From Guest BloggerTamera Slack, birth mother and adoptee, click here>> for more information on Adoption Mosaic Bloggers.
Don’t refer to our children as “gifts”
Gifts are something you “create or buy” with the intention to give away. Birth Mothers don’t intentionally get pregnant to give children away as “gifts.” Rather, you were given the “gift” of the experience of parenting and entrusted with the honor of caring for, and keeping safe, another mother’s child. A gift passes ownership of “the thing” from the giver to the receiver. Children are not “things” to be owned, but rather unique individuals who like all people have ties and connections to family which cannot be severed or transferred, no matter who claims them as their own. Most Birth Mothers would agree that they “gave up” their right to parent, but do not feel they should have to “give up” their right to know their children, even if that was what we were told we had to do.
Instead you might say, “I am so thankful for the opportunity to experience parenting and raising a child.”
Do not say “you made the right choice.”
You do not know for sure if a Birth Mother actually felt like she had a choice. Often due to circumstances and the social influences surrounding her, she doesn’t feel she had much of a choice at all. A Birth Mother may have been harassed, threatened or isolated to get her to relinquish, or she may have felt there was no support system to help her. A child is best left with their original mother whenever possible, therefore relinquishing a child is not considered the “right choice,” but “a choice.” Since we do not have the ability to know what might have been, no one will ever know if the “right choice,” for mother or child, was truly made or not.
Instead you might say, “That must have been a really hard thing to do. If you ever need to talk about what happened, I am here for you.”
Don’t say “you, or the child, was better off.”
Again, whenever possible, a child is best left with the mother that created them and with whom they share a biological bond. Their connection to the world begins with their biological mother. We can all agree that every child deserves a safe and loving home, and when this cannot happen within a child’s family of origin, we must provide it for them some other way. However age, economy and marital status are not automatic reasons for a child to be “better off in another family,” or for a mother not to be able to keep her baby. In fact age, economy and martial status are all variables that can and are changed with time, whereas a biological tie cannot be replaced or substituted.
Instead you might say, “I wonder what your life would have been like had you not had this experience” and then JUST LISTEN.
Don’t say “it’s a good thing you have an open adoption”
Open adoptions are not the cure all for the grief and pain that comes with relinquishing a child. Although we can agree that “open” is a much better than “closed,” it is still painful for a mother and child to be separated and open adoptions come with a different set of challenges altogether.
Instead you might say, “I bet it is still hard to not be able to parent your child yourself.”
Don’t respond with, “maybe your child does not want to have a relationship with you.”
Often, the only thing a Birth Mother has is “hope.” It may be the only way we get through each day of our lives after relinquishing our children. It is especially hard to hold on to “hope” when reunions are rocky or stagnant. Our biggest fear is that our children will not want to have a relationship with us, or be so hurt by what has happened that they don’t feel they can. Nothing positive can come from reminding us that this might be the outcome.
Instead you might help us hold onto “hope” by saying, ”I’m sure he/she will come around.”
Don’t remind us “that it may take time” to reconnect with our children.
For most of us, we are all too familiar with the “time” it takes to connect with our children. Those with a closed adoption have most likely had to wait 18 years to even attempt contact with their child. Others may have taken even more “time” to find the emotional energy to attempt this reconnection. When we finally do find that strength it takes every fiber of our being to make that journey. We apologize to all those who feel we seem to be “too pushy,” but when you finally have a chance to be with your baby, patience is a pretty tough thing to practice. Imagine for a moment if you had not been able to talk to, see or touch your own child for 18 years and then tell us if you would be willing to “take more time.” We are intimately aware of the “time” it takes. . .there is not need to remind us.
Instead you might say, “It must be really hard to wait for your child.”
Don’t shut down grief or pain, or say you “know how we feel.”
Relinquishment of a child is an incredibly unique and painful experience. Trying to soothe a Birth Mother by using comparisons to other loses in life will not console, but rather widen the gap and isolation. We know you can’t know what relinquishing a child is like, unless you yourself have gone through this exact experience. The grief, sadness and anger that accompanies it is normal and needs to be let out. We know no one wants to hear the true pain of this experience and that is why we are often left to deal with it alone. Be able to sit, listen and comfort without trying to “fix it,” make comparisons, or shut it down. It is truly a gift when a Birth Mother feels safe enough to begin to tell her story. If you are who she picks to tell it to, you have a unique opportunity to help with her healing by simply listening and giving her love.
Instead you might say, “I have no idea how hard losing a child to adoption must be. If you want to talk I am here to listen.”
Don’t say “at least you didn’t choose abortion,” or “at least your child’s alive.”
First of all, you don’t know if the woman you are talking to may have had an abortion in addition to relinquishing a child. Abortion is an equally hard and painful choice, discussions of which often lead to arguments of personal, religious and political beliefs rather than offering comfort. Additionally, many of us with closed adoptions have no idea if our relinquished children are alive or not. This is another fear and anxiety we live with until we are able to find out the truth. We don’t know if their adoption experience was a good one, and whether or not they were raised in a loving home, or if instead they were abused and neglected as sometimes happens. It is obvious that we chose life for our relinquished children, so no need to point it out.
Instead you might say, “It must have been really hard to carry a baby full term and then not be able to parent.”
Please, please, please don’t say “everything happens for a reason.”
I have a personal disdain for this statement, but know that there are some Birth Mothers and even Adoptees who find comfort in it. However, since I am writing this particular piece I am going to take liberty and state why I, and other Birth Mothers may not find this statement helpful.
None of us like to feel out of control of situations that occur through life, especially uncomfortable or sad ones. Also, if you are a religious or spiritual person, you may in fact have the belief that things are in being directed by some greater power. Either way, we have a tendency to try and make “sense” of things by throwing out this comment. This statement is made for the death of a loved one, to the loss of a job, or the adoption of a child and everything in between. I will tell you the reason I lost my son, because I was shamed and felt no support by the people who supposedly cared the most for me. They made a mistake, as many people do with this “situation.” This “mistake” has caused great pain in my life, my child’s life and the lives of many other Birth Mothers who were faced with my same circumstances. Adoption occurs for many reasons, whether it is by “choice,” or “circumstance.” Suggesting there was some “divine plan or fate” that caused the loss is not comforting or healing for the people that were separated. We live in an imperfect world, and sometimes bad and sad things happen. I find greater comfort in knowing that life is sometimes unfair, then feeling that I and my child were in some way “used” to fulfill some “greater plan.” Until you know whether or not the statement above is comforting to the Birth Mother you are speaking with, it is probably best you just not say it.
Instead you might say, “I am so sorry that you suffered this loss in your life.”
I attended Adoption Mosaic’s first ever Reunion Panel this past weekend. The panel was split into two portions. In the morning we heard from adoptees who were in the early stages of their reunion journey. The afternoon was reserved for adoptees and their birth parents who had been reunited for ten years or more.
It was a profound experience listening to their stories, and I learned so much about the emotional investment and process that is involved in beginning, and sustaining a reunion for over 20 years. One of the things that most impressed me was seeing these families who had been in reunion for so long, and how they had all reached normalcy in their concept of family and kinship.
Reunion has two very different subjective connotations. On one hand it’s seen as a connection of separated (birth) families. On another hand it can be seen as destroying the connections of existing (adoptive) families. My question is why are these concepts mutually exclusive?
Adoptive families, more so than the mainstream population, know that families are not only made, they are created. Kinship systems are defined by blood, but they are also defined by love (and, well, laws). If adoptive families are more able to use out-of-the-box-thinking when it comes to the concept of family, isnt it then just a small step further to conceive of a greater family system that includes not only the adoptive family, but the birth family as well?
Not to say that any of this is simple. Connecting different families, in the case of reunion or in the case of open adoptions that occur on the outset of adoption, can be complicated, emotional and even messy. But honestly, aren’t most families, in general, complicated, emotional and messy?
I am so grateful to have been able to see first-hand, on the Reunion Panel, adoptive and birth families who are making it work, and who even love and appreciate each other. I left hopeful and inspired.
We blend our families through marriage all the time. We don’t always love or understand “the in-laws” but we don’t question their right to be considered a part of our family. Shouldn’t it be the same for birth families?
Here is another blogger’s take on the Reunion Panel
After a seven year search, Korean adoptee Melissa Konomos found and reunited with her birth mother. Thank you Melissa and Jeanne Modderman for sharing this beautiful video with us and our readers.
A new post by Jane Edwards on Birth Mother, First Mothers Forum talks about the legalities surrounding relinquishing a child to adoption, and the difficulties birth mothers face when trying to obtain legal representation to contest an adoption.
From Guest BloggerMelissa Konomosvisit her atYoon’s Blur, and click here>> for more information on Adoption Mosaic Bloggers.
After reuniting with my biological parents last year, my husband asked me whether my need to conceive biological children had diminished at all.
(Just for clarity’s sake, we both want to have children, so he was not asking because he was hoping to escape the simultaneous joys and horrors of raising children. But rather he was asking a very valid question based on previous conversations, in which I had expressed a desire, almost a longing need, to conceive a biological child.)
Clearly, as an adoptee, I have never known what it is to share a biological connection with someone else. Earlier in our relationship, as my husband and I would discuss whether we wanted to conceive a child, time and time again, my answer was an emphatic, almost desperate, “Yes.”
There was never a doubt as to why I answered, Yes. Having a biological child seemed the only way that I could somehow know and connect with my biological mother and father. It seemed the only way that I might be able to gain insight into what my biological mother experienced as she carried me for nine months and subsequently relinquished me. It also seemed the only way that I would be able to understand what it means to share a biological connection with another human being.
But now, that I have met my biological mother and father, along with uncles, aunts, and cousins, and hence now have opportunity to build relationships with those who share my biology, it would seem plausible that my “need” to have biological children would diminish or at least change as a result.
As of now, surprisingly so, meeting my biological family has actually seemed to have the opposite effect of what would be predicted—it seems to have increased my desire to want biological children.
I can identify several contributing factors.
The first factor I’ll mention is simply that reunion does not “fix it.” There can be a well intentioned but false assumption that once an adoptee reunites with his or her biological family, it fixes everything—all the questions find answers, all the loss and pain find healing, and so forth.
This is not true for more reasons than I have space to elucidate here. But in short, reunion cannot magically redeem all the years, often decades, that have been lost. Although reunion has given me some answers, in many ways it has served to also give me more questions. Although reunion has brought some healing, it has also awakened old pain while stirring new pain. Although reunion has allowed me to meet my biological family, it cannot compensate for the 35 years that have been lost between us.
Even though I now have the hope of building a relationship with my biological mother, she and I will never share the moments when I took my first steps or spoke my first words. She and I will never know the thrill of when I first learned to ride a bike or when I won a soccer game. She and I will never know the tender moments when my first love broke my heart or conversely when my husband and I fell in love and eventually married.
She was not there and will never be able to be there for those crucial moments of my development growing from child to woman. She has missed the first 35 years of my life, and nothing we do can ever retrieve or restore all those moments of growing up that have been lost between us—except in some symbolic, metaphorical way—that is, through conceiving a biological child.
Hence, secondly, having a biological child, at least for me, lures me in as an opportunity for redemption for all of us. My Omma and I could share in the moments of raising my child, her grandchild. She could be there for her grandchild in the way that she could not be there for me, while I could give to my child what I never had—a relationship with a family that is both biological and relational. My Appa would also have, in a way, a second chance to do things differently.
A third reason that I can identify for wanting biological children even more so now that I have met my biological mother and father is that I fear losing them all over again. Some day, I know that they will die. So, I tell myself that if I have a biological child, the trauma of losing them a second time will perhaps be minimized if I can look at my biological child and see them in him or her. Without a child through whom I can maintain a biological connection to the parents that I lost 35 years ago and will lose again some day, I fear that the connection I now have will be lost and severed again, forever, when they die.
So, you see, at least for me, meeting my biological mother and father has not abated my desire to have biological children. Rather it has intensified and amplified it.
Now, of course, I share all this knowing that having a child for these reasons is a dangerous thing. I don’t want to bring a child into this world assigning him or her with the job of redeeming the lost hopes and dreams of his or her mother and grandparents. (Alanis Morissette wrote a very affecting song years ago about parents who do just this entitled, “Perfect.”) If I do ever have a biological child, I am going to have to be hyper aware of my own issues to ensure that I don’t project them onto my child—the aforementioned being only a few of the many issues.
I am simply sharing all of this in an attempt to explain, with sincerity and a somewhat uncomfortable honesty, what goes on in my mind and heart as an adoptee regarding the question that titles this post, “Did meeting my biological family diminish my desire to conceive biological children?”
I am not purporting that my answers to this question are right or wrong—they just are. As adoptees, we face complex psychological issues surrounding identity and relationships and just about everything else in life. The issue of biological children is no different.
I realize the emotional baggage I carry, and the potential that exists that I may strap that baggage onto my children. This is all the more reason for me to be aware of it and to make it apparent to others—not simply for my children’s sake, but for the sake of others who also occupy this vast and complex world of the adoption experience.
From Guest BloggerMelissa Konomosvisit her atYoon’s Blur, and click here>> for more information on Adoption Mosaic Bloggers.
I am a Korean-American adoptee who met my biological parents for the first time (last year in June of 2009) since my relinquishment in 1975. Since then, I have officially entered into what is often referred to as “post-reunion.”
Post reunion often receives less attention, I think, in part, because it is less glamorous and less emotionally climactic than the process of search and reunion. Hearing the story of how I searched for seven long years and the details of the first moments of coming face to face with my Omma and my Appa are much more enthralling and riveting. It is this phase of the adoption experience that brings simultaneous tears to our eyes and smiles to our mouths. But the actual reunion is only the beginning of a long, and often arduous and daunting, process. I find it unfortunate that post-reunion is so grossly neglected, because it can often be the stage in the process that can last the longest, can be the most fragile and complicated, and requires long-term support that is often lacking or underdeveloped. Read the rest of this entry »
We recently wrapped up our newest, and soon to be released, Adoption Dialogue on adoption language and it has (once again) brought the issue of adoption language to the forefront of my mind. I am reminded of this blog post by adoptive parent and Adoption Mosaic Guest Blogger Dawn Friedman who blogs at This Woman’s Work. She wrote this post last fall and it has stuck with me. (Read the full original post here>>) For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dawn’s family, Dawn is Madison’s adoptive mother, Pennie is Madison’s birth mother.
“It sounds like a very gloomy conversation but it wasn’t. She is very matter of fact about it all. I was just thinking about how she (Madison) says “real real mama” and how that’s supposedly “negative adoption language.” I guess in the mouth of the wrong person it could be but hearing it from my daughter, well, I know what she means. Read the rest of this entry »
From Guest BloggerDawn Friedmanvisit her atwww.thiswomanswork.com, and click here>> for more information on Adoption Mosaic Bloggers.
On Saturday we had a big celebration for my son’s bar mitzvah and most of our immediate family were there including our daughter’s birth mom, Pennie. We have a very open adoption with Pennie that has grown in the last 5 and half years to something we have integrated comfortably into the rest of our family life. Pennie is not a special event or a separate experience and for our daughter that has been nothing but good.
The night before the celebration, Madison had a hard time falling asleep. She was excited about the party but she was also worried about something. I left the room to get her a drink of water and when I came back, she was sitting up in bed sobbing. Read the rest of this entry »
A friend of mine let me in on a conversation she had with her husband last week. It was initially in reference to international adoption and went something like this:
A: If we were to adopt would you be upset if the child didn’t call you “daddy.”
B: Well, yes, a bit. I would want them to call me “daddy.”
A: But what if we were to adopt, say, your niece?
B: Well in that case no, I wouldn’t expect them to call me “daddy”
A: Why not?
B: Because they already have a daddy.
Put so simply, it makes you realize how easily and how often birth/first parents are completely erased from the lives of the adoptive family, as if they don’t exist. But the fact is, all adoptive children already have a daddy. They already have a mommy too. Can you imagine how the face of adoption would change if we all kept this reality in the forefront of our consciousness rather than tucking it away out of sight out of mind? What an amazing thing it would be if we could celebrate each of our parents (or children’s parents) without value judgments or guilt, but with openness and love.
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A friend of mine let me in on a conversation she had with her husband last week. It was initially in reference to international adoption and went something like this:
