I am a Happy Birthmother God-Damnit!
I have to admit when I am not perfect and I will say that I am struggling right now. I have been thinking a lot about supporting people in adoption even before I wrote that last post. As I said there, I am still working on my response to other birthmother’s who are still at the place where they insist adoption was a wonderful thing.
I believe I have found a bit more clarity today.
I don’t begrudge another birthmother for being in a place where she says that SHE had a positive experience. If she’s still at a place where she really feels that she did what she had to at the time and it’s working for her, then OK. I don’t want to make her fell all shitty about what happened. I’m not out to convince her that one day her adoptee will hate her for placement because I don’t know that any more than some pro-adoptive person knows that every adoptee will be happy and grateful. And I know that there are some truly lovely people out there that have adopted and do try as much as they can to make it positive for the original families and the adoptees. I can accept that some people do not feel that relinquishment was horrible for them and that they carry a positive feeling about adoption.
I accept that MY experience is NOT everyone’s experience, but I will then expect the same of you.
Do Not Tell Me How I Feel
It’s just rude and lazy. I have been blogging here for over 7 years now. I have every thought, every emotion, every raw truth admitted on this blog. Don’t come here and read one post and act like you KNOW me. At least take the trouble to do some research before you get all high and might passing judgment.
Ok, so what’s got me all in an uproar today? I found this comment today on my 29 Things I wish I knew Before Adoption Entered My Life post:
“this actually makes me really sad to read, to be honest…you’re basically making adoption out to be evil just because your single experience was horrific in your eyes & ‘ruined’ your life. you’re preaching to people who may very well have a completely different experience (as i did) & you’re encouraging discontent in the adoption/birthparent community. being a birthmama saved my life. could i have parented, sure, but being a birthmama means putting your baby first, above you, for their best interest, not yours. mine was full of grace, hope, joy & sacrifice. it was not, nor will it ever be, something that is bad, wrong, or something to be stomped upon. i’m so sorry that you had such an awful experience, but this is what’s wrong with the stigma’s placed on birthparents, that we are all bitter, angry, wish we wouldn’t have done it, you are feeding in to that stigma. it just makes me very sad for those girls who really need an adoption plan for their precious babies (like i & an unbelievably gracious & sacrificial amount of other women) that they may stumble upon this site & decide incorrectly because of your rant. i’m sorry, i just had to speak up 🙂 i think adoption is beautiful & i will yell from the rooftops that i am a birthmama who is PROUD to be such & take that title with as much worth as royalty! the past is past, dwelling on trying to change it still won’t change it. it’s moving forward in HAPPINESS & PEACE that enables you to not wind up a bitter individual who just play the “woulda coulda shoulda” game their whole life, thinking of what could of been instead of living life happy as it is, the good, the bad & the ugly!”
My immediate reaction? This chick pissed me off. I followed her profile to Google, but couldn’t find a link to a blog and posted a snarky comment back. Irritated.
I Already Know How it Feels to Be You
I found the same comment on Facebook, repeated the process, and then vented a bit. The conversation that ensued got me thinking.
I’m not annoyed that this birthmother had a different experience.
I’m not even annoyed that she thinks I’m wrong based on her personal experience.
I’m annoyed that she dares to come in and tell me that I should be more like her and if only I accepted PEACE & HAPPINESS that everything would be fine and dandy.
“Encouraging Discontent”? Look lady, I’m not the one going over to other people’s blogs and telling them what they should do and how they should feel like royalty and scream about “Birthmama” pride from the rooftops. That whole blog bombing with your “outrage” is not the sign of someone who is content and secure in their decision. See, this wasn’t a blog post about YOU and what YOU wish YOU knew about adoption relinquishment. It was a post about ME so I talked about what I wished and MY experiences. I never said they had to fit YOU. If it doesn’t fit you, it still fits ME and wait, what’s that, a whole lot of other people who bothered to agree in comments, but you didn’t bother reading any of them, did you? You have no right to go dismissing other people’s feelings if you want your own pint of view to be heard.
My Lack of Fellow Birthmother Compassion
Now, it doesn’t matter who this chick is. It’s not about posting her name and her situation and making a point of how wrong SHE is. I mean I could, I am angry, but the question was poised “Where is your compassion” and I too, wondered. Why am I so pissed off? I, of all people, should completely understand where this chick is coming from. And I do. See, I have been there and I have done that and I learned. When you come to someone’s house and start telling them how to live, well you best be prepared to be shown the carpet, or door or something like that.
When I was a proud birthmother and went over to the Birthmother’s Exploited By Adoption guestbook and posted about how adoption was so win-win and “not every adoption is like that” and how the others there were just clueless, I had my ass handed to me on a silver platter.
I deserved it.
I hated it, and I was upset, but they sure as hell had a right to call me on my shit. I was woefully ignorant and had blasted my mouth off before I had any idea who I was talking to and what I was talking about. If I was so positive and secure in my views and in my beliefs, then I wouldn’t have felt so threatened by what I had read. I would have just shrugged it off and found another place to read, but I was just shocked and horrified! I was just APPALED! I HAD to say something! So I told them how wrong they were. Ha! How DARE they make me question such a wonderful thing as ADOPTION! I’ll show THEM! Yes, I even called them all the evil “B” word.. I called them BITTER!!! I called them BOB’s which stood for “Bitter Old Birthmothers”.
And, then, I shut up and listened. Then, I called them mentors and friends.
This “Support” Thing; It Works Both Ways
I have compassion. I have understanding that those who protest too much are trying to convince themselves. I feel sadness for I know how far it is to fall when reality looms up. And so all snarkiness and anger aside, I will echo what I regret is the eventual truth: Enjoy it while you can, we’ll be here holding down the fort for you when you wake up. I’m working on being able to say if. Right now, I have to be honest and say when.
But until then, just don’t go telling me HOW I feel or how I SHOULD feel or what YOU think I ought to be doing and I won’t tell you what you WILL feel. If you want me to respect YOUR joyful adoption experience, then you need to accept MY truth too. I’ll be kind and leave you in your happy place, but if you question the validity of my feelings, then it gets much harder for me to stay on the high road. I’ll get all BOB on you. I learned from the best. Don’t come here and beg for me to give you a birch slap of reality. I’ll do it.
Don’t poke the mama wolves unless you want to hear the growls. Go stay in your happy place and leave my house of bitterness alone. I am really really HAPPY and PEACEFUL here.
See 🙂
It’s sad that this girl, woman whatever does not have the intelligence to consider other opinions and experiences. We lose when we limit ourselves like that. Our entire family refuses to consider our views on adoption.
This persons reply to you reminds me of a quote by Lord Molson who was a British politician.
“I will look at any evidence to confirm the opinion to which I have already come.” And she vehemently argues against any different opinions. It’s very sad.
This may not even be a “birthmama” at all, but an adopter trying to shut you down. Too phony and saccharine, just like so many adopters I know.
“i’m so sorry that you had such an awful experience”.
Bullshit. Your not sorry about anything but the fact that people have this medium to speak their truth. It makes you squirm and uncomfortable. GOOD. It’s about damn time. Now go back and get on your high horse and ride off into the sunset…
Her rant sounds like an adoption for religious reasons. A person who honestly thinks that adoption is THE ANSWER for abortion. A person who has probably been taught that anything less than a married Christian household for a child is akin to spitting in God’s face. Especially with the key-words of “grace”, “sacrificial”, and “joy”.
It’s funny how often birthmoms are supposed to sacrifice for the common good of their child. Yet why aren’t the infertile Christian married couples sacrificing their wants and needs to help people keep their child? It’s awfully curious that the solution is to take the child instead of help the family itself.
As I said on my Facebook a few days ago: It’d be a real interesting world to live in if we decided to make assault and battery and rape legal just because some people are into BDSM and acting out (safely) rape fantasies.
When you’ve had a happy experience with adoption and then expect everyone around you to be happy with adoption and continue enabling it, that’s pretty much what it amounts to. Because some people can convince themselves that being hit or pretending to be violated is fun, everybody else should just shut up and enjoy those experiences too.
Bullshit.
And you know, I thought human sacrifice was supposed to be evil. Well, unless women are suddenly not human, and if so I didn’t get THAT particular memo, not sacrificing people ALSO means not destroying them emotionally by taking their children away from them.
And if you’re OK with losing your children for ANY reason? By definition you’ve been destroyed emotionally.
A first mother who says that she’s not happy her child was adopted but IS happy that the child had a good life and turned out OK? I have respect for that position. Someone willingly lying down in front of the train and then yelling at everyone else for having to have been forced onto the tracks? That’s sick. I don’t consider that a “valid opinion,” I consider that a cry for help for some serious mental health intervention.
And no, this does not make them bad people. But it DOES mean somebody should probably take away their internets until they acquire said intervention.
Just sayin’.
I’ve only just found this blog a day or two ago, glad I have too.
I think what the original message poster was saying is valid for her at the time, BUT I also believe she was still within the first five to ten years POST-RELINQUISHMENT. I was all happy-clappy positive about adoption up until fairly recently, when I basically realised, pregnant with my third child, ‘Holy FU*K, what the F*CK did I do to deserve that psyche-warping derailment?’ Now I can look back on it for what it was- a survival instinct for me, and for my girl.
Do I think I should have HAD to make a decision in my youth of that magnitude without support of family or friends? Hell no. Therein lies the problem. Women adopt because they don’t have the support of the old community tribes we were designed- as humans- to belong to, to be brought up within, to depend upon as a whole body.
Today I suggest most birth mothers are raised within a dysfunctional nuclear unit. Feel free to call me out on this. I want to know it’s not always so.
As humans we are able and often willing to have sex aka ‘breeding’ from the teens. But we’re not ready and the natural environment is poorly suited/doesn’t exist these days for young parents- and in this manipulated commercial age of unreason, ill health and financial struggle, what is a young woman supposed to do? It doesn’t matter- she’ll make the decision based on what she knows, which generally is not much thanks to shite education systems and t.v./film propganda. (Who’s seen ‘Juno’ for heavens sake.)
18yrs later I’m just realising and wondering; for whom did I feel obliged to relinquish? The adoptive parents? Society or the ideal Cosmo/ Sex in the City lifestyle we’re force-fed as young girls? My parents who were of fairly high social standing, religious, perfectionistic?
I did it for me, I thought, because I had no idea who I was, I didn’t even feel like I existed, buried as I was beneath years of Alice Miller-style infliction of parental madness. Seriously, my parents were ‘perfect’ monsters. So removed from a natural reality of emotional and mental health. They were magazine perfect to outsiders, I realise that now in my 40’s. Fools. And mostly I did it for my baby, because I honestly believed I’d do as much damage to her as my parents had inflicted on me.
Seriously, it was to end with me, but I now realise I just passed on *every bit as heavy* baggage. I need to stop venting here and write a letter to my daughter now. That I’m universally sorry, no matter how great her life is, parents are, I made a mistake. I hope it ends up working to our advantage. I have faith it will. Somehow. Fingers crossed.
“gracious and sacrificial”, “proud”, ..as much worth as royalty”? Really? Hmmm.
Here’s something for expectant mothers to consider:
You cannot earn salvation,
redemption,
forgiveness,
or (real) love
by -impaling- yourself on the alter
of other people’s wants, needs, expectations,
or demands.
It just doesn’t work that way. People ””’pleasing””” (to attempt to ‘earn reward’ or gain a sense of ”worth”, or to keep from being rejected) is a filthy habit. If it is sincere and freely given that’s different. It’s the -I have to do this- or they won’t like me, or ‘they won’t be my friend’, or they won’t ”praise me” “i won’t be found *good* (in human eyes) that is destructive. Putting on a false front is a very heavy load.
I know, I tried for decades to attain such in that manner and all it produced for me was anger, pain, suffering and ..abuse / neglect of self in the desperate attempt to ‘be good’, to be ‘worthy’, to be loved.
Like the ‘put on the happy face and don’t ever speak of how much losing your child hurt’,… oh yeah, I tried for decades to be a ”good bee mommy” or rather the ”you’re not a hurting mommy who lost her child because you weren’t ”good enough” (you weren’t *worth* being his mommy”).
I often think that the expected / demanded pretense is in part what kept this practice going.
”See? There aren’t any unhappy bee mommy’s /there aren’t any hurting mommy’s. They’re all doing fiiiiiiine! ..well, except for those few “”bitter”” women.”
So the next generation of girls and women and boys and men lose their children and suffer as we. Sigh! I’m so sorry I didn’t throw a screaming hissy fit and then some! I’m sorry that my acquiescence to the cruelty and abuse of silent suffering led, in part, to the continuance of this rending of mother and father and child.
I will be silent no more while I have voice.
loss of a child to miscarriage hurts.
loss of a child to (secondary) infertility hurts.
loss of child to adoption is agony!