Frozen (adoption-style)

I wrote this post sometime this past spring, and I didn't post it until now because I've been... well, frozen.

I've been frozen for too long. Frozen because any movement is risky. Frozen because most everything I see and hear and read and feel in Adoptoland makes sense enough until I move in any direction. The slightest shift springs a crack that splits into 2, then 4, then 8, which spread like a spider army marching, marching, marching in all directions at once, until everything cracks and nothing bears weight and I'm drowning once again. I'm bone weary of talking about adoption.

I stay out of the adoption cybersphere for months, and then on a brisk, sunny day in early spring I'm pulled back in by Claudia's piece about Gaslighting. I love reading Claudia's thoughts. And I'm jealous. Jealous because the whole world gets to know what Claudia thinks and feels, and I don't get to know squat about my kids' first moms. Oh sure, I know demographic details, I know superficial things about them and their families, but I don't know anything that matters. I don't know how they feel when they look at the pictures we send. I don't know what blogs they read. I don't know if they're planting a garden, taking a class, resenting me...  I know more what strangers think and feel than I do my own kids' first moms. That's messed up. Frozen.

How Can a Mother Give up Her Child?

She said: I've been blessed by adoption, but still, I don't understand how a mother can give up her child. I could never do that.

I said: You could never do that? How do you know?

She said: Because! I love my kids far too much. I would never do that to them.

I said: Hmm... then surely you love your children too much to ever diminish their history or deny them access to their roots.

A mother as loving as you doesn't feel the need to compete with her kid's first family, change her child's name, or withhold any contact with their birth family.

And - hallelujah! - you're not one of those adoptive parents who tries to pretend that the life and development and attachment and love and leaving that happened before you is insignificant.

You love your children far too much to do that to them.

Whew! Good to know.

Click here to purchase Sally's adoption book, What I Want My Adopted Child to Know: An Adoptive Parent's Perspective, in softcover, hardcover, or e-book formats.

Sally Bacchetta
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