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

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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

Reunion Haiku

once the journey's destiny realized  

and see the scattered pieces of ourselves

we realize we've just begun

***

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

***

Grandsons

Illustrations from the beloved, Tikki Tikki Tembo.

Today, my oldest son turns eight. Both of my sons have a good relationship with their birth-grandparents. I think they both understand the difference between my birthparents and my adoptive parents and seem comfortable with everyone.

We have a family rule that all questions are okay. It doesn't matter if the topic is "inappropriate" as my kids would say. At this stage, it's usually in reference to bad words or potty talk, though there was also a question that the kids worried was inappropriate when they asked if married people kiss more often than non-married people ("yes and no" was my answer). What's interesting is that they haven't yet asked why I was relinquished for adoption, why didn't my mom keep me? And, what will that mean for them - will there be fear that I could give them away? It nags at me, lurking. Why haven't they asked?

I don't know exactly what I will say. I will tell them that Kate was very young, too young to be a parent - and give the examples of teenage girls they know to give them perspective.

I will skip the things I've always been told, the things that now get under my skin, "it was for the best, and, she wanted a better life for me." I will try to stay closer to the harder truth, "It was just too hard for a single young woman in that time to raise a baby."

Something about saying that truth, even to myself, is reassuring to me. It was just too hard. She didn't have the resources, she didn't have help or support.

But there's the darker truth too, that she didn't want the baby. Even though there is regret now, the truth at the time was that she didn't want me. That part, I think, is just too sad to share.

***

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

***

Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

The Many Sides of Mother's Day

It's been twenty-four Mother's Days that I've been in reunion with my birthmother, Kate, and I still haven't found a way to celebrate it.

My own boys are 8 and 6, so, as a mother, I am in my prime years for Mother's Day enjoyment. They look forward to Mother's Day. They make me gifts at school, and enjoy making them. They will bring me coffee in bed, and then we'll pick an activity that we all enjoy -  a hike or drawing pictures or playing basketball. The best part is that I get their appreciation for the things I do for them the rest of the year.

As the adopted daughter, it's easy for me to celebrate Mother's Day with my adoptive mom. I send flowers and call her and we both seem good with that. I get to appreciate all she's done for me.

As the relinquished daughter, I am stymied. I don't really want to rejoice being relinquished. I don't imagine Kate associates joy with being a desperate and isolated pregnant teenager who is giving away her daughter. Appreciation the years of care and nurture and sacrifice - well, that doesn't work either. And I've come too far to fall back into the old, tired and inaccurate mantra of the birthmother's noble sacrifice to give me a better life.

I love Kate, and am happy to have her in my life. I wish I could acknowledge her in some beautiful way, but I can't seem to find a way to do it. Over dinner last month, while discussing the difficulty of finding the right word for who she is to me (I find birthmother as a term to be weak and missing the whole picture, Kate down-right hates it), Kate insisted that she is my mother. "It's just as a matter of fact," she explained, "I am your mother." She was trying to get across that biologically, it's just fact. I gave a small shrug, unconvinced. While I could see her reasoning, it still didn't ring completely accurate.

Kate  has only been in my life during my adulthood. While she became a mother when I was born, I became the daughter of my adoptive mom by the time Mother's Day came a month after my birth. Although I existed for Kate, though I was out of her life, she didn't really exist for me. Certainly not in my child's mind. To me, she was more imaginary than literal. Saying that I had a birthmother was akin to saying there is a Santa.

While I know Kate is my mother, I can't acknowledge her as my mother because I wasn't mothered by her. Mother is both a noun and a the verb. If the verb isn't part of the relationship, does the noun still stand? In one way but not the other. It doesn't fit.

Yet, there is still pressure to acknowledge the day in some way. Mostly, all I've been able to manage is a phone call to say, "Happy Mother's Day," while trying to keep the question-mark out of my voice.

***

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

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

The Men of Reunion

It seems that men often come as an afterthought in reunion conversations. One of the attendees at our talk at the American Adoption Congress asked if I have a relationship with my birthfather. I said that, yes, I do, and that we have a good relationship. But, I also explained that my relationship with him just isn't loaded like it is with my birthmother. I said I don't know why exactly, aside from the obvious part that relinquishment wasn't his decision (he didn't have a part in the decision). But even when it comes to the connection to the larger family, my connection with my birthfather feels less ... important isn't the right word ... less heavy, less significant, less immediate. That's it - less immediate. It feels one step removed.

I talked about this with my birthfather, John. when we spoke a couple weeks ago. He was saying that he finally got it and that it's because the father is NOT the mother. That the relationship with the mother is so fundamental, that it's just a different thing.

I get that, but it still doesn't quite satisfy my curiosity about the difference in relationship with not only my birthfather, but the men in reunion vs. women in reunion. In addition to my birthfather, I have a birth-step-father, Kate's husband, who I've known nearly as long as I've known Kate. There are my uncles, my grandfather (Kate's father is still living). Kate's husband's father just died this past week, and he was more a part of my life than Kate's own father. I feel that loss so much right now and it makes me want to have a stronger connection to the men in my life.

Maybe it's just that men are different than women. Maybe that's as simple as it is. Because they're different the relationship isn't as complicated, isn't as intense, isn't as loaded. And maybe that's okay. It doesn't mean they're not important, it's just that it's easier. And with adoption, I'm totally okay with anything being easier.

After all, my boys will soon be men, and my reunion is theirs as well. They are a part of all of these families in a way that will come much more naturally to them than it has for me. I don't think they'll question their connections with the families in the way that I have. It will be easier.

***

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

***

Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

Thoughts from the Conference

In 1997, eight years into our reunion, Kate and I had been through many dramatic ups and downs and deep challenges. There were times that we didn’t know what would happen, or if our relationship would survive. After years together working through it, we got to a solid footing with each other. Not perfect, but stable.

It was at that point, we decided to go together to the American Adoption Congress Conference in Vancouver WA, hoping to gain more insight into our experience.

Now, seventeen years later, we got to experience the American Adoption Congress Conference again. This time, even deeper and longer into our relationship. And, we were going to present, as well as listen.


The introduction to the conference took me right back into the swirls of amazement in being with people who have an instant understanding of what you are experiencing. It's the experience of being enveloped in honesty. Considering that what we are experiencing 
- questioning the good of adoption, discussing the wounds and issues it causes - are topics that aren't acceptable in our society, it felt like an act of amazing bravery.

It made me realize that in presenting, I would be speaking those unacceptable truths. Despite my time and experience in reunion, and no matter how much of a rebel I may feel that I am, once I was about to cross that line to talk in public about something that's passive-agressively forbidden by society, my heart started racing and my head began swimming. I couldn't eat and couldn't sit still.


That anxiety morphed as we began the talk itself. We went into the very large conference room with lines of chairs and I worried that no one would come to the presentation (Kate and I joked that we would have one person there, and we could sit on either side of them, reading our parts to her one by one). 


Once the room filled with people and we began our talk, I worried that people wouldn't related to it, or that we were droning on too long, or that this was all just ... wrong. 
Then we were done. And we had questions from the audience. And we had conversations. Suddenly, we were all there together, all going towards the same goals, holding similar values. I felt full, and right, and heard. 


We were able to speak the unspeakable. Nothing came crashing down, the world didn't stop. 


Of course, the world didn't change overnight to knowing the truth about adoption and reunion. But maybe our little talk will cause a ripple that will go out and on. I want people to talk about their experiences in adoption and reunion. Everyone's story is important. More than that, everyone's story is interesting. 

What was different at this conference was the variety and depth of the adoption and reunion experience. No longer was long-term reunion unusual - there were lots of people in our talk who were in reunion as long as we've been. And there was a talk on donor-conceived children who have such a similar circumstance to the adoptees with so much of the same issues. They were all there because they want the openness and honesty about the experience. 


I'm sure I'll still feel the pressure that we shouldn't speak out, but I'll just get used to doing it 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!