Adoption Interview Project: Rebecca Hawkes from Love Is Not a Pie

Whoot, whoot!  It is that time of year again for all members of the adoption community to come together and interview each other.  I love this Project and participated in March 2010 and November 2011 as well. For a complete list of participants and links to their respective interviews click here.  (My partner and I got top billing on the list :)

Though this is my third year participating, it is also a year of firsts.  For the first time I was paired with a blogger that I already follow and love dearly.  It is also the first time I get to interview an adoptee blogger.  I'd like to introduce to you Rebecca Hawks who blogs at Love Is Not a Pie.  Rebecca blogs from the perspective of an adoptee in reunion with her first family and an adoptive mother who adopted her daughter through foster care.  She also shares her experience with open adoption in foster care adoption.  So, without any further ado...

The Interview

ME:  In your writing you mention that in your 20's you experienced a shift in how you processed your adoption. Do you mind describing a bit of what this shift was like? Were there specific events that you believe brought it about? What resources did you find the most helpful as you moved through this shift?

REBECCA: Thanks. This is a great question. The first time it happened I was reading the novel Marya: A Life by Joyce Carol Oates. The book doesn’t deal with a formal adoption, but the main character’s father is dead and her mother has abandoned her. The ending of the book snuck past my defenses and touched on an adoptee nerve. Suddenly I had thrown the book across the room and was on the floor in tears. A wave of grief and loneliness came over me and just completely knocked me flat. A similar thing happened about a year later when watching the movie The Joy Luck Club. The scene at the end where one of the main characters returns to China to meet her two sisters just completely undid me. Prior to all of this I would have told you that I was completely fine with being adopted and had no adoption-related issues at all.

This was all pre-Internet, and I had absolutely no resources. I didn’t even know enough to look for them. I had always been told that being adopted wasn’t a big deal and that I was no different from children who were born into a family, so I had no way to make sense of all these feelings that I wasn’t “supposed” to be feeling. I felt completely alone.

These feelings did shift me from thinking that I would never search for my biological family because I was “just fine without them.” Obviously, I wasn’t fine. It took a few more years before I really got up the nerve to search, but the seeds were sown during this period of emotional awakening.

It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered resources such as books by Betty Jean Lifton and Nancy Verrier. I wish I had known about these earlier.
 
ME: Do you mind describing what brought you and your husband to the decision to become foster parents and eventually adoptive parents? Did you foster any children before Ashley came to your home? 
 
REBECCA: As an adoptee, I was always aware of adoption as a possible means of family building, but I was never drawn toward infant adoption. I knew that there were kids in the foster system who needed homes, and I thought that my husband and I might be good candidates to take in an older child. I had read a fair amount about trauma and believed that this knowledge combined with my personal understanding of adoptee issues might help me be an effective parent to a child who had experienced disruption. Of course, I had no idea what I was really getting in for! (Does any parent?) Also, let’s face it: our motivations were not entirely altruistic; we simply had the sense that our family wasn’t quite complete yet and believed that an older child -- specifically, a daughter -- would be the best match for our family. We were already parenting one child (my biological daughter, adopted by my husband as a step-parent adoption), and it made sense to add a child of a similar age and developmental stage.

Our process started when my husband called me on the phone one day, and I was on a website looking at profiles of waiting children in our state. I confessed what I was doing, and he admitted to having entertained similar thoughts. So we called the Department and Children and Families and scheduled the first step, a social worker visit to our home. Then we decided to take the next step, which was to take the required training course. As we took these early steps we told ourselves we were just exploring possibilities, but shortly after we made that initial call, Ashley’s profile popped up on that website. Both my husband and I felt drawn to her for reasons that I can’t entirely put into words. I could tell you some of the reasons why we believed she would be a good match for us, and vise versa, but the emotional connection and the pull toward this particular child cannot be explained by the sum of the parts. Later, we met Ashley in person at a local adoption event and our daughter Mackenzie was drawn to her as well, without even knowing that my husband and I had already told Ashley’s social worker that we were interested in being matched with her.

So to answer your final question, no, we didn’t foster any other children before Ashley. We didn’t even consider any other children; she was the only one.
ME: You have an open relationship with your daughter Ashley's first mother, Erica. Was this a relationship something that you, your husband and Ashley decided to pursue? Does the foster care system encourage openness in foster adoption? Do they have resources available to all three parties (first parents, adoptees and adoptive parents) to help facilitate open relationships in foster adoption?

REBECCA:  My husband Paul and I went into our foster-adoption experience expecting to have an open relationship of some kind. In our geographic area, foster-adoptions do often involve a limited amount of visitation between the child and his or her biological family … typically one or two supervised visits a year. Prior to the finalization of Ashley’s adoption, Erica retained the rights to two visits a year; this was something she had negotiated when she agreed to sign the papers terminating her parental rights. The visits were supervised by a Department of Children and Families social worker. As part of the adoption finalization, Paul and I signed our own agreement with Erica, this one giving her the right to at least one supervised visit a year. Our agreement stipulates that Paul and I have the choice of supervising the visits ourselves or of having them supervised by a third party (as at a visitation center).

That’s where we began. Where we ended up is someplace completely different. It was a gradual transition, but over time, much of the formality of our official agreement has dropped away. We consider Erica and the two young sons she is parenting to be a part of our family. We all spent Mother’s Day together and we have plans to spend Thanksgiving together, for example. We do many more visits than our contract requires.

Erica is an amazing, resilient woman who has worked hard to turn her life around. She has not only triumphed in her own battle with drug addiction and overcoming a trauma history, but now works for a program that helps other mothers-in-crisis do the same. She is one of my closest friends and a source of inspiration to me. I never could have predicted that outcome!

Ashley had always maintained a bond with her mother. The family had come into crisis, but there was never any question of Ashley’s love for her mother or vise versa. My husband and I noticed that our support of frequent visitation did not prevent Ashley from bonding with us; in fact, the opposite was true. As we increased visitation with Erica, Ashley’s bond with us strengthened. Because of our openness, Ashley understood that she didn’t have to choose or hold back from connecting with us out of loyalty to Erica.

As for support and resources, the foster-care system in our area does encourage openness to a certain extent. For example, I am frequently invited by the department to speak to groups of people who are training to become foster-adoptive parents. I certainly encourage openness when I am speaking on such occasions, and they keep inviting me back so I guess that says something. But as for resources, no, we do not offer much in terms of post-placement support of openness. That is something that Erica and I would very much like to create through our organization Ashley’s Moms (www.ashleysmoms.org). Because we don’t yet have funding, we currently fulfill our mission primarily by speaking and writing about openness in foster adoption, specifically by sharing our personal story, but we do very much hope to eventually create some actual programs that would support others in creating successful open-adoption relationships. 

 

ME:  How does your experience as an adoptee influence your experience as an adoptive mother? What advice would you give adoptive and prospective adoptive parents to help them better understand the experience of adoptees that they may be more supportive of their children through processing their own adoptedness?


REBECCA:My commitment to openness is certainly influenced by my own experience as an adoptee in reunion. (I have had a relationship with my maternal family for the past 17 years and recently reunited with my biological father.) I have four parents, and they are each “real.” I love my adoptive family and I love my biological one. The one does not detract from the other. Because this is my own viewpoint regarding family, it’s natural for me to hold both parts of my daughter’s family in the same way.

I think it is important for adoptive parents to understand that being adopted is different from being born into a family. The adopted person may deal with a range of issues throughout the lifetime, and his or her feelings and thoughts about adoption may change many times throughout the years. I encourage adoptive parents to follow their child’s lead as much as possible. Listen. Be emotionally open to whatever comes up for the adoptee.

An adoptive parent (Shannon LC Cate, who blogs at http://shannonlccate.com/) left a comment on my blog the other day that I thought was just perfect. She said: “When my children need to talk about adoption, I try to remember to ask them as many questions as they ask me, so they will know it's their story, their feelings and their life to make of what they will--with my unconditional support for it, no matter what it is.” That nicely sums up what I would advise as well.
 
ME:  What reform would you like to see in the adoption industry and/or the foster care system? Feel free to focus on one or the other if that would be easier. This is a HUGE question.


REBECCA:  Ha, ha - yes, this is a huge question. My short answer is that I’d like for the adoption industry to be smaller … and less of an industry. I have serious concerns about adoptions being handled by for-profit agencies, but that in itself is a huge topic. For now, I’m going to cheat a little and focus on the changes I’d like to see in the way adoption is perceived and understood in the broader culture. I think there’s a tendency to perceive adoption as a simple solution in which everybody wins, and it’s not that at all. Take domestic infant adoption, for example. It’s tempting to look at a situation in which we have an infertile couple on the one hand and an unplanned pregnancy on the other, with parents who are not fully prepared to parent on their own without additional support of some kind, and say, “OK, so we move the child from one family to the other and, ta da, everybody wins!” But it’s not that simple. There’s often a huge price to pay, for the child (I know so many adult adoptees who are struggling with issues of identity, unresolved grief, etc), for the biological parents, and even for the adoptive parents. As the title of your blog indicates, adoptive parenting is no walk in the park!

The closed adoption system of my era was based on certain assumptions. Children were assumed to be blank slates. Nurture was assumed to trump nature. Things like genetic mirroring and a connection to one’s biological roots were considered to be of of small importance to the adoptee. Now many grown adoptees, such as myself, are speaking up and saying that these assumptions did not prove accurate in our situations. Many of us have mourned the loss of connection to our biological families, and we have struggle to make sense of our lives because of the lack of genetic mirroring and of knowledge about our histories. Many original parents are also speaking out now about the pain that they endured. That’s another one of the assumptions that was prevalent at the time of my adoption -- that the birth parents would simply move on as if nothing had happened. But they didn’t … not really.

Obviously, strong bonds can and do occur between family members who are not biologically related, in adoptive and other kinds of families. I’m not negating that. I’m saying that those new bonds don’t cancel out the original bond to the biological family. I believe that if our society truly understood and valued the bond of biological family, we would not have adoption as we know it. We certainly wouldn't have the kind of adoptions that completely severe a child from his or her genetic roots and seal up the original identity in a legal vault. We're a creative species; we can come up with solutions that don't involve such extreme measures. I do believe open adoption is a step in the right direction, when the adoption is truly open, involving a real relationship such as the one you have with River's first parents and brothers. But, unfortunately, I read about many adoptions that are nominally open on paper and yet lack a true spirit of openness; I don’t believe such arrangements are a significant enough improvement over the closed adoptions of my time.






Thank you so much, Rebecca, for opening up and sharing your thoughts with me in this Project.  I hope everyone else feels as edified as I did after this interview.  You can read my responses to Rebecca's questions here. Happy Reading!! 

Destiny

I am emerging from the obscurity of summer to ruminate on a NY Times article titled, "Adoption, Destiny and Magical Thinking."  Many in the adoption triad have already weighed in, and have done so with beautiful, though provoking words.  I am so grateful for them because they have helped me to really reflect on this and think about the ramifications of dedicating events as "destiny" or "God's Plan."

The focus of the NY Times article is the power of "magical thinking" and how we apply it to our own life experience.  I don't believe applying "magical thinking" in the form of "destiny", "God's Plan", "karma", etc. is an issue when we designate our individual life experiences as such.  To me it seems a natural part of coping that has been ingrained in those that have faith in a higher power.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." ~ Jeremiah 1:5 (New International Version)

Isn't it common for us to have the need to "extract a sense of purpose from the random events that make up our lives?" 

However, the article uses the example of how it is applied in adoption and yet adoption is not the story of just one person. It is the story of many.  This is where I believe that "magical thinking" doesn't belong and can even become a benevolent way of thinking. 

For the most part we use these "magical thinking" platitudes with others because we don't know what else to say in to them in their time of trial.  And yet there is still danger because if we believe God is a just god then saying something is part of His plan must mean that we deserve what happens to us or we need it to grow into a better person.  This isn't offensive when telling an adoptive parent that it was in His plan for them to adopt.  The end result was good.  They became parents.  But what of the first parents who have to suffer unimaginable loss for adoptive parents to have a positive end result?  What about parents of a child who dies of cancer?  What of the people who die of starvation due to a lack of resources world wide?  They deserved pain and suffering?  They needed it to learn and grow as an individual?  Absolutely not.

I believe in God. But I'm not naive. I think we can all agree, regardless of creed, that life is NOT fair. Bad things happen to good people as good things happen to those who are bad. Is that part of God's plan? No, I don't believe so. We are all subject to the consequences of our own choices, others' choices, culture, society, our health, mother nature, etc. My ability to choose is part of God's plan, but my choices and how they affect others are not.

Dear Readers: Would you mind sharing your thoughts on "Destiny" and belief in "God's Plan" in a world that seems so unfair?  How do you rectify the two?  What are your thoughts on using the terms "Destiny" and "Part of God's Plan" in adoption?

--

"You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair," said Anne reproachfully. "People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is. Mrs. Thomas told me that God made my hair red on purpose, and I've never cared about Him since." Anne of Green Gables

River dabbles in heroism...

River recently had the opportunity to be a hero.  Not just in my biased opinion, either. A police officer gave him a teddy bear to honor his efforts!

River's nanny, we'll call her Nanny Deb (after our favorite nanny on Nanny 911!), took River and the other little boy she watches to the park.  After parking she got out and went to open the slide door on her minivan to get the boys out.  Unfortunately, she found that the door was locked.  All of the doors were locked.  The keys were still inside the vehicle and so were two little boys snuggly buckled into their carseats.

Nanny Deb is awesome, of course, and did everything right.  She called the police and a locksmith.  The police showed up first.  The police officer had a son just about River's age and using age appropriate directions he instructed River how to get out of his carseat and unlock the door.  Some may not consider this much heroism... No lives were really in danger.  If River hadn't followed the directions of the officer it would have only meant a few more minutes stuck in the car sweating until the locksmith arrived.  But the officer was really impressed with how well River listened and followed the directions he was given and dammit I am, too :)

"There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasurèd."

~ William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 

Passing the Buck - Adoption Ghosts

This is the last in this series of my passing the buck posts.  To read the first two go here, and here.  Though I did not intend to do this I highlighted three posts I love... one from each member of the adoption triad.  I don't think it would have come out that cool if I had tried to plan it that way :) 

The first two posts in this series are far and away the most viewed posts in all my 4 years of blogging.  I'm so happy because I highlighted the provoking thoughts of bloggers that deserve as much exposure as possible.  They are just that kind of awesome.

The final post I would like to highlight is actually from an article published in a professional newsletter by Faith, a fellow adoptive mom, whom I met on a discussion board years ago.  She blogs at Nurture Your Hopes and kindly published the article as a post on her blog as well.  She is an amazing writer and is able to put to eloquent words so many of the thoughts and struggles I have had over the years as an adoptive parent.  Check out Faith's article here:

Adoption Ghosts: A Personal and Professional View

What was most profound to me about this article was Faith's perspective of adoption from the prospective of an adoptive parent (AP) and an infant mental health specialist.  She acknowledges the loss that is experienced by adoptees, often refered to as the "primal wound" the concept of which was posited in Nancy Verrier's landmark book of the same title, "The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child."   This is big because admitting that our love is not enough for our children can be difficult for AP's.  We already feel like an outsider... a failure even.  So we tend to gloss over any such loss to the detriment of our children who need and deserve to have the loss acknowledged and supported without their resulting grieving process being seen as some indication of how much they do or don't love us in return.

She also acknowledges the loss experienced by AP's and putting both losses in the same article, I feel, is helpful for so many (especially us AP's) to recognize that this isn't just about us or fixing what was broken.  It is about identifying those adoption ghosts that haunt us so they do not sabotage our relationships with our children or their first families. 

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the article:

The Bonding Process Ghosts

"I look back often on my early bonding experience with Jackson.The ghosts are still there.I still wish I hadn’t been so anxious, so fearful.I wish that I could have immediately fallen in love like I’ve heard so many other parents describe.Then, I agonize over how all of that could have affected him.Did he sense my hesitancy somehow in the beginning?Did he know I loved him so much it hurt?Did he even know I was his mom?I had so many expectations of how I would feel when my baby was placed in my arms and I didn’t meet them.Did I meet his expectations?Was I what he needed?I will probably never know the answers to those questions."

Grief and Loss Ghosts

"Jackson carries his own loss.He learned the rhythm of his birth mom’s voice, the movement of her body, and, after he was born, the smell of her skin.I have no doubt he found warmth and comfort as she held him close and snuggled his sweet newborn body.And then after 9 months in her womb and 2 days in her arms, she was gone.His mother left him.While she did not abandon him, I do believe his “felt experience” was one of abandonment.His first mom let him go.No matter how great his “forever” mom is, I don’t believe I will ever fully understand the power of that loss for him."

"As for me, I came to this adoption with a lot of grief.I grieved my two babies lost to me before I ever had the chance to hold them in my arms.I grieved the loss of confidence in my body, confidence that it could do what I needed it to do.I think, just as heartbreaking, I was grieving my loss of
control... Infertility teaches a hard lesson – we never really had any control in the first place."

"I can see these ghosts weaving their way in and out of my role as Jackson’s parent.When Jackson is sad, especially if it is due to something I did, I have a gut reaction that is deep and painful.I worry that each time he is sad, his grief is getting bigger.I find myself wanting to protect him from any more pain and sadness in life.After all, hasn’t he already experienced enough?Yet, isn’t pain and sadness a normal part of development?There is much to be learned in those hard times, even for babies and their parents."

"Many parents worry about harming their babies.I agonized about harming my baby more, and so it has gone with many decisions I have made in parenting Jackson.I find myself facing these ghosts frequently.I’d like to think that being an Infant Mental Health Specialist has allowed me to notice these ghosts so they do not guide my every move, but I wonder about the adoptive families we work with.Are they as aware of the potential harm these ghosts can cause?

I have witnessed other adoptive parents dealing with their own grief at the expense of their children.For example, keeping the adoption a secret from their children because “it may hurt them.”I often wonder where this comes from- their worry that their child will be sad or their worry that if the subject of adoption is open will their own grief be exposed, too?I also wonder if this is the way that they try to take back some control and, if so, what will the cost be to their child?I have watched parents have a difficult time setting boundaries with their children because they never want their children to be sad again.I don’t know that they always realize this is their reasoning.Consequently, these children lose their footing.Without boundaries, how do they know how to stay safe?Ghosts can be sneaky and quiet, gently weaving their way into our relationships with our children."

The Guilty Ghosts

"In that moment, I remembered his whole life flashing before me.I immediately worried that he was behaving this way not because I was his mom, but because I was his adoptive mom.I began worrying that my early ambivalence lived on in our relationship.I wondered if the fact that he had experienced abandonment as an infant affected his ability to be separated from me and I felt intense guilt for not thinking of that sooner.All of the previously mentioned ghosts converged in this one interaction and overwhelmed me."

"As we know, when the ghosts are lurking in our subconscious, we have no way to acknowledge them and their impact on our relationships with our children.Until we can acknowledge them, these ghosts can be guiding interactions with our children in ways we don’t want them to."

--

Thank you so much, Faith, for your awesomeness!

While AP's come to the adoption table certainly in the most advantagous position we do not come to the table without our own battle wounds. We bear the scars of our losses and insecurities, too.  I have loved and lost babies.  Not in the same way to allow me to fully understand the loss felt by first parents and adoptees.  However, my loss can and does allow me to understand that the grief of others deserves just as much respect and support as I would ask for my own.  No one person's grief should negate the grief of another.  These are lessons that I have learned over the years and I carry them with me as I continue to develop my relationships with Angie and River and all of the other women and men in the adoption triad that have been essential in helping me come this far in my journey.  

"Ghosts don’t always have to be scary.There are always angels as well." ~ Faith Edison

Who Wears Short Shorts?

Over the past two weeks I've had the opportunity to share childcare duties with Cory while our nanny is on vacation.  The opportunity to forego work and stay home with River during the day has been something I had been excitedly anticipating.  I've been craving lazy open days begging to be filled with a long list of fun activities I put together during the wait. 

Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as I had hoped... first Cory didn't work for almost a week leaving me able to work those days.  Then when I finally did get my time off with River, I had clients calling me daily, quick deadlines and stress over how to portion my time such that I could get work in without losing the chance for fun. 

Such is my existential crisis as a working mom.  Especially when I am a Type A personality.  I want to succeed at both but have to seriously redefine what that success is otherwise I will drive myself crazy with the guilt of failure.  I won't ever be the high ranking corporate female engineer.  I don't want to devote nor do I really have the time necessary to get there.  My house will never be picturesque with neat clean lines and colors of organization.  I don't have the time and energy to devote to that.  Sometimes we will have to rely on our nanny to help us to take care of River.  I hope it will be a benefit to him to have the additional influence of her peaceful, humble, giving nature.    

I could go on and on about my existential crisis but I will save that for another post.  Instead I will share some ridiculously cute pictures of River "playing soccer ball" as he called it.  We attended a 3 and 4 year old soccer camp one evening this week and while it was complete chaos, to my chaotic 3 1/2 year old it was pure excitement.

He looks like such a natural!

I loved how 70's footballer he looked in these short shorts :)

Kudos to all of the volunteers that made this possible.  They did an amazing job...

...as evidenced in River's cheesy, Chiclet toothed grin!

Despite having to juggle work we still managed to squeeze the most out of our days together.  It is so rewarding when at the end of each day you fall into bed exhausted with the sore back and muscles that only come from a day of running hard, playing bears, and doing whatever it takes to give your child perma-cheesy-Chiclet-tooth-grin.

I still have one post left in my Passing the Buck Series then I will be devoting some time to restructuring my blog.  I'm excited about the changes and want to thank everyone who has come to check out my blog since I joined A Real Adoption Blog Hop over at Adoption Magazine.  A truly inclusive list of great adoption blogs from all sides of the adoption triad no matter what the writer's opinion of adoption is.  Just as it should be!  I encourage everyone to check the list out.  Many of the blogs I already follow but now I've got so many new ones to check out.  Insert picture of my cheesy, Chiclet toothed grin here.  

Statistically Impossible - Thoughts on what each member of the triad is "allowed" to blog about

I am back to passing the buck!  This time with a post that I have wanted to highlight (and received permission to do so) months ago.  The post was written by I Am, a first father who blogs openly and honestly at Statistically Impossible.  The post is titled:

"First Family Blogs: The Ultimate Downer - OR - Why We Don't Post Recipes"

When I read I am's post I was in a bit of a blogging existential crisis.  Here I was writing a blog with the title "Adoption Ain't For Sissies" and yet only about a third of what I was writing had to do with adoption.  The majority of what I was writing was anywhere from the downer of infertility to light fluffy stuff about how freakin' cute River is.  I even posted recipes.  I felt a bit like a fraud and wondered if I should change the name of my blog to avoid false advertising.  All the first parents and adoptees I follow blog almost exclusively about adoption.  Why am I not pigeonholed like they are?

Enter, I Am's enlightened words in this post...  Very similar to my own thoughts but from the perspective of a first father, a member of the triad that is pigeonholed. 
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from his post:

On Adoptive Parent Blogs - "So far it seems to me that adoptive parents are given license to discuss all aspects of their lives except those that may make casual readers squeamish."

On First Parent Blogs - "First parents are expected to write only about adoption. Their lives beyond the placement of their children is taboo. We don't want to know. It's uncomfortable to think about how dis/similar the first parent is to the casual reader. The birth parent is given the opportunity to speak of pain, grief, anguish, loss, and resent. All the negative aspects of human experience are covered here. Aristotle would be proud. But then there are the subsections. Happy first parents versus unhappy first parents. The chasm between these two groups is nigh unbridgeable."

On Adoptee Blogs - "Then we look at Adoptee writers, who likely have the most limited role of all in the online adoption discussion. I honestly feel terrible about how little voice adoptees have been given in the way we talk and think about adoption. Rather than being given, I think it may be fairer to say adoptees have had their voice ignored and censored. Therefore it makes some sense that the anticipated response from adoptees is one of rage, intense loss, and abandonment."

I've been an avid reader of I Am's blog for a while.  I am so happy that the opinion of at least one first father is out there in adoption blogland.  First fathers seem to be the least represented not only in blogland but also in terms of adoption support in the industry.  Hopefully, this is on the mend, though, as he pointed out in a more recent post, a fledgling first father forum was recently launched.  For more info check out this link:

Birthfather's Recognized

Because this topic fits so well with what shook down over at Circle of Mom's Top Adoption and Foster Care Moms contest I also wanted to highlight Heather's kick ass response on her blog Production, Not Reproduction to what happened to Cassie at Adoption Truth during the voting process when she was deemed not supportive and positive enough about adoption.  My favorite quote from the post:

"I'd argue that voices like Cassi's are the most important, in many regards. Speaking for myself, they give me a view of adoption I do not get anywhere else--not in the mainstream media, not in the most popular adoption books, not in most of the training materials I've been given. It is the people who vulnerably and honestly share about the complexities of adoption--those often labeled "anti-adoption" or "negative--who have most influenced my views of adoption. More than just my views--they have influenced my practice of adoption, my choices as an adoptive parent, my relationships with my children. All for the better. And they are effecting change on a larger scale in terms of adoptee rights and the ethical adoption practices, too."
 
This is EXACTLY why I read blogs written by all members of the triad.  I too have learned the most from those who are labeled "negative" and "anti-adoption." They have helped me to better understand the position of first parents and adoptees and they have helped me to see the flawed state of affairs that adoption has become as an industry.  Sometimes it hurts but that is what parenting is about.  Walking through the valley of the shadow of death or whatever it takes to provide your children with the resources they need to navigate their own.

Despite the debacle, the top two blogs before the contest was pulled were NOT adoptive moms... The Declassified Adoptee and Musings of the Lame... an adoptee and a first mother... and I'm fist pumping Jersey style for that.  Maybe, just maybe this is a sign that we (adoptive parents) are moving closer to mutual respect and a willingness to listen to all adoption opinions.  Regardless of whether or not we agree we all deserve to be heard.

In The Mean Time

One piece of advice I often received while waiting to become a mother was to make the most of the freedom and extra time that I wouldn't get back for many years after we had children.  If you know me, you know I always bristled at this comment because as Tom Petty said, "The way-ya-ting is the hardest part."  Didn't they understand it is difficult to see the forest through the trees when you are in the thick of it?  It came across as just one more insensitive comment from those who "didn't get it."  Tonight, though, I had a conversation with a friend I go to church with after which I feel I finally "got it." 

I'll start off with a little background on my friend whom I will call, Dee.  Dee and I both have "callings" (volunteer positions) serving the young women of our congregation in Sunday School classes and midweek youth activities.  Dee and I are both the same age with only 10 days separating our date of births.  Dee and I are also both infertle myrtles in a Mormon sea of bellies swollen with life and stereotypically large families.  She is not yet a mother, however, so she really "gets it." Tonight, during our discussion on how much such lot in life sucks, she reminded me about one of the talks given by a member of the general authority of our church.  Because she "gets it", though, her telling me this story really made me think.  Here is the story:

Don't worry, it isn't all churchy... instead something I think we can all relate to.

“One woman wanted more than anything else to marry... and be a mother and a wife. She had dreamed about this all her life, and oh, what a wonderful mother and loving wife she would be. Her home would be filled with loving-kindness. Never a bitter word would be spoken. The food would never burn. And her children, instead of hanging out with their friends, would prefer to spend their evenings and weekends with Mom and Dad.

“This was her golden ticket. It was the one thing upon which she felt her whole existence depended. It was the one thing in all the world for which she most desperately yearned.

“But it never happened. And, as the years went on, she became more and more withdrawn, bitter, and even angry. She could not understand why God would not grant her this righteous desire."

“She worked as an elementary school teacher, and being around children all day long simply reminded her that her golden ticket had never appeared. As the years passed she became more disappointed and withdrawn. People didn’t like being around her and avoided her whenever they could. She even took her frustration out on the children at school.

Holy graham crackers, Batman! I want to give this woman a hug. I am just like her... bitter, withdrawn and angry.

“The tragedy of this story is that this dear woman, in all her disappointment about her golden ticket, failed to notice the blessings she did have. She did not have children in her home, but she was surrounded by them in her classroom. She was not blessed with a family, but the Lord had given her an opportunity few people have—the chance to influence for good the lives of hundreds of children and families as a teacher.

“The lesson here is that if we spend our days waiting for fabulous roses, we could miss the beauty and wonder of the tiny forget-me-nots that are all around us.”  

~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Having Dee remind me of this story made me realize that there is actually great wisdom in those that have encouraged me to make the most of my time.  I don't want to waste all of my time and effort grieving in the mean time waiting for my prayers to be answered for more children.  My "in the mean time" may mean that never in this mortal existance will I experience a full term pregnancy or the joy of bringing life into this world.  That doesn't mean that my "in the mean time" will be any less productive or legacy producing than any one else.  I've just got to recognize the damn forest in the trees so that I don't waste my opportunities while I still have them.  I want to make the most of my "in the mean time."

"Sending you forget me nots
To help me to remember
Baby please forget me not
I want you to remember"

~ Patrice Rushen, Forget Me Nots