So Much To Worry About

We are ALL being forced to live through perhaps one of the most extraordinary times in our collective generations history. It will certainly be long remembered and remarked upon. We can not see clearly where all of this disruption will leave our country and the world, much less our families and our selves.

It is crucial that we learn to manage the anxiety. I had to recently make a point to my own husband that his anxiety was not healthy for me. That if I had a heart attack I could end up in the place where I really don’t want to be at this time (though truth be told, I never want to end up there for that reason).

It is a moral and social responsibility incumbent upon each of us to do our best to minimize our own role in and help to curtail the spread of this contagion. We are all having to make adjustments and modifications to the way we would prefer to be living. We are having to give up those things we like to do best in favor of not doing much of anything that we can’t do in our very own homes.

This can be a challenge for anyone with children in their home. It is best to be truthful in an age appropriate manner. I heard a young child at the grocery store yesterday ask their mother, “why can’t I touch things ?” It is definitely a teaching moment and where day care is necessary for those who must continue to work – good hygiene and distancing can even be taught to young children.

So, I want to say to you today – It’s OK to be worried. It’s normal and it isn’t an overreaction. If that is how you feel, it’s your feelings. Feelings can’t be wrong.

It has helped in our family to have a plan. I am the most likely to become infected because I am the supply officer for my family. We are fortunate that we have always lived this way (though there are a few more inconveniences and necessary actions that weren’t necessary before). We have a home-based business and our children have always been educated at home. We have less to adapt to and we also live in sparsely populated rural wilderness. Not always an advantage but at the moment, one we are grateful for.

Adding Insult To Injury

We are living through uncertain times. Many people feel un-moored from their usual sources of confidence that all will be well. Children who have been adopted or are in foster care find their worlds upended. Lacking consistency, routine, and an overall feeling of stability and security as their personal worlds are being shaken up again by the Coronavirus and the efforts to contain the spread of that infection.

Schools have closed and public community events through which diverse people usually bond are cancelled. Instead of joining together in common experience we are forced to isolate ourselves from one another. At least we have modern technology to keep us connected while maintaining a safe distance from one another but life is not routine or what we would conventionally expect as we wake up each day.

For those parents who still have jobs to go to while their children are alone at home, the struggle can be significant.

One of the responsibilities that foster parents face is transporting the children in their home to visitations with their birth parents and biological family members. Often times, visitations take place at child welfare offices, while other times, visitations may occur at public places, such as parks, restaurants, churches, and other public venues. Visitations are important as they help to maintain the relationship between both child and adult. Along with this, many foster parents have very strong relationships with the birth parents and during visitations, trust is built and children can grow and develop in a healthy fashion, as a result.

Yet, those public spaces are now closed to most of us in most locations throughout the United States. And coming out of the usual wintertime season of colds and flu can complicate things because many of us have all had one thing or another since Thanksgiving and our immunity is generally low. Essential services such as therapy sessions, drug counseling, and even court appearances have also been affected by Covid 19.

All families face difficulty at this time in our collective history and families with the additional challenges of trauma and regulations face an additional burden on top of the difficulties they face every day. All families are concerned, and confused, looking for answers and receiving little guidance. There is no school, foster care related visits are being cancelled, church services are cancelled, and generally all children are now isolated from the friends they depend upon in their everyday lives. The challenge in an era of social distancing is physical, and tangible, but can’t be solved by throwing dollars at it.

Stay safe, be well. Come together – though at a distance. Keep the efforts to slow the spread of this virus going until the assurance that it is once again safe to have greater contact with our fellow human beings becomes more certain. Patience is necessary and flexibility too.

Why Did You Adopt ?

My husband and I made a conscious decision not to adopt when we had been trying unsuccessfully to conceive. I believe our main concern was that uncertainty factor. We decided that we preferred to start “fresh” using an alternative form of medicine (obviously the main response to the question in the survey above).

Many adoptive parents are driven by altruistic reasons – it is not because of infertility – but they truly would like to be there in a positive way for a child who they believe needs them. It is a form of rescuer or savior motivation.

DIA is not through an agency but is a disclosed identified party adoption aka an open adoption. The inconvenient truth is that regardless of the type of adoption – agencies are manipulative, hopeful adoptive parents are clueless and often blinded by their own wants, expectant mothers are coerced into giving up their babies because they are led to the false belief it will be better for their infant, and infants experience tremendous trauma when they are separated from their original mother. The whole system of adoption is sadly a mess.

Hopeful adoptive parents usually have good intentions, even if they are blinded to more selfish and personally oriented reasons for adopting. Wanting to be a parent and acting on that is a selfish decision via adoption, regardless of how you get there. These adoptive parents may have more than they need for just their own selves. They want to share from their abundance because for some people sharing feels good.

Many original mothers were forced. One example that I read about – she was told either she place her son for adoption or they were going to report her to Child Protective Services – she was in extreme poverty, she did not have a job, she was depressed, unmarried and her my son was originally conceived through a man no longer in the picture. She was told she wasn’t good enough to raise her own son and that he deserved better.

It is important to change the narrative about adoption – it is not a beautiful circumstance. It is damaging and painful and should only happen in the very rarest of circumstances, and then it should be within the family, if possible (and honestly, it usually is possible). I am pro-reunification. It is important that the pain of separation is not permanent if at all possible. My perspectives on adoption, I will admit, have gone 180 and mostly against. There are exceptions, of course, and good ones.

Misunderstood

Suddenly, friends and family have discovered what I have been writing about daily for over a year and they are understandably confused. I would not have understood before about two years ago myself. Both of my parents were adopted and so adoption was the most natural thing in the world to me. Both of my sisters gave up children to adoption. What I can say is that ignorance is bliss.

But for adoption I would not exist and I never forget that. But for adoption my mother would have grown up in abject poverty instead of the privileges of wealth as the child of a banker and socialite. My husband has said that my story could be viewed as pro-adoption and that is the truth.

Even so, I cannot ignore the many voices of adoptees and the original mothers who have suffered because adoption carries with it inherent wounds and that is what I tend to try and explain in this blog.

Even so, today I read a heartwarming story. I am sympathetic to the pain of infertility. I do believe that couples who have struggled with that really DO need to seek counseling before adopting any child.

Back to that heartwarming story. A couple was traveling on an airplane with their 8 day old adopted daughter. The mother have given birth in Colorado. It had been nine long years of fertility treatments, miscarriages and adoption stress for this couple.

A flight attendant announced that he’d be passing out napkins and pens for anyone who wanted to jot down a message for the new parents. The cabin erupted into cheers and applause. A steady stream of people came by to coo and congratulate the couple.

One of the napkins read: “I was adopted 64 years ago. Thank you for giving this child a loving family to be part of. Us adopted kids need a little extra love. Congratulations.” YES, some adoptees are truly grateful and I do not doubt that but I pause on that thought “adopted kids need a little extra love.” Hmmmm.

The flight attendants explained to the couple that they are married, and a fellow flight attendant had done this for them while they were on their honeymoon. They wanted to pay it forward.

The new father shared, “Adoption is wild with uncertainty. You wonder, is this birth mother going to choose us? What happens if she changes her mind, if she backs out?” The overwhelming support the couple felt during that plane trip was also a time when they were worried that their daughter might somehow be stigmatized.

Southwest Airlines released a statement saying, in part, that the crew showed “kindness and heart” on that flight. Common kindness always matters. I actually do care about every part of the adoption triad. Just saying.

Does Gender Make A Difference ?

My dad as a toddler. I believe this photo may have been taken at the Salvation Army home in El Paso Texas at least a couple of years after my dad was adopted. His original mother was probably still working there at this time. This photo came from her own album, even though he was adopted at 8 months of age. I do know that my Granny went back to them to adopt a baby brother for my dad and so this may have been when she went there to get my Uncle Buddy.

The look on his face leads me to reflect on what it might possibly mean. His original mother was fond of taking photographs and so it may be that she actually took this photo. Did he recognize her now ? There is no way to know really.

What I do know is that my mom and my dad, both adoptees, responded to that fact of their very lives differently. It never seemed to matter much to my dad. His adoptive mother was the prime source of security for him and the reason he was adopted. She actually kicked my dad’s first adoptive father out of the house for abusive behavior. My nephew says my Granny (what we called this woman growing up) said he was hurting one of the boys and she threw him out the window. Whatever the truth was, she was that feisty, and he died young because his liver was too damaged by alcohol.

My dad was actually adopted twice. At the age of 8, he was adopted again by my Granny’s new husband and he was a good man and they stayed married until death did part them.

When my mom wanted to search for her original family, my dad warned her against it saying she might be opening up a can of worms. I believe that statement represents his thoughts about his own adoption. Preparing for this blog, I went looking to see if gender makes a difference in one’s feelings about having been adopted. At least one story I found seems to indicate as much. He said, “I still do not wish to find my biological parents, but I am thankful every day for the love and the sacrifice they made for me,” even though he now has biological children of his own.

Maybe it is because mothers have a different kind of relationship with their children than fathers do. My mom once explained her effort to find her mother this way, “As a mother, I would want to know what happened to my child.” My mom really seemed to have zero interest in her father.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

I continue to unwrap the gift I have received late in life of knowledge about my natural grandparents, meeting my genetic relatives and understanding the impacts of adoption on my entire family. It is a gift that has not stopped giving to me more and more each day.

One year ago, I completed a family history as a gift to 9 of my relatives. Having recovered our unknown genetic history and having some additional family stories I felt were worth saving, I self published it economically in a spiral bound book. If something ended my life, I did not want the knowledge lost again.

Over the last year, I’ve been retelling the story of finding my original grandparents but soon realized I could not convey an accurate understanding of the final miracle in that journey without delving into something I did not cover at all in the family history. That is my journey as executor of my deceased parents estates and having to contend with a brilliant but delusional sister. It certainly adds an element of tension, uncertainty and conflict. Truth be told, two parts of my on-going story have only revealed themselves this last November.

Even so, I’ve decided I am now “complete” with a version that I hope will be commercially published and bring some modest amount of revenue into my family’s financial support while opening a door for me to publish whatever comes next (I have a couple of ideas in progress – one has waited 5 years for me to have the time to take the rough draft into a finished form).

May your own heart be warmed with the love of knowing family. No family is perfect and often they vex us and yet, they truly polish us into stars of shining light for others to be inspired by. May all your holidays be bright.