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Monday, April 2, 2012

Life is Messy

There is a saying in adoption that God's perfect Plan A was for the parents to keep the child and that adoption is Plan B. I don't like the idea that adoption is Plan B. I think that this opinion grows from well-meaning people trying to reconcile a belief in a loving God with a child who's been abandoned.

Ask any abused child - just because your parents decided to keep you does not mean that life will be cozy...or even, nice.

Ask any child who is being abused by their foster/adoptive parents or living in the unbelievable squalor of an orphanage
 (even a good one is still just an orphanage, nothing takes the place of a family who loves you) - just because your parents gave you up is no guarantee either.

Life is hard. Period.

Most people have hard stuff in their lives.

If there is a Plan B, it's this whole world that we live in.

Adoption is an answer to a crappy question. It can be a very very very good answer.

I love this quote:



"Life is not holding a good hand. Life is playing a poor hand well."
- Danish Proverb

Adoption can take a hand full of jokers and fill it with aces and wild cards. It doesn't necessarily replace the jokers...but we all have jokers in our hands.

That being said:


Every adoption grows out of heartache. It's a painful truth. No matter how good the adult reasons to give up a child (and there are some GOOD reasons) it still feels like what is, on some level, to the child -rejection. 



It would be very easy to feel very judgemental of Q-Boo's birth parents - who would abandon a child? But then, I am not them, I do not face the mornings that they face, I do not live their lives, in fact I know very little about what it really means to be Chinese in China, paraticularly in rural China.

I've read lots of very good books on adoption and attachment for LYRIC ( Attaching in Adoption, Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft) through this process but the best book that I've read, the one that has helped ME to get my head around this the most, has been, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother by Xinran.  It helped me to understand the possible heartbreaking scenarios that might lead a Chinese mother to desert her child. After reading it, I want to bring them BOTH home. I want to erradicate from the world all such horrible situations. No mother (or father) should EVER have to face those choices. It created compassion inside my heart for Q-Boo's birth mom and I think that that is necessary if I am going to do a very good job of raising OUR daughter.

(You just can't get around that, in every adoption there are two mothers, two dads, two sets of siblings -two families. I get to be a part of one set. Do I like it? No, not all the time. But, if I truly love my daughter, I embrace ALL that she is and what she is is part of two families. Special thanks to my friend, V, who taught me this. She has three adopted children in various stages of "open adoption" and she seeks out ways for her kids' biological families to be a part of her kids' lives because it's best for her kids.  It takes incredible strength and work but she LOVES her kids and she accepts them for what they are- kids who are part of two families.)

I love the photo on the cover. It is heartbreaking and accurate.
It also mirrors the cover of Xinran's first book, The Good Women of China.

I want Lyric to understand her birth mother from a spot of respect and love...when I am afraid that she'll only, really, feel unwanted. (And, I worry about how to help her deal with adoption as one aspect of the things that define her in life, without it becoming THE defining factor.)


(Actually, Q-Boo has been fostered for the better part of her life so that makes her a part of three families and she's had a sponsor who's paid for her to be in foster care and people in all sorts of places who've loved her and helped her not just to survive but to thrive. They all need to be respected. If for nothing else, because that's the right thing to do but also because it is good for Q-Boo's sake.)

Gotcha Day is the day that (THANK GOD!) you are united with your child - the official adoption, in China, usually takes place later that same day or the next morning. Gotcha Day is the birth after the LONG paper pregnancy. It will be one of the happiest days of my life...and her worst.

That day, probably in the morning, maybe right after Q-Boo eats her breakfast, someone that she barely knows will show up and take her from the only family that she's ever known, drive her a couple of hours in a car, and bring her to me, in a hotel, in an unknown city. They will hand her to me and she'll become, in that moment, "flesh of my flesh," (oh, I can NOT wait) but for her...

...she will be passed to people she does not know,
who do not look like her,
or smell like her,
who do not move like she's used to,
who do not know the routines and the rituals of everyday life,
who do not even speak her language.

These people probably can't even prounce her name correctly and, at some point, will probably start calling her something totally different.

Two sisters, a mom and a dad...gone...(it was a foster family, it wasn't permanent - they were doing a job, even if they were doing it very well- but to her, it was her family) ...replaced with two brothers, another mom and another dad.

Can you imagine? I can't.

She's being shown our photos, being told that we are her momma and her "baba," but she's not even old enough to understand the concepts. It would be world-class hard at 41...she'll be about TWO. IF she could ask the questions, we couldn't understand them. And, what answers could we give that would make it "okay," in her heart?

She'll get through it, we'll all get through it. There will be giggles on the other side and blury memories of a life before she belonged, heart and soul, to us. But first, there will be grief and confusion and terror. And that, I dread.

Q-Boo has been very lucky, she was put into a  good foster home almost as soon as she was found.  She will, most likely, grieve a great deal.  Other kids, who do not know "family" outside of an orphanage, face other complex issues.

This is a reality in international adoption.  See,

Hope for Healing
 or
Mia Mia Mia
or
No Way Out But Through
and even,
Click Your Heels Three Times

and be sure to read the comments on these posts as other people chimed in about THEIR experiences.


Adoption (but really, all parenting) - it just ain't for the weak at heart...and it's messy.



Just really feel the need for more information?  Check these out:

LWB - Realistic Expectations   
(Cleanliness)

LWB -  Realistic Expectations 2   
(Potty Training)

LWB - Realistic Expectations 3
(Clothing)

LWB - Realistic Expectations 4
(Child Preparation)

LWB- Realistic Expectations 5
(Food Issues)

LWB - Realistic Expectations 6
(Attachment)

LWB - Realistic Expectations 7
(Parasites)






2 comments:

  1. I read something while we waited for Ting that has always stuck in my mind- (I think Amy Eldridge of LWB wrote it...) 'Adoption is a redemptive response to a tragedy'. So very true.

    Big hugs to you & can't wait to hear that you have TA SOOOON!!!!!

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  2. ugh...I still say adoption is one of the MOST HOLY THINGS that humans do...and how amazing that this most holy action is so messy and so imperfect and so...human! I only see sunshine in my little bright corner of the world...how easy it is to forget the "dark night of the soul" through which each of the wounded parties must walk alone. Nights. Dark NIGHTS (plural) of the soul. Each parent from all sides. Each child. Each participant. Bless you! A thousands bless yous to all involved in this amazing, heroic, pain-filled, trustful, hopeful project!!!!

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