because they are a part of your child; the question for adoptive parents is: "How are you going to respond to this reality?"

I really appreciated the many thoughtful comments I got last week in response to my Attuned Adoptive Parent post, and I especially liked the following words from Martha Crawford, LCSW:

"Even when families are forrmed through international adoption - emotional openness to the first families: ie listening to children's wishes to search, supporting that process when it feels age appropriate, inviting your child to communicate about their first parents and then accepting whatever feelings or language emerge, offering acceptance and support with out fear or defensiveness - this to me, is the primary sacred task of being an 'adoptive' parent."

I love her phrase "emotional openness to the first families," and I believe it represents a key factor. If an adoption is nominally open on paper but the parents are not emotionally open to the biological family, the openness of the adoption is likely to be perceived as a burden rather than a gift and is much less likely to succeed in the long term. This lack of emotional openness is detrimental to the relationship between the adoptive parents and the biological family, and, sadly, it is ultimately detrimental to the relationship between the adoptive parents and the adopted child. By contrast, there may be situations where circumstances preclude regular contact with the biological family but the adoptive parents are emotionally open and therefore able to hold space for the child's experience, whatever it may be. In such situations, the adoptive parents communicate acceptance to the child and able to help facilitate his or her growth and healing.

Some adoptive parents (including my own) like to say that adoptive families are no different than other families; they are just formed in a different way. This well-intentioned sentiment is meant to communicate that adoptive parents love their children as much as if they had given birth to them. As an adoptive (and biological) mother I can attest that this is true; I love my two daughters with equal intensity, though my relationship is different with each of them, just as it would be different if I had two biological children. But being an adoptive parent is not the same as being a biological parent. It is different because something more is asked of us, the "sacred task" that Marth Crawford mentions above. The adoptive parent is asked to open his or her heart to something more than just an individual, separate child. Loving and accepting an adopted child means loving and accepting all that the child is and holds within them, including the unbreakable thread that binds them to another family.

Returning to Normal ... Whatever That Is

2011-09-30T18:03:00.000-07:00

Well, I did it. Or rather I will have done so when I click "publish" for this piece. Thirty days; thirty posts. I've enjoyed writing every day, but I've had to put off some other things while doing so. My "to do" list has grown. Though I intend to keep writing (just not quite so frequently), I'm also looking forward to getting back on track with some other projects; namely, ashleysmoms.org, the website that Erica and I created as part of our efforts to promote open adoption. We've got plans for things we want to add to the website, and we're also looking forward to a speaking engagement we've got lined up for mid-October.

My blog readership has grown this month, and I have really, really appreciated the comments. You'll be hearing lots more from me, but unless I really happen to get smacked up the side of the head with inspiration tomorrow, I'm planning to take a day off. Enjoy you're weekend. I'll see you soon.

Return of the Bug

2011-09-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

In August of 2004 a bug appeared on the wall in front of my computer at work. I opened a word document and composed the following:

There is a very large bug on the wall,

a spray of filament legs radiating

from a wormlike body.

Almost beautiful.

I can't think of a good enough reason to kill it

so instead I watch

as it worries itself precariously

up the smooth flat wall.

Today, all these years later, the same bug reappeared. Well, more likely it is one that is simply identical to it, presumably a descendant of the bug of the poem, owing its very existence to my reluctance to squash its ancestor. But it seems like the same bug. Is there a message here? Some deep meaning I am meant to take away? Or has the bug appeared today merely to prompt me to look back over the years since 2004, noting the things that have changed -- the people who have left my life or come into it -- and the things that have not changed. I'm still staring at the same wall at the same job, and is it really possible that so many years have passed and I still haven't pulled up that ugly rug on the stairs in my house?

Or maybe the bug is my muse ... giving me one more tie-in to NaBloPoMo's September theme of "return." I believe I have stretched this theme about as far as I can stretch it. Only one more day of this silliness. Thank you patient readers for sticking with me thus far.

Returning to Fun and Connection

2011-09-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

We all get a little off track sometimes, gradually slipping away from our core-value intentions, like a car slipping out of alignment. I'm aware that I've gotten a little off track in terms of one aspect of my parenting.

This summer, the girls and I did a lot of fun things together, but since the return to school parenting has become more about driving them to activities, helping with homework, and pestering Ashley to do her eye exercises. Weekends have been taken up by the usual slog of laundry, plus a home-improvement project that my husband has been working hard to complete. There's nothing really wrong with any of this, but I'm aware that something is missing. This weekend, I want to do something that's just plain fun. It's time to put the joy back in joyful parenting.

Are You an Attuned Adoptive Parent?

2011-09-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

When a baby cries, an attuned parent or caregiver recognizes this as a communication of an unmet need and subsequently tries to a) decipher the communication, and b) meet the need. Repetitions of this cycle facilitates attachment between the child and their caregiver.

When an older child comes into a family as a foster or foster-adopt placement, a similar scenario plays out. The child "cries out" -- sometimes with words, sometimes with actual tears, often with behavior. It's a more challenging situation because trauma scrambles the message. Fear masquerades as anger; anxiety as aggression. But a loving and attuned parent can learn to decode the message, to "hear" what the child is saying.

Most parents will bend over backwards to meet the needs of their children. Love, safety, a sense of belonging. Anything that is beneficial, we want them to have it. But what happens when an adoptive parent tunes in and hears the child asking for a connection, or more of a connection, to their biological family?

Here's where many adoptive parents panic and freeze. If they manage to hear the message at all. Sometimes the message doesn't even make it through because it is one that is so scary to adoptive parents that they can't even let it in. There are adoptive parents who would lay down their lives for the children, make any sacrifice, do anything and everything possible to increase their child's happiness and well-being ... anything, that is, but that.

There are a couple of issues here. One is that it is simply very difficult for some adoptive parents to understand that the longing for the biological family does not detract from the solidity of the adoptive family. The biological longing is often perceived as something dangerous and destructive, something that prevents the child from bonding in the new family and that must therefore be quashed.

A second issue is that a sense of connection to one's biological family is not simply recognized as a need. As an adoptee, I believe that it is one of the basic and primal of needs, but the entire adoption industry is based on the premise that it is not a need, or at the very least, not an important one. It's a premise that has benefited from a lot of PR over the years and is still very prevalent, in spite of the attempts on the part of many adoptees, first parents, and others to dismantle it.

As an adoptee, I was in a unique position to hear my daughter when she communicated her longing for more connection with her first family, as she did in many ways. If you've read my blog before you know that I consider open adoption to have contributed positively to my life in many ways. If you've read the new blog of my adopted daughter's first mother, Erica, you likewise know that our open arrangement benefits her as well. But the main reason we have an open adoption is because it benefits our daughter.

I know that some adoptive parents will say that their child doesn't communicate any longing for the biological family. I have heard adoptive parents say with pride, "My child says they won't ever search for their biological family because we are their real family and we are all they need." I cringe a little when I hear this. Why? Because I was that adoptee -- the compliant adoptee saying what I knew would garner approval. No one ever told me I had to say that, but I picked it up somehow. I knew it was my expected line. For years I repeated it without questioning it, believing I believed it. Then one day, in my twenties, I found myself curled up in a ball on the floor of my apartment, weeping uncontrollably, knocked flat by grief and longing that came at me out of the blue.

I know a set of adoptive parents who have done everything in their power to squash their child's expression of longing for her first mother, including telling her outright that she shouldn't talk about her, or really even think about her, because they are her parents now. Those parents recently told me, without any sense of irony, that one of the reasons they are not pursuing visitation with the first mother is that the child "never asks about her." If you are an adoptive parent, I know that you have your child's best interest at heart. But I urge you to ask yourself the hard questions. Have you really made it safe for your child to express all that is in his or her heart? Does the child trust that you will be able to hear them if they speak their truth, or do you have blinders on in this one area? Is there any way that your own fears and anxieties may be getting in the way of your child's message getting through?

I understand that there are some biological parents who are not safe people for children to be around. Or in some cases the biological parent may be the one who has retreated and pulled back from contact. And then there are those situations in which distance makes regular contact with the biological family impossible. Meeting the longing in the child will look different in different families. In some cases, the best the parent can offer may be empathy and understanding -- acknowledgment of the child's loss. It may mean making space for mourning. (Even this can be challenging for some adoptive parents.) In other situations, creative solutions may be possible. If one or both biological parents are not accessible for whatever reason, is there another relative with whom a relationship might be formed? Can siblings be connected? (For example, there are summer camps devoted to bringing siblings back together for a week or two or reconnection.)

I tried to explain to a friend recently how my bond with my adopted daughter strengthened as I facilitated more contact with her biological family, and she looked at me in disbelief. But when viewed in terms of what I wrote above about attunement, it's not so surprising. My daughter communicated a need and her need was heard and met, by me, her attuned parent. I'm not a perfect parent. I get tired and cranky; I've got buttons and my kids know how to push them. I often look back on situations and wish I had handled them differently. But in this one area I am confident that I am on the right track.

Looking Back: What I've Learned From NaBloPoMo

2011-09-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

I still have a few more days, but I already have a pretty good sense of some of the lessons I'll be taking away from my experiment in blogging every day for one month.

1) Blogging every day is hard.
This one is perhaps a little obvious. And no, I didn't think it would be easy. But I'm aware that there are some bloggers out there who do this regularly. Not just for a month, but all the time. And all I have to say is, wow! Kudos to them!

2) Sometimes I just need to sit down and do it.
Before NaBloPoMo, I pretty much only sat down to write when I had an idea of something I wanted to say. This month, I often sat down with no idea in my head at all. Really. Nada. I learned that if I stared at the screen long enough, something would come out. It wasn't always brilliant or pretty, but it was something. And I like to think that there may even have been a few gems among the dross.

3) It's good to push beyond my comfort zone.
Blogging is a risky business. We put our raw selves out there. Sometimes I'd write something and think "I don't know if I can publish that." And if it wasn't for NaBloPoMo, maybe I wouldn't have. But the clock would be ticking and I'd be feeling the pressure to get something up, so I'd hit that "publish" button anyway. Some of those posts were the ones that readers most connected with.

4) It's not always about adoption, but often it is.
I started out with the goal of not just writing every day but of trying to tie each post to my focus on adoption issues and to the monthly theme of "return." I didn't quite accomplish that goal. Some days, I found I needed to widen my focus beyond adoption, and that's OK. In fact, it's something I may want to continue, though adoption will remain the dominant theme woven through most of my pieces. Also, even when my writing's not about adoption, it still kind of is.

A Quiet Sunday

2011-09-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

Ashley has spent a lot of time in her room today. Her sister is at a friend's house, so Ashley has been entertaining herself. I've heard her singing, and I just went in and discovered that she had moved a number of her belongings (including her computer and her bean bag chair) into her closet. She explained that she was playing a game in which she was a teenager at high school, and the closet was her locker. (She obviously has no idea how tiny high school lockers are, but never mind that.)

This quiet alone-time play is not a bad thing. In fact, I see it as an important development for her. When she first came to us, it would have been unbearable -- nay, impossible -- for her to spend so much time alone. Too many fears and anxieties. Now she is comfortable with herself, and comfortable in our house, and she is developing a new skill, the ability to play alone.

Community is important; connection to others is important. But there's also something tremendously valuable in being able to enjoy your own company. She played by herself for a while, came out and connected with me for a while, then went back to the world of her imagining. I think she is striking a good balance.

Twitter Jealousy: The Open Adoption Symposium Happens Without Me

2011-09-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Symposium Opening Adoption is taking place this weekend in Richmond, VA, and I'm not there. I really, really, really wish I was, but I'm not. Instead, I've been torturing myself all day by reading tweets by people who are. It's sweet torture. Here are a few of my favorites:

From https://twitter.com/#!/hedra:

We are still paying the price for the generations of secrecy. (Pertman) #OAsymposium

"Goal of adoption is to help kids feel 'at home'." To me, that means at home in adoptive family and in family of origin. #OAsymposium

Need to stop talking about forming families & start talking about forming successful families. Much broader, longer commitment. #OAsymposium

From https://twitter.com/#!/LavLuz:

#Openadoption confuses child? JGritter responds: Is it your experience that when you're well-informed you're confused? #adoptionsymposium

J Gritter: Growing up in a closed #adoption is like coming into a mystery movie 15 min late. You've missed the connetions #adoptionsymposium

From https://twitter.com/#!/OpenAdoptBlogs:

"Commercialism in adoption is as damaging as secrecy." - James Gritter at #OAsymposium

I'm glad this symposium is happening. I'm glad the conversation is taking place. Next time, I just need to make sure I find a way to get myself there.

Returning to the City of my Birth ... with my Birth Mother

2011-09-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

About nine years ago, I spent a weekend with my biological mother and aunt in the city of my birth. We picked the city because it was a half way point between my aunt's home and mine; my mother flew in from out-of-state and met us both there. I had my two-year-old daughter with me as well. It happened to be an especially difficult time in my life; I was going through a painful divorce and was parenting on my own. I was extremely sleep deprived, and perhaps as a result, my memories of the weekend are not especially crisp. I can tell you that we ate in restaurants, browsed a museum or two, and all shared one hotel room, but what mostly stands out in my mind from that visit is the hospital.

The hospital that I was born in is on hill, visible from various points in the city, and it seemed that everywhere we went, there it was. I didn't grow up in that city, and my mother didn't stay there either. She had only come there during the last part of her pregnancy, after she had begun to show, to hide out in a cousin's apartment until I was born. The city wasn't our city, but there was that hospital, hovering above us throughout the weekend, a reminder of the one event that linked us to the location.

Being reunited in adulthood with a biological family that you didn't grow up with is a bit like suddenly acquiring a new sense, or an aspect of a sense. For example, I recently read about a woman who (through vision therapy) acquired the ability to see in 3D after not being able to do so for most of her life. She described how amazing it was to experience the world in this new way as an adult. Being with my biological family is a bit like that for me. I am more keenly aware of "relatedness" than I presumably would be if I had always known genetic mirroring. That weekend in the city of the looming hospital, I experienced that heightened sense of awareness together with the strange sensation of coming full circle.

A Birthday Card Dilemma

2011-09-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

We bought a birthday card today for Ashley's sister. Not Mackenzie. The other sister. The one I don't write about much on this blog because I've never met her. This would be Ashley's biological sister, who is two years older than she is and who was placed for adoption in a different family.

Unfortunately, that family is not as open as we are to openness in adoption, so we have not managed to get the sisters together. (The primary sticking point is that there is a younger brother who was born after the girls came into state care. Ashley knows about him and the older sister doesn't ... and her family doesn't want her to find out. Ashley adores this brother and sees him often. There is no way to guarantee that she won't mention him if we get the girls together.)

Ashley feels a connection to this sister, but standing in the card aisle today, it was painfully obvious that many of the choices would not do for our situation. Any cards with references to "the great times we share" were out. This one would be perfect, she said at one point, if I could add a "d" -- in other words, change the tense from present to past, as in "the great times we shared."

We eventually found a card with a simple message that basically just said: "You are awesome, Sister. Happy Birthday!" It will do for now, but I hope that someday their relationship will again be present tense.

"Visit Backlash" in Open Adoption and Blended Families

2011-09-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

Ashley's first visit with her biological mother after moving in with us came only a short time after her transition into our household. In fact, the visit had been postponed to give her a few weeks to get settled. I expected that this might be an emotional visit for her, and I was ready. Though I wasn't involved in the actual visit (at this stage of things, visits were supervised by a social worker, who picked her up at our house and then returned her afterwards), I took the full day off from work so I could support her. I knew that we might encounter regressive or difficult behavior or expressions of grief and sadness. I knew that Ashley had been looking forward to the visit and would likely experience post-visit letdown.

I call this "visit backlash," and I was already experienced with it from my older daughter. Though Mackenzie is my biological daughter, we are a blended family. Her father and I split up when she was a little over a year old, and he moved to a distant state shortly after that. My current (and final) husband officially adopted her when she was 5, and had already been "Daddy" for several years before that. Mackenzie sees her biological father a couple times a year. Nowadays, the visits are not a problem at all, but in the early days they were tough. Seeing him seemed to open up the wound of losing him, and I noticed that we would spend weeks "putting her back together" after one of these visits. We would see a regression to younger behaviors as well as clingy tendencies, irritability, and disruption of sleep habits. How did we handle it? We simply did everything in our power to meet her needs and to be really present for her during this time of mourning and readjustment. It was parenting as usual -- lots of love, lots of one-on-one attention -- just cranked up an extra notch or two.

I did the same with Ashley. She arrived home with a bag of gifts from her first mother that she was excited to show me. She seemed happy, but a little wound up. At times her speech became "young," even nonsensical or difficult to follow. I just followed her lead, letting her direct the play. Eventually, she ended up creating a puppet show. I no longer remember the exact themes, but I remember being aware at the time that she was using the puppet show to process her emotions around the visit. Her energy continued to be a little bit "off" for the rest of the day -- she was OK, just not relaxed. I continued to give her a lot of focused attention throughout the day, and, actually, throughout the weekend. By the time she returned to school on Monday morning, she seemed pretty well grounded.

Some adoptive parents see visit backlash as a reason to discontinue visits. Clearly these visits can't be good for the child, they say. Just look at how the child behaves afterwards! I take a different view. I see the backlash as a stage, something to walk through with your child as you help them heal from wounds of loss and separation. Also, it's temporary. We saw with Mackenzie, and then experienced the same thing with Ashley, that the backlash became less pronounced with each visit. Now we really don't experience it at all with either of them, though we have learned that it is important (especially with Ashley) to end each visit with a word or two about the next visit, even if it's just to say "OK, so we'll be in touch to plan the next visit." Understandably, many children find it uncomfortable (as would many adults) to end a visit on a note of uncertainty, not knowing if or when they will see the other parent again, so we make a point of departing with at least a loose plan for future contact.

NaBloPoMo Day 20

2011-09-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

Today's NaBloPoMo prompt is "What point in time would you like to return to and live again?"

I am answering honestly when I say that there is no time I would rather be in than the present. There are things I miss about being younger. I miss the energy I once had and the feeling of strength and confidence that accompanied my younger, more athletic body. I wouldn't mind turning back the clock to the skin I had in my twenties. And sometimes, yes, I miss the carefree feeling of being responsible for no one but myself. But would I really go back? Of course not.

I wouldn't go back to a time before before Ashley was in my life. Or Mackenzie. Or my husband. Or my birth family. Nor am I willing to trade in even the tiniest fragment of the knowledge and experience I have gained.

I once participated in a workshop where I was asked to close my eyes and imagine myself at my fullest power. What immediately popped into my head was an image of myself with long gray hair. This may be because the neighborhood I grew up in happened to be populated by older women. I found them all fascinating and I would go from house to house visiting. I spent many hours sitting by their feet, listening to the amazing stories they would tell. Since that early age, I have always known what I want be when I grow up: an old woman.

I hope I may be lucky enough to live to see my dream come true. In the meantime, I will try my best to be present for each moment along the way.

Returning Ashley to Miss D's

2011-09-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

During that long, difficult time when Ashley was my daughter in my heart, but not legally anything to me, not even yet my foster daughter, thanks to a bureaucratic snag, I had to return her after each visit to her foster mother, Miss D. This stretch of time was difficult for all involved. Ashley had been told that we wanted to adopt her and didn't fully understand why she couldn't move in with us. As she began to bond with me and my husband, she began to separate emotionally from Miss D. This is a natural development and was her way of preparing to leave someone who had been "mom," if only temporarily, but it caused problems.

Miss D is a loving, strict woman who had been doing foster care since the early 1980s. She once told me that of all the children who had been placed with her over the years, Ashley was the most challenging. Ashley is a child to whom the words "obstinate" and "strong-willed" have been applied, though my husband and I prefer "free-spirited." In any case, she gave Miss D a run for her money, but Miss D, to her credit, never gave up on her as previous foster mothers had. Ashley and Miss D had adapted somewhat to each other, and things had been going relatively well in the months before my husband and I came into the picture.

Unfortunately, Ashley's way of separating from Miss D in preparation for the transition to our family was to begin acting out. The social worker explained that this was normal and happens frequently in such situations. It was a sign that Ashley was ready to move on. All would have been fine if only Ashley could have moved in with us at that point, but because we were stuck in red tape, she had to stay at Miss D's, even though it was clearly no longer the right place for her.

Oh, how I dreaded walking up to Miss D's door to drop Ashley off. Ashley didn't want to go. I didn't want her to go. And Miss D was overwhelmed with the stress of dealing with the behaviors that Ashley was exhibiting in her home. She would meet me at the door and vent. I didn't blame her. I was frustrated, too. But there we were, stuck in a situation that neither of us could change.

I am happy to say that when I walk up to Miss D's door now, as I occasionally do with Ashley when we return for a visit, it is with much lighter emotions. She is delighted to see how Ashley has thrived in her new, permanent home. She laughs and tells me how worried she was that my husband and I would not prove up to the challenge of parenting this particular child, and how happy she is to have been proven wrong. I in turn am grateful to Miss D, for the love and safe haven she provided to Ashley on her journey.

A Homecoming of Sorts

2011-09-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Ashley returned home, in a way -- not to a home that she'd been to before, but to a place full of people who consider her to be a family member, which she is. It is a house where she is loved, where photos of her hang on the wall, where she is mentioned in prayers. I am talking about her biological grandmother's house. She got to visit with her mother, her little brother, a baby cousin, her grandmother, her great grandmother, and a slew of aunts and uncles, some of whom are not much older than she is.

Ashley was happy to be there, and she was happy to come home to us, her other family, after the visit. What I've noticed about open adoption in our case is that the more we open it, the more natural it becomes. There was no drama or tension involved in yesterday's visit, though there was gratitude. It was just day with family. Our definition of family just happens to be a little broader than the norm.

My Adoption Reunion Search, Part Two

2011-09-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

I read once that the typical adoptee who searches is female and in her early thirties. I fit that profile exactly. I was 30, recently married, and working at a job that I expected to be at for a while; in other words, my life was pretty stable -- enough so that I finally felt ready to take on the emotional risks of a search.

I knew that the state I was born in had an adoption reunion registry. The way this works is that if both the mother and the child register, the registry will send each party the other's identifying information. It seemed like a long shot, but I decided I might as well start there. I sent off my information in the mail, and a week later I held the reply in my hand. My birth mother had registered, ten year earlier.

The address and phone number that they sent were outdated, but knowing that she had wanted to be found, at least at one point, gave me the courage to take the next step. It required a bit of mild deception, but was surprisingly easy. I did it on my lunch break at work one day.

Using the newspaper clipping that my adoptive mother had given me, I called the library where my birth mother had been working at the time of her marriage. I said that I was trying to locate an old family friend who had worked at the library some years ago. I asked if there might be anybody there who could help me locate her. The friendly librarian who answered the phone said why yes, she knew her. No, she didn't live in town anymore, but her ex-mother-in-law did and would probably know where she was. I called the mother-in-law, and she answered right away. This time I said I was planning a surprise party for someone and trying to track down this person's old friends. Within minutes, I had my birth mother's current address.

I sent her a note and included with it my own wedding announcement so that she would have the same biographical bits about me that I had about her. Then I went away for Thanksgiving and tried to put the matter out of my mind. When I returned to my apartment, my answering machine was blinking. There was her voice on the machine, saying how happy she was to hear from me, telling me how to reach her.

I called her back the next day. I had a list of questions. This was before I had a cordless phone, so I sat on the wooden floor in my foyer. We talked for two hours. After that came numerous letters and eventually email. We met in person for the first time about 6 months later, and by that point it felt like we already knew each other because of all the correspondence we had exchanged.

We have kept in touch ever since, and today, she is simply a part of my life. We communicate mostly through email and facebook, and we see each other in person about once a year, usually for a week. At first I struggled with loyalty issues, and I still do to some extent, but for the most part I have managed to let go of that, and to instead embrace the number two. I have two mothers; I love two mothers; I am loved by two mothers. This is my reality. It really is that simple.

I Gave My Adopted Daughter Back to Her Birth Mother

2011-09-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, I stooped to sensationalism with that headline. No, Ashley hasn't gone anywhere. She is still very much my daughter.

But here's what I've learned so far from my journey through open adoption. You can give something back without giving it away. To the contrary, Ashley's bond with me has only strengthened as I have facilitated increased visitation with her biological family.

Is the headline true? Did I give Ashley back to her first mother, Erica? I believe so. But don't take my word for it. Let Erica tell you herself, in her own words.

Open Adoption Roundtable #29

2011-09-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

The "assignment" for Open Adoption Roundtable #29 is to pick a favorite post on one's own blog and explain the reasons for the choice. I chose Love Is Not a Pie because it was one of the first blog posts I wrote (I composed it for BlogHer before I had even set up my own personal blog at this location), because the name for my blog came from this post, and because it summarizes my personal philosophy ... about open adoption and life.

You'll find links to lots of other great posts there as well. A few of my favorites are "Sister, Sister" (this one brought tears to my eyes and shows so beautifully what open adoption can be), "I'm Just as Scared of You as You are of Me" (which address the fear that can exist on both sides of the open-adoption equation while also touching on the benefits), and "This is Perfect for When I Can't Sleep" (a touching description of a birth mother's love, with music).

I found a few new blogs to follow, and you may as well. Happy browsing!

Lunch with Erica

2011-09-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

I had lunch today with Erica, Ashley's birth mother. It is something we do every once in a while, just the two of us. As usual, we talked the whole time and would probably have sat there for hours longer if we hadn't both needed to get back to our jobs. (Working for a living can be so inconvenient.)

I feel incredibly blessed to have been paired with Erica for this journey of open adoption because, quite frankly, she's awesome. Yes, she's made mistakes in her life (mistakes that resulted in the termination of her right to parent Ashley and three siblings), but she isn't afraid to admit them or even to talk about them publicly, as she now sometimes does. She has worked hard to turn her life around, and because of that hard work she is now able to be a beneficial part of Ashley's life ... and mine.

I know that not all relationships between adoptive and first mothers are going to be like mine with Erica. We're lucky; we have a lot in common and find it very easy to get along. But we wouldn't have realized this if we hadn't first taken those initial steps to get to know one another. Erica asked to meet my husband and me early on in the process, when she first learned that we would be Ashley's adoptive parents. That meeting went well, and I took the next step after Ashley's adoption was finalized, inviting Erica to join me for what turned out to be the first of many lunch meetings.

Successful open adoptions originating via foster care are a rarity. I understand that there are situations where a high degree of openness is not possible (as because of distance) or not in the best interest of the child. But I'm also aware that it would have been very easy for Erica and me to have missed this opportunity and, instead, to have erected a wall of suspicion and distrust between us. (In that scenario, the person to really lose out would be Ashley.) And I can't help but wonder what would happen if more first parents and last parents would make a habit of getting together for lunch.

My Adoption Reunion Search, Part One

2011-09-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

"Do you think you will search for your birth mother someday?" That's a question I was asked, in various forms, throughout my life.

For many years, I answered it automatically, without much thought. In my childhood years, the answer was, "Oh, yes, probably when I'm older" (in other words, that's a matter for a distant future that I can't even quite imagine yet). Then, in my teen years it became, "No. I have one mother already, and that's more than enough, thank you very much." But it wasn't actually something I thought about a lot. It was too big and scary to approach, even in my thoughts.

The complexity of emotions for a pre-search adoptee is mind-boggling. The adoptee may have lived for years with denial and unprocessed grief over loss ("Why would I search? I'm just fine as I am."), and then there's the loyalty issue ("Am I betraying my adoptive family if I search?"), and the big R, fear of rejection ("What if she doesn't want to be found? What if she refuses contact?"). I hadn't actually consider the fact that it might not be possible to find her, but I now know that, because of sealed records and denial of access to original birth certificates, many adoptees can't get past square one. In fact, I feel a little guilty about what I am about to write because I'm aware that so many other adoptees have struggled and continue to struggle with lack of access to the information that would allow them to search.

For me, adoption grief and awareness of loss began to rise to the surface in my twenties, but I still hesitated to approach my adoptive mother with questions, and I couldn't bring myself to begin the search without her knowledge. Then one day, the topic arose spontaneously in a conversation between us. She was very open to talking about it; in fact, she had been expecting the conversation for years but apparently believed that I needed to be the one to initiate it. And not only was she prepared to talk about it, she also had some surprising information.

There was a crack in the seal of my closed adoption. My adoptive mother should not have known the identity of my biological one -- and she couldn't, or wouldn't, explain how she got the information -- but somehow, she knew the name. Not only that, but one day during my childhood she had opened up the paper to see my first mother's wedding announcement. She had cut it out and saved it, waiting for the day when I would ask about "my beginnings," as she put it.

And so I suddenly found myself in possession of a newspaper clipping of with a photo of a woman who looked a lot like me and all of the little tidbits of biographical information that are typically included in such write-ups. The bride had attended graduate school (as had I); she had lived in various places in the United States (as had I); she was a librarian (I was -- and am -- a lover of books).

But I didn't search right away. For a while, just having these little pieces of information was enough.

To Be Continued ...

Read part two here.

Looking Back: The Wallpaper (NaBloPoMo Day 12)

2011-09-12T17:44:00.000-07:00

I had outgrown the babyish print that had been on my bedroom walls since before we moved into the house; I was in second grade, and my mother had told me I could pick out whatever I wanted to replace it. Off to the wallpaper store we went, each with our own visions of what the future room might look like.

When I spotted the paper, I knew immediately that it was the one for me. I wish I could show you a photo, but you'll have to use your imagination. Picture an explosion of large, bright flowers. Now, double the brightness. Hot pink, shocking purple, parrot green. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

My mother gently tried to steer me toward other choices. She reminded me that I would have to live with my choice for years to come. She coached me to envision the paper, not as it was in small sample in my hand, but on every wall. She allowed that it was lovely, but perhaps a little bright.

But I was firm, and, to her credit, she stuck to her word. She had said I could choose, and I did. "Are you absolutely certain?" she asked, one last time, before paying at the register. Yes, I was sure.

My father hung the paper without comment, and only the slightest twinkle of amusement in his eyes. We finished the room off with a green shag rug. The result -- to my second-grade self -- was glorious; I had the most beautiful room in all the world.

The NaBloPoMo writing prompt for Monday, September 12,2011 was "Write about your childhood bedroom." Learn more aboutNaBloPoMo at http://nablopomo.blogher.com/.

A Tale of Two Necklaces

2011-09-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

Today I was in Ashley's room and I happened to catch sight of two necklaces, two prized possessions, laid out carefully side by side:

The necklace with the flip-flop charm was a gift from her first mother, received during one of Ashley's earlier foster-care placements. It came with the following note, which Ashley keeps taped up in her room:

The heart-shaped "Forever" necklace has the date of her adoption finalization inscribed on the back; it was a gift from my husband and myself, given on that day.

No Returns

2011-09-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

In a haunting recently published post on First Mother Forum, Lorraine Dusky writes of hearing her relinquished daughter say, "My parents could have returned me. They could have sent me back.” Dusky continues: "Could have sent me back, like goods in a consignment store that nobody wants. If Jane was 'chosen' like a pair of shoes, she could be returned. Could have sent me back -- what non-adopted person ever thinks that? There’s nowhere to send one’s biological child. Could have sent me back. The concept is a particular demon of the adopted."

I don't believe I ever consciously considered the possibility of my adoptive parents "returning" me, but I'm sure the idea lurked in my subconscious. I was a compliant adoptee -- "never any trouble at all," as my adoptive mother has told me many times. No, I don't believe I thought they would send me away, but I wasn't taking any chances. I wrote recently about my fantasies of running away. That's one thing, but to be sent away -- rejected -- is an adoptee's deepest fear.

The Home I Left, and the Longing for Return

2011-09-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

Today's NaBloPoMo prompt is "If you could return to a place you once lived, where would you go?" This is an easy one for me because it's something that is always on my mind.

I grew up on a rocky chunk of coast, an island connected to the mainland by a bridge. Locals refer to the island as "The Rock," and that's an apt descriptor.

One thing that adoption gave me was a rock-solid base. Not only is the island itself composed of granite, but my adoptive parents are similarly rock-solid in their values and stability. They have been married for more than 50 years, have lived in the same house for almost 45, and are pillars in their community. They have never faltered or failed to be there for me when I needed them.

The island is also stunningly beautiful with take-your-breath-away scenery and easy access to nature. And, of course, there's the ocean. My ocean. When I return to visit my adoptive parents, one of the first things I do is walk through the streets of the small town to the path that leads to the water. When I catch sight of the first patch of blue, my heart quickens, and when I reach the point where the full bay opens to my view, all anxiety washes out of me. I breathe in, and everything is right. I find I can think clearly; answer to problems I have struggled with come to me easily.

When I am there I sometimes think, "I don't know how I can bear to live apart from this."

But then I return to the place where I have lived for the past 18 years. It is not beautiful. It's not rock solid; in fact, it's crumbling -- an urban area struggling to hold on in times of economic decline. It is not a place I would have picked, but it seems to have picked me. I came here for a job and stayed. It was here that I gave birth to one daughter, met my husband, and found my second daughter by way of foster adoption. Erica, my adopted daughter's first mother, is here, and she and I are currently full of plans regarding work that we want to do locally by way of our fledgling organization Ashley's Moms. And I am connected to the community in other ways. Friends. Church.

And so I will remain here for now. It is not yet time to return permanently to the other place I call home. But the pull is always there, and I've warned my husband to be prepared. One day, I may wake up and say, "I can't stand it anymore -- I've got to get back to The Rock."

What's in a Name: How I Became Rebecca Hawkes

2011-09-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

Today my approach to the theme of "return" is genealogy, or the return to ancestral roots.

For many adoptees, this is a complicated matter. The adoptive family's history is not really our own, and if we have not succeeded in locating our family of origin, our biological roots may remain a mystery. Like medical history, this was assumed to be something that we could live without, but it is a loss, one that adds to the complexity that so many adoptees already experience around matters of identity.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have reconnected with my "blood mother," and one of the many gifts that I received from this reunion was a genealogy. And in my case, there was a surprising twist. When I shared the information with my adoptive mother, she noticed a similarity. We did some more research and discovered that six generations back, my two mothers' genealogical lines converge at single point: the union of Ebenezer and Anna (Breed) Hawkes.

And so I am Rebecca Hawkes. It is not my legal name nor is the one that I am generally known by in my offline life. But is the name that I have claimed as my own in this space and for my open-adoption advocacy because it represents and unites the two parts of myself and my history.

An Adoptee's Fantasy of Return

2011-09-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a very loving adoptive family, yet throughout my childhood I fantasized about escaping from it. I would fall asleep at night thinking over my plans to run away. These plans were very vague; I thought little of how I would survive or what I would do after I set off ... but I knew in which direction I would head. It wasn't until many years later, as an adult, that the significance of that direction struck me. I was planningto head toward the hospital in which I was born, the place where the separationfrom my biological mother occurred. It was a fantasy of return.

I wonder ifthis is common among adoptees? Does a desire to return our families oforigin lurk beneath the surface of our consciousness, rising up periodically inways beyond our control? I would love to hear from other adoptees on thissubject. Have you experienced anything similar?

NaBloPoMo: Day 6

2011-09-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

Today'swriting prompt for NaBloPoMo is"How do you feel when you return home at the end of the day?"

Well, let'ssee. On a typical day I work six hours at the office then pick up my daughtersfor dance or acting or whatever's on the after-school schedule for the day.When I walk through the door to my house after that I am tired and still facingdinner, homework (and accompanying whining), Ashley's vision therapyexercises (and accompanying whining), and the bedtime routine. So, naturally, I feel ...

Joyful!

Or at least,that's how I feel when I remember to practice gratitude. Yes, it's a crazylife, but I wouldn't really trade it for another.

Returning to Running in Middle Age

2011-09-05T08:53:00.000-07:00

Somewhere inside of me is the skinny runner I used to be -- the one who could run a mile in close to 5 minutes, who for a short time in college ran 70 miles a week, and who completed the Boston Marathon, albeit as an unofficial entry.

I am 25 pounds heavier, and a decade older, than when I last ran for fitness, and 40 pounds heavier than when I ran competitively. But I've still got decent form, and somewhere in my muscles is the memory of what it feels like to be strong and confident in my body.

I have recently started a variation of the popular Couch to 5K program, alternating walking and running for a 30 minute workout. My old self would have scoffed at what I count as a workout these days. What I consider serious running now would have been a mere warm up for my younger self.

I am determined to claw my way back to fitness, or some version of it. I was a relatively active person before becoming a mother; I exercised regularly at the gym during the week and in the winter I skied every weekend. And I kept up some semblance of a fitness routine in the early years of motherhood. When my first child was still able to be confined to a stroller, I would strap her in and walk and walk. But as she became more active, somehow I became less. My priorities changed, and working-out just kept getting pushed down the list.

My daughters are older now. They can work-out with me (as they sometimes do) or be left alone for short periods of time as I walk-jog around the neighborhood. It's time to return to a healthier me.

I'm at the age where my biological mother began to get heavier, and in the past year especially my body has begun to move in that direction. Is biology my destiny, or can I successfully fight back with diet and exercise? I don't need or want to be a twig, but this body I am walking around in these days doesn't feel like mine. I'll never be the runner I once was; those days are past. But I'm sure there's an older-but-fit version of myself in me somewhere. I am working my way toward her one day, and one workout, at a time.

Adopting an Older Child from Foster Care

2011-09-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

People often ask me why I decided to adopt from foster care. As with so many things in life, there is no one simple answer. My husband and I had a desire to grow our family and a vague awareness that there was a need for parents to adopt older children, who are considered difficult to place compared to infants and toddlers. (I'm even more conscious of that need now, having since acquired additional awareness about the challenges faced by teens who age out of foster care without finding permanency with adoptive families.) I thought that my husband and I would be good candidates to parent an older child. Though I had loved parenting my biological daughter Mackenzie when she was an infant, I had also enjoyed moving into later stages of child development. I didn't really want to return to the baby stage. I'm a word person -- I like interacting with children when they have acquired language and I enjoy them even more as their sophistication with language increases; my husband is similar to me in this regard. I have enjoyed every stage of parenting, and I have never wanted to go back to an earlier one. I seem to like each stage better than the one before. (So far, at least. I'm aware that I may feel differently when the teen years arrive.) Adopting a child who was close in age to the one we already had allowed us to stay at the same general stage of development, more or less. (Because of her challenging history, there are some ways that our adopted daughter is developmentally "younger" than her chronological age, but that discrepancy is decreasing already and will likely continue to dissipate.)

Prior to becoming a foster-adopt parent, I had read a lot of books about trauma and attachment issues (including Heather Forbes' Beyond Consequences books, which were especially helpful in increasing my understanding of the child's fears and anxieties, though, to be honest, I never quite mastered her techniques). I believed that I had a pretty good grasp of the challenges we were likely to encounter, and I believed that my husband and I were up to those challenges. I underestimated. I really could not have imagined just how challenging the first year would be. Ashley entered our home with a lot of emotional baggage and behavioral issues. In the beginning, we experienced melt-downs almost daily. She swore at us. She threw things. She destroyed things. She hit.

But after each one of these melt-downs (and she wasn't always the one having the melt-down -- sometimes it was me!), we would find our way back to connection, and she learned that we were going to stick with her no matter what. We weren't going to send her away (as previous foster parents had done) when she "misbehaved." Over time, the difficult behaviors decreased and the good days increased. Eventually, the good days became the norm. Today, she is a different child. The aggressive behaviors are gone, and the truly amazing child that she is has emerged.

Would I go back and do it all again? In a second! Yes, those early months of her placement with us were difficult, but the joyful outcome is worth every one of those "labor pains."

Coming Home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up

2011-09-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

Oneobvious way that word "return" is significant to adoptees is thereconnection to the biological family, which so many of us seek by way ofreunion as adults. I will certainly write more about that before the month isout, but the subject that is most alive for me today is another return ofsignificance to adoptees -- the return to self, or to some part of our selvesthat we lost when we were separated from our biological roots. Reunion is tiedto this idea; we are searching for our families but we are also searching forourselves.

NancyVerrier's book Coming Home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up playedan important role in my own journey back to self. This book has been criticizedbecause of the author's tendency to overgeneralize. Verrier's critics have apoint; some of her descriptions of adoptees are a bit like astrologicalfortunes in their broadness. Sure, adoptees may have the traits that sheascribes to them, but can't such traits (such as fear of rejection) be found inthe general population as well? Undoubtedly they can, but that doesn't meanthat adoptees aren't more likely than others to have certain tendencies formedfrom our experience of separation.

For me,so much of the book rang true. I saw myself on every page. It was as if I hadbeen seeing things a little out of focus my whole life, and when I read thisbook everything shifted into focus for the first time. Coming Home toSelf started me on the path to healing, and I have made tremendousprogress.

But I'mstill a little off. One of the points that Verrier makes is that adoptees havedifficulty knowing ourselves, and being ourselves. Because we are so afraid ofrejection, many of us tend to be chameleons, attempting to become whateverothers want us to be.

I recently startedRhonda Britten's book Change Your Lifein 30 Days : A Journey to Finding Your True Self. Thefirst question that she asks (and it is one of several that the reader is meantto answer on day one of the program) is something like "What would it looklike if you were really true to yourself?" (Apologies to Britten if Ihaven't quoted this exactly; I don't have the book with me currently.)

When Iencountered that question, I felt a mild panic rising up in me, and I knew itwas going to take me a lot longer than 30 days to complete Britten's program.That is no easy question for me to answer. It is the question I have beenworking on for years, and I'm still working on it. Strip away the anxiety, thepeople-pleasing, the intense desire for belonging (coupled, confusingly, withapprehension about closeness), and who am I? For adoptees, definition of selfis complicated by divergent influences: the biological, the environmental, andthe trauma of separation. For many of us,the journey home to self is not a single trip, but an ongoing journey. And yes,that's a statement that can be made of non-adoptees, too. It's just a littlebit truer for us.

When Are You Coming Home? Soon, Sweetie, But Not Quite Yet.

2011-09-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

My assignment for myself this month is not just to post something every day, but to try to tie each post somehow to the theme of return and my overall focus on adoption issues.

Tonight the return part is easy. "Return" is what I'm not quite ready to do yet. My house is full of tween girls: my two and a friend for each of them. I left my husband home to deal with it all and slipped out for a rare night of grown-up company. I have left the party at my friend's house, now, but I'm not quite ready to head home just yet. It is 10 p.m. my time, day two of NaBloPoMo, and I haven't written my post. I could try to slip quietly into the house and hope nobody notices as I sneak up the stairs to my writing chair, but I just can't risk it. Chances are somebody will want me for something, and that will lead to something else, and then ... Well, you know how it goes.

So I'm hiding out at a local fast food joint that is trying (half successfully) to pass itself off as an Internet cafe. Free WiFi and no interruptions -- I'm not complaining!

But soon I'll be heading back to all that young energy, and I will be glad. I like having a house full of girls. I like being the house of sleepovers.

This is another return, of sorts, for us. When Ashley first moved in with us, we had to take a break from such things for while. The dynamic of our family was just too unstable initially for any inclusion of outside friends. Incorporating an 8-year-old child with a trauma history into your family is no easy task. A lot of people are hesitant to adopt from foster care, and I understand the hesitation. It isn't easy. 100% worth it -- but not easy.

But now, we are the house of sleepovers again. And Ashley has just called me on the phone asking when I will be home. So, I guess it is in fact time for me to return.

NaBloPoMo: Day One

2011-09-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

So I've decided to do NaBloPoMo for September. I have no idea if I can pull this off without neglecting my family or my paycheck job, but this month's theme of "return" was just too tempting to pass up. Just so many directions I can go with that. The basic idea of NaBloPoMo is simple; you merely have to post something every day for one month. That's it. Easy peasy. Well, we'll see.

Today's writing prompt ("What magical creature would you love to meet?") doesn't grab me, nor do I understand its connection to the theme, but I've been mulling over various ways that "return" resonates for me. Today, I think I'll start with an obvious one for September, the return to school. Yes, I know, it's been done already. The blogosphere (or at least the mommy-blogger part of it) has been fairly crackling with back-to-school posts this past week. I haven't jumped on the bandwagon until now because, to be honest, back-to-school has been a relative nonevent for us this year. The girls were a little sad that summer had ended, and they complained some about their new, treeless (post-tornado) playground, but mostly they seem glad to be back with their friends and back in the routine. Ashley's transition to "upper elementary" went smoothly -- so far nothing but positive comments.

But here's the thing, the very ordinariness of this fall's return to school is something to celebrate! Let's start, for instance, with the fact that this week Ashley said the words "I like school," and meant them in all sincerity. In her years of foster care, before her placement with us, school was not a positive experience, for her or for the school professionals. She was viewed as a "problem child," a disciplinary challenge. Academics were barely focused on; all of their energy went into controlling her, preventing her outbursts. These days I send her off to school without any concerns about serious behavioral issues. How's that for amazing?

Academically, she still struggles a little, but we are beginning vision therapy this week and I am hopeful that this will help. When I used Strabismus in my last post as a metaphor for the experience of being adopted, I was drawing on her situation. She has Strabismus, literally, and we've learned that she has to struggle to keep her eyes in focus, which is likely exhausting her, leaving little energy for learning.

Another celebration is that for the first time this year both of my daughters are in the same classroom, and this seems not to be an issue at all. Two years ago it would have been a disaster. People often ask me how Mackenzie handled getting a new sister, close to her own age, at 8-years-old. It wasn't pretty, believe me. Oh, she had wanted a sister so badly. She had begged, longed, and wished on a star for a sister. But as soon as that sister moved in, she did not want a sister ... at all. She would have given anything for an "undo" button.

That first year was so hard, and my husband and I got through it mainly by adopting a divide-and-conquer strategy. One with one child, the other with the other. It was a good investment in the long run, but challenging; each child got a lot of one on one time with a parent, but he and I got barely any with each other.

Things are so different now. I would say that Mackenzie and Ashley get along better than most siblings. That's not to say that there are never any problems -- no siblings get along all of the time -- but for the most part things are peaceful in our household. And in the classroom, too, apparently. What a long way we have come!

Double Vision: An Adoptee's View of Family

2011-08-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

I sometimes wish I knew what it would be like to not be adopted. If you are not adopted, please think about that for a moment. Think about the things that you take for granted. Think about the simple, natural connection between you and the people to whom you are related. Even if your relationship with your family is not 100% positive, there is a quality of your connection to them that you have probably never questioned; they simply ARE your family. They didn't choose you; you didn't choose them. You are connected to them by the interwoven threads of shared experience and biology.

For me, as an adopted person, things are not so simple. It occurred to me recently that being adopted is a bit like having Strabismus, or "Wandering Eye," a condition in which the two eyes don't quite work together as they should to create a single, unified picture. As a metaphor for the adoption experience, this translates to two separate visions of family. One eye sees the world through the lens of experience and upbringing. This is the "nurture" lens, connected to a definition of family as those people with whom I grew up, who cared for me, and shared the experiences of family life with me. The other eye is the lens of "nature," or biology. It sees family as those people who share my genetics and genealogy, who are related to me in spite of our lack of shared history.

Some people with Strabismus compensate by favoring one eye over the other, and some adopted people do so as well, metaphorically. There are adoptees who will tell you that their real family is the one that they grew up in. Period. There are even those who express distance from, and disdain for, their biological mothers by referring to the them as "incubators." On the other end of the spectrum are those who refer to their adoptive parents as "adopters," rather than parents, rejecting the adoptive definition of family in favor of a strictly biological one. But many of us find ourselves in the middle, struggling to hold two (at times contradictory) definitions of family simultaneously, striving to create a single, unified vision from these two divergent points of reference.

Can I say that my life would have been better if I hadn't been adopted? Would I be happier or psychologically healthier today? I can't say that with any certainty at all; who knows where that unknown path would have led. Most of the time I am able to accept, and even celebrate, my life for what it is and to see the duality of adoption as an enrichment rather than a detraction. Usually, I am thankful that I have the love of not just one but two families. But to be honest, I'm not always in that place of acceptance and gratitude. Sometimes I wish that instead of families, I simply had "a family."

Children in Open Adoptions Are Not Confused by Contact with Biological Families

2011-08-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

I was reading a list of Adoption Myths and Facts earlier today, and one myth in particular jumped out at me:

Having regular contact with the Natural family would be confusing and destructive to the adopted child and her family

Followed by the refuting statement:

Regular contact with the Natural family is less confusing than no contact and will reduce many of the pains and problems that face the adopted person as she lives her life

As someone who advocates open adoption, my views are obviously strongly in line with the second statement. The prevalence of the first belief is something that has long bothered me, especially when I encounter it among members of the psychiatric and therapeutic community.

About a year and a half ago, I was sitting in the office of one such professional discussing my daughter Ashley, who was at that time still my foster child. I mentioned that she had twice yearly visits with her biological mother, adding that she did well with the visits and that I intended to continue them following adoption. A look of concern crossed his face. "I don't know," he said. "Don't you think that will just be confusing for her?"

This was a pivotal moment -- one that could have sent my adoption journey off on a very different track. The visitation agreement that Ashley's biological mother had signed with the state included a clause stating that the visits could be stopped if a therapist believed they were not in Ashley's best interest. If I was looking for an "out," here was one being handed to me on a silver platter.

Fortunately, I wasn't looking for an out. And I also knew that even though this man was in the position of an expert, sitting behind a big desk with degrees hanging on the wall behind him, his education likely included little or no training specific to adoption. I knew that as someone who was herself adopted and who had read countless books and articles on adoption, I was the one who was in fact the expert on this subject. I spent the next 15 minutes educating him on the importance and endurance of the biological bond.

Can we really say that the second of these two statements is a "fact," or a proven scientific statement? No, probably not. But I can say with confidence that everything in my experience as an adopted person and in what I have seen so far as an adoptive mother in an open adoption supports the second statement. Ashley was very definitely "confused" (or more accurately, "traumatized") by her removal from her biological family, but my husband and I have not seen any evidence of confusion as we have continued (and, in fact, increased) her visitation with them. Nor have we seen any evidence that increased contact with the biological family is harmful to our adoptive one. To the contrary, we have seen Ashley's bond with us strengthen and we've noticed her seeming more relaxed and happy.

There are a lot of things about adoption that can be confusing to children. The separation from the biological family, and the various explanations that adults give for that separation, can be very confusing. But loving two families, and being loved by two families -- that's not confusing. It's actually pretty simple!

Are My Kids Too Old for “The Bedtime Routine”?

2011-08-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

My daughters are 10-years-old, and my husband and I still do a fairly elaborate bedtime routine with them involving reading, cuddling, and a lot of talking and listening. We have a system and a schedule, and each child gets one-on-one time with one or both parents.

To be honest, it can be exhausting, and there are times when I want nothing more than to crawl into bed myself and leave everyone else to fend for themselves. I’m aware that many parents have trained their kids out of needing such elaborate routines well before age 10. Why haven’t we done so?

Though it would certainly be easier if my daughters went to bed by themselves, I see so many advantages to doing things as we do. The bedtime routine is a cornerstone of our bond with them. Our days are busy, filled with school, work, after-school activities, homework, etc.. But the bedtime routine guarantees that we have at least some small amount of time for connection. Many of the most important conversations in our family happen in the hour before bed.

I actually don’t know how we would have made it through the last two years without "the routine." When our younger daughter (the just-turned-10 one, as opposed to the almost-11 one) joined our family as a pre-adoptive foster placement, our household was temporarily thrown into chaos. It’s not easy to integrate an 8-year-old child with a trauma history into a family, and in the beginning we had many rough days. The bedtime routine was one of the ways that we showed our new daughter that we cared for her; we cared enough to listen to her fears and to sit with her until she fell asleep. Eventually, we integrated foot massage, relaxing music, and other calming techniques into the routine to help her relax; bedtime for her became something to look forward to rather than something to dread. And it was at bedtime, also, that we introduced her to books and made reading a regular part of her life.

During that same time period, bedtime was when our older daughter cried in our arms and poured out all of her frustrations and regrets regarding this new sister -- the terrible, awful sister that she wished would go away. Bedtime was when we helped her process the complex swirl of emotions that she was experiencing as part of the major transition that was happening in her life.

Things are very different now; our younger daughter has made dramatic developmental and emotional progress and our older one no longer wishes the younger one would cease to exist. In fact, they seem to get along better than most siblings. And they are 10. Isn’t it time we dropped the bedtime routine?

I know there are those who would argue that it is high time we did so, but I’m just not ready to give it up yet. The fact that each child gets one-on-one time with a parent every day may be one of the very reasons that these siblings get along so well. And the reading and the conversations are also still just too valuable. Our family isn’t perfect; we squabble and disagree and sometimes say things that we regret saying … but because of the bedtime routine, we end each day on a positive note. I see my children maturing daily in so many ways, and I know that the time will come when the bedtime routine will pass out of existence. I don’t need to force its demise; it will simply come about eventually. When that happens, I will probably feel a mixture of relief and regret. I will l still want to prioritize the things I value now about the bedtime routine: connection and conversation. I’ll just have to work a little harder to fit them into our busy lives.

Is Open Adoption a False Promise?

2011-08-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

I follow a lot of adoption-related blogs and online groups -- some of which are very critical of adoption as an institution and some of which are very supportive of it. One of the concerns voiced by those who are less enamored of adoption (usually because of their own negative experience with it as an adoptee or birth parent) is that many birth parents today are being persuaded to sign away parental rights with promises of contact that never materialize. It’s a serious concern, and a complicated matter. Open adoption only works if the adoption really is open -- in practice, not just on paper -- and that takes commitment from both parties.

Why do adoptive parents enter into open adoption agreements? Some do so because of a firm belief that openness is best for all involved, but others may do so merely as a matter of expediency. Potential adoptive parents interested in domestic infant adoption may recognize that a willingness to engage in open adoption will make them more attractive matches for birth parents. If open adoption increases the likelihood of become parents, or has the potential to decrease the waiting time, it’s not surprising that prospective parents would be willing to consider it. But is openness truly what they want? Possibly not. Maybe they would prefer to have a biological child of their own or to adopt a child through a closed adoption; for such parents, openness is a compromise. I’m engaging in a lot of speculation here, and I certainly don’t mean to imply that all open adopters fall into this category -- but it seems very likely that some do.

A similar ambivalence can arise in foster-adopt situations. After a foster child’s goal has changed from reunification to adoption, many birth parents are persuaded to voluntarily relinquish parental rights in exchange for visitation rights. For the biological parent, it is usually a choice to gamble on the side of something rather than nothing -- they are afraid of losing all rights, so they voluntarily give up the bulk of them in exchange for the guarantee (or so they think) of some of them. The adopting parents may not be thrilled about the situation either -- they might prefer that the biological parent retain no rights at all -- but they agree because it paves the way for the adoption to move forward.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that my husband and I have such a contract with Erica, my daughter’s birth mother. Our agreement gives her the right to one supervised visit a year and stipulates that we must maintain a post office box where she can send gifts and letters. What makes our situation somewhat unusual is that we have decided to have visits on a significantly more frequent basis than our contract stipulates. Our frequent visitation schedule wouldn’t be right for all families but is right for ours.

Our open adoption works in large part because I want it to. As an adoptee myself, I probably have a stronger awareness than many adoptive parents of the importance of maintaining a relationship with the biological family whenever possible; the endurance of the biological connection is not just something I’ve read about -- I know it by experience. I feel incredibly lucky to have been paired with Erica for this journey of open adoption because I genuinely like her and admire her for the work she has done in recent years to turn her life around. Her stability is one important factor in our success, but so is my openness. Because to be honest, if I didn’t want this adoption to be an open one, I probably could find a way out of the agreement. Our contract, a fairly standard one for our area, includes lots of potential “outs” for the adoptive parents.

The enforceability of post-adoption agreements between adoptive and biological families varies from state to state, but there are certainly plenty of anecdotal stories out there on the Web about open adoption agreements that have fallen apart. As someone who self-identifies as an “open-adoption advocate,” I feel compelled to qualify that it is not the signing of agreements that I advocate but the creation of actual functioning relationships between adoptive and biological families. In fact, my message to potential adoptive parents might even be don’t sign it if you aren’t prepared to live it -- fully and joyfully.

But the other part of my message would be “be open to the possibility that openness may turn out to be a blessing.” You may discover, as I have, that openness contributes not only to your child’s well-being but to yours as well. You may find that your bond with your adopted child is actually strengthened by increased contact with the biological family. There are plenty of great stories out there about open adoptions that do work, and a positive, open, nonjudgmental attitude on the part of the adoptive parent or parents is typically an important factor in these successes. Yes, there are situations in which open adoption is not a possibility or not in the best interest of the child, but don’t be too eager to assume that your situation is one of them.

“Is it ethical to use promises of ongoing future contact with their children as an incentive for birth parents to relinquish parental rights?” (http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_openadoptbulletin.cfm). I’ve been mulling this question over quite a bit lately; it’s an important and complex issue. It would certainly seem very unethical for an adoptive parent or an adoption agency to promise contact with no intention of following through, but I suspect that is rarely, if ever, the case. More likely, people begin with good intentions, combined in some cases with a bit of ambivalence, and later things break down. Let’s face it, relationships are tricky, and open adoptions are just that: relationships.

What are the factors that contribute to success in open adoption and what can be done to ensure that more adoptions remain truly open while serving the needs of all involved, especially the child? These are questions that interest me. What is your take on the situation? Do you have a story of an open adoption that succeeded or failed or maybe ended up somewhere in the middle? If so, I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment or email me at ashleysmoms@gmail.com.

2011-07-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

These are busy and exciting times for me. Erica (my daughter's biological mother) and I recently launched Ashley's Moms, an organization devoted to helping families create successful open-adoptions. And this coming Tuesday (Aug 2), she and I will tell our story on the Internet radio show All Things Adoption. We also found out this week that we have been accepted to present at a conference in the fall.

My recent blog post on the term "birth mother" was picked to be a featured piece on BlogHer last week, and has generated some interesting discussion. Today, I'm a guest blogger on Foster2Forever.

On a personal level, I had the great joy of attending my biological brother's wedding in California last weekend and now I am in Maine visiting my adoptive family.

I Should Have Been a Criminal: How My Lack of Fingerprints Brought Our Adoption Process to a Grinding Halt

2011-07-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I missed my calling. I should have been a safe cracker or a cat burglar. It isn’t really the case that I have no fingerprints at all; I do. I just have “shallow groves,” or so I’ve been told. I don’t print well. Who could have predicted what problems this condition would cause!?

My husband and I had been drawn toward Ashley (then 7 years old) since seeing her profile on an online photo listing of “waiting children,” and we had become even more convinced that she was the child for us when we met her at a public adoption event. (See my guest post at Foster2Forever for more of that story.) We had taken the required class and our home-study was complete -- almost. We were waiting on just one thing: my fingerprints, as required by a new state law. I had “failed” one fingerprinting attempt, but I was scheduled to have them done a second time. I had been given instructions -- keep my hands dry; avoid hand creams, etc.

Since the fingerprinting was the only thing holding up approval of our home-study, and we believed that matter would soon be resolved, we had asked for and received permission for a draft of the home-study to be sent to Ashley’s social worker. To our joyful delight, we were matched with her. The social worker informed Ashley that we wanted to adopt her, and we began visitation, with the intention of gradually increasing the visits until she was with us all the time. Everything was going great.

Everything, that is, except for the small matter of the fingerprints. My second set of prints failed to meet the standards. I was sent for electronic fingerprinting, and that set failed as well. I was informed that the department would not fingerprint me a fourth time; three strikes and you’re out, apparently.

We had seemingly hit a bureaucratic dead end, but both our social worker and Ashley’s remained hopeful that the matter could be resolved. They scrambled for answers. Because the law was so new no one was certain how to proceed, but surely there must be a plan in place somewhere to cover situations like mine. We continued visitation with Ashley, including a successful overnight visit on the weekend. Her social worker told us that the department was ready to move her in with us … just as soon as the fingerprint matter was resolved. Another weekend visit was scheduled.

Then everything fell apart. We received a phone call on Saturday, an hour before the visit was supposed to begin. The questions about our situation had worked their way up through the hierarchy of the department until they had reached someone in authority who said, “These people never should have been allowed to begin visitation without a finalized home-study. Stop the process, immediately.” Ashley would not be staying with us that weekend.

Hearts broke on two sides of town. I cried. Ashley shut herself in her room at her foster home, refusing to come out. Ashley’s foster mother and social worker tried their best to explain the situation to her, but she couldn’t understand -- not really.

The weeks that followed were difficult and full of uncertainty. We were allowed to continue visits with Ashley, with a social worker present at first, and later, when someone in the department pointed out that they were holding us to a higher standard than babysitters and day care providers within the system, on our own. (To be a daytime-only care provider for a child in foster care you only need to have passed a CORI -- Criminal Offender Record Information -- check, which my husband and I had done.) But Ashley was not allowed to spend the night at our house, and she could not move in. We were in limbo.

I had made arrangements with my employer to take the month of August off so that I could have bonding time with Ashley before school began in the fall. But August passed, and then September, and still we waited for answers. It was an agonizing time; I cried, I prayed; I wrote to my state representatives; I lost sleep and weight. Ashley would sit on my lap during visits and pick up my hand to look at my fingers. “Have you fixed these yet?” she’d ask. At the visit's end, she’d ask, “Why can’t just I stay with you?”

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer; the FBI completed an alternate check on me in October, and Ashley moved in with us at that month. A little over a year later, her adoption was finalized. I probably don’t even need to tell you that I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Would I have preferred an easier journey? You bet! But I wouldn’t change the end destination.

In a recent guest post on the blog Foster2Forever, Rita L. Soronen, President & CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, wrote “there are … many challenges that anyone jumping into the child welfare system faces -- unresponsive agencies, paperwork, system delays, and lack of post-adoption resources, to name just a few.... But we cannot give up.” I’ll second that. Our case was an extreme example, but there was never any question of giving up. And although the pre-placement experience was highly stressful, now it is simply part of our story. It was the path we needed to walk to bring an amazing child into our home.

My Birth Mother Doesn't Like the Term “Birth Mother”

2011-07-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

One of the first commonalities that my birth mother and I discovered when we reestablished contact shortly after my 30th birthday is that we are both wordy people: readers, writers, storytellers. So it was perhaps inevitable that we would eventually get into a discussion of the language of adoption. She and I have many things in common, but one thing we differ on is the word “birth mother.” She doesn’t like it. I’m rather fond of it.

For her, the word “birth” refers to an event that happened and passed in our relationship, whereas her connection to me continued. “Birth mother” doesn’t reflect that her mothering of me didn’t end; it continued even through the years that we were separated.

She likes “blood mother,” which reflects a connection between us that is more enduring. But I’ve never really warmed to that one. With its “blood brother” association, it calls to mind an image of the two of us in a club house making a solemn pact. In a recent e-mail conversation, she hinted that she likes “blood mother” for that very reason. “It implies sacrifice,” she wrote, “and a deliberate chosen bond. I choose to connect with you and to maintain that connection. I want a pact. I want a ritual: Maybe write my name in ink on a copy of your birth certificate….” (See, I told you she was a word person.)

And yet for me the “blood brother” association remains problematic; it suggests two people who aren’t biologically related becoming related symbolically through ritual. The crux of my relationship with my birth mother is the opposite. We are related, and nothing can change that. Not the fact that the law doesn’t acknowledge us as such or that her name doesn’t appear on my birth certificate. Not thirty years of separation. The bond between us simply is.

I use “birth mother” and “birth mom” largely for reasons of practicality (they are the established words that people instantly recognize as having the meaning I intend). But I also like them. It's true that my birth was not the last event that we shared together. (Nor was it the first. Those nine months in the womb were not insignificant. Nancy Verrier notes that adult adoptees are often driven to locate their biological mothers yet typically show very little interest in finding biological fathers; she attributes this to the bond formed in utero.) My birth was also not a purely joyful event, followed as it was by our separation. But it is a history that I share with her and no one else. It is something that separates her from every person on the planet.

Like a lot of adopted persons, I was told growing up that my birth mother was someone who loved me very much and that she gave me up because she wasn’t able to care for me and wanted me to have a better life than she could provide – and act of love. There are problems with this story; it does not reflect the fact that many birth mothers, including mine, experienced coercion around the act of relinquishment. They did not give their babies away because of love; they reluctantly signed papers giving up their right to parent because they experienced intense pressure to do so, and – young, scared, and lacking support – couldn’t see an alternative. The love was there – yes, definitely – but it wasn’t the reason for relinquishment.

For an adopted child, however, this isn’t a bad story to grow up with. I never associated the word “birth mother” with abandonment. I associated it with love. There was somebody out there who loved me – somebody unknown but connected to me by an unbreakable thread.

I am aware of other terms that have been put forth as alternatives to “birth mother.” “First mother” is one that has become common in recent years and is preferred by many first mothers themselves. I can understand the appeal from their point of view, but it resonates less strongly from mine. My birth mother may have been the first mother that I knew, but she wasn’t the first mother that I knew as “mother.” The word “mother,” with all of its associations, was originally linked to someone else. “Birth mother” has a specific meaning to me that none of the alternatives capture. It refers to someone who began as an amorphous concept, shifted over the years in my psyche to something more specific, and eventually, through reunion, became flesh – a real person who looks like me and shares many of my quirks of personality, including a tendency to be over analytical about words. (When you think about it, that’s kind of miraculous – a sort of “birth” in and of itself.) I’m aware that “birth mother” may not be the perfect word, but I choose it intentionally because it is the only one that, for me, represents all that this person is and always has been in my life.

Did the Department of Children and Families Use Me as a Pawn? Sure Looks That Way!

2011-07-20T08:57:00.001-07:00

They probably didn’t expect that my daughter’s birth mother Erica and I would one day be on such friendly terms that we would be sitting at lunch together talking about the time before my daughter’s adoption was finalized. But that’s what happened last week. And I received a surprising piece of news. During that pre-finalization ever-agonizing waiting time, Erica was told that my husband and I had refused to sign an open-adoption agreement, and that we were unwilling to do so unless she dropped her suit against the department. (She had sued because she had been denied visitation with another one of her children who was placed with a different foster-adopt family.)

Things were never difficult between Erica and us. She had relinquished her parental rights before we came into the picture in exchange for an open-adoption agreement with the department, which we were willing to continue. She had met me and my husband, had received positive reports about how Ashley was doing with us, and felt positive about the placement. Ashley had adjusted well to life with our family, and we were ready to finalize. But things dragged on and on. Why was it taking so long? My husband and I asked each other this question time and time again. We chalked it up to bureaucratic inefficiency. But I now believe it was something more.

It seems that our situation had become tied to that of the other family. Erica was told (though we never were) that the goal of the department was to finalize the adoptions of the siblings on the same day (even though they were placed separately and weren’t having visitation with each other). It makes sense, in a way. If you’ve got one adoption situation that’s chugging along nicely and another that has come to a grinding a halt because of failed mediation between the adoptive family and the birth mother, why not use one to pull the other along?

But do good intentions justify deceptive means? Here’s what actually happened on our end. We were contacted by DCF and told that Erica’s lawyer had proposed a visitation agreement. My husband and I discussed the offer and considered it very reasonable. We actually would have been willing to agree to more visitation than she had requested, but as there was nothing to prevent us from doing more on our own, we were happy to sign the contract as a base starting point. We told the department that we were very willing to sign.

But, until our discussion yesterday, Erica never got this information. Instead she was led to believe that if she didn’t comply with the department’s requests, she was at risk of losing everything - visitation with the other daughter AND with Ashley. So she backed down.

I’ll admit - I wasn’t there. Maybe there’s a crucial piece of information that I’m missing. Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding. But however it played out, I’m saddened by it. I’m sad that Erica doesn’t have visitation with her other daughter, and I’m especially sad to think that words and intentions that were inaccurately attributed to my husband and me may have played a part in that outcome.

Do I Actually Advocate Something Other Than Adoption? No … and Yes.

2011-07-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked the following question on Twitter: “You seem to advocate more communal care of children than adoption per se. Isn't there a big difference between the two?” It’s a good question, but don’t think I can answer it in 140 characters, so I’ve decided to address the matter here.

The word “adoption” can refer to a spectrum of arrangements from completely closed, with identities kept confidential and zero contact between the adoptive and biological families, to very open, with frequent contact and interaction. Even so called open adoptions can vary significantly in the degree of openness and frequency of contact. To quote one of my favorite informational resources on open adoption: “In open adoptions, communication may include letters, Emails, telephone calls, or visits. The frequency of contact ranges from every few years to several times a month or more, depending on the needs and wishes of all involved.” http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_openadoptbulletin.cfm

Each adoption situation is different, but I encourage adoptive parents to be open to higher degrees of contact whenever possible. My own daughter is legally adopted but currently has relatively frequent visitation with her biological mother, and this works well for our family. I believe that both parts of the equation contribute to her well being. The adoption gives her permanency, something she desperately needed -- she was not thriving as a foster child bouncing from home to home within the system. Adoption is a legal agreement, but it is also a ceremonial contract between the parent and the child. To my daughter, it means that we will stick with her, even when the going gets tough. It means, “no take backs.” But the connection to her biological family, and especially to her mother, nurtures her as well.

I’m not anti-adoption, and my intention in writing and speaking about adoption is not to discourage potential parents, especially those open to adopting from foster care, from considering adoption; with a distressingly high number of kids aging out of foster care without finding permanency, more adoptive parents are needed, not fewer! But I’m also aware that the old, closed adoption model really didn’t work for a lot of adoptees. Many adult adoptees today are angry and resentful, and even those of us who are ultimately grateful for our connection to our adoptive families will usually acknowledge challenges as well. Adoption may be a beneficial option in many situations, but it is rarely a painless option. My focus is primarily on making it less painful, for all involved but especially for the adoptee. I believe that nurturing and maintaining a connection to the biological family and/or culture is a crucial part of attaining that goal.

Though I don’t want to discourage potential adoptive parents from adopting, I do believe that it’s important for anyone who is considering adoption to understand that they are not bringing a single child into their life -- they are bringing an entire family. That’s just a fact. The old adoption model, and even many current adoption arrangements, try to ignore this reality, but ignoring doesn’t work. Even if the adoptive family has no contact with the biological family and rarely discusses them other than in vague, almost mythological ways (such as the “your birth mother was someone who loved you very much” story), that family, and especially the birth mother, is still there, fully present in the child’s psyche. They may exist primarily as an absence, as a longing (spoken or unspoken), but they are still there.

I myself grew up with an adoption-positive framework. I had always known that I was adopted and for the most part I viewed being an adoptee as a good thing. For a long time I thought that I was fine and had no issues related to being adopted. Then one day, in my mid-twenties, I found myself on my floor in my apartment sobbing uncontrollably, with the phrase “she doesn’t even know who I am,” in reference to my birth mother, repeating incessantly in my head. The feeling of loss came at me out of the blue, and knocked me flat. It had actually been there all along, but I’d never acknowledged it.

An eventual reunion with my birth family, plus some good therapy, brought healing, but also left me with a keen awareness of the endurance and importance of the biological bond. When I became an adoptive parent myself, I brought this understanding with me and it has guided me to my current, friendly relationship with my daughter’s birth mother. Our arrangement falls under the umbrella of adoption because, as I said, my daughter is legally adopted. Also, although the birth mother has comparatively frequent visitation, the nuts-and-bolts parenting still falls to my husband and me. But I’ve also coined a phrase -- “post-adoption reunification” -- to describe what I consider to be an important developmental phase for most adoptees. Whether it happens early with the support of the adoptive family or later by way of a reunion search on the part of an adult adoptee, most of us seem to need to reconnect to our biological roots eventually. I advocate open adoption as a more seamless (and less psychologically traumatic) way for this to happen.

And yet it’s interesting that my Twitter correspondent should mention “more communal care of children,” because that is in fact something that has been frequently on my mind. I don’t advocate doing away with adoption altogether, but I would like to see more emphasis put on preservation of biological families whenever possible … and this can only happen with community support. It is often said that a birth mother’s relinquishment is an act of love, and this may be true in many cases, but my birth mother will tell you that she would have preferred to have demonstrated her love by keeping me. What she longed for, and didn’t have, was the support of family and community that would have made it possible for her to raise me.

A few years ago, I had a dream (an actual dream while sleeping) that was very vivid and specific and that has stayed with me as a memory. I was visiting a college and being given a tour of a dormitory that was part of an innovative program. All of the students in the dormitory were young (typical college age) mothers. The children lived with the mothers in the dormitory, and day-care and other support services were provided. And each mother and child pair was also connected with a “foster family” in the college town who functioned as an extended family, providing additional support. Mother and child would sometimes visit the family together -- for example, for a Sunday dinner -- and sometimes when the mom needed more support, such as during finals week, the child might briefly stay there without mom. Wow, I thought, this is exactly what my birth mother would have wanted!

I’ve since learned that family foster care (in which a mother and child are both “fostered”) does exist, in some places in the UK and the United States and perhaps elsewhere, though not, to my knowledge, in the exact form of my dream. I don’t know much about such programs, but I’d love to learn more. I’ve also read about programs, such as Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, which have had success at reducing the number of children entering the traditional foster care system by strengthening and helping to preserve original families, and I applaud such efforts.

For me, the experience of being an adopted person is often about embracing contradiction, finding simultaneous truths in things that would seem to oppose one another. I wouldn’t undo my own adoption or change my upbringing, and yet I feel called to support alternative options for others. I’m aware that the separation of a child from its biological mother can be painful -- traumatic even -- for both mother and child, and I’d love for others to be spared that pain, even though I am able to view my own trauma and healing as simply part of my growth process. I don’t reject adoption as a model for caring for children whose biological parents are unable, for whatever reason, to care for them fully -- to the contrary, I live it, love it, celebrate it -- but I’m also intrigued by emerging and potential models that support biological family preservation. Do I support something other than adoption per se? When all is said and done, yes, I do -- not as a replacement for adoption in all case, but as an alternative to adoption in some cases.