Happy national adoption month! I was so
happy to find Jessalyn's wonderful blog as I have followed the daily postings
of adoption stories on adoption.net. Her challenge to negativity about adoption
came as a breath of fresh air to me.
It's now almost twenty-three years since
I adopted my son and fifteen since i adopted my daughter. As I reflect on all that has happened since
then in my life and in the world it is quite staggering. What has happened with
adoption is such a powerful reflection of these changes.
When my son was born in 1990 adoption was
still mostly closed. I remember that California was beginning to have open
adoption. There was no internet. There was not the huge access to the vast
amount of information and opinions that we have today. There were no blogs!
Adoptive parents were given standard
advice: Tell your children they are adopted. Tell them they can search for their
birthmothers when they get older, preferably at age eighteen. Birth parents
were mostly invisible. Adoptee grief was tucked away behind the wish that
everyone would be happy and the assumption that all would have a better life
created by the "solution" of adoption.
We are now rocking on the sea of anger at
these presumptions. This is creating dramatic and lasting change. Change never
comes without pain, just as adoption does not come without loss.
It is heartening to see a birthmother
like Jessalyn feel good about her decision to place her child for adoption. She
was able to do this in this new context of a changing adoption world. She was
able to feel empowered to make a choice, however painful and difficult. Her
voice and the voices of other women who have made this choice in an era when
openness allows them to own their decision is a huge and welcome shift in the
world of adoption.
It is unfortunate that many who have not
experienced adoption as positive insist that anyone who has a different experience
must be wrong. There are many common features to most adoptions: loss, grief,
fantasies of lives not lived, anger at abandonment. These are all difficult
feelings to deal with and overcome. It is easy to become stuck along the way
and even easier to assume that, because there are many common experiences, all
adoptions are the same and all involved feel the same way. Clearly, this is not
true.
We need to make space for many voices,
most especially the voices of change. Adoptees are working to open records and
claim their full identities. Birthmothers are gaining a voice and power in the
decision to place their children and maintain relationships with them. i would like to raise my voice for the
changes that adoptive parents are experiencing as the world of adoption opens.
I adopted my children in the last years
before these changes had fully occurred, that is to say in closed adoptions. As
the adoption world has opened so have we. I have helped both my children search
for and find their birth families with two dramatically different results.
Again, no two situations are the same! In order to do this, I have had to soul
search and let go in ways I never imagined years ago when I was given the
advice I refer to above. Much to my surprise, it has opened my heart in ways I
never imagined and brought into our lives a new extended family for one child
that broadens our world and theirs. For my other child, questions were put to
rest, but the birth family did not want connection and my child was challenged
to grieve again.
I think these two results of search and
reunion serve as reminders to us all that no two situations in adoption are the
same. Biological connection gives us different kinds of connections, not always
positive ones. When it does it is amazing and when it does not, it can be very
hard, but also freeing. As we ride the tide of change that is opening us all to
each other it is so vital to hold in mind that extreme positions and
assumptions about the meaning of our adoption experiences do not allow us the
room to have our own individual stories and to learn and grow from them.
Barbara Freedgood, LCSW
Link to video on
adoption: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nZDp64tFo0
1 comment:
I love this post - a good reminder of so many things for adoptive mamas.
Although there are certainly hard parts of open adoption (as I have come to realize as a new adoptive mom), I cannot imagine the difficulties that my daughter and her birth mama would experience as a result of not being in each others' lives. My husband and I feel so lucky to be able to offer our daughter a complete picture of who she is and where she comes from. There will certainly be parts of her story that our daughter will grieve and question as she grows up, but open adoption has allowed us to capture parts of her story that we think she may find important when the time comes for these tough questions and tough emotions.
Being able to tell our daughter with confidence that she always loved fills my heart with joy!
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