Something has been rumbling around in my head for a while now.
What is a open adoption to us birth moms? For those of us who's adoptions are truly that. It's a chance to be someone real to our children as they grow up. It's knowing they are safe and loved. It means not worrying and wondering where they are.
But I think it can also mean confusion in separating our joy at knowing our children and our sorrow for having lost something so very dear to us. How can we have such deep grief if we havent totally lost our children to the unknown?
I can imagine that a lot of birth Moms in this age could feel they have no right to feel the full brunt of their pain because they at least dont have it as bad as Moms from the closed era. I see it sometimes with young birth Moms and how they cling so tightly to feeling that because they have such a great relationship with their childs adoptive family they deny the pain that runs so deep. It truly saddens me because I can imagine what is in store for them in the long years to come.
So it makes me wonder. What if they go on and never deal with this pain? Do they become bitter old women? Are they really ok with all of this and that makes the rest of us somehow inferior?
That is exactly what it makes me feel like. A birth Mom who never got over it and is bitter and angry. That so isnt the case though. It makes me feel that I am seen angry and bitter because I will never reconcile the fact that I was forced to walk out of that hospital alone and the shock waves it caused with the happiness I have with having had an open adoption. Im not angry. Im not bitter. I am regretful and have negative opinions of adoption but why does that make me seen as an angry person?
And since this open adoption business is such a new thing Im sure it will be years before any of this is figured out. Look how long it took the Moms from the closed era!
There is a birth mother who blogs/blogged whose blog name I can't remember. But she writes about how it's hard to be a birthmom and want to know her daughter and yet she feels that grief and wishes there were more of a brightline. She's her "mom" but she's not her "mom". At first I was envious that she got to visit her daughter, but now I've begun to understand because anytime I get (or have gotten) the slightest bit of info about my son, I feel kicked in the stomach. It's as if, "here, this is the person you could have raised, could have known, but YOU DON'T!!" It sucks. All the way around it sucks.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said in your last post about having regrets and negative feelings. I definitely classify myself with those.
I actually have a huge topic to blog about on almost exactly what you have said. Im feeling that it may have been easier in a lot of ways for it to have been closed...but it really is better for the child to have it open I think, and after all didnt we do this thing for their best interest? (at least thats what we were convinced of anyway) Its all so confusing.
DeleteOpen adoption is very confusing...I am always second guessing myself in anything I do, say, and write to my daughter or her family while I am always thinking "is this what's best for her?" I, too, feel that even though I don't "love" adoption and there are many things about adoption that make me sad and angry, that doesn't mean I am an angry or bitter person. I hope and pray that when my daughter grows up she will be able to have healthy, positive, loving memories about how all the adults conducted themselves in this open adoption relationship...I try to keep this in mind with everything I do concerning her and her family...it is so difficult when I would like more openess than her parents...painful, confusing, and challenging.
ReplyDeleteI just found your blog. I hope you keep writing. Adoption is very confusing for me too, as an adoptive parent. Everything is layered. Everything.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I do intend to keep adding to my story, I just havent had the time in the last few weeks due to travel. Thank you for reading!
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