Please read Ariel's blog

If you haven't found Ariel's blog yet, please go there today. Her voice is essential to the adoption conversation.

She writes: Even all these months later, it doesn’t take a lot for grief to overpower me. I don’t know how to think about him, this little person that I can’t bring myself to address anymore, and not have it ruin my day. I’m starting to think that a blog is not enough as an outlet. I hoped it could be enough, but it has also enabled me in ignoring my feelings and never talking about him in real life, which doesn’t lend well to my sanity. But I can’t do anything else, not when everyone else is completely fine with the omissions, and I am literally the only one who notices a big hole everywhere.

Adoptive parents, we need to listen... 

Sally

Open & Closed

The following is a revised version of something I posted three years ago. My understanding of and perspective on adoption continues to evolve. I hope it always will.

To spend any time in the adoption cyber-community is to be convinced that first parents (almost) always want more openness than adoptive parents. The majority of blogging first mothers and fathers are eager, sometimes desperate, for more contact, and they’re simply waiting, impatiently waiting, painfully waiting for inclusion by the adoptive parents.

Many of the most vocal adoptees are either craving a deeper connection with their first families or mourning the realization that such a connection is erratic, inconsistent, unexpectedly toxic, ultimately unfulfilling, or will never be at all.

I can relate. Boy, can I relate. Most days I want more from my children’s first families. Most days I starve for information, details, history, stories, updates, and contact. I want responses to my emails. I want emails that aren't just responses to mine. I want pictures of you as a baby, as a child, of you pregnant, of you holding your baby, and as you are now. I want continuity that I don't have, that my kids don't have, that only you can provide.

And yet, I hesitate. I don't ask for what I want. I keep hoping you will read my mind and feel the same and know how to do this relationship better than I do. 

Most days I'm uncertain. Have I asked for too much? Have I asked too soon? Have I gone too far, crossed a line, rattled a cage, cut a tightrope, popped a bubble? Did I step on a crack?

What happens next? And when is next? Is it now? Why isn't it now?

Is this it? Is this all there will be? Is this enough for you? How will I know?

I'm afraid to ask for more because I'm afraid you'll say no, afraid you'll walk away, afraid of what I'll find. I'm afraid that after everything you've given, you'll give even more. For her. At your own expense. Because you don't want to say no. Because you don't want to be "that way." Because you love her.

Was it something I said?

Are you coming back?


Click here to purchase Sally's adoption book, What I Want My Adopted Child to Know: An Adoptive Parent's Perspective.

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
The Adoptive Parent

"Scary" Adoption Blogger #2

One of my 2013 resolutions is to highlight 13 people whose Truth challenges me, unsettles me, and yes, sometimes scares me. Their Truths confront my misconceptions, and I am better for it.  

"Scary" Adoption Blogger #2 is Ariel and her blog i miss you. Ariel writes with a beautiful voice. She is raw, clear, and authentic. 

Each time I visit her blog I hope her son grows to know her. She's quite something.  

Sally 

 

13 "Scary" (for me) Adoption Bloggers I Love

2012 has been a difficult year for me with regard to adoption. I have felt a lot like my almost-eight year-old, whose assessment of the world changes all the time and seems to depend mostly on what kind of day she’s having. I am almost eight years-old as a parent  – adoptive parenting, specifically – and my understanding and experience of adoption changes all the time, sometimes depending on what kind of day I’m having and sometimes depending on what kind of day someone else is having.  

Citizens of Adoptoland often talk about their Truth. This year I struggled to recognize mine. Not the core, but all the rest of it that surrounds the core and colors my days. I struggled with this because Truth doesn’t live in a vacuum; it lives in context, and in this case, the context is Adoptoland, where the terrain is well defined. Where the (battle) lines are so clearly drawn, the teams so fervently distinct, and the opinions so passionately defended that it seems nearly impossible to accept one Truth without rejecting another, to support someone without injuring someone else. To embrace my Truth without denying someone else’s.

I lost my Truth because I forgot I never had one to begin with. Not one. My Truth is many. And the many often don’t get along and they almost never make sense together. My Truth is disorderly, disjointed, and disharmonious. That’s just how it is.

I am an adoptive parent doing my best and finding my way.

I love my children. I love their first families.

I read things about adoption that I don’t understand and can’t relate to; I read things that make me want to turn away; I read things that haunt me, things that make me laugh, things that give me hope.

I sometimes write things other people don’t understand and can’t relate to. I sometimes write things that make people angry or defensive or relieved.

Some days I hate adoption and wish it would go away. Some days I don’t.

That is MyTruth.

One of my 2013 resolutions is to highlight 13 of the people whose Truth challenges me, for theirs are the voices that shake and unsettle me, and their Truths help shape my own. I'm calling it 13 "Scary" (for me) Adoption Bloggers I Love, not because they themselves are "scary," but because I am sometimes scared by their Truth. (If you plan to make a big hairy deal of how I titled this post, please spare me. This is my Truth. Remember?)

Since I’m aiming to do one a month and there are only 12 months in a year, I’m starting a few days early with Claudia. Claudia writes often and shares her truth plainly. She and I came to adoption from different places, and I am scared spitless by some of her posts and deeply hurt by others. I also have a deeper appreciation for Claudia  and her Truth than I expect anyone to understand.

Claudia’s blog is Musings of the Lame.

I especially hope you will read her REAL Truth About Adoption Campaign

and 29Things I Wish I Knew Before Adoption Entered My Life  posts. I would like to know how you are affected by her words.

Best wishes for all of us in 2013!

Sally

This Adoptive Parent's Christmas List

1. Pictures and letters from my children's first mothers. They need them.

2. Truth and transparency between expectant mothers considering adoption, prospective adoptive parents, adoptive parents, first parents, and adoptees.

3. Tax credits for women who choose to parent and raise their child(ren), equal to the Adoption Tax Credit available to adoptive parents. There should not be more financial support for people who adopt than for the women who bear the children.

4. More support and better protection for first fathers who want to parent/would want to parent if they knew.

5.  That everyone who reads this will read the post, The Reality of Adoption 2012.

What's on your list?

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
The Adoptive Parent
Freelance Writer
Instructional Designer

What's It Gonna Take To Put This Baby In Your Family Today?

This just came across my desk: I have a 1/2 Caucasian, 1/2 African American baby girl due December 11, 2012. Her birth mother has continued to smoke a pack a day throughout the pregnancy and smoked marijuana 2-3 times per week during the first two months of pregnancy. Birth father smokes marijuana 4-5 times a week. If you know anyone who may be interested please contact me at...

Is that typical of the messages adoption agencies and social workers receive?  

First off, you don't have a baby girl, and there is no birth mother in what you're saying. There is a pregnant woman and the baby inside her.

And this: "If you know anyone who may be interested..." Seriously?  Pull up your PAP spreadsheet and see who checked off "open to mixed race" and "will consider drug history."  

Is that how we were "matched?" What about all the warmandfuzzy be-patient-your-baby-will-find-you crooning whitewash?  

 

Seeing it laid out like that... I feel like I'm going to retch. What is the matter with people?

 

Click here to purchase Sally's adoption book, What I Want My Adopted Child to Know: An Adoptive Parent's Perspective.

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
The Adoptive Parent
Freelance Writer
Parenting

 

 

 

 

Nothing to do with Adoption

When I trip and slam my eye into the corner of a granite counter top and my eye swells nearly closed and I darn near pass out from the pain of the hit and the effort of holding in the long string of expletives jockeying around in my mouth, my three year-old rushes to my side, bends down close to my face and says, "Mom! I told you three times can I please have some more milk!" 

Isn't it nice to be needed?

Click here to purchase Sally's adoption book, What I Want My Adopted Child to Know: An Adoptive Parent's Perspective.

Sally Bacchetta - Freelance Writer
The Adoptive Parent
Freelance Writer
Parenting