When You Don't Know What To Say

I am finding that blogging about my surrender and reunion experience can be a minefield. There is so much that I want to say but if I say it, it seems to be the wrong thing to have said. I wonder, if sometimes, our children would care enough to refrain from saying certain things to us?

I don't think that they often intend to hurt us, but talk about your knife wounds...we are to be censored but they have a wide-open field.

For instance, I know that being raised by other people is a reality for my children and all adoptees. I know that many adoptees see this as a positive thing. But, every time I hear words of praise for the adopters, "it was meant to be" or any variation thereof, the knife that was driven into my heart at surrender is twisted.

I respect how adopted people feel about their adopters. I would just ask the same in return. For many of us, the reception we received from our children's adopters wasn't the open-hearted thing for which we had hoped. Many of us were treated like dirty monsters invading a perfect world with no right to be breathing the same air. So, as we respect that adopted people care for their adopters, Please accept and respect the fact that many of us don't. I think, in all fairness, that shouldn't be required of us. Damn it, we are only human.

We natural mothers have also had to contend with the fact that the adoptee's "feelings of abandonment" are, for some reason, seen as more important than the tragic traumas of our surrenders. Neither the adoptee nor the natural mother is the center of the Universe. We are all part of the herd and the sooner we can reach a point of mutual respect, the better. I still have to turn to the term of "Terminal Uniqueness" whenever I think of how we can make every little, even obliquely, adoption-related issue all about us, mothers and adoptees. Gee, ain't we special?

I look at Stephen Hawking. He did not ask to be born with a genetic defect that ravaged his body while his mind remained whole and active. None of us have control, as infants, over what happens to us and we often have, if we are honest, no one to blame for a damn thing. Shit happens. My father wasn't the pick of Pops but my mother loved him and so there I was. I sucked my thumb over that one for a long time until I realized that my life was totally in MY hands. I'd rather cope than mope.

I tried to blog about how difficult this communication gap is for me and it backfired. One thing I don't want to do is hurt my children. But it is so frustrating, feeling gagged like this. Here I have decried the "walking on eggshells" scenario and that is just what I am being compelled to do. It is not the way I want things to be. Perhaps if it is known that this is a common response for so many of us in reunion, it might be helpful.

When we blog about our personal experience as it's related to the cluster-frack of adoption, we can often trip over our own keyboards. When we talk about how something is affecting us, we don't mean that as an indictment. But we can be clumsy. I was.

November is a nasty month with a day set aside for us to give thanks, and I wonder if that was not premeditated on the part of the industry and those in government and the adopters who support it. To our children, let me please point out that for us moms, just like you, this month, these idiots are asking us to be "aware" of the WORST THING, BAR NONE, that ever happened to us.

Don't be surprised if you don't find me in the gallery, applauding adoption or any one's adopters, especially the ones who had the privilege of raising my children. I am human. I am pained by the fact that someone else was given the joy I was denied at my expense. I am furious that so many adopters put their needs for that "only REAL parents" status ahead of the needs of the children they raised.

And I don't appreciate being treated like a cockroach in the kitchen. That's honest.