While my friends and I are of a single mind on many things, which is wonderful serendipity and the thing from which many friendships are formed, we are all, also, very much thinking women who have minds and varying opinions of our own. Sometimes we see things differently and that is OK too. If I had to be your clone to be your friend, it just wouldn't happen.
Yesterday, one of those areas of disagreement was very evident in the blog post I wrote about the way the industry is using the self-interest of vacuous beemommies of the younger variety to keep the supply coming. I evinced pity for these young women, thinking that they, like the generation after us, would awaken to the true consequences of their loss and have a hard time forgiving themselves. For a few, that might well happen.
But I have had my eyes opened to something that I wasn't seeing when I would suppress my gag reflex long enough to read from those saccharine essays. The industry has managed to create a whole, new class of addictive disease. I am not sure what to call it...maybe Martyrism or Heroine-exia? In the discussion, I saw that some of these pathetic beemommies were addicted to the head pats and adopter gratitude and saw themselves as sooooo special for helping to "create a family" for someone else. WHOA! Yes. These kids would be willing to do it again! They are "affirmation junkies."
I have to say it. From the experienced viewpoint of someone who was forced to do it twice, You'll be so-reeeeee! I don't think they will immediately suffer from the same grief and pain that I experienced. Nope, what will happen is what is already happening as adpoptees from the 'open adoption' era reach their teens and adulthood and are starting to express their own feelings and ask the hard questions. I opine (and my dear friends are free to disagree) that they will take a hard, swift and painful belly flop off that beemommy/angel pedestal on which they think they stand. As addicts, they will have to experience withdrawal. Sorry Ladies, but I really pity these fools.
I think that, in the midst of all the attention in the post given to the Judas Goat Beemommies, the main point was badly expressed. And that is how, after feeding on our hearts and souls and the identities and self-images of us and our children, the Beast has evolved. We were the blood and guts it consumed to morph into this Machiavellian entity that is able to take an entire nation (one, by the way, which is becoming increasingly incapable of individual, independent thinking of just about any kind) and blow pixie dust in their eyes to the point that they are getting young women hooked on their own victimization. Ya gotta love the business-like approach. The bottom line has no conscience or morality.
One friend mentioned that she no longer felt guilty about being silent in the decades post-surrender and pre-reunion. We had to awaken in our own way. She's right. When we were able to realize what had truly happened to us and to our children, we read, we learned, we talked to each other and now we are speaking out to everyone. For me, speaking out and telling the truth about MY experience has caused a rift between me and my oldest child. As much as I love her, I will not keep silent. Adoption is a Beast, adopters are complicit and lies were told.
So while we are seeking justice and recognition for what was done to us in the EMS, the Industry Beast is forging ahead with a new, faster, more efficient model for the present day. I can't stop these bimbos from trying just a bit of the drug. If they start main-lining relinquishment, they and their innocent children are the ones who will suffer.
My time and efforts are better spent on the important things like the mothers of the EMS. And that is where it will always, first and foremost, be. But, for what little good it might do, some humane, soft-centered part of me wants to give these Barbie Dolls a map that shows the road to pain and that there be monsters, there. Another part of me wants to slap them silly and tell them to snap out of it. Still another part of me wants to ignore them. But, I'm, personally, not comfortable with the idea that what they are doing now is part of an attempt to dismiss our truth about our experience as something that happened "back then" and pointing to the good beemommies of today as representative of the Industry's benevolence. The Beast is clever and these young women are not very motherly.
11 comments:
I think part of the image of the NEW b/mothers is caused first by media hype. Look at all the celebrity adopters who are getting accolades for "providing homes" for all the poor 3rd world children. Second, so many families are now "blended" for various reasons, the strong natural bond between mothers and their children has been effaced...If you didn't have a strong bond with your mother, it's easier to say "it doesn't matter" who you call 'Mom.' Third, our society emphasizes 'career and personhood' over self-sacrifice and generousity. If the adopters waited too long to procreate, the same thought is imbedded in the minds of the younger b/mothers. "I can have other babies," they think never realizing that another child never replaces the one who is lost.
I'd love to see that boot camp Robin!
I do think it's important to remember that these Judas beemommies who blog are not the only ones today losing their children to adoption. There are still plenty of young women and girls out there who have no support and limited choices and aren't screaming from the rooftops about the wonders of adoption. Then they have these Stepford women out there telling them how wonderful and heroic they are for "choosing life" while they sit there wondering why it hurts so much if they did something wonderful and thinking that there must be something wrong with them for grieving so much. And then they don't say anything...and the cycle of secrets and lies continues.
Interesting point, Eileen. And a compassionate one, too.
"Maybe we could send them all to a boot camp for motherhood. I'd volunteer to be a part-time drill sergeant."
And you would be perfect! Pixie dust that falls right in line with the rainbows and butterflies ;)
I cannot help but feel that someday these Rainbow Bmommies will feel the pain in their guts, and will come to know the pain of the loss. However, they will not have anyone to blame but themselves. I predict a huge upsurge in the suicide rates of middle-aged women in the next few decades....
I agree, Sandy. I think that knowing I was not the shameful slut they tried to make me out to be made me want to live, but finally undestanding that I had no options or choices at all KEPT me alive.
As a former Judas Beemommie who clung to her pedestal for as long as she possibly could, I have to say Eileen makes a very good point about remaining silent and wondering what is wrong with you for feeling anything but the happy, happy, joy, joy we are told we should feel for giving away our children.
I lived for almost sixteen years as a good beemommie - to the point I was quick to judge other bad bemommies who weren't as "picture perfect" in the way they conducted themselves. Ha! If I'd only known the truth then.
But even as that pain hit - and it was the worst I have ever felt in my life - I thought I was the weird one, the strange one. Even with internet access, it still took me three more years of battling it alone before I finally stumbled across others who were struggling like I was. Up until then, I firmly believed there was something wrong with me for what I was feeling and because that just added more shame, I never even though of speaking out or seeking out others who might be speaking out as well.
I just have to wonder, Cassi, if those of you that "come to" do so because your maternal instinct was subdued but not destroyed. I think that the poison the industry feeds the mothers is more effective with some than with others.
I think you probably hit it on the head, Robin, my maternal instinct was subdued but not destroyed and after years of living in denial and telling myself, and others, that it was a "good" thing to give away my first born son, I finally hit a point where I couldn't lie anymore because that instinct had never really gone away. I had just continued to shove it down inside of me for as long as I could to avoid the pain.
The thing I notice now is, with the new version of good beemommies, the industry has learned another tactic. Where I came in on the beginning wave of being a wonderful, glorious saint for giving away my child to that poor desperate couple who deserved a "gift" of my own flesh and blood, there was no post-adoption counseling, as they call it today.
In other words, once they had their grimy hands on my son and the aparents check deposited in their account, they were done with me. I had filled my requirement for them. And because of that, because their influence over me began to weaken and reality finally found it's way in, I was able to finally "come to" and couldn't deny any longer the horrible pain and loss giving away my child had caused and that instinct found it's way back from where I had buried it for so many years.
But, I believe they have wisened up to that "risk" and that is why they now are so quick to offer counseling to their good beemommies after the adoption. And the counseling they offer is nothing more than a "refresher" course to the bull they fed to them in the beginning. If you are hurting or questioning giving up your child, they remind you of all the reasons why you were crap and could not keep and raise your own son or daughter and reinforce your saintly status by nudging you all over again back up on to that pedestal you are starting to slip off of.
So, it could very well be that even these moms still carry the same maternal instinct but where I was left on my own and finally could no longer deny it, the beemommies in today's world are still very carefully guided by the industry so that they continue to spout their "glorious" praises of adoption and don't recognize that instinct buried inside of them.
I think you probably hit it on the head, Robin, my maternal instinct was subdued but not destroyed and after years of living in denial and telling myself, and others, that it was a "good" thing to give away my first born son, I finally hit a point where I couldn't lie anymore because that instinct had never really gone away. I had just continued to shove it down inside of me for as long as I could to avoid the pain.
The thing I notice now is, with the new version of good beemommies, the industry has learned another tactic. Where I came in on the beginning wave of being a wonderful, glorious saint for giving away my child to that poor desperate couple who deserved a "gift" of my own flesh and blood, there was no post-adoption counseling, as they call it today.
In other words, once they had their grimy hands on my son and the aparents check deposited in their account, they were done with me. I had filled my requirement for them. And because of that, because their influence over me began to weaken and reality finally found it's way in, I was able to finally "come to" and couldn't deny any longer the horrible pain and loss giving away my child had caused and that instinct found it's way back from where I had buried it for so many years...
...But, I believe they have wisened up to that "risk" and that is why they now are so quick to offer counseling to their good beemommies after the adoption. And the counseling they offer is nothing more than a "refresher" course to the bull they fed to them in the beginning. If you are hurting or questioning giving up your child, they remind you of all the reasons why you were crap and could not keep and raise your own son or daughter and reinforce your saintly status by nudging you all over again back up on to that pedestal you are starting to slip off of.
So, it could very well be that even these moms still carry the same maternal instinct but where I was left on my own and finally could no longer deny it, the beemommies in today's world are still very carefully guided by the industry so that they continue to spout their "glorious" praises of adoption and don't recognize that instinct buried inside of them.
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