Birthmother's Blog

For those of you who might be interested, my birthmother, Kate, is also doing a blog - http://mothertone.wordpress.com/. Keeping in the same spirit as the memoir, we've decided to do the same with the blogs, and not them influence each other's writing until all is said and done. I hope at some point we can converge and comment back and forth on each other's writing, and that will be part of the fun - or, maybe not fun, but interesting and thought-provoking anyway.

In the meantime, it's just too easy to be influenced by the other's memories so we wanted to steer clear of that. What we will probably do is agree on "prompts" or topics that we find interesting and both comment on it from our individual sides, but not read each others' postings - for now anyway!

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

The Meaning of ReunionEyes

I came up with the name ReunionEyes for several reasons.

The first is that eyes have always held a lot of meaning for me in reunion. Growing up, no one I knew had eye color that was like mine – a strange melding of colors that are neither blue, nor green, nor grey, but something of them all that blended together once could not be duplicated.

The first thing I wished to see in my birthmother was her eyes. I was sure that I would see in hers, the color of my own. But they weren’t. In fact, one of the first things she said to me was that I had the most amazing color eyes. Disappointed, I’d asked if there was anyone in her family she thought they came from. “No,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it.”

Meeting my birthfather, who has brown eyes, wasn’t much more help. Though he said that he did think that he had family with similar-colored eyes, he wasn’t in touch with many of them so there was no way to know for sure.

So, for me, eyes became symbolic of the search for self in adoption and that by looking at our birthfamilies for explanations of ourselves we inevitably find that we are who we are – unique and not easily explained. Part of all of our families, a blend, but not an identical descendant of any one.

That’s the one part.

The other is the idea of Reunion in and of itself. To Reunionize. To talk about reunion and to normalize it. Not that it’s any great mystery in this day and age, except, that somehow, it still is. It’s a unique phenomenom. A time when women were more or less cornered into a closed adoption system where the only choices were abortion (if they conceived after 1970), or closed adoption, or keeping the baby and getting married. No appealing options.

And, again, to talk and have discussions from us who have been in reunion for awhile now. Not that I don’t want to hear about those who are new in reunion. I remember that time, and I empathize with it. It’s an emotional time with honeymoon-highs and lashing lows that send your soul into lightness and darkness that is exhausting and confusing. But this blog isn’t about that. It’s about the bewildering and amazing place that we’ve gotten to that by riding through the storm we come to a place we didn’t know existed so couldn’t have planned to head here that’s mostly calm and holds the sadness and loss and the gifts together as siblings in this strange family.

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Mother's Day, Part 2

So, what do you do about mother's day?

For me, it's always been complicated. It's stressful. I struggle between the right thing to do and what feels right. And realize neither are right.

So what feels right? For my mother - my adoptive mother (and anyone in reunion will know that when I say "my mother" knows that I'm talking about my adoptive mother. it still astounds me that someone who is on the outside of the experience will ask, "which mother?" like there's a choice. There is only one to me) I do the typical things - send flowers, call her on the day, or, if we happen to be together on that day, go to brunch.

For my birthmom - I'm still stumped.

I want to honor her. I want to honor the time she had me in her belly, the years she thought of me and the love she does have for me, as well as the relationship we have now. But she's still not my mother. She's my birthmother. So?

What do you do to celebrate your birthmother? The beauty about mother's day is that doing something for your mother - any simple thing - brings such great delight (if they're a decent mom that is. And from my perspective now being a mom, it doesn't take much of what my kids do for me to make it feel like the most amazing special thing in the world). But, the birthmom. Well. There's baggage there, isn't there. And I don't want my mom to know, to think that she thinks I'm honoring my birthmom as my mom. So.

So usually I do nothing. Or little. A few times - times we lived together in the same town - I would do the right thing. Bring a hanging basket of flowers or bulbs. Make a breakfast and include my husband's mom and her. But it always feels a little false, a little forced, and a whole lot awkward.

I would love to hear from other adoptees in reunion to hear how they celebrated mother's day and what feels right for them.

Thanks for sharing.

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Mother's Day?

I met my birthmother twenty two years ago. Is that right? 1989. I just graduated high school, was about to go into college and in the middle of all that - we met.

This is my first post to this new blog. I'm wanting it to be a space where adoptees in reunion can talk about their experience. I want to talk about my experience because my experience has a breadth and depth that astounds me. Twenty two years in reunion. We've come a long way, but there will always be issues, always things unresolved, and I still find it all so interesting.

Along the way I've found some friends that are also adoptees, also have been in reunion, and I find it amazing to talk to them. Beause unlike so many other things in life - marriage, kids, parents, work - there isn't much out there about what it's like to be part of this whole big strange family that we're in. Hell, there is plenty out there on mixed-marriages, blended families, gay parenting, all sorts of "non-tranditional" families. But, our strange family - us adoptees in reunion - still feels a little in the dark. It's uncertain, and we all just plod through it on our own. But, when I talk to friends who have had similar experiences as they try to adjust their lives to fit this new, strange, blended family, I am amazed by the reassurance I feel. We are not alone. There are things about this that make sense, that are predictable, that are "normal."

So, I hope to find others out there and hear your stories as well. I don't want this to be all about me. I want to hear from you too. I want to know how other adoptees in reunion handle Mother's Day. I want to hear what it's like for other adoptees in reunion to go to a family reunion. I want to hear your stories and share mine so we all hear what's going on for each other.

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!