As usual, after a long talk with my daughter I start thinking. We were talking about the barriers we put up in our relationship and why they are there. More importantly, how they effect how we behave with each other. Naturally, I immediatly thought of this as an adoptee "issue". It's not too hard to understand from an adoptee viewpoint, abandoned once it can happen again and probably will. OK, I can see that. After all what kind of a woman can walk away from her own child. I may get back to my diatribe on that question later in this post or maybe another one. Anyway I was busy this morning doing laundry and drying my hair. I looked in the mirror a saw a woman who was letting the lie control her behavior. This is not an "adoptee issue". It is a problem that occurs when you are outside the norms of society. There are a whole lot of people very eager to tell you how you should think, act, and feel. Everybody says that birth mothers/adoptees should...... Of course ask any three people to finish that statement and you will get four mutually exclusive answers. I started thinking just how much I have let all this influence my behavior.
I am not the type of person that is easily influenced by people's opinion of me. I know I don't like everyone and everyone won't like me. I am fine with that. I try to treat everyone respectfully whether or not I like them and expect the same. So why do I allow the lie and people's acceptance of it to control how I behave with my daughter? This comes out in so many ways. The most incidious is the belief that I don't deserve to have a real relationship with her. I am her mother but I didn't do the hard part, take care of her when she needed a mother. (mothers, ignore all the reasons, this isn't logical its emotional) Consequently, it is hard for me to accept she does love me and will continue to do so. Where do I fit in her life? How can I fit in her life? For the believers in the lie the answer is simple, nowhere except possibly as a source of genetic/medical information. No wonder I keep doing things like getting very close and then at the slightest hint that I have over-stepped my bounds go scurrying back into my corner. It is a safe corner where I can tell myself that I am treating her as an adult and allowing her to make adult decisions. What I am really doing is letting the lie control me. My behavior is at odds with how I feel and what I want. It is at odds with how I relate to other people. Why the hell should I care about what what the lie says? Why should I give a damn about anyone's opinion on our relationship except my daughter's. I send out so many mixed signals that it makes her dizzy. Most of the time I don't even know I am doing it. I need to look in the mirror more often. I want my relationship with my fdaughter to be one that we define free from what other people think it should be. To do that requires an honesty about what we want and what makes us happy. We are adults and have to make accomodations for the other people that are important to us. That doesn't mean that we have to let their opinion dictate how we behave with each other or how we feel about each other. I am sure I will still do an occassional retreat to my corner. Bad habits are hard to break. I hope I have enough sense the next time to pick up the phone and apologize for my bad behavior and tell her why I am feeling scared or hurt.
Now that I am on a roll, I will give my answers about what kind of a woman can give up her baby. I really love this one. When you are unmarried and pregnant the answer is the unselfish kind who cares more for your child than for your own (hormone induced of course) needs. Thirty years later the answer is a self-indulgent bitch who didn't want to bother with taking responisiblity for her own child. Yep, you got it right. In the court of public opinion and the fog masters you really can't win. The real answer for what kind of woman is as diverse as the women who are in a situation where they need to even consider it. The beauty of it is that that the lie (BEST FOR THE CHILD for those of you that missed my analysis of the root of all evil) works for everyone. Is the child inconvienent? No problem you do whats best for the child and get on with your plans. No harm done. Are you scared that you aren't ready to be a mother? No problem, do what is best for the child. No harm done. Are you financially unable to provide a home? No problem, do what is best for the child. No harm done. Are you in a bad relationship/no relationship. Solve the problem by doing whats best for the child. No harm done. In other words, the lie is perfect and fits all occasions. It is the ultimate little black dress. So every woman has her own reason for wearing the little black dress.
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6 comments:
Fuzzy Rat Mother, what a wonderful post. Seems like you had an everyday epiphany! I often have them while doing laundry or in the bathroom, too. There's something about washing that seems to bring them on.
Anyway, what you wrote about the lie that is specific to adoption broadened in my mind to include other sorts of lies all of us tell ourselves, too. For instance, "this is permanent." If you think about how many times in adoption a person is told this, and also outside adoption. In Buddhism they teach about the idea of the impermanence of all things; but human beings habitually think that everything is permanent.
In adoption, this has worked like a lie against you and your relationship with your daughter by telling you that once you gave your daughter up, you were permanently unforgivable in effect; you would always be a mother who gave up.
But if you look at it, it's obvious this can't be true any more. YOU'RE NOT GIVING UP NOW! So there's that bigger lie about all things being permanent.
The other way this works, I think, is that we think that the relationship is always going to be the way it is now. But if everything is impermanent, you or your daughter can lose your life any time; how would you feel about all the barriers to love you or she erected if she died suddenly, or you died suddenly? Wouldn't you feel you had wasted all your years of reunion? Wouldn't you wish you had just jumped in, lived in the now, and loved each other madly and completely right now?
I ask this because yesterday I came from the funeral of a 36-year-old mother of six who died suddenly on July 22. It puts regrets and hesitations and one's reliance on lies in perspective.
I don't think there is one big "lie" in adoption. I think there are a lot of lies that humans tell themselves to keep themselves from living in the moment; and many lies are attached to adoption. One is that you are not a real mother any more; another is (for adoptive mothers) that they never can be a real mother; for adoptees it can be that they are never a "whole" child. These are all lies. We can have what we need and want to be whole human beings, regardless of our circumstances. But we can't get it, as you so wisely and passionately point out, if we continue to believe lies without dismantling them.
I love how you are dismantling them. Your whole life is changing! Thank you for giving us a glimpse into how.
Add to that the lie(s) of why reunion can't work:
-you are not a mother
-you gave up your rights
-she already has a "real" family
-you will hurt the a-family
-you will hurt your own family
-you have no bond
-and on and on...
The lies about giving up a baby and about reunion are endless.
And add to that "Your child will not want a relationship with you because of what you did."
For a few this might be true, but for the majority that I have talked to it is a lie.
It's hard. When all that crap ran through my head, I asked myself if I believed it based on my daughters feelings towards me.
Your daughters feelings toward a relationship with you are and should be the only things you judge your reunion by.
Everyone else who had an opinion about my reunion was wrong, way wrong, and they now know it.
There was only one person who ever told me I might get another chance with my daughter, and she died the next day. Weeks after her funeral I found out she was a first mother and had reunited with her daughter. Talk about blow me away. I never understood why she seemed to get it. She was a friend of my mom and step dad's. That's why she kept quiet. All those years and she never even told my mom. Probably because of the opinions.
Remember opinions are like particular body parts, everybodies got one. LOL
Good Luck
Lori said, "There was only one person who ever told me I might get another chance with my daughter, and she died the next day. Weeks after her funeral I found out she was a first mother and had reunited with her daughter. Talk about blow me away. I never understood why she seemed to get it."
Boy, so true how only those who have walked in our shoes truly "get it" (moms and adoptees). When I first outed myself as a mother, a friend told me, "you were better off, you were too young, you got to go to college," - the usual LIES, the rationalizations....they can be molded to fit any foot. When I mentioned that, gee take a look around, this was my only child, too old now for any more, she actually said, "hey, you could adopt."
That just takes the cake.
Hi FuzzyRM, My answer to "what kind of woman" is a desperate woman. Forgiving myself for my desperation and lack of control is the way I get up again and keep going into the continually evolving relationship with my firstborn.
I have recently found your blog - I had seen it before but just found it again and read the last few months posts. I am happy your reunion is working- it sounds like you are having the normal bumps you would have after meeting so many years later under these circumstances. I hope it continues to go well. I guess where I am puzzled is why you are stuck in the "lie." Was it really a lie? Was it not true for you a the time? Did you not do the very best you could for your daughter that YOU COULD at the time? Not to say that she doesn't hurt from the adoption but you would "if" your selves to death here and it just doesn't seem productive. I think you did the best you could at the time- if you could have made a different choice- I am sure you would have. It is like I have to think about my own raising- which I have my bio parents- but my mom was absent emotionally - did she do it intentionally to hurt me? No- if she could have been there for me- she would have but for whatever reason- she couldn't- it was not malicious. This world is full of fallen people- and we all reap the wake of that- I guess I just wanted to say- let yourself up off the matte. You did make the best decision for yourself and for your daughter AT THE TIME that you could. If you COULD have made a better one- I trust YOU WOULD have but your circumstances didn't permit it. Hang in there! just my 2 cents- :)
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