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. 
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