I’ve been doing a lot of blog reading lately. I know, what a shocking revelation. Next I’ll tell you I love chocolate. But seriously, after I caught up on the 40 blogs I track on bloglines – or really, as I was catching up – I started branching out and reading blogs from viewpoints I tend to avoid: Birthmoms and Adult Adoptees. It’s not the first time I’ve read some of these blogs, but to be honest a lot of what they write is hard to hear so I have to be in the right frame of mind for them.
It’s not just that their hurts are so fresh and many of their posts so deep… it’s the guilt that often comes with reading them. I’m so good at the guilt thing – I feel guilty about everything. The house isn’t clean, I’m not a very good cook, I forgot a nephew’s birthday… you name it. One area where the guilt runs deeper is in raising my SE Asian kids. Am I giving them enough of their culture and heritage, without making them feel different or singled out? Am I telling them enough about their birth stories, but not so much that I overload them? Being a mother is often about walking a fine line between enough and too much and it seems like being an adoptive mother just means more fine lines to walk. And thus, for me, more guilt.
I think guilt can be good, when it’s well-placed and spurns us to action. But useless guilt, unmerited guilt, just weighs us down and prevents us from being who God created us to be and doing what God prepared in advance for us to do. So that’s where I am today – trying to sift though all the things I’ve read and are running through my mind to figure out what is my responsibility and what is not. What can I do… not just for my child, but for the adoption triad as a whole?
The blogs I’ve been reading talk about power… or rather feeling powerless. Birthmoms feel powerless because their child is being raised by another family. Adoptees feel powerless because they had no say in losing their birth family and often their birth culture, birth name and so many other things that are a part of a person’s identity. What surprised me was how often Adoptive Parents are considered to be the ones with all the power. I sure didn’t feel like I had any power when a social worker interviewed us and visited our home to make sure it was suitable for another child. Or when we waited for our agency to give us a referral. Or when we were at the mercy of two different governments to bring my child home. Even now, when my children are officially a part of our family and we have all the responsibility for raising them, so much feels out of my control.
Do you see how defensive I just got? It happens often when I read blogs from other viewpoints. And honestly a lot of it can feel like once again women are attacking one another the way we get into ridiculous wars over bottles versus breastfeeding or stay-at-home versus working moms. But I don’t want to do that. I want to hear these other voices and sift through the guilt. I want to take responsibility for that which I do have power over and make positive changes. I have a lot of ideas how I can do that … most of them turning into soapbox posts… but today I want to hear from you.
Wherever you are in the triad (or outside of the triad altogether) tell me what you think: How can we reach out to one another? What concrete things can we do to bring some balance to the triad? What responsibility to birth parents and adoptees do adoptive parents have?
If you’ve never read these other viewpoints, here’s a few blogs to get you started.
Birthmoms:
Writing My Wrongs
Paragraphein
Adult Transracial Adoptees:
Twice the Rice
Ethnically Incorrect Daughter
An adoptive mom who has raised her kids to adulthood and sees with a wider perspective than I can:
Third Mom
April 19, 2007 at 10:20 am |
What a great, thought-provoking, post. I don’t actually have that much to say because you have given this so much more thought that I have (which is definitely a good thing – I’m still very much processing things). I just wanted to say I thought it was very well put – it is really hard. I know that there are a few messageboards I’m on for adoption and there is constantly talk of separating off the boards to isolate each part of the triad and it KILLS me! This can not be the best way to deal with the conflicting feelings and ideas and emotions. Understanding can not happen through isolation. I just don’t have any ideas or enough experience to bridge it.
April 19, 2007 at 10:59 am |
I know I haven’t thought as much about this as others perhaps have. My first response would be that my first priority is to take care of the needs of my children. If they are needing cultural/ethinical activities and interaction it is my responsibility to find it, however, if they need to distance themselves from all that I am exposing them too then so be it. How on earth I will know all this and what I will do if one twin needs it and the other doesn’t…that gets mind boggling. And to complicate it more (a good kind of complicate) is that fact that prioritizing my childs needs in turns prioritizes the needs of their first mom. I don’t want to go charging out on a mission to find her and send daily updates to her, however part of me feels the need to contact her, get our info into her hands, and send her a photo. How to even begin this I have no clue. I do want to be able to take my children to see her if/when they ask/need. It is all very intermingled and confusing. It is something I pray on and search deeper into as time goes by.
My plan right now is to find outlets for our family to be able to plug into a bit of Vietnamese culture, making it consistently available with the hopes of being able to pick-up on their cues later on as to if I am providing for their unique needs.
Still sound unsure don’t I!
Thank you for the links, I’ve already browsed a few in the time I had today and thank you for the digi-scrap links too as I’ve got to get going with scrapbooks. Time is flying by and so far I have folder after folder of the girls’ photos on the computer only.
April 19, 2007 at 12:44 pm |
You raise excellent questions. I wish I had answers. Right now I feel like I am putting so much of my effort, all of the effort that I have, into being a good mom to my two kids. And one of them is bio and one of them is adopted from SE Asia, and it takes so much of me to just be a good “mommy” – to be their mommy. Right now I am tired of wondering how to be a good adoptive mom with a transracial family – I just want to be a good mom. Right now I feel like that should be enough. I feel guilty about thinking that should be enough. But, that’s my world view right now. (Pretty narrow, I know. But, I’ve only been doing this for 3 months!!!)
Gretchen
April 19, 2007 at 5:51 pm |
Wow-
I know I haven’t commented in ages and ages, but I have been reading the whole time:)
Being a very newly adoptive parent, I am really trying to educate myself as much as I can. Lately I have started to read Heart, Mind and Seoul(http://heartmindandseoul.typepad.com/). It has been really really good for me to read the perspective of an adult adoptee and adoptive mom. It is really, really hard for me as well. I get off the computer either feeling defensive or defeated or guilty.
Today my friend, who is a Vietnamese Adult Adoptee and mom to two bio kids, come over and I was grilling her about some of the issues I am most afraid of…
Will Khai resent us for adopting him?
Will he ever be happy even if he can’t find his first family?
Should I feel guilty for adopting him?
What is enough?
She assured me that all adopted kids are different and have different issues, and that we have to do the best we can and trust God.
That was such a relief. She loves her a-mom, and couldn’t care less about finding her first family, not in a denial kind of a way, but more like, sure I think about them, but it doesn’t consume me. The other thing she said was, do these adult adoptee bloggers know God? Perhaps the huge void that they assume would be filled by know their first families, is actually the God-void…….
I have no idea, but I really love Khai, and want to do what is best for him…..
So I know where you are at, and while it makes me very uncomfortable at times, I wouldn’t want to go back to being naive. I need to know.
Jena
April 19, 2007 at 9:30 pm |
Thinking it over for a bit, I do think adoptive parents are in huge positions of power. (As well as parents in general.) For instance, I was given the power to choose the age, gender, and country that my child would come from. I have the power to expose my daughter in her early life to her birth culture—or not. I have the power to shape her feeling about her birth country by the way in which I talk about it to her and others. I have the power to share her story of her first family, whether thats just the facts or “filling in the blanks” or however parents decide to do it. I have the power to make her feel guilty if she ever wants to find her first family or move back to her birth country if that is what I’m after. I have the power to teach her to be strong as a woman of color and be truthful about racism or just pretend that we are “colorblind” and love solves all.
I don’t know. What scares me is that I *am* in a position of power. What am I going to do with it?
April 20, 2007 at 5:38 am |
I agree with everything that Susan just wrote about the power we hold as adoptive parents – we might not have felt particularly powerful during the process, but in comparison to the total lack of power that our children and their first mothers had – yeah, we’ve always been pretty powerful!
The thing that has helped me the most in this journey is to always remember that my boys will always be my sons, but they are only children for a short time in their lives. The great majority of their lives will be their adult lives – when they don’t live with me, when they will be viewed in the world as Asian-American men. I want them to be comfortable in their skin – with their history. I want them to be able to confidently operate in the world however they may wish to identify.
That’s why the voices of the adult adoptees are so important to me. I want to hear every voice – so that I will one day recognize the voice of my adult sons. I want to be able to support and understand as best asI can.
I attended one of Jane Brown’s parent seminars – and my kids went to her “adoption playshop” – and it was such a good positive experience. Ms. Brown has several adult sons and daughters who were adopted internationally, and each of them as taken a different perspective so far. One son rarely thinks of adoption, always dates white women, seems not too interested in his Korean heritage. One moved to Korea, married a woman who has lived in Korea all her life, and is raising his children as Korean (not Korean-American). A daughter is thoroughly “Korean-American” and that is her primary identity. Most of her friends are Korean-American, and she is very active in the Korean-American community. The last adult son/daughter primarily identifies as a transracial adoptee – s/he is most at home with other adults who have shared the adoption experience.
There’s no way of telling how our kids will identify and I think the biggest favor we can do them is to offer it all – in small, age-appropriate bites
and let them decide for themselves. With no guilt or pressure from us.
I think we can’t wait for the children to ask or assume that silence means disinterest. My oldest son is deeply sensitive. He rarely initiates conversation about adoption or race. But my husband and I try to throw out the pebbles on a regular basis – and every once in awhile, G. will have a question or say something that completely blows us away. He’s thinking about it for sure – and he has told me that he sometimes doesn’t talk about it because he doesn’t want to hurt *me*. He’s 8 years old and he’s already feeling that way…….
In regard to birthmothers, I value the voices of the women who speak. I only wish there were more of those voices able to tell their stories. I think about my sons’ birthmothers often – and tell my children that I do. I’m a little wacky and even talk to her in my mind sometimes – one of the kids will do something especially cute and wonderful, and I’ll think “Hey, look what our boy did.” It’s not always in the forefront, but it’s always there.
My oldest son once asked me if I was every sorry that he wasn’t “born from me.” I said that I was sometimes and a little. But only because I wish I could have taen care of him from the very first moment. But I quickly get over that thought because he wouldn’t be exactly who he is if he had been born to me – and I love him so much and would never want to change a thing about him. And that’s why I think the birthparents are always in my mind – my boys wouldn’t be who they are without them. That’s an awful lot to be mindful of!
April 20, 2007 at 7:34 am |
I’m too new at this to express thoughts right now, but I really appreciate the prompt, and the guidance, to help me think these issues through more thoroughly (and, as you said, with a broader perspective). Thank you.
April 20, 2007 at 8:18 am |
I would like to thank you for two things:
First, for raising the issues you raise. It isn’t easy to look at the hard things in adoption. Many of them circle back to decisions that we adoptive parents made along our journey, and that self-reflection can be painful. But it results in a much clearer view of the experience our children are having, and that makes it not only worth it, but crucial.
Thank you, too, for the shoutout. I look forward to reading your blog, too, and the ones I’m finding from the comments here. It’s amazing how blogland is like a collection of circles that sometimes intersect, sometimes never touch. It’s always exciting to me to find a whole new circle, and I think I may have here.
Of course, this is why I have 200 blogs on my blogroll and can’t keep up with them all, LOL.
April 20, 2007 at 12:29 pm |
For a different point of view try reading this site. Several of his post deal with this topic. It is China but I think he makes several good observations.
http://research-china.blogspot.com/
My little girl was not left in the best of circumstances nor was she in the best shape; so the best I can do is not judge. I lived in that country for several months and I know with my background I can never really know or understand the pressures and emotions of the people there.
The longer I have my child the more I realize she just wants to be like everyone else. I do have nice ethnic celebrations, pictures, food, memory books, she loves her Asian Barbie etc; but I let her be herself which right now is my daughter the little American girl.
Whe I got her she spoke a different language, she folded her hands and bowed to people. She did not make eye contact etc. She would sit quietly forever. Now she is a loud, talkative, happy,confident, little wild women and there is no going back.
April 23, 2007 at 4:38 am |
You are right that guilt can weigh us down. I think it is a good idea to try and keep positive and not be too hard on ourselves-to try to look at ourselves through the loving eyes of God.
Time to start practicing what I am preaching here!
April 23, 2007 at 9:51 pm |
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April 30, 2007 at 10:22 am |
[...] I had intended to nominate Mrs. Broccoli Guy before she nominated me so, sorry, she gets my first nomination anyway. She has written the most thought-provoking posts on ethics and adoption issues. She is my inspiration, she keeps me thinking. If there were some grand poobah of Thinking Bloggers, she would be it. Plus she wrote one of my all-time favorite most-thinkingest blog entries of all times [...]