I have many things buzzing in my head, like who are those lovely people who visted my blog yesterday after I finally put in the statcounter? And will there be more? Jeez, I wish I done this earlier!
My DH came home with good news the other day. His new business is finally paying off, and he had a nice big cheque. We also found out that there will be another big cheque at the end of the year. Now, don't get me wrong...we have to spend this cheque on paying off just one of our many racked up credit cards. I'm not going to be walking around in designer duds anytime soon, LOL. But I personally am feeling some relief, thank God!
The weird thing is that he isn't relieved. In fact, he seems more stressed than before. And I don't know why! Men are strange creatures...
Plus, all this talk in the blogosphere about adoption and IF has me very very torn. I have wanted to post about it a dozen times and haven't, mostly because it all seems too awful, like when your parents fight with each other, and you can't fix it, but you're stuck in between.
Like I don't get why people are so set on one mom and one dad per kid? Have they seen the playground lately? Almost every kid I know has multiple dads and moms through divorce and remarriage, and it's no big deal. Gay and lesbian kids have 2 moms or two dads, and sometimes donors and they turn out fine, in study after study.
So what's the big deal? If they love the child, why can't birth moms and dads and adoptive moms and dads know each other and have a part in the kid's life? (Yes, Big If, but even when foster kids are adopted, they may have blood family members somewhere who maybe kind and decent and can provide a link to the bio family.)
It just seems like some awful competition, and we, the adoptees, are the hard-won prize. Unfortunately it also assumes that we are inanimate objects who don't have an opinion.
Well, um sorry we do.
And just because you adopted us, or gave birth to us, or provided the donor egg/sperm to make us, doesn't make us your property. I don't care how much money or grief or hope was involved...
Like the whole forever family thing. I hate that phrase. What if I grow up and don't like you? What if I don't speak to you again? As an independent human being I have that choice, like it or not.
Like my adoptive mother. She assumed that because a judge said so, I was tied to her forever. (And boy did I hear that over and over again...) Yet, I haven't spoken to her or my adoptive father in years. They have never met my children or my husband, and at this point don't even know where I live. And I like it that way. They were really crappy parents. And no matter how many peanut butter sandwiches they made me, they never earned the title mom or dad because they never really loved me.
My birth mother, on the other hand, was so desperate for a relationship that she pushed me away in the end. She wanted to become my instant mom, but we couldn't recreate the years we missed. We could've been friends, but she kept pushing the whole extended family thing. Way, way too hard. And yes, I may still talk to her from time to time, but I really don't like feeling smothered and then becoming a big disappointment when I haven't lived up to her perfect vision of a daughter. I've haven't found my birth father yet, but maybe someday, or maybe not.
And so I've made my own family composed of friends, and my kids, and my DH's family, and many wonderful people I like.
So maybe the world is wrong, maybe we CAN pick our own family? It just may not look like the Cleavers, kay?
I believe that forever family is not just a phrase. Because no matter how much my parents disappoint me (or I disappoint them), they are still my parents. I can choose not/to have a relationship with them...but they are still my parents. So even if you cut off your adoptive parents...or your birth parents...they are still your adoptive parents...or your birth parents. It's a forever family...whether it works or not is a whole other matter entirely.
ReplyDeleteLet's face it, all parents worry that their children will grow up to hate them. That feeling just seems magnified through the lens of adoption because NOBODY has quite established the 'perfect' adoption plan.
I read something the other day that stuck with me. It said that in an adoption situation, the parents (adoptive and birth) have to come to terms with the same thing that all parents have to deal with...that their children may some day leave them...only they have to do it much sooner. It has got to be a difficult thing to deal with. And some may not be equipped to handle it (as it sounds your parents were not). But there will always be parents who aren't equipped to be parents...whether they're raising biological children or adopted children. I don't see it as a problem unique to adoption. But that could be a result of having worked with abused and neglected kids for too long. :o)