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They were broken people in broken situations looking for a panacea for their children. Problem is, there is no such thing.
That day I answered the phone and heard about each of my children is one I will never forget. The experience is both exhilarating and exhausting all at the same time. We waited so long to hear we were going to be parents. It was a time of relief, hope, and nausea all rolled into one.
“Congratulations!” to “A little girl, three months old,” “A boy, nine months, removed from his home,” “A boy, four weeks old with Pulmonary Stenosis,” “A birth mom who is 7 ½ months pregnant,” and “A birth mom 8 months pregnant.” We hardly had time to think let alone process our emotions each time, which usually resulted in me feeling like I was going to throw up.
Then came crunch time. We sat and listened to their stories two days or one week later, while some of the details spanned over the next two months, where we were allowed to collect bits and pieces at a time. We had no doubt in our minds we would accept our children, and any mess that came with them. The answer was always yes. But having to process the details of each situation was no walk in the park.
Decisions were made for my children long before they came home. They had an irreversible impact on their lives and mine. For some time I stayed silent, protecting the details with my very life, afraid of other people’s opinions and unsolicited advice. I wanted to shield my children from the judgmental glances of pious people. They shouldn’t have to shoulder the weight of their birth family’s decisions. They already have to deal with mine.
And then a light went on. My children do have to shoulder the weight of those decisions every day, and so do I. Why are we walking this road alone?
Drugs, alcohol, and mental illness were major factors in each of my children’s stories, with one mismanaged condition usually resulting in the others. Only one of my children’s birth moms denied using, but the rest were ashamed of the decisions they had made. We didn’t blame them. This is a harsh reality of adoption. They were broken people in broken situations looking for a panacea for their children. Problem is, there is no such thing.
It was my job, as an adoptive mom, to create a facade all while wading through my own share of the muck.
I’m tired of the lies, afraid of what others might think. Truth is, we’re all broken in one way or other. We spend so much time and effort trying to hide the ugly reality of it all, we almost manage to forget it’s actually there, and that we have to deal with it (or run from it) on a day-to-day basis. But we must walk through the brokenness to find healing. We must swim up-stream, always fighting the current. We each have our own river.
I try to teach my children not to be ashamed of theirs. Healing comes when we can see things for what they really are, have compassion for those who are struggling, and find the grace necessary to forgive others and ourselves. But unfortunately I was the one hiding all of the mess, refusing to talk about it, communicating shame. I was the hypocrite.
This was hard for me to come to terms with. You see, all of this time I thought I was protecting my children when, in fact, I was the worst perpetrator. Social workers encouraged me, and others thought highly of me for it. I was so strong. But this was a coward’s way out. Countless of adoptive and birth families played the game, and took the steps toward adoption without knowing what they were actually getting themselves into.
Life is filled with struggle. The birth families had an over-ideal expectation for open adoption and realized, too late, that it wasn’t the perfect way to raise a family. They still gave their child away to an imperfect couple. We believed our love and support would override any in utero experience or genetic pre-programming our children had. Truth of the matter is, it didn’t. We struggle through severe mental and physical health issues every day. We don’t get a free-pass, and we don’t get to tap-out. We’re parents, fake or real, it doesn’t matter.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am thankful for my messy family and in a heartbeat, I’d do it all over again. Empathy comes with experience. But that doesn’t mean I have to accept it as being “okay”. It is not okay that I have to handle the baggage that was handed down to me for countless generations. And it is not okay that my children have double the baggage to carry, much thanks to my own shortfalls. But whether we face it or not, talk about it or not, it doesn’t get rid of the baggage. It’s real, it’s debilitating, it’s suffocating.
Families are never perfect, genetically related or not. In fact, this statement alone separates us. After all, aren’t we all related in some way or other? I think if we look close enough we will find that we’re not much different from each other after all.
Adoption gets a bad wrap, whether you’re the birth parent, child, or adoptive parent. You’re either the savior, perpetrator, or victim, depending on the crowd. It’s a broken situation filled with more broken people than we first realized. Instead of passing the blame, I’m accepting it, and dealing with the mess I’ve helped to create. It’s my responsibility. To be human is to be broken, and one loss begets another. We are not perfect, and perfection is overrated anyways.
2 Comments
Claudia Pendergrass
Boy can I relate! One of the harder things is that well-meaning friends judge and second guess our decisions. Also, somehow since adoption is involved they think we brought these problems on ourselves so we should never vent or complain. Thanks for sharing your messy 😊
eyeswideopenadoption
Good points!