Respecting Boundaries

Sometimes I feel like being in a semi-open adoption is just more complicated than it needs to be. Since I moved once my birth son was born, I live halfway across the country from him. The agreement since birth has been that I can send letters and gifts whenever I want and I see pictures of him and keep in touch with his parents. However, they want to wait until he's older to do visits. While I don't really like this arrangement, I appreciate what I do have, I respect it, and would never do anything to cross any boundaries, something that I work very hard at.

But sometimes that gets tricky. In a few weeks, I will be traveling back to where I grew up and to near where my son now lives. I'm so excited to go back and I'm so excited to see my family and eat foods I haven't been able to since I left (I can taste the bagels and the pizza now...), but I also have an overwhelming sense of anxiety about it. What if I get triggered by things I'm not expecting to, or worry the whole time that I'll accidentally run into them? I doubt I will, but still. 

Respecting the boundaries that his parents have set is something that I always take to heart and always something that I try to do. While it is something I want more than absolutely anything in the world, I will not ask to see my birth son while I'm there, and I will do my best to avoid accidentally running into them.

But something that I don't understand is why I can't see his parents? I don't know why the 3 of us can't just catch up and grab lunch together or something. I've brought it up with them before and they told me that they don't know if they'd be comfortable with that. I respected and accepted their decision, but it still hurts. Maybe they thought I was asking to see my birth son, I don't know. It's so important for me to try to still feel connected to them. I hate feeling a sense of disconnect or distance. We'll see what happens, but I won't push and I won't ask again. 

Adoption is something that will never be easy, and it will never be fun. But it is doable, and it is a blessing. This has been a difficult season for me, but I know it will change and I know it will get easier to deal with soon. I'm so grateful for his parents, they are truly great people and I do have so much respect for them. I guess I just wish I didn't miss them all so much.

Gifts

My son was born November 23rd, so my thought a couple weeks after, were "What in the world do I get both him and the most perfect parents that are loving and taking such amazing care of my son?"

No gift could show how grateful I was.

The truth is, I think adoptive parents struggle with this "perfect gift" scenario as well.  I think the "perfect gift" is the gift of having a relationship with them and showing our love for the child we share.  When it comes to material items, I have always gone for the meaningful gifts instead of what the latest popular toy or the "bath and body works" gifts for the adoptive mom.

The first year, I bought Christmas gifts for both Noah and his parents along with birthday gifts for him as well.  I plan on getting his mom flowers or something small to send her when she graduates with her Doctorates degree in Education this summer.  It really is just about showing your love, not how much money you have.

If you cannot afford to buy toys or other items, send a childhood book you had growing up or a card with a meaningful message in it.  Simple and sweet is the way I go about sending gifts. 

In the end, it is all about the love you give!

Photo Credit

Visits with our Kids

Tomorrow I'm finally going to have a Christmas visit with my son after many delays.  Not one "side's" fault at all, just a matter of illness, weather, travel, and things keeping us busy.  Tonight I want to go out and have Chinese food with a friend or two.  I want something to get my mind off of tomorrow.  Of course my friends will ask me, "Aren't you happy about this?"

*sigh*

Happy that I will see my son, yes.  Happy that I get to watch him ride away in their car again? No.

Happy that my parents will get to see their only grandchild, yes.  Happy that when he leaves they get that far away look in their eyes that guilts me to no end?  No.

Happy that my son is doing well and smiling and doing good in school and growing up fast, yes. Happy that I have to see that this is happening without me?  No.

Happy that he's happy, healthy, and doing well, yes.  Happy that this is only because he's not with me?  No.

Happy that I get to see him, yes.  Happy that he leaves again?  No.

I'm not sure how else to describe the conflict of feelings that happens when I'm having a visit with J. I want him to be around.  I want to see him.  But I also know how much it will hurt when he leaves again.  I know I want to keep him forever and can't.  I know I want to be there for him and can't.   I know a thousand things I can do.  But I also know the million things that I can't.

Only thing I try to hold onto these days is that if he were with me, his life would not be nearly as good as it is now.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  Will try for a happier topic next time.

Nature vs. Nurture

Today I thought I'd post a little something I've noticed about my son lately.

My son looks like me.  Now, that's easy to explain.  That's genetics.  I have two male cousins and one female cousin who all look like me.  We all look like our grandmother.  So as he's gotten older, we've compared to pictures of me and my cousins at the same age.  The funny part is that he often looks nearly exactly like the pictures of us from long ago.

But my son also acts like me in some ways.  And it's kind of spooky.  When he was two, he would insist on doing things over and over and over again.  My father said to them on a visit, "We had a rule, if you didn't want to do it a hundred times, don't do it the first time."

Now, many kids like to do the same thing over and over.  It's true.  But then it keeps going.

He makes up stories.  He likes to make up stories and tell them to his parents to see what they think.  I tell stories.  I write stories.  I wrote stories when I was little as well.  Not great ones, as you can imagine.  But I was writing then too.

He hates it when his things get messed up or you rearrange the words in a song.  Absolutely hates it.  Will get very upset about it even.  And yeah, you guessed it, I did that.  Still hate it when someone gets into my things.  I don't cry or scream anymore as you can imagine, but I still have to control myself when people start messing with my things.

He's musical.  He and his adoptive dad have been banging on the fridge and the cabinets and making music all their own.  I picked well in his adoptive parents.  I'm a musician.  And his adoptive father is too.  I can see the delight in his adoptive father's eyes when he talks about making music with Joseph and recording it.

If I added up the time that I've spent with my son, it would probably amount to about two and a half weeks all together.  But there are things I passed down to him without even knowing it.  There is one thing that puzzles me.

He's a practical joker.  I fail at practical jokes.  His biological father never did pull any on me or anyone else I know.  I don't know where it came from.  Maybe some distant relative.  Maybe he learned it from someone in his adoptive family.  I have no idea.  But we all delight in it.

As the years go by, I expect other traits of mine and his birth father will come out.  And traits he picks up from his adoptive family will come out as well.  And I can't wait to see what he makes of all of this.  Hope you and yours are doing well and let me know if you've seen bits of yourself in your own children.

Thankful For Being Lucky

It's Thanksgiving week.  I've been with family all week like many of you probably have.  This year my mother was still in a cast due to a broken arm she got at the end of September.  So I was enlisted to make Thanksgiving dinner.  Fear not, I've done this two times before due to her having a very bad knee and by now I'm much more confident and I am able to nearly recite the recipes and get my mother out of my cooking if need be.  Third time through, I did well yet again.  And now I have a post to write.

I'm no fool.  I know that I got extremely lucky with my adoption agency, the family I placed with, the willingness of everyone in my family and my boyfriend's family to step out of our way and make the right decision for our child, and that my child was born healthy and well.

I am thankful that at a time when I needed it most, my luck turned for the good in a serious way.  I am thankful that my son's parents continue to involve me in his life and keep me updated on his life.  I am thankful that my son is growing up tall and handsome.  I am thankful that he has a very creative mind and soul.  I am thankful that he has loving, wonderful, and capable parents who can raise him the way that I wish I could have.  I am thankful that they have become my friends and people that I can talk to not just about my son, but about many other subjects as well.  And I am thankful that I got so very very lucky when I needed it the most.

I wish you all the luck that I've found.  I hope you all have had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families.  Know that while I am thankful for all of these things and am grateful that my son will get the life he deserves, it is a fact that I have to live with every day and it is a fact that pains me every day.  But I always knew I would live with this better than raising my son in a home that would have been unstable at best and hostile and unbearable at worst.  May you all find peace with your decisions as I finally have.

Unexpected Visits

For my first official post, I wanted to tell you about something that happened a few months ago that I had worried about happening and perhaps some of you worry about it too.  My son and his adoptive parents live about twenty minutes away from me.  As such, there was the potential to run into each other accidentally, but this had only happened once at the local farmer’s market.  The encounter was slightly awkward, but we parted ways after about thirty minutes and I was able to go home and recover the rest of the weekend.

In October, I was invited to come to an open mic poetry reading at a bar and restaurant in the downtown area.  I had a new poem that I had written and I thought, what was the worst that could happen?  Well, one should never ask that question.  I was standing outside the restaurant when my son’s adoptive father and mother waved at me from inside the restaurant.  My son, J, was also with them.  I went in thinking, “It could just be a fluke.  They could just be here for a nice dinner.”  Yeah.  Right.

“Are you here for the poetry reading tonight?” were the first words out of my son's father's mouth after greeting me.  As it turned out, HE is the leader of the open mic poetry reading group.  J actually walked me up the steps to sign up for a place in the poetry reading that night.  Coming back down, he met one of my friends and it was the first time any of my friends had met my son.  It was an interesting night to say the least.  He stayed for a few poems, but then was taken home by his mother after a few poets read their work.  After all it was past 8 pm and he was only a couple months past three years old.  Sitting still for poetry is not a skill three-year-olds are known for.  He gave me a hug and a kiss for the first time when he left.  I and my friends stayed much later and I got a chance to talk to his father about several things about their life with my son and some details about their side of the adoption process that I’ll post about at a later date.  The last thing that he said to me was that he hoped I kept coming to the readings and bringing more of my work.  I went home that night a bit shaken and it took me a few days to get over that.  I just wasn’t emotionally prepared to see them.

When I spoke to my parents about it that weekend, their reactions were positive.  But my father could still see that I was cautious.  Later that week, I found a hand written letter from him in the mail.  Let me just emphasize how important that is: the man is a computer programmer.  He is by no means afraid of an email.  He’s on Facebook and Twitter.  He’s about the most technologically adept 60 year old I know.  But he had decided to send me a hand written letter.  I knew that whatever he needed to say it was important.

His first words were that we never had to discuss this again, but he had something he wanted to say to me and make sure that I heard him.  He suggested that I keep going to the poetry readings.  His reasoning was that over time I would get to know J’s parents better and by proxy J better.  Eventually it would be easier for me to see them and it wouldn’t be as much of a shock to the system.  The words that made me cry were when he said, “I say this knowing that I could not do this myself.  But in this, I believe you are stronger than I am.”  I was bawling in my car for about ten minutes after reading that.  But after some calmer thought and a few more tears, I realized that he was right.

My father and I have never discussed the letter.  But he does know that I have been going to the poetry readings once a month ever since.   I have, over time, learned more about my son’s parents and their lives.  Sometimes it’s actually easier than sending an email about a visit.  Sometimes I just talk to his father at the monthly readings and then send an email a day later so everyone is on the same page about everything.  J has turned up a couple more times and I have handled it better than the first time.  Next month he will be turning four years old.  Sometimes I just think time moves too fast.

Have any of you happened to run into your child and their parents unexpectedly?  Or have you ever feared it happening?  If you have, I understand.  And if you ever do, I can report that it is survivable.  It was difficult.  But I was lucky that night in that I had a couple of friends with me who were more than happy to hold me together.

I hope all of you are having a wonderful day and I will see you all again next week!

Photo Credit 

Broken Can Be Beautiful

I read a blog once about a young mother whose newborn had died shortly after birth. She was racked by grief and loss. At some point in her story she felt compelled to shatter a water pitcher that she had and slowly glue it back together. To her, that pitcher is more beautiful now. It will still hold water, but now the light shines through the cracks. That pitcher is a representation of her life and her healing.

You can take something broken and make it beautiful. Adoption is broken. There is coercion. There are unethical lawyers and social workers. There are adoptive families that believe they are entitled to your child. There are birth families that are not supportive. There are even birth parents that are selfish.

My attorney was unethical. My agency was non-existent in all the ways they should not have been. I remember the social worker coming to my house one time before the placement. She asked a few questions and was on her way. After 5 minutes with me she gave the green light on my placing my son. The lawyer, the most dramatic thing she did was insist to me that the post-placement agreement was legally binding. That if it was notarized and we both signed it was now a legal contract. Each page of that agreement is initialed. The document is notarized. It's not legal though. Not even a little.

I met with a dear friend, a lawyer, several times. I was so angry. How could she lie to me like that? Did she not see how important that agreement was to me? That agreement was my sanity. That was how I made it through those first few months. My friend started attacking me with questions. Asking about all these personal things. About my son, finances, my job, my friends, where I lived, my family. He was relentless. Then he asked about the adoptive family. He asked about my choice to place. He asked about my feelings. It was one of the longest evenings of my life. I cried until I could cry no more. Then he asked me one last question. "Do you want Frogger removed from R&P?" I was horrified. Of course I didn't. I just wanted my lawyer to pay for her lies. I wanted my lawyer to burn in hell. It was then that I realized what he had done.

The defense would have torn me apart. I was a grieving mom that changed her mind. Oh no, wait, I wasn't. I was just bitter and angry and out for blood. I didn't pursue going to the bar. My wounds were to too raw and too deep.

This is why I say we, as birth mothers, need to speak out. We need to change the way adoption is handled. If it wasn't so hush-hush then the laws would be known. Open adoption would be the norm. Everyone would know what an ethical, moral, upstanding adoption looked like.

Take something broken and make it more beautiful then it was meant to be. Fix it. Don't trash it. Someone may need it one day.

When Did You Know?

I've heard many different stories about how and when expectant parents chose adoptive couples, and how their experience affected the openness and closeness after the adoption.

I'm conflicted on whether I think there's an "ideal" situation, because what may work for one person may bring more difficulty to someone else. I didn't consider adoption until seven months and we didn't choose a couple until shortly before my delivery. This naturally meant we hadn't developed a relationship with the parents, so our updates following were more formal than those of my friends who described their relationships and contact as very close and open.

However, unlike one would expect, my late change of mind didn't make the decision harder. I was always a tomboy, never a girly-girl. I dreamed of owning and breeding horses, not getting married and having children. I watched cats and dogs for money growing up, instead of babysitting like so many of my peers. I was raised an only child and just never really had experience with children or motherliness. I'd imagine this was a big reason for my detachment during pregnancy. Even with my next pregnancy and this current one, I am just not a rub-the-belly, singing-and-talking-to-baby-in-the-womb kind of momma.

All of that goes out the window when the baby is born, though, don't misunderstand. I cried in the delivery room and spent as much time as possible with R while I had the chance in the hospital.

But thinking about my experience and hearing all of the different stories of other birthmoms, or expectant parents who later change their mind about placing with an adoptive family, always intrigues me.

So, what about you? Did you grow close to the adoptive family throughout your pregnancy? If so, did that make it easier or harder to make your decision? Were you naturally attached to you pregnancy or did you work to stay detached?  Do you wish things had happened differently?

Photo Credit

Giving Up

Has this ever happened to you? You give up on something, totally resign, throw it in the round file, give up the ghost; however you want to say it. You renounce it, announce it, and tell everyone that you no longer want to do whatever it is. And you're serious. At that moment, you are totally serious and mean what you are saying.

I tried that with public speaking six months ago. I was so done. Over it. Never going to do it again. I didn't like it. It didn't like me. I was boring myself, boring my audience, and making a fool of myself. I knew I was supposed to share my story of unplanned pregnancy and closed adoption, but after the last time, I was done.

So the exciting news is that I got six months off. The not-so-good news is that I now have three speaking engagements in the next two months. Three. And none of them did I seek out, look for, apply for or otherwise market for. I told you, I was done. Done done.

Funny that it's been just long enough to forget how boring I am. Just long enough to make the prospect of speaking to a group of women enticing and exciting again.

So my point is that for me at least, this story doesn't belong to me. For me, the saga that is my life belongs to my Creator God. And if he desires for me to share it with people in a public setting, so be it. Do you ever feel like you want to keep your story to yourself? Do you ever feel like God wants you to be more vocal about it than you are?

Photo credit

Initiating Contact

As you may remember, I have a very open adoption with my daughter’s family – minus the visits. Some people get confused when I say that we have an open adoption but do not have face-to-face visits yet. I suppose that if I weren’t so involved in this world now, I, too, would be confused. Before I got pregnant with my daughter, I assumed “open” meant you spend physical time with the family and your child, and “closed” meant that you didn’t. Now, I realize that there are no solid definitions or rules...at least in my case, we are sort of making them as we go.

My daughter’s adoptive parents have an older adoptive child (he is three now), so while they know the ropes a bit more than I do (as far as communication), each situation is different and that does not exclude sibling adoptions. Just because my child and their son’s birthmom have the same adoptive family for their child, that doesn’t mean the relationship is the same. Their son’s birth family is not too involved with him, from what I have been told. It is because of this that A’s mom seems to appreciate our relationship even more and most likely why she always says that A is so lucky to have such a ‘great, loving birthmom.’ (Which, by the way, makes me smile from ear-to-ear when she says it). Not that I want to use someone else’s sad situation to make mine look better, that’s not it at all. My point is simply that each relationship has it’s own dynamic...so while your open adoption may include visits, another person’s may include visits and no personal info (phone numbers or addresses) and anothers may include all of that information and no visits.

In the same light, communication has completely different boundaries in open adoption. Generally, I leave it to her adoptive mom to initiate our conversations, be it by text or by email. There have been a few times where I have requested something out of the ordinary, and I was terrified to ask. I was scared to be rejected, scared that I would come on too strong and not only would she say no, but she would back off in future contact. Each time I have taken the plunge, though, she has never had a problem with it. In fact, when I asked if it would be okay to make a phone call to A on her first birthday, her mom responded by saying it was absolutely fine, and asked if I would rather Skype with them instead. Hmm, let me think about it....YES!! I was over the moon (and still remember every minute of that 50 minute call, believe it or not)! I expected to have a quick video chat for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, but it lasted nearly an hour. It was amazing. I don’t mean to get off track, though. These thoughts are all swirling around my head today because I sent an email to her mom last night because it was really bugging me that I didn’t know what her first word was. I knew she was talking, but was never told what her first word was. Curiosity got the best of me, and I emailed her. I am awaiting a response...I hope she doesn’t mind sharing. While it would have been nice if she had volunteered the information, I know her well enough to be fairly certain that now that I have prompted it, she will let me know.

This got me to thinking: birthmoms, do you usually leave the ‘first contact’ up to the adoptive parents? Or do you initiate the conversation just as much as they do, or more? I remember my adoption counselor stressing that I had to write back when they wrote to me, or they would stop writing to me. I always write back, if not the same day, within a couple of days. So why do I feel  intrusive if I send the first email?