Carmen Martinez Jover

Here my newfound values related to all things adoption and foster care bump up against my decidedly new age tendencies and personal experience.  It’s always about the bunnies in my household.  Though these bunnies have human hands.  Oh my.  That part is a travesty.

The adoption group I am a part of does not appreciate Carmen Martinez Jover because of her books on adoption.  One adoptee writes – “My thoughts to you Carmen Martinez Jover: I did not chose this, I did not want this, I reject this, fuck adoption!”  This is tough ground.  I am not an adoptee but I know too much now to ever dismiss the feelings and trauma an adoptee experiences in being separated from the mother in whose womb they grew.

Her books seek to explain adoption to adopted children.  She and I also share an interest in past lives.  The manuscript I have in process is actually about reincarnation and being given a mission to deliver a message in a Syrian refugee camp.

As a matter of fact, her theory is that adoption occurs by the choice of the child’s soul.  This is hard because we really can only theorize about consciousness before physical life.  However, due to my own personal beliefs, I find it difficult to criticize her on that point.  I see this belief structure as being about empowerment, not fault finding.

Here’s one quote –

“The soul is with its soul group, then goes and visits the Elders who give the soul advice on how to be happy when it’s born. The soul is then shown glimpse of possible lives and chooses the parents it wants. Understanding that it cannot be born in a conventional way and is born in another woman’s womb and with the help of adoption lives happily with its chosen parents.”

I do realize that such thinking is not for everyone.  Jover has experienced infertility firsthand and is a fan of Dr Bruce Lipton, who I once met in person and also deeply appreciate.

What I do know about adoption has led me to feel that, of all the options for addressing infertility, egg donation is the kindest to the child.  That is my lived experience thus far.  My obstetrician suggested it to my husband and I when an attempt to jumpstart my very last egg failed.

I would not call it a fully informed decision based on what I know now.  Both of my sons know as much as they are interested in as teenagers about their conception and we are fortunate because the egg donor for each of them was the same woman.  There is some sadness in my youngest son that he doesn’t have any of my genes, though my emotions and the foods I ate throughout his pregnancy contributed to the body his soul inhabits.  My sons would not be who they are otherwise.  This is the bottom line truth.

There is some adjustment needed in my own feelings and emotions as we have all done 23 and Me.  My grown daughter (who is biological to me and my first husband and thus carrying our genes) is also there at 23 and Me.  I see her shown accurately as my daughter.  That feels good.  But I do not see my sons.  The woman who donated her eggs also has a 23 and Me DNA result account and she is shown as their mother.  Genetically, that is the truth that I can’t deny.

This is the world modern medical science has made possible.  I loved my pregnancies with both sons.  I loved breastfeeding them each for over a year.  I love that I have been here for them from day one and will continue to be in their lives until I die (hopefully, before either of my boys).  It means a lot to me to have mothered them because I have faulted myself for being a horrible mother.  Due to poverty and my ex refusing to pay child support, my daughter ended up living with him.  He remarried a woman with a daughter and together they had a daughter.  This gave my daughter a family with two sisters, the same family structure I grew up within.

I paid a steep price for not raising her, I lost so much and know it, and I continue to pay a price for the choices I made as a young adult.  Though I have a good relationship with my daughter now, her childhood wasn’t as good as I once believed but I didn’t know the truth then.  Just like once upon a time I didn’t know anything about adoption.  Just like I never saw inexpensive DNA tests changing everything for donor conceived children.  I do still believe in eternal souls.  I do believe there is much more to this thing called Life than any one person can know or understand.  Only the “All That Is” intelligence can know that.  Some people call that God.  I am good with whatever anyone wants to call what I have discovered for myself somehow exists.