Holding My Breath

Last night, my first mother and I exchange Christmas gifts.

A tad awkward, perhaps, since we were 12 hours apart. But we agreed on a day to open gifts, and a time to call one another afterwards. She sent me a lot of neat little things. She got me a Star Wars pop-up book that's just cool. (My wife nearly got me the same thing, but told me she changed her mind at the last minute.) And she knitted me a scarf in the color of my birthstone. I have worn it almost constantly since opening it last night. (She sent my wife a scarf in her birthstone color as well.) There were some other gifts too, including ones from my brothers and nieces. It was just a very nice experience.

We had a good conversation on the phone. I wish I could see her for the holidays, but it just isn't possible this year. Maybe next. We are planning to go visit sometime in March perhaps.

Now I'm just holding my breath. She has a medical procedure today to take care of her cancer. It sounds like it should be simple. But it still makes me nervous, both the procedure and the cancer. She should be going into surgery as I type this, actually. I probably won't hear how it went for several hours.

I'm trying not to be a basket case about this. The emotional ups and downs just continue. I feel like I'm largely just at the mercy of events out of my control. That might not be so bad if it all wasn't so emotionally charged. I try to take it one day at a time. I'm not sure what else I could do.

Being Negative

One reaction that I've always experienced when I talk about adoption is something along the lines of... "Everyone has bad things happen to them. You can't dwell on the negatives in life." In other words, some variation on the "get over it" theme.

Understand that I say this as someone who had a relatively good adoption experience. My adoptive parents are good people who have given me lots of love, care, and support. They were, in a word, good parents.

But none of that changes the very real problems adoption brings with it. The lifelong struggle with abandonment fears, with trust issues, with being walled-off from people... These are real problems. My adoption caused some very real pain in my life.

When I talk about that pain, I'm sharing my story. I'm trying to educate people about what adoption really is (for some, at least). It's about loss and separation. It is basically a tragedy for the child, just as much as if the mother had died during childbirth. The loss and pain is real, even if good things happen later.

Recognizing the negatives about adoption, and about my life in general, does not mean I have not moved forward, that I am not functioning. I do think and talk about other things. I manage to have a job. I have friends and contribute to society. But that doesn't mean that adoption doesn't have a dark side.

As long as society doesn't want to hear our stories, as long as it wants to pretend adoption is win-win-win, the damage done by adoption will continue. It will continue for those of us who have experienced it. And it will continue to be visited on new generations of adoptees. We persevere and even succeed. But that doesn't mean the pain isn't real. And it doesn't mean the pain doesn't need to be acknowledged and validated.

I am negative about adoption. And it isn't directed towards my adoptive parents. Nor is directed towards my first mother. But that pain and sorrow is there. And I can't make it go away by ignoring it. I've tried that. For several decades. It doesn't work.

When Things Get Scary

I found out something that scared me deeply yesterday. My birthmother has been diagnosed with cancer.

Apparently, it is very treatable and the doctor expects her to be fine after a minor procedure to remove the cancer.

But I didn't know that right away. It came up, accidentally, in an e-mail, and I spent a few hours worrying about it. She feels awful about that. She didn't even want to tell me until it was taken care of so that I wouldn't worry. And I completely understand.

What surprised me is how much it upset me. I'm generally fine about death. There has only been one person close to me who has died that really, really upset me. Not because I'm a heartless bastard, I think. I just have a very matter-of-fact attitude about death. The one that bothered me was a suicide and should not have happened.

But yesterday, I was horrified that I might lose her so soon after finding her. It really shook me up a little.

It reminded me, once more, of how much a little kid I feel in all of this. All my adult reactions are out the window when she's around. At this point, I just want her to be around, to be there to make it all okay. It's not rational, I know. And I did calm down, even before I was completely reassured, but my initial reaction was that of a child. It was a basic fear of losing her again.

I keep hoping this will mellow. People assure me that it does. So far, it hasn't. But I suppose it's all still pretty new.

For now, I'm just glad she's going to be okay.

Rewriting History

If you had talked to me a year ago about my adoptive parents, I would have been nicer than if you had talked to me twenty years ago. I've come along way in my thinking about them. I always loved them. But I was really upset with them for much of my adolescence.

In that, I don't think I'm special. Many kids go through that. My phase, though, lasted well into my twenties. I had a lot of issues with them.

But once I moved away, that began to subside. I began to get some perspective. And most importantly, though I never said anything to them directly, I forgave them for being human. I hadn't forgotten their flaws. I just recognized that we all have them.

So a year ago (say) I would have said mostly positive things about my parents. But I wouldn't have said they were perfect. I had real complaints about my childhood. And while I don't care to rehash those now, here, I think I would have been honest about my own feelings about my childhood.

Since finding my birth mother, though, that has all changed. It's almost as if, to protect my birth mother, and to prove my loyalty to my adoptive parents, I feel the need to rewrite history. I have to paint a rosier picture than the one I would have painted before finding her. I have to eliminate all the bad from the story of my life. I would feel horrible saying anything negative about my adoptive parents. And I wouldn't want her to feel bad for any of it.

So I purify my own biography. I don't know if I'm being dishonest or if I'm beginning to recognize more of the good than I had before. But I suspect it's the former. And that's bad all around. Yet I don't know how to overcome the impulse to purify.

Report on Open Records

I posted this on Over A Candle, but I should have posted it here, as well. So here's a bit of a cross post. A news story about a report advocating for open records for adoptees and a link to the report...

Unseal adoptees' birth records, report urges:

NEW YORK - It's among the most divisive questions in the realm of adoption: Should adult adoptees have access to their birth records, and thus be able to learn the identity of their birth parents?

In a comprehensive report being released Monday, a leading adoption institute says the answer is 'Yes' and urges the rest of America to follow the path of the eight states that allow such access to all adults who were adopted.

'States' experiences in providing this information make clear that there are minimal, if any, negative repercussions,' said the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. 'Outcomes appear to have been overwhelmingly positive for adult adopted persons and birthparents alike.'

I'm not terribly impressed by consequentialist arguments. I happen to believe that it's a matter of rights and equal protections under the law. But, for people who may be of a more consequentialist persuasion, this is an interesting finding.

Here's the link to the full report: "For the Records: Restoring a Right to Adult Adoptees" from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

Being a Child

One of the things that has struck me being in reunion is how much I feel like a child again.

What I mean is that my feelings seem to be the feelings of a child.

I'm grown up. I have grown up concerns. I have grown up emotions.

Or I did. At one point. Now I have the feelings of a child.

I want my mom.

Seriously, that's what it feels like. I want my mom. I want her to put her arms around me, and make it okay. These are feelings I've had for years that I've suppressed since I was what... ten?

I'm excited to the point of grinning stupidly when I get an e-mail from her. And when a few days go by without an e-mail, I worry. I want to go visit her, even though that's out of the question at the moment.

All these feelings from childhood that have been locked away for years, come out now.

It's hard to be a mature adult when your emotional state is that of a small boy.

Anger

One thing that my reunion has done is bring up a lot of emotions that I never really dealt with much before.

I am feeling a lot of sadness and a lot of anger right now. Not at my birth mother. And not at my adoptive parents. All of them did the best they could for me. I have few complaints. (I have some, mind you. What child who was raised by other human beings doesn't have some complaint? We're imperfect creatures, after all.)

But I still feel anger. I'm mad at the situation. I'm mad at the social workers, the nuns, society, and even my birthmom's mother, who didn't giver her a choice. I'm angry about what I've lost, even though I was taken care of. I'm angry at the time that's been lost, and the questions that have long festered.

I also recognize that, while being angry is understandable, I can't let it take me over. I need to do something I've never been able to do before. I have to give myself permission to feel it, without letting it totally consume me. If I bury it, I'm just doing what I've done my whole life. And if I don't rein it in some, then I become embittered. I don't want that, either.

All of this just raises my long-standing ambivalence toward adoption. I don't think I've ever been completely against adoption. (Maybe because that raises too many questions about my own situation that I can't face up to?) But I also have thought it was highly problematic. And I still don't know what to say about it all. I just know that, even if it does sometimes seem like a necessity, that it should never be celebrated. It comes from pain and loss. And that has to be acknoweldged. And I've been really bad at acknowledging it in the past. Now it feels like it's overwhelming.

So for now I just keep on keeping on... I don't know what else to do.