This article is about the underside of adoption.
In the New York Times a woman said don’t tell me I am adopted and was chosen. Don’t tell me my mother gave me away because she loved me. Another young woman at a writer’s conference said her sister could never accept her parents. Her sister found out she was adopted by finding paperwork in her parents’ dresser. Both children said they have been loved, but rejected.
The question they ask is – How would you feel if you never looked like anyone? If you had no background or no family tree?
I have tried to imagine myself in these women’s shoes. I’ve also thought about my own shoes. Knowing my own story and how we desperately wanted a child.
The first woman cut herself. The second woman never bonded and was in constant fights with her parents. Reading the statistics in the article, it said alcoholism and suicide is higher for those who are adopted. They said the rule as an adoptee is to never talk about the pain because they are the lucky ones. They were adopted.
This definitely was not the story I imagined. When we decided to adopt, never in my wildest dreams did I think of the baby girl in an Indian orphanage who felt lost. Never thought of adoption as a tragedy.
Our adoption agency said there would be a time period around the age of seven where our child would feel rejected, but never thought adoption would or could leave a scar in our daughter’s life.
Yes, my thinking may be naïve, but my mind has always gone to the happy place if we loved her enough, talked to her about her adoption, and were open about her adoption where she could ask us any imaginable question that she would consider us her family. In my world, there has never been a day where Ryley was different or didn’t belong to the Barnett’s and Miguelucci’s. Of course, we should never compare adopting a child to adopting our beloved dog Mugsy, but do think family is what you make of it.
To explain a little more about my train of thought….
We didn’t adopt our daughter because we would change her life for the better, but do believe as a family we will each change our lives for the better. Ryley has been a positive influence on our family with her bold, charismatic personality. She makes us think, smile, and more present people just by being Ryley. She fits us and believe we fit her. She fits us with our dance parties, tickle fests, sleep-ins, etc. Don’t think bloodline is the only important factor. Some of my friends are like sisters to me even though they don’t come from the same genetics. Arrogance would say our daughter’s birth mother couldn’t love her like us, but do think Ryley joined our family for a reason. Without diminishing the two women’s feelings, what I heard from their responses was not adoption is a tragedy, but where it goes wrong is the lack of true talk and acceptance. I feel many children, not only adoptees, have gaps in their heart. Children who are bullied, homosexual, not popular, racially diverse, etc. will discuss these gaps. Anything different can make you feel alone, rejected, or not whole. Life for me is all about tests and how you handle these tests, so, if adoption is not the scenario for the writer and the sister it would be something else. The important part is to not ignore feelings, to be honest, to have an open door policy, to teach your children resiliency (since life is not easy), to build a strong family where you are each other’s safe place, to have faith, to be proactive, and to see hope and the positive. If you stay in the negative, you won’t and can’t ever recover. For instance, who knows what your life would have been like if you stayed in the orphanage in India and never got adopted. Who knows what your life would have been like to want a child, but never have the opportunity. At work, my slogan is don’t just come to me with problems, but come to me with solutions. If you get to the core of the issue, the discussion is not about adoption per se but truly about what each person needs in the family; which can be different for every person and every adoptee. Don’t assume you know what the need is or what it should be. Again, I don’t want to offend anyone, but think the coward way out is to cut yourself, not speak, to concentrate on what you don’t have instead of what you do have, or to place blame in the wrong place. Like any family whether the child is adopted or not if you are not present, not open to each other’s differences, or don’t accept each other or advocate for each other then you will be broken. As a family, we’ve chosen to adopt and we’ve chosen to not be broken.
