I find this so true of my adoption situation. Nearly everything reminds me of the daughter that we do not have in our lives.
A glaring example has been the past two weeks. I had to buy a new car. Mine was finally at death's door and my mechanic told me he wouldn't work on it any more because I just needed to buy a new car.
So I did the car lots visits. I researched online. I drove several cars for several days.
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| The new car |
Finally, this weekend, I purchased a new car. Yes, a brand new car. Something I have never had before in my life, because let'e be honest, who can really afford a new car?
But I did it anyway, because now that I live with BF I have no household expenses and I can afford a car payment. So what is the problem with that?
The first thought in my mind was if I had Brit with us right now, the money I will be spending on a car payment would be what I would be paying for daycare.
The thought immediately made me resent the new car and the trade off that it represents in my life.
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| Little Princess playing in the playhouse at the car dealership |
And to top it off, when the kids got in the car after the soccer game on Sunday, BF's oldest son looked at Little Princess (the little girl I babysit every weekend) who I had buckled in her car seat, and said to her "Hi Brit!" Then he caught himself and said "I mean Little Princess."
I could hardly breathe.
Apparently I am not the only one who thinks about Brit.
15 comments:
It's those little reminders that make us hurt. I have been guilty of speaking my daughter's name when I meant to say something different.
Though it's not AT ALL the same thing and I'm not at all reducing your pain to the same thing... somehow I can relate to this on some strange level after we lost the daughter we thought we were adopting. I thought I'd be over it a lot faster. I still have three huge plastic bins of baby girl stuff. Can't bring myself to pass it to someone who will actually use it. I resent it. I hate that it's in my house. I should have already used it all and given it away. Instead, it sits there in the corner of our unused bedroom and mocks me. Blah.
Hope you get to show Brit your new car soon. :) <3
In the year after I lost my son to grandparent adoption, I was visiting my own grandparents and my brother was there with his son, who was under a year old at that point. He got fussy and I went to pick him up and said, without thinking, "Come see Mama." Thank God no one heard me. My son was just shy of three when he went to live (I thought temporarily) with his grandparents but for some reason I was mentally stuck on him as a baby; my nephew looked quite a bit like him.
Ok.....breathing, breathing.....
Amber, I'm sorry, but you CANNOT COMPARE your attempt at obtaining someone else's child (I pray Mom was able to have full disclosure of what it means to the child to be separated from the only sound, smell and life he/she has never known for no reason that the child can understand, and also what her life would have been like had she been separated from her child), to the grief a mother suffers from being deceived just long enough to obtain Lisa's child. This is one of the MOST OFFENSIVE THINGS I have ever read. And I'm sorry, but your 'disappointment' of being so close to getting what you WANT (because it is really NOT a 'need'), is NOTHING like what Lisa or any mother who has had adoption rip her child from her and be left with nothing. I am really trying to be nice here, but let me tell you, your ignorance and entitlement has just shone through. And I as a mother of adoption loss, if you cannot tell, am triggered by your even mentioning it here. But, then again, nothing surprises me when adoption is the subject. Educating the masses of the infertile and entitled is truly exhausting......
A quick defense of Amber.
She has the most open adoption that I know of. Her son knows his birth family intimately. His birthmother and Amber are best of friends. She is an adoptive mother who truly embraces the spirit of openness with her son and his family.
As a matter of fact, her son's birth mother is the first person she asks when she is looking for someone to care for him when she is away. Amber is deeply respectful of birth families and how they belong in the life of the child.
While the analogy of the clothes may have come across as an example that seemingly trivialized adoption loss, it was meant to be a be just that, an example of how adoption loss (whatever it is to each of us) can manifest itself in the strangest ways.
I do believe their are an abundance of adoptive mothers and HAP who do not understand adoption loss from the perspective of the birth family and the adoptee. But fortunately Amber is not one of those people.
Her love for her son and his family is lived by example. She walks the walk. Never is her son's birthmother/family considered second. They are her family too. They celebrate holidays together. They share dinners with each other. They live the adoption love that we could all only dream of.
Adoption education is exhausting. And I am glad that there are some living examples of women/families who show the world that if adoption is to work for the benefit of the child, then it includes mitigating the loss as much as possible by including families of origin. Because they are just that. The child's family.
"NOTHING like what Lisa or any mother who has had adoption rip her child from her and be left with nothing"
WS:
Did Lisa really have her child ripped from her by adoption? As I recall, Lisa and her BF wanted adoption for the child while they raised the other children they each had. Is that "ripping" a child away or is it placing the responsibility of raising the child to someone else?
Aw, I am sorry you suffered the loss of your baby.
Aw, I am sorry you suffered the loss of your baby.
I had no idea that this blog post would cause such a flurry of emotions for others.
I first must say, I did not look to see which Amber had posted the original comment. I defended a different Amber than the one who actually posted the comment. And for those who know the Amber of which I speak, you know all those kind things I said about her are true. She is an amazing mom who puts her child's needs above all else, which means loving her son's birth family to pieces.
I do understand how it would seem that a comment about a disrupted adoption would seem inappropriate on a blog that deals with birth mother loss and grief.
However, I try to remain empathetic to all sides of the adoption triad. I know that we are all just trying to navigate through this tangled web of adoption.
The Amber who posted is someone I don't know very well, but I do know she has an open adoption with her son's birth family. And if she is reading and commenting on a birth mother's blog, I would like to think that means she desires to know the heart of a birth mother who has been devastated by adoption loss.
To my birth mother friends who were offended by that comment, I am sorry. As we know, when the wounds of loss are so deep EVERYTHING adoption related is a sensitive topic. I know, because I feel the same way.
My love to you all.
LisaAnne,
I wish I knew you in real life. Your thoughtfulness and empathy toward everyone who visits your blog are rare and generous qualities. You always seem to manage conflict in a way that hopefully brings people together toward understanding and promoting adoption truths...because really--do any of us truly know the truth until we too late experience it?
Even for APs, even the best intentioned APs, how many are really aware of the lifelong trauma issues they will need to navigate alongside their adopted child? Adoption is like an onion, multi-layered, and just when you think you've peeled the last shred, there's more... and of course, you can't stop crying the whole time.
Best,
Jennifer :)
Lisa,
The adoptive parents of your daughter seem like heartless people. To promise you a near-perfect after placement life with you all in each others life and then now having absolutely nothing to do with you is just pure cruel and evil. Can you be sure that these people aren't harming your child? I don't just mean physically, but emotionally also. I know from reading your blog they also have biological children now also. I wouldn't put it past them to treat your daughter far different from their biological child. I would be real fearful of that.
I do not fear that they treat her unkindly. Brit is an exceptional child and I think they are very proud of her and her abilities. I also know that she spends lots of time with her grandparents who are just a couple of blocks down the street and they love her to the moon and back. I have no reason to believe that they are anything but amazing with how they parent her. Their monthly emails portray a family who is very childcentric and I have no reason to believe that what I perceive is less than the truth. Their interaction with her once a year around us is very good and it is obvious that she loves them.
I too wonder what life will be like later, when her personality develops and if she is dissimilar to them. Since she has two siblings who are just a year her junior and who are biological children of her parents. I choose not to dwell on that. But I do wonder if it will ever be an issue. Three children so close in age with one of them not fitting in like the other two.
Did they ever actually agree to any openness? I know you've mentioned you told them you hoped they'd attend a family BBQ, but did they ever agree to visits and so forth, or did they stay silent? I know you never had a written agreement in place, but was there a spoken one?
Just wondering if they're going back on an agreement, or simply never said no to the suggestion of visits and let you take their silence as agreement. They absolutely should have told you their intentions, of course, if they knew they were different from yours -- and frankly I think it's despicable either way.
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