When you have more than two parents...

In my last post, I interviewed Cynthia of The Night Kitchen as part of the Open Adoption Bloggers Interview Project.

Now I'd like to share here HER interview with ME, which you can also find on her blog.

I am getting very close to forgiving her for asking me that last, very tough question. But I'm not quite there yet.

Cynthia: What was your experience of adoption, prior to being an adoptive parent? You mentioned in the podcast with Crystal that you had a very different view of adoption and I was wondering if you had any personal experiences with friends or family that informed your pre-parenting conceptions?

Me: I had a close high school friend who had been adopted. But it was never really talked about. It wasn’t until recently that she told me it bothers her that she has no medical information, and that she’s begun to wonder about her birth parents. She took her cues from her parents: adoption was a one-time event. Once the papers were made legal, the event was over, rarely to be mentioned again.

There was also an acquaintance of ours in high school who became pregnant our junior year and placed her baby. Again, it was never talked about. Just guessed about in hushed tones.

So I grew up thinking that adoption = secrets. That it must not be discussed, let alone OPENly discussed. You might say I’ve come a long way, baby.

Becoming a parent is such a transformative experience, and becoming an adoptive parent is transforming beyond that. Were there any moments for you that stand out in this process? Any big “a-has” or realizations with regard to adoption?

I am particularly grateful to blogging adoptees who have given me insight into what it may be like for my children to grow up adopted.

When my children were babies, I remember seeing our adoptions as singular events, each which ended at that last adoption hearing whereupon we got new birth certificates with our last name on it.

But due to what I’ve read on adoptee blogs (which range from “adoption? no biggie” to “adoption defines me” — and are equally helpful) I now feel better prepared to understand what may be going on for my children at their advancing cognitive stages. As adoptive parents, we must be careful not to insert/project our own feelings but rather to be sensitive to theirs.

So to answer your question, the ongoing a-ha is that while adoption may have been an event for ME, it may be a lifelong process for my children, a facet of their identities that they occasionally revisit.

Why do you think some adoptive parents decide to open up to the complexities of what adoption means for their families, and others remain closed? Is this just human nature, or do you think there are specific things at play that can be isolated and identified?

I think it’s a human tendency to treat others as you would wish to be treated. So if I were to do a dissertation on the subject, I would try to find if there is a correlation between the degree to which people would want their OWN adoption open (if they had hypothetically been adopted) and the degree to which they open their adoptions for their children.

Case in point: I’m a wonderer. Had I been adopted, I would want to know. I would want to see. If denied that, I would scan the crowd for faces that look like mine. I would build fantasies in my head about who my first parents might be. I would want to fill those gaps desperately.

So it was natural for me to want to have wide open adoptions for my children. Which doesn’t mean this is what they might have chosen for themselves.

There’s the rub.

I do try to be sensitive to my children so I don’t “overdo” the openness for each of them. So far, so good, I think.

Had I been less of a wonderer, maybe I would not have embraced OA so readily.

In your description of the reunion with Joe, you seemed clear when it felt unsafe to continue contact- and clear beforehand that contact wasn’t the right thing. Are there any guidelines you use to make these judgments? Have you found it hard to make these decisions, or has it been obvious what was right?

I get better at making heart-centered, intuitive decisions the older I get. I have been gradually moving from analytical, mind-based decision-making, THINKING, to incorporating more FEELING and SENSING as I parent.

It takes more time to do, to tune in to my body rather than my mind. That’s hard to do with the daily cacophony of family chaos. It also takes a good bit of trust in one’s self, which is why it’s taken me time to get here, to like myself, to trust both myself and the process of heart-led parenting.

So when I’m on the fence about something logically, I sit and empty my mind and find a moment of stillness. Once there, I almost always have a knowing about it. The more I trust it, the more it is present for me.

I was intrigued to hear about how your childrens’ processing styles dovetailwith the amount of contact you’ve had/ not had with their first parents. It seems as if your daughter expresses things pretty easily and openly, and I wonder how you handle adoption processing with your son, who is less verbal on the subject. How do you know when to push talking about things, and how do you know when to let it go?
Tessa now has a fully open adoption with both her first parents. We have aimed to make our relationships with Crystal and Joe No Big Deal. By this, I mean that they are extended family members. Wanna call them to chat? Invite them to your school play? See if they can have dinner with us next Tuesday? Go ahead — no big deal.

I believe this serves Tessa well. She seems to need this time with them, this fitting in with people who look like her, who have her mannerisms and gestures and expressions and temperament. She comes away from her time with them feeling replenished and calm, full of their love and acceptance.

Reed, on the other hand, has very infrequent contact with his first mother, and has never had contact with his first father. He does have rare moments of sadness and anger around this. When he does, we abide with him and give him space to feel his feelings. We do not attempt to make it all better (how could we?) by reminding him of all that he has in us. We just hold him, support him.

However, these moments are not frequent. He revels in time spent with Crystal and Joe and their families. Reed also seems to be less of a wonderer, and does not seem to give his adoptedness a great deal of thought. His temperament is a close match with mine and my husband’s. He seems to be easily filled up with our love and acceptance.

So we are lucky. The child who needs openness more has it, and the one who seems not to — well, we hope he has it some day.

What else lights you on fire, floats your boat, gets you psyched to get up out of bed in the morning?
Yoga. Wine (not at the same time). Dark chocolate. Travel, especially to places where I need to learn phrases in a new language. Turbo-kickboxing. Music that speaks to my soul. Sharing all that with my husband (except the chocolate — that I don’t share). Freedom, and observing the evolution of humans from homo sapiens (wise man) to homo noeticus (spirit man).

Can you write us a limerick about open adoption?

When you have more than two parents
People might think you’re aberrant
But it ain't so weird
To be OA-reared
More chances to be heir apparent!

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Open Adoption Bloggers Interview

I am pleased to introduce to you: Cynthia from The Night Kitchen.

How did Cynthia come into my blogging life, and how did we discover just how much we have in common? Through Heather's Open Adoption Blogger's Interview Project, which marks the 1st anniversary of the Open Adoption Blogroll and Open Adoption Roundtable.

I was matched with Cynthia. Below are my questions and her answers. To see HER questions and MY answers, go raid The Night Kitchen.

You are the mom of two sons, Wendell, 4, and River, 1. How would you describe the openness in your relationships with their first families?
The level of openness is different with each of my son's first families, and has also changed a lot over time- sometimes towards more openness, sometimes less. Actually, i'll correct that. I would say that the level of openness has remained the same throughout- what has often varied in either direction is the level of contact.

We always knew we wanted contact from the beginning, and our desire for more of that has grown over time. We have found that in most cases (well, all cases) we have wanted more contact than their first families have wanted or been able to have. I have yet to be in a situation with either of their first families where I wanted less contact than they did. Most of River's first family lives in our town, so we see them or some part of them pretty frequently. One of their childcare providers is a good friend of ours, so when we haven't been able to get together with their parents, we've seen the kids. Wendell's paternal birth family lives all the way across the country, and almost all contact with them has been through his grandmother and aunt. Mostly text messaging, which I can't say i'm thrilled with- but i'll take what I can get… and my texting skills are getting better. We're planning a visit out there in the Fall, if we can confirm that we'll get to see his birth father as well. If that can happen, I think it will be pretty huge in so many ways. I write more about contact with Wendell's first mom below.

What have been the best parts about having openness in your adoptions? The most difficult?
The most difficult parts have been the times when contact hasn't happened. Having to guess at why that's the case, and wondering how much I should- or even can- do about that. How much to keep reaching out or push, how much to just give space. This is especially the case with my oldest son's first mother- we had contact for 2 and half years (though during that time she would leave emails unreplied for 6-8 months at a stretch), then nothing at all for more than 2 and a half years. But just in the past month she has friended me on facebook, and i'm hopeful that we'll have a visit soon. The facebook contact feels easy and good, as visits always did. Which is partly why it feels so weird when contact drops off. I have kept a photo album going for her from the beginning, so that when there is a lapse in communication, she'll have something that marks the time as his life unfolds- rather than something that was created retroactively. I want for her to have something that's just hers, rather than only looking at our photo albums after the fact. Does that make sense?

What's been the best, or the most rewarding, or the most spiritually satisfying has been the actual contact. Experiencing open adoption as another extension of our (already immense!) extended family. Seeing my sons play and connect with their siblings (so far we have only been able to have contact with River’s siblings by birth, but they all interact as if they were family. Right now anyway, it doesn’t seem to matter whose biological sibling is whose). I love seeing features or expressions or eccentricities in my sons and knowing where they came from. Not wondering! I really relate to your answer on a similar question I asked you- you said that you are a wonderer, and if you had been an adoptee, you would have wanted to know about your origins. I feel the same way. Therefore it feels natural to want to give that to my sons, too. What was perhaps a surprise in the beginning is how much I found that although I initiated open adoptions for the benefit of my children, I craved and needed that contact and information, too. My sons are still too young to articulate whether its what they want or need- but I know that I do, and so that’s where I’ve started. Of course that all began from believing that that kind of contact is in their best interest.

You have a post where you are talking about birth fathers with Wendell, which ends up covering reproduction. You also mention that Wendell concludes that his brother was placed because "he wasn't cute enough." I think you handled it well, but you expressed some regret. If you could go back, what would you say to that?
Originally, I wished that I had explored more where that comment was coming from- that, instead of immediately refuting it, I had asked in a neutral tone, “Oh, you think that? Where did you get that idea from?”- drawing more information out of him about the origins of that idea. Since then, however, I feel better about how I handled it. I do think that 4 year olds are constantly testing out ideas about how the world works in SO many ways and that in that moment, he was exploring that one with me. It isn't up for debate that that particular idea is not the way the world works (as far as i'm concerned), so refuting it is important. I have faith- or am trying to- that my sons trust the environment of openness in our home, and will bring up ideas with me when they need to. I have to trust they know this in order to let go of a conversation as soon as he needs to, and not push it when he's done. I really wouldn't want the take away message for him to be: “well... mommy freaks out when I trot out my half formed ideas, so i'll just keep them to myself.” You know?

As for the discussion on reproduction, I have NO idea if I did the right thing by giving him the full scoop (or most of it), but am guessing that even here I could have done worse. I know it won’t be the only conversation on the subject, and hope that I’ll have plenty of chances to get it right. That’s what I have to believe about all of this, really.

How have you balanced your desire for openness with your need to set some boundaries with one of your sons' first parents?

Perhaps surprisingly (in one case especially), we have never needed to set a boundary for contact with any of our sons' first parents. On the contrary, as I wrote above. I wish I could write about that more here, but it’s hard to do without violating some privacy issues i'm trying to guard. This does touch on one of the hardest things about open adoption for me, though. While I view and behave as if our sons' first families are extended family, one significant difference is that our other extended families are not really connected to them (beyond me sharing pictures of each with the other). I hope that will change someday, but there are good reasons why that isn't the case right now. That's hard for me. I want the people I know and love to know and love one another, and right now I often feel a split within myself because that isn’t the case here. I have to keep secrets from people I love (including my mother!) to protect these privacy issues, and that has been extremely challenging sometimes. I don't like secrets!

As a side note, I don't think i've ever written about this on my blog, but the only difficulty i've ever had with openness in adoption was with Wendell's birth father's girlfriend, who was 16 at the time of his birth. I’m going to try and write about that sometime, because the story is worth telling and did affect my growth as an adoptive parent.

Would you tell about the open adoption conference that your agency is hosting in 2011?
The plans have been slower to develop than I'd hoped for, but we are in the process of organizing a conference on open adoption here in Virginia in February or March of 2011. We want the focus to be on the practicalities and regular old realities of living in an open adoption- with symposiums as well as interactive workshops. Our hope is to attract members of the adoption community (like yourselves, dear readers) not just social workers or those in the field of adoption and foster care. “We” is: myself, the head of our adoption agency (who is herself an adoptee as well as first mom), and another adoptee who is involved in adoption reform. More to come...

How do you figure out if something regarding your kids is a parenting issue or an adoptive parenting issue?
I think that in most cases I would hope for my response to be the same regardless. That is, whatever issue is going on for my kids, I want to be present, listen, pay attention, and respond with love. To get them whatever resources they need, if its something I can't handle on my own. That said, of course I do and have wondered about this question when certain things have come up, and in most of those cases i've called my social worker to check in. Or asked some of you all what to do! Increasingly, I trust my own instincts about what to do... though it’s also true that every new developmental stage shakes up this confidence... perhaps in order to strengthen it again?

How did your agency prepare you and your sons' first parents for open adoption? What did they do well and what could they have done better?
I really have no complaints here. They have several workshops that you are required to attend before you adopt, all of which were very good. The agency was started by an adoptee, and is currently run by an adoptee and first mom (mentioned above), who has become a good friend and trusted advisor. Our agency makes a commitment to you for the life of your child that they will be there to support your family. They know that adoption is a lifetime experience, not a one time event, and their services really reflect that. In fact, its the many conversations i've had over the years with our social worker/ now friend that led to initiating this open adoption conference.

And what about you? What, besides your family, what lights you on fire? What are you all about?
I feel like, when you have young kids, you“get”one extracurricular activity besides work, if you work outside the home (and I do, part time- i'm an acupuncturist and herbalist). Right now my one thing is Ashtanga yoga. Most weeks, I can manage getting to the studio 3 times, which is a huge blessing. But- with and without the kids- I also love and need walks in the woods, backpacking, gardening, poetry (Wendell Berry is a favorite and who my oldest is named after), photography, my big southern family, and good friends. Those are just the first few that come to mind.

Tell about when and how you started blogging. I started bl%gging (I hate that word) 2 years ago in March of '08 very hesitantly and with trepidation. The main reason I decided to start writing is that reading other people's blogs (Dawn's, in particular) really affected and accelerated my growth as an adoptive parent. I wanted to be in conversation with those people and I felt like the only way I could do that was to write myself. Most of the time, i'm still a pretty halfhearted blogger and a terribly slow typist, but I so value what i've learned online from reading progressive adoptive parents, adoptees, and first parents. It has really, truly affected my real life family, and the way that I see myself as an advocate for adoption reform.

I've added Cynthia to my Reader -- how about you?

For more interview pairings between open adoption bloggers, visit Production Not Reproduction.





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Crystal's debut on MomTV (and she ROCKS it!)

Here to vote in the Limerick Chick Contest?

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Tessa's first mom, Crystal, joined me on Adoption Angles last week on MomTV.

Some of you participated in the live webcast and plied us with the most important things to get us through the hour.

No, not glasses of wine.

Questions! Thanks for keeping our conversation moving by asking us the fantastic questions you did.

And thanks to Melissa of Our Full Circle for hosting and producing. I highly recommend that you tune in each Wednesday evening, 9 pm EST, for her show and her guests.

Crystal and I tell about how we ended up at the same agency at the same time, how it felt for each of us during that first meeting, how we have built our open adoption relationships, why she chose us (we were not her first choice, and I never miss an opportunity to tease her about that), our hopes and dreams and fears for Tessa, and Crystal's relationship with Reed.



We hope you enjoy watching as much as we enjoyed bantering.

Don't forget to check out the limericks and VOTE.





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Adoption Angles: My bling and my John Travolta impression

My apologies if you don't have an hour, because watching this video is the only way the title is going to make sense to you.

This week I was the guest on Melissa's Adoption Angles. We played to a large audience (wow, Melissa, well done!) which was delightfully involved and curious about creating a child-centered open adoption.

We had sound difficulties for the first 15 minutes, which was when I talked about how we went from marriage ==> infertility ==> adoption ==> open adoption. If missing that part pains you greatly, you can get the same tales at my other blog, Drama 2B Mama.

After the technical difficulties are resolved, I talk about WHY I chose openness (it was purely selfish), HOW to come to terms with "sharing" a child, and WHAT big responsibility we adoptive parents carry. And at 57 minutes, there's a shout out to TOOTPU from us ColoBloggers.



You got chills? I do. Nothing a little Merlot can't cure.






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Perfect Moment Monday: Contact

Perfect Moment Monday is about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between.

Once a week we engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join. Details on how to participate are at the bottom of this post, complete with bloggy bling.

Please visit the links of the participants at the bottom.

Here's a perfect moment from my week. I hope you'll share yours, too.

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Reed's first mother moved out of state three years ago, and has since gotten married and had two children. We hear from her sporadically, not often. Life is busy for her with a toddler and a newborn.

Still, it makes me sad to see Reed's heart sink when he doesn't get a response to his voicemail or email messages to her.

This weekend we got an email from her saying that she'd been visiting family in our area, but due to the flu (her son came down with it), she was unable to put us on her schedule.

She sent photos of her family, her 2 year old son and her 6 month old daughter -- Reed's half-siblings. He was so excited to see proof of his big-brothership!

I know I have no control over this, but my wish for 2010 would be for Reed to have more contact with his first parents.

Putting it out to the Universe. Thanks for this perfect moment for him, and, greedy mom that I am, I ask for more.

Image: EdgewaterTech
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To participate in Perfect Moment Monday:

1. Between Sunday night and Tuesday night, write up your own Perfect Moment in a blog post, on Twitter, on Facebook, or simply leave a comment below.
2. Grab the URL of your Perfect Moment.
3. Use MckLinky below to enter your (or your blog's) name and the URL of your Perfect Moment
4. Visit the Perfect Moments of others (from the links below), and let the writers know you were there.

Once you make a Perfect Moment post , you may place this button on your blog.

I Capture
Perfect Moments.

What Perfect Moment have you recently been aware of? Be sure to visit these moments and share the love, and please come back next week (click to subscribe).





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Examiner Book Tour: The Primal Wound

I am very excited to be hosting my very first bloggy book tour. Well, my alter-ego, the Open Adoption Examiner is.

Our first selection is The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Verrier. I and my fellow Book Tourists -- adoptees, first parents, adoptive/adopting parents -- spent November (Adoption Awareness Month) reading this controversial book that was originally published in 1993 -- the early days of the open adoption era.

My take on it? Between the nodding of head and the shaking of head, my neck got quite the workout.

The premise is that a primal wound exists for every baby/child/teen separated from his/her biological mother. This includes not only adoptees, but also babies placed in incubators, children born via surrogacy and children placed in day care. The thesis continues that such a primal wound leads to issues that "center around separation and loss, trust, rejection, guilt and shame, identity, intimacy, loyalty, and mastery or power and control..."

There is a LOT of insight in this book, which was written by an adoptive mom and therapist whose daughter was in deep pain. I think it's well worth a read, especially at this stage of my children's lives (they are 8 and 6).

When my children were babies, I would not have been as open and receptive to Verrier's thesis as I am now. During the baby years, I felt there was no question that my children had bonded with me. With my first, I was in a state of euphoria -- after years of drought, I was finally a mom! We had reached the happily-ever-after and because of what we'd been through to get there, the rest was to be a piece of cake. With my second, the attachment took a bit longer, seemingly on my end. I was certain, after we morphed into a tightly knit family, that happily-ever-after had resumed.

But babies don't stay babies. They grow and individualize and wonder and work things out. Issues arise. Some are overt and I can help with them. Yet other deeper issues may exist beyond my ability to reach. Reading this book extends my abilities by giving me insight into what might be going on as my children grow -- what to watch for what emotions lie beneath the behaviors, and what I might be called on to do or to allow to play out.

Children with a primal wound, according to Verrier, tend to be either highly controlling or highly compliant, as a result of a pre-verbal assault on the rightness of their world, of the utter lack of control during this defining episode of their lives. "Having been manipulated at the beginning of their lives makes some adoptees manipulating and controlling."

Children who become compliant, according to Verrier, may become highly responsible -- not because they are healthy and well-integrated, but as a response to that initial rejection. "As Rick said, 'I knew I had to be a better person than the one who was given away.'"

Children with a primal wound, according to Verrier, tend to have difficulty in relationships, with intimacy, due to this early break. They often pre-emptively push away people (and jobs) to avoid being hurt again. "Being wanted by my adoptive parents doesn't compare to being unwanted by my birthmother. -- an adoptee."

Ouch. What a powerful statement. We parents are wise to listen.

There are more indications of the primal wound, all worth knowing about, if only so that I can recognize what may (or may not) be happening for my kids as they become tweens and teens and adults. In my opinion, knowing is almost always better than not knowing -- hence my advocacy of open adoption and open records.

The head shaking came from the anecdotal nature of the evidence. When dealing with human subjects, it is impossible to isolate variables. Some adoptees are controlling. Some adoptees are not controlling. Some non-adoptees are controlling. Some non-adoptees are not controlling. A causal link has not been established because of the inability to isolate adoption as THE factor in a personality.

Many of the noted issues -- "separation and loss, trust, rejection, guilt and shame, identity, intimacy, loyalty, and mastery or power and control" -- perfectly describe ME. My own parents say that *I* am controlling. I became overly responsible and strived to be perfect. I have had trouble with abandonment. I have felt unworthy. I have felt I don't fit in with my own family.

I was separated from my mom at age 5 by an oxygen tent, so maybe I *do* suffer the primal wound.

But is it possible that perhaps these issues are maybe somewhat universal?

I addressed this conundrum on this post (about a comment from Melissa's post on Adoption Chiasm), excerpted here:

Me: Anonymous, I gather, suffers from a Primal Wound.

"I was adopted as an infant, I have a great adoptive family that I love very much. I was not abused. I got everything I ever wanted, went to college and have had a good life. I would give it all up to have been raised by my 17 year old emotionally immature birth mother. I would give it all up to experience what it would be like to grow up feeling normal, like I belonged and happy."

In essence, Anon asserts that the road not taken (the abstract) is superior to the good life s/he has had (the concrete).

The appeal of that road is that it is a fairy-tale road. There are never any potholes, and the sun always shines, but not too hot. It's a smooth, gently sloping road with bounteous apple trees adorning the sides. In short, it's the angel you don't know compared to the devil you do.

No one can ever prove or disprove Anon's notion that a life with a not-ready-to-parent biological mom would have been better than a life with those who parented her. Because we each get just one road.

This is the crux.

The comment started a new train of thought about roads not taken, which, as Melissa pointed out to me, is not just part of the adoption experience. It is part of the human experience.

On to my three chosen questions, asked by others touring with me.

Verrier presumes that most adoptive parents are ill equipped to handle the emotional complexities experienced by adoptees. Did/do you feel well prepared to address the sense of loss that your child might experience? How did you prepare yourself? How do you help/plan to help your child resolve his/her feelings about his/her adoption?
I went into parenting realizing that I was unprepared for both the parenting part and the adoptive parenting part, and also knowing that I would do my best to figure it all out.

To prepare myself, I have read lots and lots of first-person accounts of adoptees, running the gamut from happy to angry, which are very simplistic labels for very complex people.

I listen to what they say. I try to grasp what I can do to help (for example, keep communication open), what I should refrain from doing (for example, put the children in a position to divide their loyalties), and to also know when I cannot help -- when I must simply abide with my children while they work things out.

And I ask for the wisdom to know the difference.

How do you think open adoption changes the feel of this book? If you don't feel it changes it in any way, why? If you feel that it changes everything, in what ways? If you fall somewhere in the middle, how do you explain what does get changed and why other things are left unchanged?
I think open adoption does change the situation. I don't think it ameliorates it, but it does go a ways in relieving the tension of all that not-knowing.

I have two main concerns about our open situations:

1. Our daughter, in a fully open adoption with both first parents, has enough information on how her life would otherwise have been to build an idyllic picture in her head about it. She can see the grass on the other side of the fence, but it will never be her yard. Yet her older bio-brother gets to play there all the time (source).
2. Our son's is an open door adoption, meaning his first parents are welcome in our lives if they want to knock on the door. In meeting the needs of our daughter, are we making it more difficult for our son? One of our parenting challenges is to deal with the differing levels of openness our two children have. I am hoping that Ms Verrier will address this situation when she answers tour questions on the Examiner page (subscribe if you want to make sure you see it.)
   

As far as openness being an improvement over closed adoption, the proof is in the pudding. My children will be the final arbiters on this question as it pertains to them, in about a decade or two.

What signs did you see in your child that support the concept of a primal wound derived from separation of mother and child in the process of adoption?
I have what you might classify as a controlling child (I prefer to say assertive and spirited) and a compliant child (I prefer to say resilient and cuddly).

When we were going through reunion with my daughter's first father, I did also notice a push/pull as she was simultaneously drawn to Joe and also needed to know she was firmly rooted with us:

One afternoon we had an out-of-proportion argument over chores. She went from zero to steam-coming-out-the-ears in a flash. Her eyes a-blazing, she hissed, "And if I don't, are you going to send me to Joe?"

Whaaaaa?

Sudden flash of insight: she wasn't JUST worried that we would keep her from meeting Joe. She was ALSO worried that we might abdicate our place as her parents. This thought, I believe, filled her with terror. Like an earthquake was about to hit.

While I don't take it as gospel, I do recommend The Primal Wound for adoptive parents and pre-adoptive parents. Further, I recommend that the book be read periodically as the child grows and experiences different stages of cognitive development. It is also helpful to listen to the voices of adult adoptees -- for me, anyway.

To continue to the next leg of this book tour, please visit the main list at The Open Adoption Examiner.






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Hotel Rwanda and open adoption parenting

A few years ago I was teaching World Geography to middle school kids. We'd done a unit on the phenomenon of genocide, and at about the same time Paul Rusesabagina came to our city for a speaking engagement. I organized a field trip, and we all heard the first person account of the hotel manager who sheltered Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

Truly, his story is remarkable. At risk of his safety and that of his family, Paul Rusesabagina (played in the film Hotel Rwanda by Don Cheadle) used his connections and wiles to save more than a thousand refugees. Think the Schindler's List of Africa.

The audience was full of gushing praise for him. Each person who got up to ask a question at the end of Paul Rusesabagina's presentation began with some version of, "You are extraordinary." or "You are exceptional." or "You are amazing -- I would never be able to be so brave."

With each of these proclamations, I saw Paul Rusesabagina slump a little. Each time, he protested, "No, I'm not. My point is that I am just like you -- in extraordinary times, we all can be extraordinary. We all have it in us, and I am proof of that."

Still, the audience continued to set him apart.

I left the auditorium that day feeling sad for Paul Rusesabagina, who looked a bit lonely, a bit defeated in the way his message had been received. Who, as if to make my point, titled his book An Ordinary Man.

Now, on to open adoption parenting.

Thank you all so much for your feedback on my recent post about open adoption parenting.

But. And I say this with great affection. Some of you missed the point. The conversation I had with Tessa was not the result of me being an all-wise mom (I'm not). Or because I am more mature, thoughtful, ego-less than the average Jane (most definitely not).

It's just that in one moment, I stopped long enough to tune into deeper wisdom. I lived from my heart, not my fears.

And you can, too.

Don't tell me, any of you who are or will be parents, that you wouldn't run into a burning building to rescue your child. Don't tell me that you wouldn't jump in front of a bus to prevent your child from being hit. We say it all the time -- this type of love transcends all. And in a moment where you're called on to do something heroic, you would not think twice.

So why would you react any differently with the relatively minor thing of resolving your own fears and insecurities for the sake of your child?

Maybe the way I handled Tessa's question was incredible, extraordinary, remarkable. But, over and over again, incredible, extraordinary, remarkable things are done by ordinary people.

Like you.

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Roundtable: An adoptee's relationship with firstparents

I'm taking a seat at the Open Adoption Roundtable, where the assignment this session involves these italicized thoughts:

[Some say that] adopted persons should be free to initiate relationships with their first families--or not--on their own timetable. The parents (first and adoptive) in an adoption shouldn't make such an important and personal decision for them.

First, let me address the idea that adopted children (like children in general) should get to take the lead with their relationships. Yes! I support this -- in firstfamily, as well as in other relationships. But with no other extended family relationships do we say, "well wait to let little Bobby decide for himself how much and what kind of contact he wants."

Have you ever heard--or perhaps even made--statements like these?

#1: "The decision to have a relationship with her bio family should be hers when she is ready. Creating a relationship between them before she wants it might cause issues in the future."

Because I see our children's firstparents as extended family, I am going to replace one key word to see how logical the new statement sounds:

"The decision to have a relationship with her grandparents should be hers when she is ready. Creating a relationship between them before she wants it might cause issues in the future."

Ridiculous, no? Have a child wait until she's "ready" to meet her grandparents? When will she be ready, and how would you know?

#2: "Children deserve to have just one family during childhood and not to deal with anything adoption-related until they are more mature. A fully open adoption robs a child of a normal childhood."

The snag here (well, the one I'll address) is the word "normal." What is a "normal" childhood? This argument makes it sound like adoption cannot be part of "normal" childhood, that adoption is "abnormal" (some adoptees may agree with this, but it's certainly not an idea that parents should perpetuate).

The notion that being adopted is "abnormal" can do more damage to a child than "dealing with anything adoption related."

"We have medical histories and can share the information we have about their birth parents with our children now. If they feel a need to initiate contact with their birth families when they are adults, we will fully support them."

We do better to normalize our children's adoption from as early as possible. Our children come to us living in a gap between their biology and their biography. The sooner this schism is addressed and the less spread open the cleft is, the more likely it is to heal well and completely. Integration of the two parts of an adopted child's identity should, in my mind, be the responsibility of the decision-makers (parents) from Day 1 with their new child.

It seems to me that search and reunion after a lifetime of separation would be very difficult to navigate -- not just the relationship, but the feelings that go with establishing it. If I can prevent my children from having to go through search and reunion, I will. The way to do this is to foster contact with firstparents from as early on as possible.

Obviously, a parent needs to stay tuned in to his/her child to see signs of overwhelm or of distress. But the presence of these is not necessarily caused by openness. It's just that these feelings are out in the open, not buried. Dealing with any adoption issue in the light, in a supported way, without shame or secrecy -- THAT is what adoptive parents should initiate and provide.

As much as possible, I advocate that adoptive parents be introspective about the reasons behind their decisions regarding openness (or closed-ness). In a child-centered adoption, a parent's own fears and insecurities are examined and resolved, much the way we hope our children's will be. In a way, we are modeling the process toward wholeness for them.

One caveat: my remarks apply to situations where a family's safety is not threatened. I am talking about adoptions where the firstparents freely and lovingly placed a child, and are already child-centered-- not the drug-addicted wh0re stereotype, and not people who have boundary issues that could result in danger to anyone involved.

For more powerful thoughts on this topic, see this from Heather's archives.

Click over to Production, Not Reproduction to see what others have to say. And feel free to contribute your own thoughts.





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Moments in Open Adoption Parenting, part 73

Tessa was distraught, after a Halloween party, for not getting the nod for a sleepover at her aunt's house. The excitement of the kid-oriented haunted house, the disappointment about the sleepover and a sugar high made for a meltdown.

I got her into the car and she continued to wail about how mean her dad and I are. Roger and Reed were in the other car (long logistical explanation), so Tessa and I had some rare alone car time.

The wailing changed tone as we headed home.

"Why can't Crystal and Joe be my parents!? I have never even been with both of them at the same time!"

Whoa.

I silenced the GPS lady so I could focus. Here's a slowdown of my processes during moments like this.

1. Calm, center, open. Breathe, and be aware of my breathing.
2. Listen. Let her do most of the talking.
3. Assess. What is she really saying or asking?
4. Trade places. What might this look like, feel like, to her?
5. Abide. Give her space to feel her feelings.
6. Speak. Equal parts head and heart

Following are the salient parts from the ensuing conversation, which lasted about a half an hour and culminated while we cuddled in her bed.

"Tell me more," I said while driving home.

"If they got together, maybe they would LIKE each other. And then..."

"And then...?" (pause) "And then they could be your parents?"

"Yes." (pause) "But Joe is married, and Crystal has L---." (pause) "They will never be married, will they, Mom?"

Now, the best thing I did here was not personalize this and make it about ME. Her words, and the thoughts behind them, had NOTHING to do with her feelings for Roger and me, her attachment to us, her love for us. The best way for me to help her find resolution about having two sets of parents, and about her own road not taken is NOT to pretend that one set of parents doesn't exist, is NOT to feel bad that I can't be everything to her, is NOT to "fix" it for her by pointing out all she does have.

It's by giving her space and support to find her own way.

"No, Sweetheart. They were together many years ago, but they were not a good match. You know, don't you, that they both love you?"

"Yeah, I know that. But why aren't they my mom dad?"

"Would you like me to tell you the story again? After we get home we can cuddle and talk."

"Yes!"

10 minutes later we pulled into the garage. Tessa got on her jammies and brushed her teeth. We climbed into her bed, about an hour past normal bedtime.

"Crystal and Joe were very young. Twenty may not sound like young to you, but it's a time when some people don't have a lot of skills in dealing with other people, with being frustrated. You know that class we took together, Taming the Anger Monster? Well, at that time, neither Crystal nor Joe had learned how to tame their anger monsters.

"They broke up because they were hurting each other. With words -- you know that words can hurt. And as much as they both loved you, they knew that neither one was able to give you a stable home, a calm home. At that time. You needed a forever family then, though. And that's what you got. Daddy and I will always be your mom and dad, no matter what.

"The Crystal and Joe you know now are different from who they were then. It's OK to imagine what life with them would be like. What do you think?"

"Well...I would have an older brother from Crystal. And a younger sister from Joe. I'm not sure if we would live at Crystal's house or at Joe's house. And I would probably go to a different school. One I don't even know. I might not even know Reed. Or Grandma and Grandpa. Or the OTHER Grandma and Grandpa. And all my aunts -- I wouldn't have any aunts! That would be weird."

"It would be very different, wouldn't it? You can tell a thousand stories of what your life is not. And only ONE story of what your life IS. This is your life, Tessa. Lots of people around who love you now and forever, including Crystal and Joe, daddy and me. All of Crystal's family, all of Joe's family, all of our family."

"Mama," she said sleepily, the anxiety and sadness gone for now, "I love you."

"I love you, too Tessa."

*****

There probably were wiser words I could have said, and things I shouldn't have said. I'm putting this out there because in this space I try to share (within the limits I've set regarding Tessa's privacy) as many facets of open adoption parenting as I can. It's important to know that "open adoption" isn't just something you do when you exchange photos, send emails, have a visit. It's something that can come up even when you have other plans.

Cross-posted at the Open Adoption Examiner.

Image: JewelBasket.com





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Show & Tell: Hard Copy

I knew this day was coming. I alluded to it here.

Last week I got my advance copy of this.

And I flipped open to this.

That's Crystal (Tessa's birthmom) and her children with me and my children.

It's the September/October issue, available on newsstands soon. Or you can subscribe to Adoptive Families.

Oh! I see I'm wearing my self-beater shirt in the photo.

**UPDATE: The article is now available online .**

See what my classmates are showing and telling at Mel's Show & Tell.

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Open adoption: Head and Heart

I'm taking a seat at the Open Adoption Roundtable, where the assignment this session is:

Write about how open adoption has changed you.

For most of my life, through school and college and dating and TTC and infertility, I was mostly guided by my head. I learned early on the surest way out of any problem was to study it, analyze it, work it, contemplate it.

I was pretty successful with this method. I earned several degrees, didn't marry several Mr Wrongs, and navigated several medical interventions -- all with the power of my intellect (not as colossal as I make it sound, and there weren't THAT many Mr Wrongs down on one knee).

But adoption required me to take my Data model (sensible, information-based) and add the Deanna Troi model (sensitive, compassion-based).

Adoption and, more specifically, OPEN adoption, is something I couldn't think my way through. I couldn't study my way through or weigh my options through or test my way through with a #2 pencil.

I had to FEEL my way through.

Open adoption has engendered a huge shift in how I move through life. From Day 1 with Tessa's firstmom, Crystal, I have had opportunities to choose between what feels right and what makes sense (in cases where they are at odds).

Pulling another organ into service for decision-making and leadership has had an added benefit: parenting itself requires the involvement of one's heart as well as one's head. I can't think my way through Reed's fight with his BFF. I can't think my way through one of Tessa's tantrums (no thinking occurs for either of us during one of those). Book learning only goes so far.

It's not that I turn OFF my intellect, but that I also tune into my heart for answers.

Living from my heart requires me to just. be. present. Abiding in a situation and with the people in it. Being open to insight, inspiration and intuition.

Which I can add to intellect.

Open adoption has brought me more deeply into thinking/feeling. I used both my head and heart to navigate Tessa's reunion with her firstdad, Joe, and am using both methods currently to help Reed with some questions he's begun to ask about his firstparents.

I'm not saying that all problems are easily solved because I've got such massive brainpower and a huge, unerring heart. I make lots and lots of mistakes every single day, and some are whoppers.

I'm saying that open adoption requires that I see things from the perspectives of the others involved, that I understand the effects of my actions on them, and that I use both my head and heart as I move through life.

It's been a worthwhile change.

Images: Language is a Virus and TechRadar.com

***

Click over to Production, Not Reproduction to see what others have to say. And if you're in an open adoption, feel free to contribute your own moment.

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Open adoption: The Family Toes

I'm taking a seat at the Open Adoption Roundtable, where the assignment this session is:

Write about a small moment that open adoption made possible.

(April, 2001) -- Our plan is to make a quick getaway, to say a guilty goodbye to Crystal and bring our newborn daughter home. This plan was carefully crafted to make this day as bearable for Crystal as possible.

Roger and I show up at the hospital. Crystal, the experienced mom, shows me how to change an impossibly small diaper. She mentions that her Grandma, whom everyone calls Honey, would really love to meet the baby. But she’s been battling cancer and isn’t well enough to leave her home.

We find out Honey lives not far from Crystal, who lives within 10 miles of our home.

So we decide not to listen to the adoption experts about the clean getaway, and to follow our hearts instead. We ask Crystal (though she could have dictated any route home from the hospital had she wanted to, since relinquishment is still weeks away) if she would like us to take the baby to visit Honey.

She lights up. And we load the cars. Before long we all arrive at Honey's house.

As soon as we get Tessa inside, Crystal, her mom and Grandma Honey huddle over the baby. Three generations ooh and aah over Tessa's toes – she has the family toes. This is an intimate moment where I feel like an outsider, and I wonder if I can ever truly be this baby’s mother.

Tessa begins to cry and Crystal says to me, “Get the bottle, Mom.”

I didn’t even bring in the diaper bag! I’m not used to this. I can’t do this. I’m not a natural. We’ve all made a big mistake. I’m embarrassed. I’m exposed for the fraud I am. Who in their right mind would consider me a mother? Panic attack.

Roger brings in the diaper bag and I have a crying baby in my arms, so my moment of self-pity is over in a flash. Crystal giggles, good-naturedly cooing to Tessa: “See, Mommy has what you need.” And she smiles at me, telling me all is well.

Our glance also communicates that it’s time for us to leave. I know how grateful Crystal is that we’ve brought Honey and Tessa together. I know she will be incredibly sad as we drive away. I know I am itching to start our lives with this beautiful baby.

We gather all the stuff and say our goodbyes. I whisper in Crystal’s ear during a hug, “You call whenever you’re ready. I love you and I’m thinking of you every single day.”

She looks at me with pure love and trust in her eyes and whispers, “I know. I will.”

We finally make our quick getaway and head home. With our daughter.

Originally appeared on Drama 2B Mama.

***
Remember to click over to Production, Not Reproduction to see what others have to say. And if you're in an open adoption, feel free to contribute your own moment.

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Examine these links

Check these out:

• How open adoption has changed in 20+ years
• Scrapbooking and open adoption
• A civil rights issue: access to original birth certificates

The author would be grateful :-)
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Open Adoption: Wish List

I'm taking a seat at the Open Adoption Roundtable, where the assignment this session is:

Share your wish list for your open adoption(s).

For Tessa's situation, which is fully open with both firstparents, I wish:

• that Tessa feels integrated rather than split as she grows emotionally and cognitively
• that seeing Tessa ceases to cause her birthfather, Joe, to ache (hey, it IS a wishlist)
• that Crystal and I have the wisdom to handle all the adoption questions that may come as Tessa grows into a tween, a teen, a young woman, a wife and mother herself
  

For Reed's situation, which is an open door adoption, I wish:

• that Michele would be more accessible to Reed, more present
  
• that Reed's birthfather would surface and that Reed would feel his love
• that Reed will continue to be OK with the differing levels of openness experienced by him and Tessa
• that Reed will always feel loved by his birthfamily, whether they are present or not
• that Roger and I have the wisdom to handle all the adoption questions that may come as Reed grows into a tween, a teen, a young man, a husband and father himself

Remember to click over to Production, Not Reproduction to see what others (adoptive parents, birthparents, even an OA adoptee) have to say. And if you're in an open adoption, feel free to contribute your own list to the roundtable.
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Open adoption: Fathers Three

I'm taking a seat at the Open Adoption Roundtable, where the assignment for the week of Father's Day is:

Write about the father(s) in your family's open adoption(s).

In our case, there are three. Rob, Joe and Andy.

Let's start with Andy, Reed's first father. Reed was a complete surprise to his first mother, Michele, making himself known just hours before he was born. Michele and Andy had not been together for months; he had moved to another state.

We have scant information on him. I once used an email address that I *think* was his to send him some photos of Reed. We did not hear back.

If I could tell him just a few things, it would be: "Reed is so lovable and loving and intelligent and wondering and adorable and he tries his best at everything. He is a son any parent would be extremely proud of. You must have all these qualities, too. I wish you would get in touch with us -- it would mean a lot to Reed."

Next up is Joe, Tessa's first father. Joe has been part of our extended family since last year. We've had some bumps in the road -- not any one's fault, but rather the nature of a union after 7 years of separation. Joe has handled things better than I had expected, always respectful and always keeping Tessa's well-being in mind. I suspect the reunion has been hard on him.

What I will say to him on Father's Day when we call: "Thank you so much for all the gifts you gave Tessa, and for being in our lives to help make her whole. It's time for us to get together again."

Finally, there is DaDa, what our kids call Rob (I love it; it's sweet).

Rob is a storybook dad. He is interested in everything and he exposes our children to his passions: music, sports, fixing things, cooking, history, language, travel. He is a man of his word who models compassion, patience and zest for life. One of the things I love most about him is that he loves to get at the kids' level and be a kid with them. Perhaps the wisest thing I've ever done was choose him to be a father to my children.

To Rob, I will say: "You continue to amaze me with your ability to always know how to handle whatever comes up in exactly the wisest way. Now, let's find a sitter and have a Date Night. We haven't seen a movie since 2001."

Click over to Production Not Reproduction to see what other open adoption bloggers have to say on this topic.

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Open Adoption: When What I Knew was Wrong

I'm taking a seat at the Open Adoption Roundtable, where the topic is:

Has the reality of open adoption as it's looked in your life matched your expectations? What one thing would you tell yourself if you could?

In response, I have recycled/reworked a post from early in my blogging days.

***

When Rob and I embarked on the journey of adopting a baby several years ago, everything we "knew" about adoption was from decades past:

• You waited on a long list until the agency matched you with a situation. Top of the list of criteria for the match? Your place in line.
• You tried to make the building of your family as close to "normal" (read: biological) as possible. You didn't talk much about the adoption, either inside or outside of the family, and you certainly didn't have any contact with birth parents. The goal was to make it seamless, almost as if adoption were never part of the story.
• As the child grew, you continued not talking about adoption. Surrounding my friends who had been adopted was an air of secrecy. When we did speak of adoption, it was in hushed voices. These friends didn't know much about their birth families, their birth story, or their origins. And it would hurt their parents too much to wonder too much. So they tried not to.

Nearly 9 years ago, our agency introduced us to this newfangled thing called “open adoption.” Wikipedia, at the time of this writing, says that open adoption simply "means that the natural mother and adopted family know who each other are."

Wikipedia further explains, “Although open adoptions are thought to be a relatively new phenomenon, in fact most adoptions in the United States were open until the twentieth century.” I had always thought that closed adoptions were the “default setting” of the ages!

Far from being newfangled, it turns out that open adoption had always been the norm, with closed adoptions a 6-decade aberration(anyone else surprised by that?). Adoptions became closed when social pressure mandated that families preserve the myth that they were formed biologically.

Rob and I learned all that we could about open adoption. Over the years, we replaced the myths with these ideas:

• Open Adoption isn't about waiting passively in line -- it's about who we are. A couple in an unintended pregnancy would make a conscious decision about us parenting their baby. The criteria for their decision would be our values, our bundle of experiences, and our vision for the future -- US!
• Why try to deny that our family was built by adoption? Is my ego so fragile that acknowledging the birth mothers of my children takes away from me? Loving and respecting our children's birth parents is just another way to love and respect our children.
• Walking a fine line between dwelling on adoption it and denying it, we tell our children (now ages 8 and 6) their adoption stories once in awhile. We encourage them to talk with us about it as their cognitive skills grow. I believe that anything kept under a rock can get moldy, and I want their adoption tales to bask in sunshine.
• There are many more benefits to open adoption. Our children have access to their medical histories and to clans who look like them and love them. Also, our children will not have to go through the potential minefields of search and reunion just to get answers to their wonderings.

So to summarize my answer to the question, I would tell myself pre-adoption, "Lori, don't be scared to open up your heart to this experience."

There is another answer I would give myself about parenting in open adoption. But that's for a future roundtable.

Click over to Production Not Reproduction to see what other open adoption bloggers have to say.

***

Another day, another chance to vote for Weebles Wobblog. Please click on the blue button, scroll down to the Most Inspiring category, and vote for this blog, currently in 3rd place. (You can also vote for Luna in the same category, and for Eden in the Most Provocative Blog category.) Rock the ALI vote!

Here's a button if you'd like to help me make a good showing against some fabulous blogs. Not that I'm competitive or anything. OK, maybe inspiringly competitive.

(To those of you with the button: I really won't hurt the cute puppy.)

Reed's Amendment

When I told Reed (who is 6) that I'd blogged about our perfect moment, he grew quite concerned. Our bedtime conversation:

"You shouldn't have put that on your blog, Mama."

"Why, Reed?"

Pause.

"Mama, does Michele read your blog?"

Michele is Reed's birth mother. I wish we had more contact with her.

"No, Honey. I don't think she does."

"But if she did, that might hurt her feelings. I don't want to hurt her feelings. Will you tell everyone that I also love Michele? And that I'm glad she's my birth mother?"

"Yes, I will. You have a big heart, Reed. I love that about you."

***

Another day, another chance to vote for Weebles Wobblog. Please click on the blue button, scroll down to the Most Inspiring category, and vote for this blog, currently 10th row down, far right. (You can also vote for Luna in the same category, and for Eden in the Most Provocative Blog category.) Rock the ALI vote!

Here's a button if you'd like to help me make a good showing against some fabulous blogs. Not that I'm competitive or anything. OK, maybe inspiringly competitive.

(To those of you with the button: I really won't hurt the cute puppy.)

Reunion in Open Adoption 6: What was the What

It seemed, in this dark period, as if we had made a huge miscalculation, committed an unfixable mistake. One that our daughter would suffer for.

Our crime? We had chosen open adoption. And despite thumbs up from all the grown ups in the equation, it was not working out well. At. All. For Tessa.

She was the pudding. She held the only proof that mattered.

Previous posts leading up to this part of the story
Part 1: Considering Joe
Part 2: Telling Tessa
Part 3: The horrible wait
Part 4: The meeting
Part 5: Crash

Despite our best intentions at a gradual and functional reunion with her birthfather, Tessa had ended up in angry tears two weeks after spending a day with him. ("I DON'T WANT TO HAVE FOUR PARENTS!!...I NEVER WANT TO SEE THEM AGAIN!")

First, we had to determine (as best we could): was this a parenting issue or an adoptive parenting issue?

Finding no evidence of The Worst Thing during the time she was with Joe (which I can't even type, but you can probably guess), we deduced Tessa's trauma did have to do with adoption.

But what? WHAT??

Enter my sister, Sheri.

I alluded here to an intuitive reading she did for me at the time (see Problem #2). She was able to help me see through Tessa's eyes, feel through Tessa's heart.

And it wasn't near as big or as bad as I'd feared.

I had been full of remorse and fear that I'd screwed everything up by embracing open adoption so whole-heartedly. Had I been too enthusiastic about keeping Crystal in our lives? Too driving in bringing Joe into our lives? And my most secret fear: would this have played out differently if I hadn't become an open adoption advocate and blogger?

Sheri helped me to take myself out of the equation. For Tessa, it wasn't that the last 7 years had been one huge mistake; it was that the one episode with Joe had been, simply, too much, too soon.

Tessa is a child who needs boundaries -- both the figurative and literal kinds. She can sleep only against a wall and with pillows surrounding her. She must, at all times, know just how far she can go with a given person in a given situation. She is constantly rubbing against my boundaries with her, as well as others'. It's her way of (1) figuring out her world, and (2) feeling secure in it.

And although she professed to be eager to spend the afternoon with Joe, she was unable to predict the feelings of unsupportedness that would ensue. Not because Joe was unsupportive, but because it was all different.* He smoked. He and his friend called each other "Duuude" in a way she doesn't hear from Roger and me. These two minor things became symbolic, for her, of being in a very different, possibly scary, place. One in which she had no navigation skills, no anchoring, no steering mechanism.

And, at a very deep level, she also may have been considering that this was her Road Not Taken. Profound implications come with that thought.

So, two weeks later, after spending the night with family friends (Roger and I had an overnight date) Tessa's feelings and fears of unsupportedness surfaced, this time demanding to be dealt with.

And THAT, my friends was the what. Or my best guess of the what.

So simple yet so complex.

I am relieved for Tessa. She has processed this episode, and has resumed telephone contact with Joe. She is asking now to see him again, but not alone. For the foreseeable future, our family will once again be a package deal.

We did not have to throw away the proverbial baby with the open adoption bath water. We will continue living in our open adoption -- just a little bit wiser.

* Please understand that in discussing the life Tessa has with us and the life she might have had with Crystal and/or Joe, I am not saying one is better and one is worse. I don't have the omniscience to make that determination on her behalf. I am simply saying that one path is familiar and one is not. Such a comparison is unknowable and irrelevant anyway -- she gets to live only the life that is, not the one that might have been (as do we all).

The End
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Reunion in Open Adoption 5: Things Fall Apart

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Joe (Tessa's birthfather), who had been absent until she was 7, had fully integrated into our lives by the end of 2008. We had spent much of that year easing into a relationship with him. It culminated with visits in his home and visits in our own home. We were feeling pretty good about the process and the outcome.

Previous posts leading up to this part of the story
Part 1: Considering Joe
Part 2: Telling Tessa
Part 3: The horrible wait
Part 4: The meeting

Tessa had always had a relationship with her birthmom, Crystal. In fact, as Tessa became a grade-schooler, visits with Crystal -- even solo visits (without Roger or me) -- offered an invaluable intangible to Tessa. After just a few hours with Crystal, Tessa would become, somehow, refreshed and restored.

So we encouraged it. Tessa would see Crystal 8-10 times a year -- much like you would a good friend or family member who lives 30 minutes away.

Crystal invited our family to her home on New Years Eve day. Tessa, Reed, and her son Tyler spent hours playing and giggling while Crystal and I worked on our projects. Crystal then cut and styled Tessa's hair, giving her an AnnaSophia Robb look.

So it seemed natural a few days later, to respond affirmatively to Joe when he asked (after months of dropping hints) to spend an afternoon with Tessa. We felt comfortable with him, Tessa felt comfortable with him, we trusted him and his love for Tessa, as well as his ability to keep her safe from harm.

I asked Tessa if she's like to hang out with Joe for a few hours, and she squealed with delight.

We set it up. We met for the exchange and planned to meet up again several hours later. I talked with Tessa about expectations (we always do this when approaching a social event) and about how I would call to check on her often. We came up with a code word for her to use if she wanted me to come get her.

When I did call (via Joe's cell phone), each time she said she was having a GREAT TIME!!

After awhile we met to retrieve Tessa our two families had dinner together. I could see that she and Bella (Joe's daughter) had bonded, and that Tessa was glowing. Nothing remarkable happened at dinner.

I asked about her afternoon on the drive home She shared only two specifics: (1) that Joe smoked cigarettes (she said this with a "yuck!" -- we knew he smoked and had talked with Tessa about it) and (2) that he had a friend over. They called each other "Dude."

All seemed well and I patted myself on the back for taking yet another successful step on the path of open adoption.

=======

Two weeks later, at bedtime, Tessa began freaking out. "I DON'T WANT TO HAVE FOUR PARENTS!!" she said over and over. "MOM, TAKE AWAY ALL THESE PICTURES OF CRYSTAL AND JOE!" She climbed up to her shelf and nearly hurled selected photos at me. Before collapsing into an exhausted heap, she ended with "MOM, YOU CALL THEM BOTH TOMORROW AND TELL THEM I NEVER WANT TO SEE THEM AGAIN!"

Sometimes things don't stick with my mercurial daughter. But in the morning, she asked me again, this time more calmly, to call Crystal and Joe and give them her message.

I figured she meant business, and also she was gauging how much control she had of the situation. While she was at school I called Joe and broke the news, thereby breaking his heart. He put on a brave face and said he was just happy to have had the time he did. I asked if he could think of any trigger from that day. He could not.

Exploring the only thread I had to pick at, I asked about his friend, "Dude." Joe said Tessa was never out of his sight, and that "Dude's" visit was very brief. He was at a loss for explaining her upset, and so was I.

When I picked up Tessa from school, her first question was if I had called her birthparents. I told her I reached Joe but not Crystal. Tessa replied, "I changed my mind. I think I can still see Crystal."

She did not want to talk anymore, so I was left in the dark as to what may have happened to change her view so dramatically.

I believe Tessa does not currently have the cognitive and language skills to figure out and communicate the reasons for her unease. It was excruciating for me to not be able to help her, and to not know what was the what. ExCRUCiating.

We had to sit in that uncomfortable place for awhile.

Next and final episode: What was the what

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Any adoptees who are reading: I am open to your insight, either here or via email. Thank you.
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