Blissfully Ignorant #FlipTheScript

NOV. 14, SATURDAY - Lost Daughters' Prompt

For those who are in reunion with birth family members, talk about the rewards and the challenges of building and maintaining relationships with people related by biology but not by life experience. How do these relationships differ from those with your adoptive family members? Have you experienced the “reunion rollercoaster,” the wanting to be close and then pushing away that many describe? Are your relationships with your birth family members what you would like them to be? Knowing what you know now, would you do it all over again? What might you do differently if given a second chance? Has being in reunion made everything “better” in relation to your adoption? Are you pleased with how your adoptive and birth families relate to each other? Why or why not?
______________________



I read a post today about an adoptee who is happy to have been a closed adoption. My first reaction was that I could've written that post myself. Back before I was in reunion, I felt the same way. I've even said some of the same things:

I've always known I was adopted 

In my family, being adopted was seen as a good thing 

Being adopted wasn't upsetting for me 

I respect my birthmother for making the decision that was best for me

I've said all of those things. Not having more information, those were the foundational elements of the structure of my life. It was what was best. I have a good life. Why should I care?

Know what bugs me? I miss that ignorance. It's so damn comfortable. You are loved! What else matters? Why SHOULD you care?

I went into reunion the way a clueless co-ed opens a door in a horror movie - "What can go wrong?" I thought. I didn't know what lay behind the door. It's not that it was horrible, that would have been easy to reconcile, "Of course I was relinquished!" I would have thought in that situation. And it's not that I revealed an unimaginable Eden either. That would have made my discontent equally explainable.

No, it's that what lay behind the door were my original families. Plain and simple, with all their gifts and their faults. Perfectly human, and a whole lot like me. The families I had been denied as a child.

Had I gone through life never knowing my families, I would never had known that loss. It would have been easier. Yes, more comfortable. Reunion is uncomfortable. Addressing that there are things you lost, things that were outside of your control, ways that you were controlled - those are unsettling feelings. Ignorance is easier.

So, why shake things up? Why not just accept what you were given and not look back?

I guess, for me, the answer is because that's empty. It's ignorant. Sure, you're happy, but you don't know who you are. I've heard a statistic that genealogy research is the most popular searches on the internet after porn. We crave knowing where we come from nearly as much as we crave sex, so that tells you something. As adoptees, many of us are missing even that first connection to the tree in not knowing where we come from. It matters. I know many people wish it didn't matter, but it does. It doesn't mean you can't make your own families or build your own life, but without the grounding of where you came from, I feel like you're trying to gain traction sliding on sand.

I'd rather be rooted on hard truths of the knowledge of my history as a way to make a more solid future. I know what I've lost AND I know what I've gained. One doesn't cancel the other out in either direction. The deeper the sorrow the higher the joy, or so they say.

But, yes, sometimes I wish I could just go back to being content. Contentment is easier. Questioning is difficult. But then again, I don't know of many people who've said on their deathbed, "I just wish I'd known less!" So, I'm going with that. For better or worse, I'll take the unabridged version of myself.

***

Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Happy to be Alive? - Nov.4 #FliptheScript

Nov. 4, Wednesday

In response to the GOP effort to defund Planned Parenthood, #ShoutYourAdoption was created to posit adoption as a better alternative to abortion. 

Talk about your reaction as an adoptee to the idea of adoption being pushed as an alternative to abortion. Whether you are pro-life, pro-choice, or somewhere in between, your opinion on this issue as an adopted person matters. Consider these questions...

A couple of years ago, Kate and I were having a painful heart-to-heart discussion about how much I lost in relinquishment. My youngest self didn't have her mother, and she needed her. It was one of the first times I really identified with myself as a newborn, what that loss must have felt like. I felt such deep sorrow for that infant... for me... at the loss experienced.

Kate stayed gently firm in her belief that it was the best choice given her situation. Faced with the newly legal choice of abortion, she chose life instead. She expressed how glad she was she made that choice. Wasn't it the better choice? Wasn't I happy that I was alive?

My answer shocked her.

"No," I said. "I wouldn't have cared because I wouldn't have known any different."

Don't get me wrong, there are days that the beauty of the world makes me want to fall to my knees in worship. There are also times when the burden of the sorrows in my life cripple me. The experience of being alive is powerful. I understand why we must respect life. But...

We are conditioned to honor human life over all things. Sometimes it even seems that the opponents of choice honor the unborn life over that of the mother's life. Kate wasn't anti-choice, she respected others who had abortions, but couldn't have one herself because of her values, because of what she felt. I respect her choice.

But I can't say I'm grateful to be alive. I happen to be alive. Just like you. Just like anyone. We popped into this world because of the innumerable instances that led to our conception and birth. And now here we are. All of us trying to figure out the meaning of it all.

Half of me suspects there is no meaning (I relate to existentialism, believing there is no God, love and kindness is the highest form of being); the other half of me feels that Buddhism probably has it right (we are here for a moment, our spirits should be unattached to the worries of the earth, focus instead on enlightenment, our souls eternal, part of the whole).

Either way, whatever we believe, there is one fact - with life, comes death. Before we are born, we are essentially dead. An essay that stuck with me (but that I can't recall who wrote it) pondered this, saying that they were not in distress to not be alive before they were born, so why fear death? It'll be just like how it was before we were born.

Without the fear of death, there is no need to mourn not having been alive. We will just be as we were. Our souls enact, just not here on earth in this body at this moment.

But I do feel gratitude. I am endlessly grateful that my life was surrounded with love from so many sides. I am so happy that I am able to be in a relationship with all sides of my family. All sides. I am infinitely blissfully humbled by getting to be the mother of the two most wonderful people that I have ever met. There is so much to be grateful for. But being born isn't one of them.

Getting to live with the loss honestly, without masking it with gratitude - yeah, I'm grateful for that.

***


Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?


Your comments matter!

Truth in Lies - Nov. 3 #FliptheScript

Nov. 3, Tuesday

Talk about how truths, partial truths, and lies on your adoption documents have impacted your life and identity. Example of these include birth certificates, baptismal certificates, adoption agency records, orphanage records, court records, non-identifying information, naturalization/citizenship papers, passports, etc. 

My name is Petra. It is the name my birthmother gave me.
My first mother. 

That name is gone now. Hidden in who I was. 
I never got to be that person.

Petra is the feminine of Peter, which happened to be my adoptive father's name. My adoptive parents named me Cathleen. They didn't know it was my birthmother's name. 

It's like is was designed by fate. 

But what it feels like is two separate lives, one lived out, the other unknown. 

Which is the true person? 

I don't know. 

***

Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

My Adoption, Their Story #FliptheScript

#FlipTheScript Prompt: Talk about the “adoptee in the room” moment—that moment when you realize you are the only one in a space who can address a particular aspect of adoption experience, when you have to decide whether or not to speak up knowing that what you have to say may be confusing, unsettling, or triggering to others. Perhaps you have found yourself in this position at a work function, at a family gathering, or while with a group of friends. Or, you may have run into this situation in an online forum or on social media. Did you decide to speak or not, and why? If you did speak, what reactions or feedback did you receive?

I default to not speaking up when adoption comes up in conversation. It is striking how often it does come up. Someone will mention a recent adoption by a co-worker, or mention a child they adopted, or an adopted relative.

I know if I mention being an adoptee that I will be reduced to a tidy box that fits their story, the one society built for them. Or I speak out and they look at me quizzically, as if I have said something wrong. Something that doesn't fit.

I prefer to listen. I hear all the things that aren't said. And, the things that should be said.

I want to share what I know, what I understand about the adoption experience. But it doesn't fit into the office banter or the party chit-chat. It's bigger, it's more important. It would be awkward, confusing, strange.

But, when someone says THEY are an adoptee, then I speak. I say, "I am too." We can banter in the office or chit-chat at the party while still holding the weight of our experience, knowing the importance of it.

Someday, I hope to be able to reach the same depth with non-adoptees, but we're just not there.

Not yet.

I hope to read more on this prompt of adoptees speaking out, speaking up and standing up for what they believe. I want to hear stories of the narrative changing, even a little, to listen to the adoptee voice. Maybe for now, the writing is enough. Maybe next, the voice will come.

***

Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

#FlipTheScript on National Adoption Month 2015

#FliptheScript #NAM2015 Lost Daughter Prompts

In November, I break from our usual format of the adoptee vs. birthmother perspective on shared topics to focus instead on the voice of the adoptee in response to National Adoption Month and the Lost Daughters' #Flipthescript campaign to amplify the adoptee voice in the adoption narrative. 

Nov. 1, Sunday

Talk about what National Adoption Month means to you as an adoptee. What is missing from the traditional narrative promoted during each November? Why is it important that adoptees’ experiences and opinions are heard during NAM? What does it mean to you to Flip The Script on National Adoption Month?

I didn't know November was National Adoption Month until just last year. 

In the past, I used to avoid a lot of things about adoption. Adoption wasn't in the forefront of my identity. There were a lot of aspects to who I was. I didn't want to be outspoken. I didn't want to make a fuss. 

Then I started to write about my adoption experience. Funny how the thoughts lurking under the surface of your psyche don't have a voice until you write them down. It is as if writing your thoughts releases them. And, like the furies, once released, they won't stand being locked away again. 

But, it's hard for an adoptee to speak out:

you get labelled
the "angry" adoptee ... the irony being that the more explaining you have to do about not being angry, the angrier you get,  

you get brushed off
if you had better parents, you wouldn't feel this way ... but I had good parents! you retort 

you get belittled
you need therapy ... ah, don't we all?

You have to stand up to these assaults. They try to silence your experience because it makes someone uncomfortable, or confused, or defensive. It brings up feeling they can not just sit with and accept. Instead they have to fight them with all their power to try to overcome them because they're just too hard to feel.

You remember reacting that way. You get it. Because to write about your adoption experience means you have to overcome the one voice that is fighting for its life to silence you. Your own.

It's the one that says:

your experience isn't important
until you remember all those stories you're read, stories similar to yours, and different from yours. stories that remind you that every experience is important.

a lot of people have had it a lot worse
until you realize that just because others have had things worse, doesn't mean that what you experienced wasn't real, wasn't true, wasn't hard.

not everyone feel that way
and then you recognize that is exactly why having so many voices in the conversation makes it so rich and valuable.

Last year my sisters decided to #FlipTheScript to say that adoptee voices should be part of the conversation about adoption. The furies flew and the chaos they caused was considerable. They took National Adoption Month and forced their voices into the conversation. 

They were voices that said that the adoptee experience is important. That even adoptees who had it good, also had it hard. That there were hundreds, thousands, millions of adoptees voices and they deserved to be part of the conversation, part of the truth of what adoption is. That their voices matter. That they matter. 

#FlipTheScript

***

Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Back in Portland - Part 3

So, finally, in my long-winded-way, I get to Part 3. It's hard stuff, and there's ugly truths. I had to talk to Kate about it in person first before I could post it here. I know she wrote her side awhile ago, but I knew some of thing thats were going to come up for me would be hurtful and I wanted to proceed with care. I don't WANT to hurt her. I love her, and she means so much to me. She's a huge part of my life. But, there are things that are true, and are hurtful, and getting those out isn't easy. She listened to what I had to say and my point of view, and it was hard. And I listened to hers, and it was hard. But, we're talking, and we're listening...

The first years of reunion were extremely challenging. I know now that that's part of reunion - your world is turned upside down and has to be made right. It's like a puzzle that's been torn apart and you have to put the pieces back together again - but with all these new pieces that you never had before. Eventually, you put them together as well as can be expected and call it good. I guess every once in a while, something gets bumped and the pieces get out of whack again.

I feel like the reason that our reunion has been smooth for many years is because we were both looking at the pieced-together puzzle and thought we had it sorted out. But I'm starting to suspect that, like with the image above - where one person sees a vase and someone else sees faces - we were both looking at the same thing, but seeing very different things.

For Kate, I am simply her daughter. Once lost, now found, and brought back into her family as though I'd never been gone.

For me, Kate is not my mother. Growing up, it was like she'd never existed, like she was a myth. While I see her as akin to family, it's still not quite the same as family.

On one hand, I LIKE feeling wanted and included in Kate's life. I appreciate being brought into the larger family and feeling like I have a place there.

But, on the other, bringing Kate into my life is more complicated. I have my family and now there is another, someone to find a place for.

We've known all this. We've talked about it. Hell, we did a year of therapy together to air out all those things. We know each other well.

And, for the most part, these differing views didn't have a big effect. But, occasionally, things would come up. Kate would be upset whenever I had travel plans but didn't inform her of them. I didn't understand why that bothered her, or why I should have to keep her posted, but tried to be better about it. If I didn't acknowledge a holiday, I would hear about it. So, I tried to make a point of calling on special occasions. And, then, what sparked this whole kerfuffle...

Kate was visiting Portland a couple weeks before Christmas and was trying to schedule to see us. I was trying to fit it her visit between work, family, MBA, and the kids' schedules. When I finally suggested a time I could make work, Kate responded that while she always put me first, I always put her last, and did I even want her to move back to Portland? 

Kate has an explosive temperament where she will blow-up and then ask for forgiveness. I am more of the festering kind. While normally I would reassure Kate at one of these outbursts, I was at a point of maximum capacity. 

The email had struck something in me. Suddenly, I got a glimpse of what the disconnect was. She saw me as her daughter with all the obligations that come with that role. But, I had my share of family obligation and I didn't need more. 

I snapped an email back, saying not to come by if there was going to be drama. I also made it clear that I did not have the same obligations to her as I did to my family - that she wasn't family, at least not in the way she wanted to be. While I knew saying those things would be hurtful, I also knew they would be true.

Kate has often said that you choose your family. She would explain that for her, she saw her mother-in-law as her mother, as true and deep as her own family, if not moreso.

And, while I understand that, there is a crucial difference. Her mother-in-law didn't give birth to her and then give her to a different family to raise. Kate didn't keep me. She left me.


I know Kate is at the time of life where you get to revel in the children your raised and the family that you created. But I am not the child she raised, and this is not the family she created. It's not that I'm angry, at least not in a red-hot sort of way. There's anger there, of course. She chose to give me away - what's NOT to be angry about that?

But saying that she doesn't get to have me as family in this phase in her life isn't about revenge, it's the natural consequence of relinquishment. It's what happens when you give a child up. She didn't just give up my childhood, but she gave up me being her child, forever. It's not that we can't have a relationship, but, at least for me, it will never be the mother-daughter relationship that she sees us in.

A friend of Kate's who doesn't have children, and never wanted children, once mused that she saw our reunion as ideal - that Kate get to have a relationship with her daughter as adults without having to deal with all the undesirable parts of being a parent.

She saw is what Kate sees - the daughter gone and then returned, reunited. But, that daughter has been raised to believe she is someone else. In a world where someone else is her mother. So, for me, "reunion" feels more like meeting someone from a time long past, but that no longer exists. We come together as two separate people from two separate worlds, getting to know each other from that point only. The mother child bond that was there at birth, was broken. I'm not about to call her to whine about being sick, or needing a loan, or any of the things you do because you're family. It's not that way. I know she wishes it were different.

So we sit now in this mess of these blown up puzzle pieces of our reunion. We're trying to put them back together. My hope is that when we do, we'll both be able to see the full picture. Just like the picture of the vase and the faces, we may revert to seeing the image the way we always have, and have to shift to see it from the other point of view. But, that's the things with those pictures - once you see the difference, you never un-see it. Both exist, both are true, while being completely different. 

***

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

***

Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Back in Portland - Part 2

I've been told by some readers they think there's more to it. That they can tell that there's something lurking beneath the surface of the writing. That is gets deeper, darker ... and that I'm not quite getting there.

I agree.

I had the same reaction when I first read Kate's perspective in a couple chapters of the book. "Come on!" I said, "I know you had to think worse of me than that!" (after all, I was a self-absorbed 22-year old - I know what I was like - and it wasn't pretty).

So how to get there?

This is an attempt.

Kate and I are in a rough patch right now. We're kinda letting it all hang out on the page.

There's a danger to writing while things aren't resolved. When you're still working through stuff, the writing can come out abstract or, worse, ugly and petty. But, part of the experiment of "writing in the raw" is to get at the deep, dark stuff that's hard to access when things are all honky-dory.

Actually I can't speak for Kate - I haven't read her side of the posts yet. I'm trying to keep mine clean and uninfluenced at this point, so I won't read hers until I'm finished saying whatever it is I have to say.

It leaves you, the reader, if a more awkward spot. One we've put you in before, where you know more than either of us. But, that's kind of the point - for the reader to get the honest experience from both the birthmother and adoptee side.

So, I have a request. Tell me what you think. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be nice. But I want to know if I'm getting across what I'm trying to. And only you can tell me that. So ... thanks.

Here's Part 2...

~~~~~~~~~

Something about Kate moving away for a few years, and then coming back, has unsettled me. I can’t explain it. Reminiscent of when I was first in reunion, I feel invaded, threatened, that somehow my boundaries have been crossed. 

My mom had an adoption story she would tell me when I was a child. Her grandmother had adopted a child. An infant, her baby. But then months later the birthmother came back and took her child away. Laws were different then, nothing could be done.

I’ve never forgotten that story.

I know where I belong in my adoptive family. My footing is firm. There’s no question that I’m their daughter, that they’re my parents.

Ironically, with Kate, who is my blood, I don’t know where I fit. Or, rather, it is clear from her where I fit in her life. But, for me, I don’t know how I fit.

From the moment we found each other when I was 18, Kate claimed me as hers. That first day she invited me to call her “mom.” Weeks later, meeting a couple of her sisters and their family, she proudly introduced me as her daughter.

But, I wasn’t. It was true that I was her daughter, technically, but it was equally true that I wasn’t. I was someone else’s daughter. She was a stranger.

The years have gone by and she is no longer a stranger, but we still struggle with who we are to each other. I have accepted her calling me daughter. I silently qualify it as I hear it,

“I am her daughter but she is not my mother. She was, once, for a moment, but she relinquished that role to someone else, and relinquished me to them. I am their daughter. I may be her daughter as well, but she is not my mother.”

We actually debated this very topic last year at this time. It was our celebratory dinner after presenting together for the first time at the American Adoption Congress Conference.

“I am your mother. It’s a biological fact,” Kate said.

“But, you didn’t mother me,” I said back.

We sat there unmoved by the other’s argument, Kate sticking to her noun, me to my verb. Both were true, and the truth we held was the one that was most important to us.

Years ago, when I first dated the man who would become my husband, I had to regularly and painfully push back his affection. I didn’t want a serious relationship, and he did.

Early on, when his sister was visiting town, he wanted me to come with him to his mom’s house for dinner. I shifted in my seat uncomfortably, saying I would rather not. When he asked why I didn’t want to go, I explained that it would make it look like I was his girlfriend. Although we had been together for a few months and were seeing each other exclusively, I didn’t accept the title of girlfriend. I wasn’t comfortable with it. It implied more than I had decided to give.

I eventually agreed to go to dinner on the terms that he would not introduce me as his girlfriend.

Many months after that, I was decidedly smitten but still refused to commit. We went to a party at his work and he was greeted by a pretty co-worker. He introduced me as “his friend.”

“You’re friend?” I mocked him. He shrugged his shoulders with a smile. Not his girlfriend.

I realized then that I wanted to be his girlfriend. Not out of jealousy or insecurity but because I wanted to be claimed. I wanted to be his, and he, mine. Before then, I felt the term was being forced on me because of external circumstances – because we were intimate, because we were exclusive, because we were in love. To me, that didn’t make me his girlfriend. What made me his girlfriend was my claiming that I was.

Relationship terms can’t be put on from the outside. It had to come from within.

I don’t know what it means for my relationship with Kate right now. I still don’t know what to call us.

But, I know the feeling. It’s the same one when my boyfriend tried to get too close, too fast. 25 years certainly isn’t fast, but I still have my boundaries of what feels too close. 

***

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

***

Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions? Tell me! 

Please comment. 

Back in Portland

I haven’t been this puzzled by reunion in over twenty years.

This past Christmas, Kate and I had a big blowout. The thing is, it may have blown out unintended truths from me that I hadn’t known were there. I'm still trying to sort through them, so my blogs will be in parts as I go through it. This is part 1. 

~~~~~

Family is a complicated thing. More complicated for those of us adopted and in reunion. My mother chose to give me to another family, to be raised as their child. For better or for worse, that became my truth. My adopted family was all that I knew. At that moment of exchange, my birthmother and my original families ceased to exist. With no tie to the past, I only had the present.

Fast-forward eighteen years. I am the same child, now grown, and my world looks much like it did when I first became aware of my surroundings – I had my mom and dad, my brother, my childhood home, my friends, my neighborhood, my life. My world was solid, as real as the nose on my face.

I had known I was adopted since I was five. Finding out I was adopted didn’t change anything about my life. I still had my mom, my dad, my brother, my world. It just added a tidbit of information to it.  It was like finding out my adoptive mother was half German. Interesting maybe, but of little relevance in the day to day.

I thought it would be interesting to find my birthparents, to know where I came from. So I did.

And that changed everything.

Everything I knew about my life, my world, was a lie. I wasn’t a quarter German, I was half Polish. Suddenly, that mattered to me.

The original family I had been born into, and then removed from, was a large family of musicians, artists and adventurers. My grandfather had graduated from Harvard – or Yale – I forget which. They were boat people who enjoyed playing music.

The family I was put into was a small family of second-generation Irish immigrants. My dad was the first of his family to graduate college. They were more middle-class with working class values of a traditional family where my dad earned a living and my mom raised the kids. They were city people who enjoyed fancy dinners, wit and theater.

Neither family was better or worse, but they were decidedly different. Now, somehow, I belonged to them both (with more on the way when I would meet my birthfather ten years later).  

My birthmother was as much a stranger to me as anyone I would meet on the street, yet in a moment, we had become blood.

I felt invaded. I would swing between two extremes. There was euphoria in finally being connected to the earth, having confirmation that I had really had been born, and to people, and that I was part of people; and there was panic in the realization that who I was didn’t exist anymore. I wasn’t that person. I wasn’t this new person either. I was something in between.

Over the course of the next four years during college I absorbed the new information from that first meeting and waded into an interchange with my birthmother through letters, getting to know each other slowly, manageably.

The four years following that, I plunged into a relationship with my birthmother by moving across country to live with her and truly get to know her, and through that, get to know myself.

The years passed and we reached a buoyancy. It wasn’t always easy, but it was grounded. She was now part of my life. She wasn’t my mother, she was “Kate,” and that meant something, if only to me. I couldn’t explain what she was to me, but she was important to me. She would call me daughter, even though I wouldn’t call her mother, and that seemed to be okay, a kind of hard-won compromise.

We lived in the same town, and had our own lives, but were a part of each other’s lives. It had evolved into a normalcy that we felt it would be good to share our story with others who were new in reunion, or those who wondered about the effects of adoption, or people who struggled with their identity, or were trying to make up for past losses.

We’ve been writing our story for many years now, but I’m finding it’s still evolving, and change is hard.

Reunion is complicated. Even now, 25 years later. I don't know why it's still hard to sort out my feelings around it, but things flare up and it becomes clouded. I have to sort through it. 

Transformation is ugly before it turns beautiful.

***

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

The “M” Word

The florist asked what I wanted the card to read for Kate's birthday flowers. "Happy Birthday..." I said, and paused. 

I'm usually terrible with birthdays and planning ahead to send a gift. Flowers were a great solution, but the card...

Kate and I have not come to a good solution of what to call her in terms of her relation to me. My relationship to her is simple enough - I'm her daughter. But, referencing her is more challenging.

We've been in a limbo of birthmother for a long time. Neither of us find that satisfying. There's so much more to our connection, our heritage. She didn't just give birth to me. She and my birthfather are my blood, my lineage, my people - but is she my mother?  

On one level, yes. Last year, over dinner, Kate argued that technically she is my mother - that it's a biological fact. I said I understood that, but that there was more to it. We left the dinner unresolved. There was no tension, it was a pleasant, well-intended conversation, and we left dinner happy. But the content of the discussion has stuck with me ever since.

By being part of a writing group with adult adoptees, this is not an unique question. We all struggle with what our relationship to our first parents ("first" happens to be one of the terms used) are, should be, what we want them to be. What to call them is an issue in and of itself.

Some of the adoptees I know are passionate enough to take action to re-form the break that happened at birth and legally change their names to include their birth names. The first time I heard of someone doing that, I felt electrified.When you're taught, as adoptee, to accept your adoptive parents as your only parents, taking back your birthname seems like a shocking and rebellious act. But, really, it just makes sense. We all come from somewhere - and telling adoptees that they don't really screws with the mind. I believe children who are relinquished for adoption should keep their birth names. They should never have to lose them. Taking our original names away is cruel - it's a severing that is equivalent to a lie. You can add on your adopted family name, but you should still get to recognize where you came from. Even if you're not in contact with your first families (yet another term sometimes used), having the name at least keeps you connected to the earth.

I love the idea of taking back my family birth names. I would love to do it. I picture doing it with ceremony, including Kate and John as part of it - and fully recognizing just where I came from. It would be emotionally huge. But I won't do it. Not yet, anyway, I won't put my mom through that -my adoptive mom.  I'm not brave enough for that.

But, I thought, maybe I could be brave enough to at least recognize Kate as my mother on her birthday flowers.

My birth-sister refers to Kate as Mama. I always thought it a little out of place for an adult to call their mother, "Mama." It's a baby's term. Maybe that could be it, I thought. There was more to us than just birth. For a day or so, I was her baby, and she was my mama. For a day.

"Mama," I said to the florist. "Happy Birthday, Mama" I said. My heart was racing. I felt like the florist would call me out, would know that it wasn't right, would hear my hesitation, but she took the information without comment. Such a small thing, but I felt empowered, emboldened. I did it! I recognized Kate as my mother.

Later that night, Kate called and left a gushing thank you voicemail about the beautiful flowers. She didn't mention the card, but I knew that was included in the gush. She was happy. I was happy. It was perfect.

I was going to class, so I didn't have time to call her back. As the night progressed, my delight started slinking into something else. Something darker. Something like guilt mixed with doubt mixed with sadness.

I did it, but I couldn't do it. Not yet. Something is still not right.

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

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