Jane’s Calamity

A little over two years ago, I made a decision I will regret for the rest of my life.

I say that knowing my words will raise all sorts of emotions in people, because I think it will be very difficult for people to understand how something that could be so positively good could turn out so catastrophically bad – bad for me and bad for my family.

I opened my home to the family of the child I placed in open adoption. Not for the first time, but for the second time in as many years.

The first time was difficult, not impossible, but difficult. Not even emotionally difficult – it was just hard sharing my home with people so unlike me I guess.

The second time, I did it out of desperation. It had been a number of year since we’d seen each other and in the summer before they moved in, I had my first visit in a long time.

It went bad. Real bad. I discovered things that made me rage – that week long visit changed so much in me.

The child I had placed for adoption so that she could have a better life was being neglected and abused.

So, when months later, I was asked to provide refuge for a hasty departure that would be the first steps in what would ultimately become a divorce, I leaped. I wanted so badly to provide for her now what I had hoped to be providing for her when I placed her…I guess I felt I was getting another chance.

That’s where the folder came from. I was digging in my files, getting ready to file our tax return, when I saw this odd blue hanging folder.  I don’t have any blue hanging folders. I have green ones. Ugly green ones. The blue one looked strange sitting there among the green ‘Army Issue’ looking folders.

So I opened it.

Inside, a legal document, two pages in length. A Passport. A Birth Certificate.

I open the Passport, it says her name. It has a picture of her when she was so small, a year old, maybe almost two. I glance at the pages, look at the stamps.

Then, do I dare? I look at the legal document, at the top in all capital letters “FINAL DECREE OF ADOPTION”

Her decree. The decree. The document that started all of this.

I look at it, nothing is unexpected and I don’t really have any real reaction to seeing it, other than knowing that it’s here. Why is it here?

Then I look at her birth certificate.

I gasp.

It’s not her amended birth certificate. It’s her original birth certificate. The one with my last name.

I scan the document. It looks different to me. Different because it says only a few things. Her name, her date and place of birth and the record number.

It doesn’t list a parent. Not a mother, not a father. No one.

I lost it right then. I literally dropped to my knees and sobbed.

Seeing her original birth certificate was more than I ever thought I’d ever see in terms of documents – I didn’t even know her parents had one. But seeing it without a single parent listed – including myself – it was like being gut punched after a full meal.

Today, I spent the day doing any and everything I could to avoid thinking about it – I even built a new bed for my son, something I’d been wanting to do for a while, but kept putting off. I have cleaned my house, bathed the dog and finished all of the laundry.

Now, there is nothing left to do but sit here and sob and think about how I have even been erased from her original birth certificate.

As for the first part of this post – she and her mother did move in with us and it was the most horrific experience of my life. Her mother, who has some major mental illness issues, can’t (or won’t) parent. They are now living with family members in another state and based on the limited communication we’ve had since they left, I’m assuming that the situation for her hasn’t changed much.

Guilt is a son of a bitch.

There is a certain time of year when I loss all ability to function in the normal world. I become an unresponsive shell of myself and I am impossible to live with. I lash out, become even more emotional than I normally am and even worse, I bottle it up inside, because so many of those around me don’t understand that it’s possible to feel this way and still feel like adoption isn’t evil. For them, my feelings and that sentiment go hand in hand. Always. No exceptions. I am unhappy or have feelings that aren’t a display of brimming joy, so I must be of the opinion that adoption is evil.

I don’t feel that way – that’s ridiculous. I feel that uneducated, irresponsible people involved in adoption are evil. I feel that, for some, the ones who are part of the “we learned our lessons from the past, so we won’t make the same mistakes in the future” era of adoption are expected to just move along.

For the love of Pete – I’m one of the lucky ones! I had an open adoption – I had contact – I have information. What I never had was (and is) the supports in place to help me deal with the loss that, like it or not, open or closed, I still had (and still have) as a result of my adoption. I still grieve and people take issue with that…for some, Adoption = Happy regardless of your life experience – I should be happy I was adopted and just stfu. Adoption isn’t an instant source of happiness for some people and to be frank, open adoption isn’t always the cure for the sadness that sometimes results. I wish it was.

The funny thing, in all of this, I hate my birth mother. Loathe her. She is the cruelest, most self-serving woman I know, yet, I still long for her acceptance I guess. Having never had the ‘mother and daughter’ relationship that so many of my friends seem to have with their mothers – I want that, I want that from one of my freakin plethora of mothers. Is it to much to ask?

I think, this time of year is hardest for me because the holidays are always about family and for the most part, I feel like I am a wayward ship at sea, without familial connections – scared to build friendships, because it seems they rarely last. I suffer. My husband suffers. My son suffers.

I hate the holidays because I want to be like the family on TV – I want warmth, love and friendship. I want to be wanted and I don’t feel wanted. I don’t feel anything but overwhelming freakin sadness and that’s just not how the holidays are supposed to be, are they?

I didn’t participate in the last Roundtable Discussion and I wasn’t sure I’d participate in this one. Sometimes, I don’t feel comfortable talking about my story, because I feel like my sides ‘conflict’ with each other a great deal. To be honest, it makes me feel like a hypocritical bitch, because sometimes, my feelings for my own first mom border on the edge of pure rage and hatred, while I hope that the perspective I’ve gained from that experience has allowed me to be the best possible first mom for my daughter that I can be. 

It’s just hard. 

This Roundtable Discussion topic is: Share your wish list for your open adoption(s).

For my open adoption, my wish list is pretty simple:

• Open, honest and respectful exchange of information that allows me to make informed decisions regarding my health care. 

I’ll explain. Open adoption doesn’t always mean that you have your medical history. It doesn’t always mean you have access to information regarding your heritage or roots. Sometimes, open adoption is nothing more than a superficial relationship between two people that really act as nothing more than a mild acquaintance. That is, for the most part, how my open adoption with my first mother is. We talk, from time to time. We catch up on the goings on of life. We send a Christmas Card each year and when I was younger, I spent weekends and some holidays with her and her family. 

My open adoption doesn’t include an open, honest or respectful exchange of information. Getting familial medical information is often like pulling teeth and in the past, I have even been told that it’s none of my business. I recall talking to my first mom once when we were out for dinner, after not seeing each other for a few years. I had called her 11 months prior and asked her some pointed medical questions and was again told that there was no familial medical history to pass on. I was telling her about some testing I’d had done to rule out some pretty serious genetic medical conditions when, in passing, she mentioned her father having had the exact same condition. It hurt. I was hurt. 

Several years later we had a similar exchange where I discovered that my first father (a man she refuses to identify) had a daughter who had undergone a kidney transplant and in the same conversation, she shared with me that he’d died. In passing. No consideration for my feelings. Again, I was hurt. 

So, for my own open adoption, I guess that’s all I wish I had, open, honest and respectful exchange of information. I deserve to know information about my roots and it enrages me to know that she has that control over me. 

As for my open adoption with my daughter, I don’t know. My daughter isn’t a baby or toddler any more. She’s a teen, which makes this harder, I think:

• I wish I had been given all of the information I needed to make an informed decision. If I had, I might have made a different one. My decision to place wouldn’t be different, but her parents might have been. There is so much I wasn’t privy to, but was known by the agency and that makes me angry.
• Teenagers are hard to raise, I’m doing it myself so I know, but as her first mom, it pains me a great deal to hear you complain about her every time we talk – that’s why I send you to voicemail most of the time when you call. Hearing you complain about her is just to much.  
• I wouldn’t mind getting together with you (adoptive mom) every once in a while, if we lived closer and saw each other with any amount of regularity, but we don’t so when you call and ask if you can come visit while Kiddo is off doing whatever it is she is doing, my answer will likely be no. I know money is tight and I’d rather you saved the money it would cost you to fly here for a long weekend and put it towards a visit where you can both come. It’s been 18 months since our last visit. Before that it was 3 years and before that, even longer. This isn’t a relationship, this is agony. You said I’d be an important part of her life. You were even the one who brought up open adoption to begin with. It all kind of seems like a lie.

When I first started being vocal about my adoption, I think I was in a haze of delusion regarding our relationship. I was happy with the communication, sporadic as it was, that I was getting. Then I realized, as Kiddo got older, that it wasn’t enough. I was a stranger to her, because every time we managed to get together, we spent the first few days acclimating to each other. 

I think, this is where my own open adoption with my first mother and the open adoption I have with Kiddo seem to be similar. There needed to be more connection. More involvement. 

My wish list for our open adoption really only has one thing:

• I hope she doesn’t harbor anger towards me like I do my own first mother because I’m not there for her. I want to be there for her. I would give my life to be there for her. 

Heather wrote a post on the Open Adoptions Bloggers Blog here at OAS that she’d like for those involved in OA to answer a Roundtable Question. This is going to be a new thing for OA Bloggers and while I’ve never been involved in the OA Bloggers Blogroll, I would like to answer this question.

Initially, when I read it, I thought, “Hmph, that doesn’t apply to my situation at all, how disappointing” then I got to thinking that maybe, on some level, it really did.

Having grown up in open adoption, I don’t recall any portion of my life without ‘knowing’ open adoption. It’s always been such a huge part of who I am and while it made me stand apart from my adopted counterparts, which made me feel odd and somehow freakish, it’s always been something that’s been a part of who I am.

So, the question posed is, “Looking back to the time when you were thinking about open adoption but hadn’t yet lived it out, what one thing would you tell your past self about open adoption, if you could?”

As you can see, its hard for me to answer this question, because there isn’t a time in my life when I hadn’t lived open adoption. However, reflecting back, I know for a fact there are things I know now that I wish I’d known then. Maybe it has to do with the way the roles have been changed – I don’t know. What I do know is that I do have an answer to this question, even if I don’t meet the qualifications for giving an answer, as the question is posed.

I remember, pregnant and sitting in the living room of the intended parents for my daughter. We were still in the ‘getting to know you’ phase and they hadn’t been told, yet, that they would be adopting my unborn child in the coming months. I recall them saying something about open adoption and me thinking how ridiculous it sounded. Open adoption? What the hell is that?

This was the first time I’d ever been given an actual name for the institution which had been such a huge part of who I am from the time I was born, until the time I was sitting right there in their tacky green pleather recliner. Hmmm, open adoption you say?

They instantly knew, once they uttered the words, that I was clueless and it wasn’t until a few minutes later, when they were explaining exactly what this ‘open adoption’ business was, that it finally dawned on me that I knew what it was, I just didn’t know what it was called.

We chatted, they were excited that, not only did I know what open adoption was, I had had an open adoption and that any concerns about me being adopted, thus limiting the amount of medical information they might get, was now no longer a concern. Strange, huh?

Anyway, from that point, we just rolled with things. I had had an open adoption growing up. They wanted an open adoption going forward. Open adoption is open adoption, right? What could there be to talk about?

So, to answer the question, what would be the one thing I would tell my past self about open adoption, if I could? I would tell myself that nothing about open adoption is the same from situation to situation. I had spent a lot of time worried about other, very important things as they related to me making a choice for her parents, so much so that I didn’t consider that there wasn’t some open adoption guidebook that everyone followed and that our open adoption wouldn’t be the same as the open adoption that I had had growing up.

For this reason, I get uneasy when people ask me for advice about open adoption, because honestly, every single one of them is different and everyone involved in them will have different yet equally valid experiences.

I don’t talk about adoption all that often. When I do, I’m passionate and usually pretty emotional. It’s not that I think adoption is bad or should go away – in fact, its quite the opposite. I think adoption can be great (and it’s very possible that my situation is pretty great, in comparison) however, I think there needs to be change. I think there has to be change, because unregulated adoption without informed consent is wrong and it hurts people. A lot of people and on all sides too. I’m not stupid enough to believe that everyone shares those feelings, however, I get quite upset when I get lumped into the ‘haters’ group simply because I think we can do better than we’re currently doing when it comes to adoption. 

I live in a world where there is black and there is white. You are one and not the other and you certainly can’t be ‘gray’ by any stretch of the imagination. You either think that it’s wonderful and every unmarried woman in the world who finds themselves ‘with child’ should place her child for adoption and that she’ll be happy, well adjusted and go on with life like nothing has happened to her. Or you think that adoption is wrong. Should be shut down. Should go away. All children belong with their biological parents, regardless of the circumstances etc etc. There is no middle ground. 

You either live in Pollyannaville or you’re anti-adoption.

Those are your choices.

Please pick one and move along. 

The fact remains, at least for me, I think adoption works out well for the most part in most instances – however, I think we need to make some changes so that it works out better for everyone. 

Let’s start with informed consent. A woman who is going to place her child for adoption isn’t going to change her mind if you share with her the facts involved. She just isn’t. What she might do is equip herself with the tools she needs to be prepared for whatever might happen later. She might not ‘bank’ on something being one way, if she knows it might actually go a different way. She may seek out and get more counseling to help her cope with what she might be feeling in the days leading up to and the days following the placement. She just might be prepared because she has the tools she needs to make a decision and has prepared herself for what might or might not happen later.

And, if informed consent makes her change her mind – it wasn’t the right choice for her situation and everyone should praise her for making the best choice she can make, once given the tools to do just that. In the end, an informed decision results in fewer heartbreaks for everyone.  

How about a little education, for everyone. Giving people the tools they need to ensure a successful experience is just good practices. Adoption isn’t just about adoption anymore, it’s about creating, building and nurturing respectful relationships with people who have an undeniable bond. 

Novel idea, huh?

In my world, women are set up for failure, manipulated by a broken system where people are scared to tell the truth, because it hurts their bottom line. The truth is often scary and it can be painful and if people knew the truth, then they might decide that the potential for pain is far to great to adopt or to place. So, we don’t tell them the truth, we share our Pollyanna-esque version of reality and pray the check clears before the truth comes to light.

There should be laws that make informed consent a requirement. There should be education that makes navigating adoption easier. There should be limits on the number of zeros placed on checks written to people who claim to do charity work for children. Our government does a fantastic job at ensuring that international adoptions are above board, including regulating practices of international adoption agencies. Why is our government ignoring us? 

I am all in favor of ethical and regulated adoption – I am not in favor of the snake-oil-salesman-like practices that are alive and well in modern domestic infant adoption.