From Wounds to Scars

A week or so ago a dear blog friend of mine, emilythehopeless, came under attack by a group of adult adoptees. The attacks were so ruthless and horrid that she decided to move out of her blog home, and the world of infertility blogs lost an amazing voice. Part of the blogging experience is dealing with negative comments it is just something that comes with the territory. This went way beyond hurtful comments; these people took it upon themselves to contact the adoption attorney that she is using and inform the attorney that they believed that she was an unsuitable candidate for adoption. This is taking the whole thing to a level of insanity that I just cannot wrap my head around.

I have thought a lot about this situation and have tried, as an adult adoptee, to understand where these people were coming from. In the end, I cannot. In my teen years, like most teens, I was angry at the world. Adoption was my ammunition because that is what I had to work with and it would have been some other issue if I had one as powerful. Anger at the world is just part of the growing up experience for most of us. Adoption is not an easy issue for anyone involved in the process. As an adoptee I felt abandoned, unloved, unwanted, and lived in constant fear of abandonment. Living in that space becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, you become the person that no one wants to be around and every person that tries to get close to you had to wade through the swamp of misery to do so, and who wants to put that much time and energy to a black hole of misery. I found myself caught in this vicious cycle that was difficult to free myself from.

At some point, I realized that it was so much easier to live my life in a state of happiness instead of the misery I had wallowed in for years. Of course, people had been telling me this all along, but it is not something that you learn until you are able to experience it for yourself. Misery was comfortable I knew how to function in that world. Learning to be happy was a long process, but life was so much easier once I got to that place.

As an adult I am grateful that I was adopted. I am grateful that my parents wanted me so badly that they were willing to jump through countless hoops to become my parents. I am grateful that my birth-mother wanted me to have a better life than what she could provide, and made the difficult decision to place me in the care of others. Most of all I am grateful that I have been able to learn and grow in ways that I would have never been able to. Seeing these adults, and I use that term very loosely, have the need to attack others because they are unable to move on from this pain, has given me a new perspective of where I could have ended up. Without being able to recognize that I have my own issues, and that these issues are my responsibility, I could have been these people who need to focus on others rather than dealing with themselves.

No one has the perfect life. We all live with deep wounds, some more traumatic than others, but just as horrible to us personally. Given the chance, all of us would change some parts of our lives; it is part of being human. What makes us adults is the ability to let the wounds grow scabs and become scars. The ability to recognize that we are not defined by our pasts is so incredibly freeing. For me to know that I have survived the pain of so many parts of my life has made me a stronger person.

Knowing that one day I am going to have to tell our child that I am not biologically their mother is not something that I am looking forward to, but it is something that I know I can handle. All my experiences have taught me that there is very little I can deal with in this life. Those experiences have also taught me that no matter the reaction the child has, that one day they will understand that all the decisions we have made and all we have done was because we love them more than words can convey. Every twist and turn that occurred in making our child a reality was done because we have loved him or her for years before they were a reality.

telling the kid about surrogacy

now that we have decided that this is the path we are taking to have our family, we now have to answer the big question: how are we going to tell our child about how they came to be?

one of my most clear memories, is the entire day of my life that culminated in my parents telling me that i was adopted. i was in the 2nd grade. that afternoon i had my two bottom canine teeth pulled. while sitting in my nana's den, eating an orange jelly candy, my mother asked me where i wanted to go to dinner that night. oh the sheer joy and excitement, my parents wanted me to give input on what i wanted. they really cared what i wanted to do and i got to make a decision and they were going to comply and i was not going to have to scream and yell or hold my breath until i turned blue. i started counting all the teeth i had yet to loose and wondering how many the dentist would pull. pulling teeth obviously led to this great and glorious day when i had power, real and true power handed to me without question. there was no question, we would dine in the wonder that was the Old San Fransisco Steakhouse, the fantasy world of all little girls, who aspired to walk across bars. they had a red velvet swing above the bar, and they let kids swing being pushed by a woman dressed in late 1800's whorehouse costume, think Hollywooded up Deadwood. then they gave you a certificate. i probably collected hundreds. now if this was not enough they served this huge block of swiss cheese with a slicer cutty thing. I LOVE CHEESE. my father says, "if you put cheese on dog shit jaymee would eat it." that is a bit of an overstatement, but not too far off the truth.

after all the glorious swinging and cheese eating, it was time to go to bed. i was told to go put on my pjs and come back out. i knew this was too good to be true, i was getting in trouble, it was never good to be told to come and talk. so in my nightgown i sat on the brown velour couch with my parents. the stress was building in my little body. "Your adopted, do you understand what that means?," my mother blurted out. according to my father she had spent weeks working out what she was going to say, and she had a whole speech ready, i never heard that speech. like all adopted children of the late 1970s i had "the chosen baby" book, it was one of my favorite stories, and through that i knew what adoption meant. i remember crying, i do not know why i was crying, but it was one of those awful snotty icky crying. i had suspected that i was adopted a year before they ever told me, and asked my nanny. my sister not being adopted, had pictures taken in the hospital, and i did not. my parents documented our lives so closely, you would have thought they were conducting research. the thought that they would not have a picture of me in the hospital could only have one explanation, i had to be adopted, there was no other option.

my mother then went and got a painting that she bought for our new house. it was 2 star gazer lilies on a black background. i don't know what happened to the painting, i assume my mother sold it when we moved. sadness fills me that someone picked up this canvas at a garage sale, they will never know all the emotions tied up in that piece of art.

being able to remember that day with such clarity is one of the best memories of my life, but it has taken me years to get to this point. i know that my parents wanted to become parents so bad, that they were willing to jump through so many hoops. i am not sure i could have endured all that they did, and i definitely can not imagine worrying for two years that someone could come and take away my child. (at the time i was born the laws gave biological parents two years to change their minds, this is not done anymore) in fact i know i would have been a wreck and there is no way that i could let myself love my child as fully as my parents love me, because i would paralyzed by the fear.

being told that i was adopted was an event in my life. i will always remember that day, because my whole self concept changed. my parents are wonderful caring people who could not love me more. they were working with what they knew, and did an amazing job raising me. out of all the people i know, there is no one that will not do something differently than their parents when it comes to raising their children. for me this will be my change. i will consider myself accomplished as a parent if my child grows up feeling half as loved by me as i do by my parents.

for my child i want something different, i want them to always have known how they came into the world. over the years i have had a lot of friends who were adopted, and it has been my experience that the ones who always knew they were adopted seemed to just accept their adoptions and never give it a second thought. for them it is a natural state of being, their adoptions never defined them as people.

our child will be the product of surrogacy. no shame should ever be attached to this fact. none of us asked for this to be the case. as a little girl, i never thought, one day i am going to grow up and have another woman carry my child. all the same this is how we will make our family happen, through a lot of work, tears, fear, joy, and people who really love each other, our child will come into the world. actually that is not much different than how most children get here, we are just adding a few more people.

a dear friend of mine sent me the book, "Hope and Will Have a Baby", which is a very sweet book. i am so happy my child will have their own version of "The Chosen Baby". still i am left with the question of how do i explain this process to a small child. i got my answer while reading the blog of a gestational surrogate. her young, adopted daughter surprised her with knowing that she was having a surrogate baby for another couple. she simply explained that sometimes women have broken tummys and other women have babies for them, please read the story here, it is simply one of the sweetest story i have read on this subject.

having all this time to think about having a child, makes you think of things that most people never consider. i can not begin to list all the crazy thoughts that have gone through my mind. a happy child, who knows we love them more than anything in the world, is all i really want for them. giving birth to a child in no way makes you a mommy and biology does not make you family. sacrifice, love, constant support, mending scraped knees and hearts, makes a family.

Legacy of an Adopted Child

this is a poem someone showed me a long time ago. it isn't completely relevant, but in some ways it does apply, especially in relation to #7.

Legacy of an Adopted Child
Once there were two women, neither knew the other
One you do not remember, the other you call mother.
One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name
One gave you the seed of talent, the other gave you an aim.
Two very different lives shaped yours into one
One became your guiding star, the other was your sun.
One gave you emotions, and one calmed your fears
One saw your first sweet smile, the other dried your tears.
The first gave you life, the second taught you to live it.
The first gave you a need for love, the second was there to give it.
One gave you up—it was all that she could do,
The other prayed for a child—God led her straight to you.
And now you ask me through your tears,
The age-old question of all the years,
Heredity or Environment, which are you a product of?
Neither darling, neither ... just two different kinds of Love.