Today I'm not sure where to begin really and I apologize in advance if I make little sense...
You see, I read an article that seemed relatively benign and things got a bit challenging after that.. Because a coworker asked, after listening to my passionate point of view, if I had always been "angry" about adoption. Even though there was no anger in my voice. And in the end what it boils down to is this; I really should not even be reading "fluffy" articles about adoption at all. I should avoid 99% of adoption/mommy blogs all together because this woman is just writing her opinion and I am not an Internet crusader.
I cant be.
I am not strong enough to take on a truth that is so easily dismissed, when the people with the power in this world are the ones who have the money and time fight against it and often use God to back them up. The same God my grandmother prayed too the day her future and my history was taken away. The same God that mothers everywhere look to for help when the stick turns pink and they don't know what to do.. Its hard to believe that God would play both sides of the fence, but then again, its often only one set of prayers is answered so maybe even He has chosen a side in the debate...
But I don't know.
I crusade my way through my real life every day in my work, in my friendships and in the causes I believe in. Because its all designed to create discussion, awareness. Right? It shouldn't inspire anger, hurt or frustration. Because I am not anti adoption, because I love the family my mother was adopted into and I love my brother who was adopted into ours at 8 years old. But somewhere it did...
Maybe it was the part of the article where the author quoted herself saying:
“It’s fine," I said. "We went through our agency. The birth parents don’t have any interest in getting her back. I’m not worried about it."
Maybe its because I am not evolved enough to separate my own story from hers...because I spent my life believing that my family didn't want me that adds the sting to words that were written as reassurance. Maybe its because I now know they did want us but layers of lies and shame kept the truth hidden for over 50 years and I worry desperately that this natural mother is worrying desperately about the baby this woman is raising. Maybe Im worrying that she isn't.
Maybe its none of my business but this family came to me in the form of an AOL article that popped up next to the place where I type in my password. I did not go looking for them and I wish they didn't find their way to me...
Because there was a section about what should never be said to adoptive parents, and mentioning the fact that money exchanged hands is on the list as well as the idea that the baby is "lucky" to have been adopted. While I agree that that luck is really the wrong word (to put it mildly) I feel she hit the nail on the head of what is wrong with the infant adoption industry without even knowing she was doing it; its often about providing children for barren couples, not about creating a family for a child who needs one...
"Not all adoptions come out of poverty. And actually, adoptive parents usually feel they are the lucky ones. We don’t adopt because we want to provide an opportunity for someone for a better life. We adopt because we want to make a family, just like other people."
So she said it. She told the truth and I have to give her credit for that. She wanted a baby and couldn't make one so she adopted. She wanted to be a mother so she found a way to make it happen and will make sure that people know to use the terminology that make her most comfortable...
"...the term for the woman parenting the child is “mother.” Use “birth mother” or “biological mother” for the woman in which the child grew."
And it makes my stomach turn, and maybe it shouldn't. I don't know this families entire story. I know only the way it was presented to me and I picture what the author refers to as "a frail, hugely pregnant ginger-haired young woman" and wonder to myself if she felt she had any options, if the adoption will open and what the baby will be told of her story. Because this woman was more than a vessel designed to deliver them a baby and because we all know that baby is not a piece of furniture right? Shes not an accessory to make the family picture more presentable. She is a little person who will one day be an adult who, even in the happiest of circumstances, will be asking questions and looking at strangers for family resemblance. Even if she never says it out loud.
I am a social worker. My first job out of college was with a private adoption agency that is contracted with Child Protective Services. I worked diligently to find families for sibling groups and kids with trauma histories that I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't met them, seen it myself and held them while they cried for the very people who had hurt them. While my counter parts placed babies and counseled "birth mothers" who hadn't even given birth yet but somehow still carried the title where everyone else would simply be "mother."
I believe that those children I worked with are who adoption is for. I believe with my whole heart that they deserve love and a family and that we should work towards helping them find it. But while there I saw first hand the manipulation that comes with the private adoption world and what "birth parent counseling"often really means.
I only lasted a little over a year and one too many mothers crying over the yearly pictures left in their file of the babies they carried who have grown into children they don't get to know. That job pulled the thread that sent my view of adoption unraveling and forced me to look at the truth and my own adoption story. It let me believe that maybe we weren't given away, that maybe someone wanted us and that I shouldn't be afraid to look harder...maybe.
So no. I am not angry that adoption is part of my life. I have been very lucky to have been loved from all directions and by people who didn't even know I existed. They loved me because they loved the baby that was taken half a century before. The mother that raised mine was an amazing, beautiful and brilliant woman who was way ahead of her time. She allowed me to question the very institution that made us a family and she will forever be my grandmother.
No, I'm not angry, I'm frustrated. I hurt with every word read because so many still don't understand. I am not unhappy with the family I have, its not about me. Its about the truth. Its about family and eye color, its about crooked smiles and health histories. Its about accepting the idea that a better income does not make a better parent. Its about openness and about love that should be multiplied and not divided. About understanding that when it comes to a child's foundation, there can never be too many people loving them. That titles and terminology are just that in the face of all that those words mean to a person whose birth certificate says they came from someone other than the woman who labored for them.
I know that in light of all that floats around the internet, this should have been something simply read and forgotten. Believe me I know. I've read far worse. And perhaps it was the subtly that got to me...the seemingly P.C writing that disguised the truth from anyone who wasn't looking for it. I don't know. It made me tired. It made me sad the way animal testing and captive killer whales make me sad. Something that seems so obviously wrong in its current incarnation that you are shocked that people still pay to go to Sea World...
So I'm frustrated. Jump up and down screaming the truth kinda frustrated. Rejoicing at the smallest glimmer of understanding, of being heard. Because its not about being angry, its about doing what is right... for everyone...
Just saying...
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