Aug
16
For the Open Adoption Bloggers Roundtable #5, Heather picked another tough question:
How has open adoption changed you? In what ways are you different because the presence of open adoption in your life?
I should say from the outset that ours hasn’t been the one-big-happy-family open adoption. We have had contact with School Girl’s father’s family exactly 3 times in the past 7 years; 2 brief visits with S himself and 1 with School Girl’s aunt (S’s baby sister). There are good sound reasons why I’m…reluctant to have S in our lives at all at present, but I’m hoping that he will be able to have contact, safely, with her in the future. We have had sporadic contact with M in the past 7 years; in fact, the only people who we have had ongoing contact with have been M’s parents; as in visits 3-4 times a year, letters, presents, pictures and phone calls.
When Evil Dad and I first got married, it was the most important thing in the world for me to be pregnant. because then I would be a mother. A real mother, one who gives birth to and raises a child with a partner – only theirs and theirs alone. Certainly sharing a child with someone outside of our little family was the farthest thing from my mind.
Adoption, specifically open adoption, helped me to let go of that fantasy. The truth is, even people who are biological parents have to share their child with a lot of others – grandparents, other relatives, teachers, friends – and may or may not give that a second thought. It’s been interesting, and joyful, and in some cases heartbreaking to share School Girl with C & J, and to a lesser extent with M & S.
The idea that a child is “my own” is something that was easier to let go. Just because a child is born to you doesn’t mean you have anything in common. It’s been easier raising School Girl in that regard; she is far more outgoing than either Evil Dad or I am, but at the same time far more shy around adults she doesn’t know. She excels at math and reading both; Evil Dad and I can barely balance the checkbook between the two of us, but love to read. She is both like and unlike M; without getting to know her and her family, we wouldn’t have seen any of that. Evil dad and I have never expected her to be a “mini-me”, and having M and her family in our lives have helped us see where she gets a lot of her personality and interests. In short, she is not our child – the product of me and Evil Dad – but our child – the product of at least 6 or 7 different people, some of whom we will never meet. And that, in my mind, isn’t such a bad thing at all.
“In short, she is not our child – the product of me and Evil Dad – but our child – the product of at least 6 or 7 different people, some of whom we will never meet. And that, in my mind, isn’t such a bad thing at all.”
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Wow… I LOVE this. So, so, so true! Thank you for your insight!
Thanks!
I love how you say she is a product of so many people. so true. and it means there is always a little mystery in there…
That’s one of the nicer things about our adoption – we’ve got C & J to turn to if some behavior or other’s puzzling us. On the other hand, School Girl and I are a bit alike emotionally – and M’s like the both of us as well, which has been interesting.