This all started with an interview request from Johnny Down To This, China dad, and blogger extraordinaire.Johnny wanted to interview an adult adoptee who had decided to adopt from China. I poured out my heart and just typed and typed, fueled by coffee and emotion.
One of the things that swam to the surface was my anger and bewilderment at being told, over and over and over and OVER again, that my birthmother LOVED me so much. She loved me even though she gave me away. She made the "ultimate sacrifice" so that I could have a "better life."
So, what are you saying to a child when you tell him that her birthparents loved her?
Love isn't enough.
Love doesn't stop you from being given away.
Maybe one day YOU, adoptive parent, will give her away if you get sick, divorced, widowed, broke?
I don't even know if I was potty trained when I first heard this. All I know is that I hated it. Hated it then. Hate it now....
At the same time my parents pumped the propaganda they tactfully let me know that I probably was not going to have a happy tearful reunion with my birthmother. The adoption records were sealed. Dr. Reuben F. Simms of Richmond, Virginia arranged the adoption. He knew my parents from church. He told my parents that he had never seen a birthmother less interested in her child's future placement or more anxious to get away from the whole miserable situation. She wanted to know nothing about the "new family" and passionately begged him to NEVER tell them ANYTHING about her.
When I turned 18 I wrote Dr. Simms and received a nice letter confirming this and suggesting that I be happy with my adoptive parents. He might as well have reached out from his office and slapped me in the face.
I had an ace in the hole, however.
The judge had accidentally spoken the name of my birthmother during the adoption hearing.
The Backstory
1. Dr. Simms was a Southern gentleman whose roots stretched back to the Revolutionary War. He was, from all accounts, as decent and honest a doctor as walked the earth. He did not choose wealthy parents who were able to slip him a finder's fee. My parents owned a 900 sq. foot house at the time. Mom had quit work in 1957 to relax and conceive. (She's still waiting).
He did not push adoption. In fact, he encourged mothers to visit and hold their babies before deciding to sign adoption papers. This comes straight from the mouth of another birth mother who used him.
2. He also told my parents a lot of details, rare for this time period, I gather.
3. My birthmother, Elaine OldSouthernName, was from a wealthy Virginia family. She was a college student at William & Mary. A music major.
She was raped by her date, found out she was pregnant, and didn't tell her parents. She begged her uncle to support and hide her. He did, telling her parents that he had decided to send her on a....
wait for it, people....
ROUND THE WORLD CRUISE.
4. In 1988 I hired a search firm and they found her. I had her name, and her address in Richmond. How did I get that? Simple. I lied. I wrote the hospital pretending to be her and ordered a copy of "my" records.
5. I sat on it for 4 years, knowing in my heart that this would not go well.
6. I got engaged in 1992 and wrote her a nice letter. I received a polite brushoff. She was married. She never told her husband about me. I'll share the letter at the end of the story..
7. I have not contacted her again. I know nothing at all about my birth father. He probably doesn't know I exist.
8. I do not believe that my birthmother loved me in 1958 and I do not believe that she loves me today. I believe that her blood flows in my veins and I must try to understand and make peace with the past.
And...after all, I was there.
So tomorrow I'm going to go on a journey deep into my imagination, beginning with imagining that the internet existed in 1958.
I'm going to pretend that I'm her, and it's 1958, and I'm blogging from my lovely dorm room in Virginia, staring at the beautiful spring blossoms, realizing that my pink chiffon dress is torn after a dance I attended and that I am...
late.
wait for it, people....
ROUND THE WORLD CRUISE.
4. In 1988 I hired a search firm and they found her. I had her name, and her address in Richmond. How did I get that? Simple. I lied. I wrote the hospital pretending to be her and ordered a copy of "my" records.
5. I sat on it for 4 years, knowing in my heart that this would not go well.
6. I got engaged in 1992 and wrote her a nice letter. I received a polite brushoff. She was married. She never told her husband about me. I'll share the letter at the end of the story..
7. I have not contacted her again. I know nothing at all about my birth father. He probably doesn't know I exist.
8. I do not believe that my birthmother loved me in 1958 and I do not believe that she loves me today. I believe that her blood flows in my veins and I must try to understand and make peace with the past.
And...after all, I was there.
So tomorrow I'm going to go on a journey deep into my imagination, beginning with imagining that the internet existed in 1958.
I'm going to pretend that I'm her, and it's 1958, and I'm blogging from my lovely dorm room in Virginia, staring at the beautiful spring blossoms, realizing that my pink chiffon dress is torn after a dance I attended and that I am...
late.
Posts
13 comments:
Wow- I am really very interested in this. You've hinted a bit at how you feel about your birth mother, but I'm interested to hear more.
Read your responses to Terri's interview. The comment re: your birth mom loved you- I wouldn't have thought of that issue, so I'm glad you pointed it out. Saying she couldn't care for you probably makes more sense.
Should you then tell an adopted child that his/her birthmother didn't love him/her? Won't that engender more of a feeling of being rejected?
Since I am pursing adoption, I'm not sure the best way to handle this.
I love the way you write, always.
my 2 cents to teendoc:
you can't tell your kid what you don't know. Eventually, your child will figure out that you don't know her birth parents and that everything you've said about their feelings is a big fat LIE. Or, if you have an open adoption, they won't need to hear it from you, and then it works differently as they make their own judgments about the birth family.
Still, making up stories and lying are dangerously close, especially to small children. The comfortable fiction just doesn't work with kids. You can tell them that you really don't know, but don't just make stuff up. Kids see through that stuff, and as you can see from clueless' take, it pisses them off. And can scare the crap out of them, too. It's just not worth it.
I can't wait to read part 2, clueless. Your take is always eye-opening. And funny.
teendoc,
Good question. I don't know if there is one good answer for every adoption.
I tell the girls that their birthparents couldn't take care of them but made sure that they were ok. Even that may get thrown in my face one day when they learn of their abandonment.
My parents KNEW that my birthmother had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with me and wasn't even interested in where I was going.
Yet Mom persists in the love thing to this day.
The explanation was couched in their world, an era that has mercifully passed, a world where being a young unwed mother was about as shameful and horrible as it gets, and she gave me up because it was unthinkable to try to raise a child by herself. She loved me enough to give me the oh so necessary gift, by 1959 standards, of a MARRIED SET OF PARENTS.
I understand that, but it's still kind of hard to know that *I* was the focus of so much unhappiness.
Every adoption is different...
A domestic, planned adoption--in 2006--I would bet that there is definitely love there and that should be conveyed to the child.
Hiya L,
As always, look forward to what you have to say. You opinions have gotten some a-parents thinking in a new light.
J.
Such a heartbreaking story. I can't wait for the next installment.
Its easy to look back and marvel at how different things were back in the 50s. Should we give what folks did back then a "pass" because of the different culture? Or judge them for not seeing their actions through a child's eyes? How will our children judge us in the future for what we do now?
Love and hugs.
I have always taken the words of adult adoptees to heart on this topic and have never told my kids that their birth mother's loved them. I encourage other adoptive parents to do the same. It is not easier, but in the long run, it has to be safer.
We stick with what we know: that for some reason, the birth parents couldn't take care of a baby--not just Y and Z, but any baby in the whole wide world. That babies need lots and lots of stuff, that babies can't do anything wrong but that they need lots of things [we have fine example of a brand new 3 month old baby in our church for that], that babies are abandoned because of grown-up reasons and not because of anything to do with kids.
In my humble opinion, growing up being told that an absent parent "loves" you screws you up in so many ways. My parents split when I was little and father was AOL for pretty much the rest of my life. I was always wondering what was wrong with ME, what I did wrong that made him leave. Better to have been told nothing.....
have you read 'the girls who went away' by ann fessler? i just finished it and it gave me a whole new perspective on birthmothers prior to roe vs wade. it was a really interesting book.
Thanks for writing about your first mother. It's pretty much impossible to find balance in any discussion of first parents, and this adds it.
And it also adds the wise advice to avoid telling our children that love had anything to do with their adoptions. I believe that there are many mothers who do indeed love their relinquished children and carry hope for reunion through their lives. But there are others whose situations and feelings are different. We a-parents have no way of knowing why our children's mothers relinquished, and should therefore keep love out of the discussion.
What is also so hard it seems to me is that your birth mother deprived your birth father from knowing he had a daughter and both sets of grandparents, not to mention possible siblings and other family members from their grandchild/sister/niece/aunt etc forever and ever just because she couldn't face up to what happened to her.
The question is do you stop with her? Do you really protect her secret and deprive all those other people and yourself a chance at a relationship?
I can't imagine what I would do in your shoes.
You can't imagine HOW helpful this is to a-parents. Thanks you, thank you, thank you.
Personally, I can't speak for others feelings so telling my daughter that her birth mother and/or father "loved" her just wouldn't feel right. I guess I can assume someone cared enough about her to take care of her for a while and then leave her somewhere she could be found. "I just don't know" seems a much more honest, if frustrating, response to me.
Thanks so much for your perspective.
It is just a treasure-trove of data to process!
Your take on love is really thought-provoking. I do believe my daughter's mother loves her and made what she thought was a good decision for her baby. I do think it was mostly poverty that led her to relinquish.
I want to plead with you to tell me how to talk about that to my daughter, but it's not your job to figure that out. Thanks though, for giving me something to chew on in the remaining year or so I have before she starts asking about adoption outright.
This is a very interesting post for me, being the mother of a daughter adopted from China. Of course, we've all been schooled in what to tell our daughters about how their birthparents loved them. And I have always been uncomfortable with the thought, as you've described it, that it's implied that even though we love our children, they could naturally believe we would leave them, as well.
Post a Comment