Maternal Grief

There is more than one way to “lose” a child. Certainly, the most obvious is the most permanent. Today, many adoptees are going through reunions with their biological families. That gives hope that the kind of loss that is giving a child up to adoption may not be a permanent one. That said, one can never regain the years the locusts have consumed. The bible promises a restoration but the reality is, those years can never fundamentally be retrieved. They are forever lost.

Adoption is, in its idealized form, is suppose to be about finding homes for children that need them, not about finding children for parents that want them. That perfect world is a place we all know we do not live in. There is nothing inherently wrong about wanting to be a parent, but it can become wrong depending on how you go about becoming a parent. Once they have achieved their goal, adoptive parents might desire to remain ignorant regarding the real loss involved for the other participants in their own path to parenthood.

Surrendering a child can really hurt emotionally, in a way that is completely indescribable and that words could never do justice regarding, if one attempts to convey it to any other person who has not had direct experience with it. Relinquishment can never be undone and all a birthparent can do is continue live their life throughout the time knowing that someone else is raising their child.

Hear it described by the most honest and real, courageous and brilliant adopted persons and you will learn that many of the feelings they have for having been adopted do not express feelings of gratitude, or contentment, but of loss and primal rejection, as well as confusion, anger, many unanswered questions and often unsatisfactory love, truth be told regarding the adoptive parents who settled for second best.

These unfulfilled adoptive parents also grieve – the child they wanted to have – compared to the child they settled for. All around a disagreeable situation. Adoption & Child Welfare Services were expected to bring in a revenue of 14 Billion Dollars during 2015. Even the banking and insurance industry has more regulations applied to them than adoption and some of the things they do to try and make money at all costs is unethical. Adoption is the largest, mostly unregulated, industry in the US allowed to do business.

It is human nature that if you put few regulations in the way and add to that large sums of money to be made from taking part in the industry, it is a situation that asks to be corrupted. A lobby group with a deceiving name, The National Council for Adoption (and an even more disturbing game) is paid for by the adoption agencies, pro-life groups, and given federal tax funds and grants – all to promote adoption.

The goal is to separate families not protected by money or the Godly union of marriage in favor of giving their child to a legally married, heterosexual, Christian couple. Many mothers have truthfully lost their children to adoption and they suffer in isolation what can only be described as a very real diagnosis of “birthmother grief”. These are women who are and could have been good parents. These children were in no danger of being bumped around in foster care for years. There was no threat of them being abused.

Maybe they would have had a few first years of lean times, maybe it would have been hard but they would have parented. There is a huge difference between child protection and child surrender. Child surrender is voluntary, it is often not really necessary, but made out to be beneficial. The real “good” of the child is questionable depending on your personal interpretation of what is “better”. Often fraught with myths, and misinformation that sway the participants involved for the benefit of the adoption agency and, often, the desires of their paying clients (the perspective adoptive parents). It is finding children to fit the needs of the industry which is based entirely on transferring the parental rights from one party to another for a profit.

Adoption adds a whole bunch of baggage to any adoptee’s life. They had adoptive parents that tried their best, made mistakes, and loved them lots. The fact is though, that if a child does not need to be separated from their original family – experts agree it is a person’s birthright to be with their original family. There are enough adoptees and natural parents searching for each other that we cannot humanly deny that it is not a primal and necessary urge in many cases. It’s not a whim, not a phase, nor a sign if immaturity, nor selfishness, nor of poor adoptive parenting, or anything else might we believe. Adoptees may have the reality of having two sets of parents, adoptive and birth parents, but they need to know and have relationships with their original, biological families – regardless of how good the adoptive family was. It is also clear by how many birthmothers never quit searching for their child that being reunited is also a unrequited need in most maternal hearts.

Second Choice

“Trigger Warning – Miscarriage”

I have a fear of a baby I adopt growing up feeling like my second choice…I have had five miscarriages in a row, most second trimester where I had to birth a baby that was no longer alive. We want a baby so badly, and I think, if God allows us to adopt, that I will look back on this time as “the broken road, that led me to our child” but (if I’m honest) I would give anything to birth a live baby instead. Is it wrong to adopt, when you still wish you could carry and deliver your baby ? I don’t want my possible future child to feel like they were a second choice (but isn’t that how most moms usually come into adoption?) I want a live baby so much.

As one begins to learn about how adoptees feel and think, one learns that there is no getting beyond this if the adoptive mother experienced miscarriages or infertility first. The adoptee will always know deep down in their heart that they were a second choice regarding motherhood.

For hopeful adoptive parents who have experienced miscarriage or infertility, it is always recommended that they seek counseling first before moving on to trying to adopt, to at least resolve these issues clearly within their own selves. This will not prevent an adoptee from feeling this however.

Religious beliefs are too often tied in with adoption and the necessity of raising children. I’m not surprised that one commenter quickly asked – Why is it God ? (“if God allows us to adopt”) So many of these people are the first ones to tell others that whatever bad thing happened to you, wouldn’t have happened, if you’d made better choices or how God gave us freedom of choice, so take responsibility for our own actions – yet when it comes to something many Christians want -suddenly, it’s all about God’s will and God making it happen. I don’t know, maybe that’s so if it all goes to shit, they can blame that on God too, or say they were confused ?

Taking that a step further ? So odd when someone makes those miscarriages “God’s way to make them suffer, so they end up with someone else’s baby that they will always resent the reason for.” People twist situations to suit their beliefs and biases. To be clear, it’s wrong to adopt, when you have your own trauma consuming you. Deal with that first.

An acknowledged Christian makes these points – The Bible is in favor of caring for ORPHANS, which has a very limited definition. It doesn’t say to adopt or even to foster. The actual biblical definition of adoption is welcoming a new person into the family of God. Which can be done without actually adopting them. It can definitely be done without the next step of changing their name. The Bible places a high premium on lineage in the first testament. This is a pet peeve for this Christian. When people who have obviously never studied relevant passages to defend their decision to rip families apart, or keep them apart.

I do see the reality in this different perspective – at least she’s honest about adoption being her second choice. She is not pretending. As an adoptee, I can deal with the truth a lot easier than the lies adoptive parents tell themselves to convince themselves to feel better about it. Then, they project that onto their kids…”we chose you”, “you were our plan all along”. It’s all BS. At least, she is owning her selfishness before, whether she continues to admit it once she adopts, is another matter altogether.

I’m not adopted, so maybe that’s why I feel more pity here than anger. I feel for her because her loss is obviously weighing on her mental state. Even so, she shouldn’t consider adoption until she’s healed her own traumas. I couldn’t imagine giving birth and seeing a lifeless baby. I don’t think I’d want to adopt or try again, personally. It is clear that she REALLY wants to be a mother, but to be a mother is to be selfless. It’s to put your wants in second and sometimes 3rd place, it’s long nights, it’s about the child and I don’t think she’s realized that yet. A child separated from their biological family NEEDS stability and more. This woman doesn’t seem stable.

And I agree with this assessment – she is deep in the trenches of her grief, and should not consider any further action until she seeks help with that. If she was to do the work and heal from her tragic losses – she may even see that she don’t want a baby as bad as she wants the babies she has lost. No baby or child, be it adopted or birthed by her, will fill that deep void.

Who Is Really To Blame ?

Most infants develop secure emotional attachments to their caregivers at an early age. This is often not the case for adoptees. Many infants show a healthy anxiety when their caregiver is absent, and they show relief when they’re reunited. Adoptees often do not respond that way and are labeled as having a disorder.

Some infants are not able to develop attachment disorders because they have been separated from the mother who gave birth to them. These babies are unable to bond with their adoptive parents and they struggle to develop any type of emotional attachment throughout their lives.

As they get older, they are often told that they are not grateful enough for having been adopted. Saying they have a disorder seems gentler than admitting they have trauma.

That first separation is where an adoptee first experiences a “CONFUSION” … and it takes hold of the rest of their lives.. if some adoptees have supportive adoptive parents, that’s better than not having that. Too many adoptive parents are seriously narcistic. Yet they somehow make it through adoption screening. If the truth were known, many of these “parents” should never have been allowed anywhere near children. One thinks, maybe when God made them infertile, God actually knew what she was doing. Some adoptive parents are tyrannical and rant and reprimand these children. They didn’t adopt a child for the child’s well-being but for their own gratification. Nothing an adoptee goes through as an adopted child is actually normal. No one should expect normal under the circumstances of an unnatural arrangement.

And where the adoptive parents were good, an adoptee can admit that. Know that they loved the adoptee but always felt like they didn’t belong in that family. The guilt is feeling like these “good people” deserved someone who loved them, the way they loved the adoptee. Guilt is a horrible weight to carry.

Often the original parents, or even more often the single mother, and the adoptee are experiencing a situation where, because our society doesn’t support families so they can stay together, there may not have been a lot of choices. And for the adoptee, they had no choice in the situation. Facing facts, they truth is that there are those who are profiting financially from this suffering that both mother and child have inflicted on them.

In the case of a single mother, if there had been “parents”, it may be that most newborn-adoptions would never have occurred. In the case of my maternal grandmother, she was married but for reasons I will never know, my mom’s father was nowhere to be found in the moment my grandmother needed him to be there for her the most.

Some adoptees were told as they grew up that they were a challenging baby, hard to console and sickly. Some adoptive parents then blame the birthmother and even make off hand remarks about the possibly she was using “substances”, or blaming the doctor for not recognizing whatever may have been a source of being sickly, like perhaps a milk intolerance. In times past, the adoption agency often handed a baby over to the adoptive parents several months old, 4.5 or 6 or 8 months old, without any written instructions about the baby’s routines.

An adoptee is left to deal with the fall-out. There is nothing they can do to change the past but it makes me incredibly sad to think about a baby, only looking for comfort and finding nothing but frustrated, ill prepared parents. This has a huge impact on that child’s life; and the impact can still have both bad and good effects. Like being able to survive less than ideal circumstances is a form of resilience.

Late Discoveries

This is not as uncommon as you might believe. There are people who believe that someone is their original parent all of their lives, and suddenly, usually because someone in their family has died, they learn the truth. Today’s story is one of those . . .

My grandmother just passed away a few days ago. Yesterday my mother (grandmother’s oldest of six kids) gets a call from one of the sisters who has been taking care of things (the mother is in Colorado, sister and grandmother are in Hawaii). The sister tells my mother that my grandmother was married to another man, prior to marrying the man who we all thought was my mother’s dad.

The first husband was my mother’s actual biological father. He abandoned my grandmother, leaving her with my mom and disappeared. So the ‘grandfather ‘ we always knew, offered to marry my grandmother and tell everyone that my mom was his oldest daughter. They got married and moved to Germany. They told everyone that my mom was his daughter. And this was my mom’s life.

Somehow my mom, lived into her 60’s without ever needing a copy of her birth certificate….honestly, which I am not sure how…but yeah. Now, she needs her birth certificate and asks her mother if she has it….her mom tells her that the hospital had burned down or flooded and all the records were destroyed….

Somehow after going back and forth, my mom managed to get a copy of her birth certificate…which had what she thought was the wrong name on it. It had my great grandmother’s last name on it, my grandmother’s ‘maiden’ name….which coincidentally turns out to be also the last name of her biological father. (Apparently grandmother married a step brother? Maybe. No actual biological relationship though….because his father was not my grandmother’s father and his mother was not her mother.) My mom has a fit and somehow manages to get her birth certificate changed to my grandfather’s last name….all because that is who she has always thought she was.

Now she is questioning everything. Apparently she is not who she thought she was. Her birth certificate should not have my grandfather’s name on it. She wants to know if she is LEGALLY married to my dad…they have been ‘married’ for over 50 years.

But of course – Yes, she is legally married to the woman’s dad because she legally used her legal name when filing for her marriage certificate. Officials do ask for information on the parents, but that is to streamline county record keeping and would not make the marriage certificate null and void. The mom answered those questions to the best of her ability with the knowledge she had, she did not commit fraud and her marriage is valid.

It is shocking to hear something like this. It takes a while to adjust and get through the emotions that any person would feel when presented with such unexpected information. It is not unusual in these kinds of circumstances to find out after one’s mother has passed. In this case, the mom at the age of 70….this grandmother would have been 92, but she passed a few days before her birthday. It is life changing and learning this is like having the rug pulled out from a person.

The sister finding out was accidental. There are three sisters. The father told the second sister in 1984 after he had been drinking too much…and she told everyone but the mother and a third sister. The third sister found out and crying, very upset, told the mother. She only told her because the second sister was threatening to tell the mother but not a nice way. Sadly, the family is a bit horrible and not terribly close.

What Could Go Wrong ?

Regarding a kinship guardian placement vs temporary foster carer ?

An adoption community acquaintance writes –

I’m supposed to take custody of a relative’s baby tomorrow (hopefully.) The caseworker is coming back out tomorrow to see things are in order for him. He’s been in a foster carer’s home for 5 days and they are already claiming he’s bonded to them and begging the caseworker to keep him. Now I’m scared the caseworker is going to come up with an excuse why he needs to stay with them vs coming to me. Selfish, selfish, selfish.

His mom is on track to start overnights in December with reunification in January. Of course, whatever stuff I have for him, will go with him, when he goes home. He was previously with dad’s mom and she lost custody because she allowed dad to have him unsupervised.

Fostering is about reunification, not adoption.

One responder wrote – THIS is a huge problem for the foster care programs. Does the state/program/whatever get money when an adoption occurs????

Another one noted – 5 days is a transition time, no way to bond enough in that time frame. He is not bonded. He is surviving. He’s clinging to a bit of kindness in the midst of chaos. At five days in, he’s likely still confused every time he wakes up and opens his eyes! When there is family that should always be the only choice. If he can be so “bonded” after 5 days with strangers, imagine how much more bonded he’ll be after five days with FAMILY.

And this advice – Let them know that with you, baby will still be able to spend time with safe relatives, which they wouldn’t be able to do in foster care. (Safe is the key word they will be looking for. They will prefer foster care, if they think kinship will allow “unsafe” interactions.)

And finally, this from experience, a woman writes –

Bonding happens faster with family. My instant “bond” with my daughter was due to her losing her mother and attaching herself to me. She is related to my husband by blood… their connection was unspoken and immediate. Ours was initially her needing me, and later it grew into something deeper. They are confusing bonding with a desperate need for human connection… they could have been anyone and the baby would cling to them after being separated. You might have a true bond that is immediate rather than earned. (I have seen this with my own eyes! My relationship with her is now a true bond and we are very close, but her connection to my husband was just a given.

Artificial Twinning

I didn’t know this was a thing – artificial twinning. Sadly, it often results in the family releasing the child to a second chance adoption (meaning the first effort has now failed). “Second Chance”… does this imply that EVERY adoption is basically just temporary and the first one is just your first “chance” at your “forever” home ?

As a Gemini, the idea of twins always fascinated me. My sister who was 13 mos younger than me was dressed like me for much of our youngest years. Eventually, she shot up and surpassed me in height and that attempt on the part of mother and grandmother ended. When my husband and I were utilizing reproductive technology to create our family, our first effort that produced a son came after a “vanishing twin” at the time my dad’s adoptive father died and I was 6 weeks along. With our second son, we definitely did not want twins because we felt that would be harmful for our older son. As it was, he was jealous and difficult in their younger years, but now they are the best of friends – thankfully.

Artificial or Virtual Twinning (as it is sometimes also called) is not a practice recommended by social workers. The conventional belief is that kids need their own spot in the birth order. Artificial or Virtual Twinning is having two siblings, that are not biological, within 9 months of one another. There are very valid reasons not to artificially twin. Reasons like sharing the first-born-ness [or whatever the birth-order], attachment-process being interrupted, being compared to one another like twins without the “benefits” of being twins, among other things.

Sometimes artificial twinning is done by adopting a child that is close in age to the child a family already has. Sometimes it’s done by adopting 2 children that are close in age, at the same time. The controversy about whether or not artificial twinning is a good idea rages on. The best recommendation is that families do not adopt 2 children at the same time, unless they are biologically related (in which case, unless they are naturally twins, it would not be what this blog is about).

Parents need time and resources to learn about their new child, help them adjust, and this is most easily done one at a time. Inevitable comparisons, and all the pitfalls of that, are inherent with raising artificial twins. Adopting a child with the purpose of creating a playmate for your child is never a good idea.

Finally, letting an adult adoptee who experienced this speak –

All my brother and I had as young children was each other. At six years old, our adoptive parents divorced over dad’s alcoholism, which had resulted in domestic violence. By all appearances only being able to conceive one much older bio son and then to adopt two babies so close in age was a desperate attempt to fix an already broken marriage.

My adoptive brother and I were as different as night and day in every way possible. Being forced to tell anyone who asked that we were twins but had different birth dates caused a lot of unnecessary gossip and confusion as we got older. I still have friends from Junior High who ask me on Facebook if we were really twins. There is no simple explanation as to why I wouldn’t have been telling the truth. Our identities were so closely meshed together that our individuality often got lost.

Tragically, after our parents divorced, my brother struggled for years with some serious mental health issues. Even as youngsters, I could see that he wasn’t and couldn’t totally bond to anyone in our family. The brother I had once thought I was close to has caused me a lot of shame and embarrassment with his repetitive bizarre behavior. I have felt those forbidden feelings of abandonment from a not so perfectly ideal adoption, as well as not being able to grieve over an absent adoptive father.

My birth siblings say I am just like my late birth mother in her mannerisms – right down to her laugh. My adoptive family could have certainly been a textbook case where nurture verses nature proved to be a fantasy. From my perspective, you fail as adoptive parents – if you try to mold us into that child you couldn’t have or somebody we are not.

The Sad Stories Just Keep Coming

A mother writes –

I am the mother of 2 daughters. My rights were terminated and my children have been adopted by their step mother. I lost on a technicality. Originally, I had a shared custody with my ex. He took off and I couldn’t find my kids. I couldn’t seem to find the right help or didn’t have the $ or connections. Finally, I found them [many many years later] and went to court.

The judge literally said “I believe you but I have to rule on the law and you didn’t provide support for the last four months.” [How could I ?, since they were on the run].

I found out that the girls father and step mother were divorcing. Something told me I should try again. So, I called him. He said he would ask my girls if they wanted to see me. He held true and my oldest daughter said “no” but my youngest said “yes”.

He made me agree that I would not tell them what really happened. My children have been completely brainwashed. I am not allowed to defend myself [not that I want to bash anyone – that isn’t healthy either] but I am trying to build a relationship. My daughter just doesn’t trust me at all. And she is very back and forth. I don’t want to push her and I want be there for her.

I have also found out that my children suffered a lot of abuse from both step mom and dad [dad was abusive with me as well when we were married]. I’m trying my best to prove myself without over stepping their father’s rule. I fear he would just yank her back from me again. He doesn’t want to be the bad guy.

I’m just trying to figure out how to handle this appropriately. It’s a hard line to walk but I’m willing to. My younger daughter is almost 15. I have completely respected the older daughter not wanting anything to do with me. I just pray maybe one day she will change her mind [she is almost 18].

Sadly, I don’t believe this is a unique story. Just one of a multitude about how children become separated from their mothers.

Jesus Loves The Little Children

As a young girl, growing up in an Episcopal Sunday School, we would sing “Jesus Loves The Little Children”. It is firmly ingrained in my mind –

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red, brown, yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children
Of the world

And I innocently believed this completely. However, we are now in a time of serious civil unrest and it is not without good reason. The parents of children of color worry reasonably about the safety of their young and give them “the talk” at a young age. Yesterday, a business associate of ours located in Kansas City admitted to my husband that he still worries about his 21 year old son who naturally has a black skin color.

I wonder if white transracial adoptive parents are able to understand the danger. I have listened to some grown adoptees who are black but were raised in white households lament that they don’t feel comfortable in the neighborhoods and among the people of color that they are genetically related to. This ability to fully relate has been robbed from them by adoption. Yet, as adults, at some level they realize they are beset by risks the white people who raised them do not fully comprehend.

Why is it that good people who are religious fail to understand the confusion and pain of adopting black children into white families ?

Asher D Isaacs writes in his article “Interracial Adoption: Permanent Placement and Racial Identity – An Adoptee’s Perspective” for the UCLA National Black Law Journal this –

I am the product of an interracial adoption. My birth father is Black and my birth mother is white. At the age of eighteen months, I was adopted by a white Jewish family which lived in a predominately white suburb of Buffalo, New York. My adoptive parents believed that the world should be color blind, so they raised me in the same way as they did their three biological children. My family never addressed the fact that my skin was brown or my hair curly. Nor did they discuss with me social and political issues relating to the African-African community. My parents did not see a need to expose me to Black culture, history, or role models.

However, despite my achievements, I was still exposed to racism. Strangers occasionally hurled racial insults at me, and white parents attempted to prevent their daughters from dating me. Thus, although I was outwardly successful, this period in my life was difficult and confusing. I could not understand how I could be popular at school, an excellent student, live in the same neighborhoods as my classmates, and yet be subject to insults and rejection because of my race. “What was wrong with me?” I wondered.

For a greater understanding of the potential harms, before you go and adopt a child who looks nothing like you and your biological children, you should read his entire paper at the linked article title above.

When To Test

I read about a situation today where the genetic parents of a toddler who has been adopted want the adoptive parents to have the child’s DNA tested so that family connections are available for that child. This is within a diverse adoption community and the responses were diverse as well. It is true that in getting our DNA tested we have no idea how that identifying information may be used in the future. Many of those commenting thought it should wait until the child was old enough to consent. Many suggested the genetic parents do the tests so that it is out there if or when the child wants it. Some believed it would have been helpful to them to have this information while they were yet a child.

I’ve had some experiences with adoption or donor conceived and DNA testing experiences.

Both of my parents were adoptees. I’ve done both Ancestry (my mom also did this one but it didn’t help her and yet, has been invaluable to me for learning ancestral relationships and my genetic family’s movements over time) and 23 and Me. Both have helped me be accepted by genetic relatives who might have doubted me otherwise. I’ve been able to make a few “good” connections and have a better sense of some of my family thanks to stories and photos shared. As to developing relationships with people I lost over 6 decades getting to know ? It is slow going though everyone has been nice to me.

Now on another front . . . both of my sons are donor egg conceived. We’ve never hidden this aspect of their conception from them and they have met the donor on several occasions. Fortunately she has an amazingly good perspective on it all. I waited until the oldest was 18 to gift him with 23 and Me. I knew the donor had done that one and before I gifted my son, I gifted my husband. After the older one received his results, I gifted the 15 yr old as well. He is mature and there was no reason to exclude him. It is uncomfortable but the GENETIC reality that the donor is listed as their Mother. They grew in my womb, nursed at my breast for a full year and have known no one else as “mom”. They seem to have processed it well as far as I can tell. Thankfully.

The adoptive mom of my nephew did Ancestry using only initials to identify him. It turned out (and she helped him in discovering this), my sister lied about who the father was on my nephew’s birth certificate. The Ancestry DNA test was their first suspicion. The effort though came at the nephew’s desire to know. He has since met his genetic father several times. They look remarkably alike and now my nephew has certainty.

My niece (child of a different sister) was also adopted and is going through some frustrations over her DNA results though her mother has given her the name of the genetic father. It can be a complicated and confusing experience.

There is one other nephew who was raised by his paternal grandparents. My sister lost custody in court when the paternal grandparents sued to possess him. This child is of mixed heritage – both white and Hispanic. He was raised in a very Hispanic family. His DNA shows a beautiful diversity.

No solutions, simply thoughts and examples.

Who Is My Mother ?

It is a complicated world we live in. For many children, one of those complicated things is defining who their mother is. For decades, since adoption became fashionable, this can be a hard question for a child to answer. Other children are challenged for other reasons. When I first told my youngest son his conception story that involves an egg donor, he asked me if she was his mother. I did my best to explain in age appropriate terms. At some point, in discussing this reality of my sons’ existence, the older one asked if he was supposed to be grateful. We answered, no but we are. When we did 23 and Me and the egg donor was identified as their mother, my youngest son lamented he did not have my genes. Sometimes reality is complicated.

For an adoptee, this can be a confusing question, especially when the child is very young and the only mother they know is the one that is present with them. In this modern age, some children have two mothers or in the case of two fathers, may have been born by surrogate. It is not an easy question for a lot of children to answer. With divorce being such a common occurrence, many children end up with step mothers.

As the source of nurturing, comforting, sustaining and unconditional love, it is no wonder a child will love their mother. Yet, for many children defining who the mother is can be confusing.

Even though every human being truly has only one mother, for many children with non-traditional forms of “Mom”, they should NOT have to correct an erroneous identification and say a primary caregiver is not their mom. This puts the child in too difficult of a situation. An adult can make it even more confusing for the child by trying to be accurately correct.

With big feelings what’s best is to validate and reflect the child’s feelings, and be a safe person for them to share their thoughts and feelings with. If you are not the woman who actually carried and birthed that child but are the one who is there for them in that role, day after day, let the child decide what they should call you and deal with the reality that their life is complex.