The Narrative

This morning I got up early to move my car out of the driveway so my wife could get her car out to go to work. After switching the cars around, I turned on the television. It came on to NBC and the Today show. They were discussing the case of Carlina White, a woman who had been stolen from the hospital when she was born. She had reunited with her biological family after 23 years (she had discovered the truth only when she asked her "mother" for her birth certificate).

After the initial happy reunion, Carlina has become distant from her biological family and has apparently inquired about money that her parents received in a settlement with the hospital. She has even gone back to the name she was raised with.

The Today show interviewed her biological mother. It was rather brief and perhaps superficial, though it didn't have the "gotcha" qualities you might expect on a daytime talk show. It was a difficult story to watch, sad and perhaps a bit too familiar.

As I watched, I began thinking about what others would think. How many people would connect this with adoption? Would they see the emotional ups and downs that Carlina is clearly going through as resonating with many adoptees?

I doubted it. After all, it wasn't an adoption but a kidnapping. And there are allegations that she was abused. Thus we have an easy explanation for why she is now behaving the way she is. She was raised in a bad situation, by people who didn't really love her. The popular view of adoption would suggest that if she had been raised in a loving home, things would be fine now. Thus there is no take-away for adoption in this story.

That's the narrative. That's what our society believes. We have made a concerted attempt to de-stigmatize adoption. It's not just that families formed by adoption are just as good as families formed by biology; we seem to need to believe that there are no differences between the two.

Adoptees who are troubled by aspects of their history are thus no different than other children who grew up in troubled homes. Such adoptees must have something wrong with them. Either their adoptive parents did not do right by them somehow, or something happened in utero to screw them up. Most adoptees are perfectly well-adjusted with no issues at all surrounding their adoption.

Again, that's the narrative.

That's what needs to be changed. It is not my intent to re-stigmatize adoption. It is not my intent to speak for all adoptees. Everyone's experiences are going to be unique. But there are a lot of commonalities among many adoptees. And it speaks to the complexity of adoption and the feelings it may provoke from those who experience it firsthand.

We would like adoption to be a simple good. It solves a problem of providing children with a home, and we want to believe we have done right by those children. Understanding the complexities of adoption requires challenging that simplistic view of the situation.

For the sake of all adoptees, we need to change the narrative. Not to pathologize adoptees. Not to stigmatize adoptees. Not to treat adoptive parents as somehow less worthy. But to recognize that there are issues and complexities that many (though perhaps not all) adoptees (and parents, both biological and adoptive, as well as other family members) will have to deal with.

We are arranging families. We can sugar-coat that however we like. We aren't stealing babies the way that Carlina was stolen. But we are taking a child from one family and grafting it into another. If we aren't willing to face up to the possible repercussions of that, we ought not do it at all.

It's time to change the narrative. It is well-entrenched, however, and it will take time. Still, we owe it to every child we claim to do this for.

Christmas 2010

Cross-posted from Over A Candle.

Ronni and I hadn't been sure where we would spend Christmas this year. We toyed with the idea of staying home. In the end, we opted to visit my biological family in Missouri.

United Airlines, though, had other plans. Apparently, last week, Chicago had bad weather. Not bad enough to cancel flights, but enough to delay flights. We got delayed in Fargo, but our connecting flight was also delayed, so we thought we were okay. We finally got to Chicago, and waited around for our flight to Springfield. At the last minute, I got a call from United cancelling our flight and rebooking us on a later one.

So we trekked back across O'Hare to the new flight. Upon arrival, we found that the gate agent was at lunch. So we waited in line for half an hour. When she finally arrived, she informed us that we had been rebooked. For the next evening. I have never liked O'Hare, and I certainly didn't want to spend more than 24 hours in the place. So I asked if other airlines were flying to Springfield. Only American had another flight.

After lots of phone calls and being placed on hold, we managed to get a flight on American that would get us to Springfield before midnight. The gate agent told us that we couldn't retrieve our luggage, but that it would be going on the next flight to Springfield, arriving shortly before we would.

Further delays put us in Springfield after midnight on Wednesday morning. Sure enough, our luggage was nowhere to be found. The first flight on Thursday, we were assured. You can guess that it didn't happen. My luggage arrived at the end of the day on Wednesday, and Ronni's came in Thursday morning.

All of this confirms my initial opinion: I hate Chicago. If I never fly through O'Hare again, it will be too soon. I don't know why I thought this would be any different than every other time I've tried to fly through Chicago.

Still, upon arrival in Springfield, we had a very nice time. I didn't care about the luggage thing. I was just enjoying our visit. It was crazy and chaotic, and simply fun.

I woke up early Christmas morning, and sat with my brother Rick watching the tree while our mother slept on the couch. She eventually woke and we all sat talking quietly in the glow of the Christmas lights.



The stockings had been hung. Not by a chimney, but with much care. And one for everyone who was going to be there.



Soon people were up, and we chatted while waiting for Santa to pass out gifts. Ronni, Audra (Ben's wife), and my brother Chris had the arm chairs.



Rick, his girlfriend Katy, and my brother Ben were on the couch.



Other people were wandering about, in the kitchen, sitting at the table, or just grabbing seats where they could.

Gifts were opened, and Rick had given mom a wonderfully soft dragon blanket.



Of course, the star of the day, mom's new cat Pepper, had his own version of Christmas.



Naturally, no get together would be complete if Ben and I weren't hamming it up together.



Needless to say - but I'll say it anyway - a good time was had by all.

The next day, very early, we were up and flying back to Chicago on our way home to Fargo. Thankfully, Chicago seems to only take it out on me during one direction of my flights. Going home was smooth, and even our luggage arrived on time.

I missed my family in Ohio this Christmas, but we had a lovely trip to Missouri.

Gifts

I am sorry for the long absence here. My life imploded in many unusual and nasty ways in the last five months. Things are getting better, slowly, and I won't go into all the details here, but they are getting better.

Earlier today, something kind of funny and cool happened, and I wanted to share it. This is the only place I really can safely share it at the moment, so I figured it was time for a post.

I am visiting my biological mom this Christmas. Despite Chicago's best efforts to prevent us, we got here very late on Tuesday night. Our luggage arrived, in stages over the last 26 hours. But we're here, and it is good. Actually, it is great. This is the least stressful Christmas I think I've ever had. It is affirming in ways that are hard to describe.

This morning, that validation took a very concrete form. My mom told one of my brothers that I had brought presents for people. His response, as she reported it later to me, was something along the lines of: "Even grandma? What do you give the bitch that made your mom give you up for adoption?"

My jaw about hit the floor. My mom thought it appropriate to share with me, my brother had the insight to see the issue, and I felt surrounded by people who had some small insight into everything I had gone through. It was amazing. And has provided me a source of chuckling ever since.

I'm the first to recognize that my mom's mom isn't really there anymore, so it's hard to be mad at her. The person who had a role in my adoption has been gone since before I met her. And I don't harbor a lot of resentment now. Still, it meant a lot to me that he would say that, that he would have some inkling of the emotional quagmire that this is.

Even before my mom told me, this has been a wonderful visit so far. That just pushed it over the top. I feel really lucky this holiday season.

Difficult Decisions

I know that this is National Adoption Month and National Blog Posting Month. But I just don't have the energy to try to write two blogs every day this month. Even though I still feel ire when I hear about National Adoption Month. I just don't have that much consistent writing in me at the moment.

But I also feel guilty that I've let this blog slide so much in the last couple of months. A lot has been going on, and I have no intention of baring it all here, but it's been kind of a roller-coaster.

And it probably isn't over yet.

Tonight we made travel plans to visit my wife's family over the winter holidays. But we didn't make plans to visit my (adoptive) family, which we usually do just before or just after the trip to my in-laws. This will be only the third time I haven't made it home for the winter holidays in my 40 Christmases on the planet.

I'm doing this for me. I'm trying to assert what I need a little bit more. This isn't easy for me. My sense of responsibility and obligation to others is pretty high. I'm not trying to punish anyone in my family, and I hope that they aren't hurt by my decision. But I need this, just this one time, if no other, that I do what I need to over the holidays, rather than what I think others need me to do.

We may visit my biological family over that time period. We may not. Depends on weather, on cost, on if the schedule works for everyone. But if not, we may just spend Christmas at home with our cats. Which is also something I'd really like to do.

Whatever happens, I'm scared of the aftermath of this. I haven't yet told my parents I'm not coming. I don't know how they'll react. But I'm trying to take care of myself just this once. We'll see how it goes.

In Support of OBC Access

If all the hand-wringing amounts to just that - hand-wringing - then isn't it time to give all adoptees the same access everyone else has?

The Self

I try not to cross-post between here and Over A Candle too much. But because of the adoption themes inherent in this post, and because I know not everyone who reads here reads there, I thought I should share this in both places.

I have, for many years, considered getting a tattoo. I knew that, if I got one, it would have to be a rune. And because runes play so deep a part of my spirituality, I could not trust just anyone with doing the art. It would invariably have an impact on my own spiritual life. So I needed someone I could trust.

Unfortunately, I never really met anyone I got to know well enough who also did tattoos. So I sat on the impulse for over a decade.

Earlier this year, I saw an episode of Flashforward where a woman had a Japanese character tattooed on her wrist. It occurred to me then that I should get a rune tattooed on my wrist.

But I still needed someone to do it, and I needed a design. At first I thought I would have just a simple character, but I realized I should get something a bit more unique. I did look at designs online, and I found one or two I liked, but I wasn't sure I wanted the runes I was finding (including Eihwaz, the rune for defense). I liked them, but I wasn't sure.

Earlier this week, I finally decided I needed to get a rune tattooed. It was time, and I had to do it. But I still needed a design. When I began thinking about it a couple of months ago, a friend had offered her services. This is a good friend from the online adoption community I'm a part of.

I told Devon what I wanted. The rune for the Self, Mannaz, seemed the only real choice for the tattoo. I showed her a picture and told her what it meant. Then I gave her almost no direction in designing a stylized version of the rune.

Here is how Ralph Blum describes Mannaz in his work The Book of Runes, which I have used as a resource for more than twenty years. The following are the opening and closing paragraphs from Mannaz's entry (in the upright position):

The starting point is the self. Its essence is water. Only clarity, willingness to change, is effective now. A correct relationship to your self is primary, for from it flow all possible correct relationships with others and with the Divine. . . .

If you take the Rune of the Self and cut it down the middle, you will see the Rune for Joy with its mirror image. There is a subtle caution here against carelessness. The dancing acrobatic energy of balancing is called for now - the Self is required to balance the self. Nothing in excess was the second phrase written over the gateway to the temple at Delphi. The first counsel was Know thyself.

With almost no guidance, but for a few comments on early drafts, here is the final piece of artwork that Devon came up with for me.



There is a lot of meaning in this for me. The first thing I noted in her original draft was the wooden look of the various stems of the rune. It seemed natural, made of twigs, and that look really appealed to me. That is preserved in the final artwork.

More, though, on the first draft, she already had the wrapped joints. I couldn't exactly say at the time why they appealed to me, but I can now. It looks to me as though the rune is actually several parts joined together with twine. I do think that does wonderful job representing the different parts of myself, bound together, but not fully united as a single whole. My Self is made of various elements. Notice, too, that the central wrapping binds together Wunjo, Joy, with its mirror opposite, as Blum suggests in his entry. Devon didn't know this when she created the piece, but her bindings were perfect.

She then mentioned to me that she was thinking of adding roots but worried that it could be offensive in some way. It was the whole adoptees not having roots thing that she was thinking of, I believe. But I liked the idea. My Self, cobbled together as it is, still has roots. So I encouraged Devon to add them, to see what they looked like.

She added roots to both the top and the bottom, but we agreed that it was a bit too much. She took them off the top, and I knew she was on to something. A couple of changes to the proportions of the legs and the width of the rune, and you see the final product.

When she sent me the picture above, it was a text message on my phone. And I knew immediately that she had given me the design I had long wanted. It was perfect. She had gotten everything so perfectly... I was in awe. I immediately wanted to show everyone. Heck, I wanted to go out and get the tattoo that day.

But I had to wait. She needed to hook her scanner up so that she could send me a clean copy. That happened Thursday. But I was too busy with other things Thursday to go to the tattoo parlor. So Friday, I went almost as soon as it opened at noon.

I guess Friday the 13th was good day for tattoos. The parlor was packed. I went up to the counter and showed them the artwork Devon had created for me. The guy thought that going smaller would lose too much detail. But a woman behind the counter immediately took an interest and set up and appointment with me for later in the afternoon.

I left for a few hours to pass the time. I was anxious to get the work done, but I managed to wait. Barely.

When I returned to 46 & 2 Tattoo, Stephanie had me fill out some paperwork and then ushered me into her chair. We discussed how it should go on my wrist, and she convinced me that, rather than going up or down the arm, it should be sideways, so that I could look at it upright, and also show it to others.

She shaved my arm and placed the ink trace on my arm. After discussing the process, I sat down and she got to work. It didn't hurt much at all. I don't know if I have a high tolerance or if I have few nerves on the inside of my wrist, but it was an easy twenty-five minutes.

As she worked, she talked to me. She asked me if my mom knew that I was getting this today. She said that she asks everyone, no matter how old they are. I said that she didn't. Then I remembered I had mentioned it to my biological mother, so I said that, actually, she did. And then, in a fit of the weirdness that happens to me as an adoptee, I explained that I have two mothers, and one of them knew.

She then said, much to my surprise, that she was an adoptee, too.

Seriously. I mean, come on. There is a way this whole thing was unreal. She talked to me about my search and reunion. She asked me about my relationships with all my different families. She mentioned that she was from Kansas (one of two states that never sealed records) and had gotten her information five years ago, but had yet to actually search.

I knew, somehow, that this was right. In Devon, I had found the perfect person to design my tattoo. And in Stephanie, I had the perfect person to actually ink it into my skin. Sometimes, the universe will have its way with or without our planning.

I know you're probably wondering by now, so here it is...



Now I really want to take excellent care of this. I want it to look good for years to come. I think the lines are even sharper in person than in this picture, but this gives you a pretty good idea what it looks like.

I cannot stop looking at it. It's a beautiful piece. Thank you to Stephanie for doing an amazing job. And thank you especially to Devon for designing exactly what I wanted.

Confirmation and Loyalty

Even while so many things seemed determined to fall apart... Okay, now I'm not owning my own agency... Let's try again...

Even while I seem so determined to torch so much of my life, this seems to be the week for validation.

Yesteday I had a long, and long overdue, talk with my best friend in the whole world. If my (biological) mom understands me so well because we are so alike, this friend understands me because she has been with me through so much. She has known me for over twenty years, and she has seen me at my worst. Repeatedly. And she is still my friend despite all of that.

We talked about a lot of things, but at one point we turned my search and reunion. I mentioned that my reunion had brought up a lot of things for me, including anger at my adoptive parents. I felt sheepish even saying it, but I was trying to explain everything to her. She immediately jumped in and said she was so glad to hear I was finally angry. She confessed that she had been angry at how my parents had failed me ever since she first met me. She seemed to think it was about time.

That took me aback. I think I had long worried that my anger was a product of my search and reunion, that that process had colored my perceptions of my childhood. Hearing from her that the problems I had come to see were really there, were evident twenty years ago, reassured me that it wasn't just that the reunion had changed my view. Rather, it allowed me to see things that had always been there. That was very therapeutic for me.

And yet, I still struggle with the loyalty piece. I still feel as though I owe my parents something. I still feel compelled to visit as often as I can manage and to be the good and happy son and adoptee. I don't want to be that, anymore. I don't think I CAN be that anymore. Somehow, I need to break that cycle. And I am working on it.

It amazes me how healing it can be to feel validated by people that know me.