tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39805319813368327892024-02-21T06:02:47.096-07:00The Happiest Sada birth mother's storyJill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.comBlogger400125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-78360583983269031882016-08-29T20:25:00.000-07:002016-08-29T20:25:02.202-07:00PostmortemI started this blog exactly seven years ago.<br />
<br />
At the time I was almost completely consumed by it. The only thing that kept me going was blogging. I wrote constantly; I didn't know what else to do. I didn't have an endgame where blogging was concerned. The Happiest Sad would, I assumed go on forever.<br />
<br />
I think it's done. I haven't updated in I don't know how long. My heart hasn't been in it for a long time. The comments and e-mail and messages became overwhelming and stressful. People expected things of me. People wanted things from me. People felt this connection to me through my writing and it got to be too much. I'm not qualified to give the sort of counseling people were looking for and I've never claimed to speak for anyone other than myself. This blog was only ever meant to be representative of my experiences and feelings and so many people wanted it to be so much more. I've never been good at living up to other people's expectations.<br />
<br />
I thought that if I took a break I might reclaim some of my enthusiasm for adoption and blogging and all of the things that used to mean so much to me. But today I'm calling it. That ship has sailed. I'm done.<br />
<br />
I am sorely tempted to delete everything or at least make it private. In retrospect I feel I did much more harm than good, both to myself and to others. Beyond that, I feel absolutely no connection to the woman who started this blog or even the woman who continued it when Roo got a little older.<br />
<br />
After some really horrible things happened to me in the last few years I went back to my therapist and one of the things that he mentioned is that I have changed so, so much since I started seeing him ten years ago. Things that would have broken me even six or seven years ago are just irritations to me.<br />
<br />
I don't identify with the woman I used to be. I have almost nothing in common with her. I don't pity her and I don't envy her but I also don't know her, and I don't want to. She wasn't happy. I am. As terrifically flawed as things are, I'm finally happy.<br />
<br />
I love Roo with my whole heart. I always have and I always will. And I'm not her mother, and I am okay with that. I said that to my friend who insisted that she's still mine.<br />
<br />
"She's still your daughter. You're still her mother."<br />
<br />
I get that a lot, actually, mostly from birth mothers who see their relationships with their placed children in that sense. "My son has two mothers," they'll insist. "I'm still his mom."<br />
<br />
Sorry, but I'm not Roo's mom. Roo has a mom.<br />
<br />
"But you gave birth to her, you're still her mom."<br />
<br />
But I'm not. I'm her birth mom and that's good enough for me. I grew her and I love her and if she ever needs anything from me - blood, a kidney, half my liver, my bone marrow, or help burying a body, I will give it to her in a heartbeat, no questions asked. But as it stands today my Roo does not need me.<br />
<br />
That's the difference, I think. If I were Roo's mother she would need me. She doesn't need me.<br />
<br />
I'm glad she doesn't! If she needed me I think I'd feel that there was something wrong - that she wasn't getting the love and support she needs from her parents, that she feels incomplete as a result of being adopted. Roo knows I love her and that's all I need out of our relationship. The fact that the last time I saw her she was much more interested in her ice cream than answering my questions about school is the opposite of a problem.<br />
<br />
(Ice cream is very, very important, and I'm proud of her for understanding that.)<br />
<br />
I've separated myself from the adoption world. I have nothing new to contribute, nothing new to say. I got tired of it. I don't attend any activities or support groups or anything. I removed myself from every adoption Facebook group I was added to. I stayed in a few local ones that I don't follow but something another birth mom posted cemented my decision to walk away from the Christian adoption community completely.<br />
<br />
She placed a few years ago - two? Three? I don't know, I met her maybe once. But she has since married and was, at the time, expecting her first child with her husband. She asked for advice from other birth mothers who had "healed and made new lives for themselves." And her definition of that was marriage and family.<br />
<br />
This made me wonder, do I not count? Is the life I've built for myself somehow less meaningful because I'm single? Am I not "moved on" because I don't have kids? Frankly, I know too many birth moms who rushed to get married and have another kid after placement and I don't think they're better off for it.<br />
<br />
I know that this birth mom, who is a lovely and kind woman, was asking for advice from birth moms who have married and had kids but that's specifically not how she phrased her question. I read it and I realized I was done. I'm done with the stereotypes and the expectations and the stupid standards that are so prevalent in the Christian adoption world.<br />
<br />
I have moved on. I have healed. I have clawed my way to a new life and I am proud of it and I'm sorry my definition of healing doesn't look like it's supposed to. But it's mine and it's good enough for me and even if I never marry and never have children I have [expletive deleted] healed, whether anyone sees it or not. I see it. I feel it. And I'm happy.<br />
<br />
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I would shout it from the rooftops but I don't like heights: I am not a hero. I am not brave. I am not selfless. I am not an angel. I am a deeply flawed, deeply damaged woman who was scared out of her mind and made a desperate decision for the small person she loved most in the world. And I would do it again a million times.<br />
<br />
But I don't need strangers telling me I'm wonderful for placing my child for adoption. I don't want that. It is nobody's damn business, and I realize as I'm typing that how absolutely stupid that sounds considering I documented my entire adoption experience for a good five years on a public blog.<br />
<br />
But my point is that this blog has unintentionally empowered people to insert themselves in my life and my story. People who I have never met, who only know me through my words here, have sent me e-mail and left comments about how I need to take better care of myself and fix myself or I won't be any better off in a decade. People have attempted to diagnose me and treat me despite the fact that I pay a lot of money to both a therapist and a psychiatrist to do both of those things (spoiler alert: it's working, things are rad).<br />
<br />
I've gotten unsettling e-mail that made me worry I was being stalked. I've gotten supportive, lovely e-mail from people who have become friends. I've gotten heartbreaking e-mail from birth mothers, and from women who confided that they wished they'd placed the child they're parenting.<br />
<br />
This blog has been a beautiful burden. My refuge and my rage. A full-color catalog of my ups and downs. The happiest sad.<br />
<br />
But I think it's time to officially say goodbye. I'll probably never update again. I haven't read a message or comment on my Facebook page in months and I don't want to. I will likely delete it. Knowing that this blog is hanging out here without any sort of conclusion has been one final thread tying me to the adoption community I don't want a part of anymore.<br />
<br />
I'll always be connected to adoption through Roo. But I would hope that adoption is a relatively minor part of her life as she grows. There are so many more interesting and wonderful things about her than the fact that her mom didn't give birth to her.<br />
<br />
Some of you have been following me from the very beginning and for that, and for your love and support, I thank you. You got me through some tough ish. Those of you who have meant the most know where to find me on the internet, although I think I'm Facebook friends with most of you anyway.<br />
<br />
To those of you who have harrassed me, belittled me, condescended to me, and concern-trolled me, I'm sad that you don't have anything better to do. Pokemon Go is pretty popular these days, if you've got a smartphone. I also recommend Neko Atsume, particularly if you like cats but are allergic like I am.<br />
<br />
To those of you I have helped, I am humbled and grateful. To those of you I have harmed, I am so, so sorry and if I can't have your forgiveness I ask for your understanding.<br />
<br />
To the only reader I had in mind for this blog, the one who has yet to read a word - my dear darling Roo. May you be happy. May you be smart. May you be kind, and may you be well.<br />
<br />
Our galaxy's sun is 864,938 miles in diameter (yes, I Googled that). But my love for you is larger. I hope the universe really is expanding because between my love and the sun's growth things are going to get tight in here.<br />
<br />
You are my favorite and my best. My jelly and my jam. My French phrase for reason for being. Thank you for being, and thank you for being you. You're wonderful and I absolutely love you to bits and forever, no matter what.<br />
<br />
- JillJill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-22082946456285489582015-07-05T21:10:00.004-07:002015-07-05T21:11:24.615-07:00July 5, 2009I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before but I kept a private blog that I updated every single day of my pregnancy. It was half first-person, half asides to Roo, who I called Peanut because that's what she looked like on my first ultrasound. I was induced on July 5, and this year it's on a Sunday again like it was the year Roo was born. As such I've been thinking a lot about that experience and looking at the clock, dredging up my timestamped memories. I started a long, feelings-laden post earlier today but I abandoned it because I remembered my pregnancy blog.<br />
<br />
I'm not going to share everything I wrote the day I was induced because some of it is very, very personal and the only person I can imagine letting read it is Roo in 20 years or so, when she's the same age as I was when I wrote it. But I do want to copy and paste bits and pieces for your reading pleasure.<br />
<br />
I was fully committed to single parenting when I wrote this but I had oh so many worries and fears, which I think is normal for anyone about to have their first baby. Reading it now, knowing that I would place Roo for adoption 9 weeks later, is a little bittersweet. <br />
<br />
I sure love that girl. Always have, always will. There's not a doubt in my mind that adoption was the best thing in the world for her. I'm lucky to have that kind of conviction. I know too many birth moms who don't.<br />
<br />
<br />
And now, a blast from the past. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
July 5, 2009<br />
<br />
Normally I would have done my baby blogging ... oh, you know, like
15 hours ago. But I didn't get on the computer last night. I wanted to
get a good night's sleep (my last ever?) and talk to Mom and cry and a
million other things.<br />
<br />
Why am I so depressed about having a baby? I
should be excited, I know that. I should be counting down the hours
until I get to hold my sweet little Peanut at last. But all I want to do
is cry. <br />
<br />
It's not just because the prospect of labor frightens
me, although there is that. It's that I don't know if I'm ready to be a
mother. I am terrified that I won't
be a good mother ... I've been thinking more about adoption in the
past few days than I ever did before. <br />
<br />
Oh, sweet little
Peanut. How sorry I am. You deserve so much more than me, than I can
ever hope to be. What if I'm not meant to have you? Will I know somehow?
I hope so. I've been through so much, though. How on earth could I put
myself through another devastating loss? Oh, Peanut. How I love
you. I only want what's best for you. But what if that isn't me? <br />
<br />
Shoot.
This isn't how I should be thinking right now. I've got to leave for
the hospital in two hours. I should be ... I don't know. Eating dinner.
Relaxing. Talking to Mom. Breathing. Double-checking my bag. Something
else. Anything else.<br />
<br />
You will be worth it all, Peanut. I know it. <br />
<br />
I love you, little girl. Don't you ever doubt it.Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-40197180793399444152015-05-24T14:12:00.004-07:002015-05-24T14:12:51.186-07:00In which I say very little with a lot of wordsLong time, no blog.<br />
<br />
More than six months, to be exact. I started and abandoned about thirty-seven updates. I read somewhere that a lot of perfectionists eventually outgrow their quirk but I feel like I've just gotten worse. The older I get, the more critical I am of myself and what I write and think and feel.<br />
<br />
I've reached the point where I hate and would like to re-write every word of this blog, or maybe just delete it forever. I no longer relate at all to the woman who wrote it. I don't know who she is. She's not me, that's for sure.<br />
<br />
Without getting into specifics I'm just going to say that the last 18 months of my life were some of the worst of my life and some things happened to me that should never have happened and I ended up checking out of a lot of things that used to be important to me, blogging among them.<br />
<br />
If I don't let myself think about the things that happened I don't feel destroyed by them anymore which I suppose is a sign of personal growth. On the other hand I feel like I'm a lot more bitter and angry than I used to be and I don't like that side of myself. Two years ago I was anxious as hell but I had a little smidgen of hope and things were for the most part under control. Then I met this guy and I one hundred percent believed this was it, this was my guy, and one thing led to another, and the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the sovereign nation of Japan.<br />
<br />
No, sorry, I'm channeling Brian Regan.<br />
<br />
I digress. It's been a rough road and I'm a little beat-up. But here I am. <br />
<br />
Roo will be six this summer. She's wonderful and I'm proud of her and I love her to bits. I will not be writing much about her on this blog anymore. She's getting older and I am fiercely protective of her and her family. She's not my daughter and what people know about her isn't my call. I will be vague. But I will say this: I think the two most important things for a person to be are happy and kind, and Roo is both of those things. She is also brave and feisty and smart and it amazes me that H's and my messed-up DNA produced such a fantastic human being. I credit her parents. They're the best. If I ever grow up I want to be like them.<br />
<br />
I want to blog again but I don't know what my focus is going to be. I've thought a lot about why there are so many more long-running adoptive parent blogs than birth parent blogs. I think it's because as a birth mother eventually you've got to sort of move on - not from adoption, necessarily, but from having "birth mother" as the sole focus of your identity. At some point you have to just go do something else. <br />
<br />
Personally, I wonder how much longer I can keep saying, "Hey, adoption's great, Roo's great, openness is going well, I'd do this whole thing again in a heartbeat." Because I feel like that's mostly what I've done for years.<br />
<br />
I guess as long as people want to hear it I can keep saying it. But I've got other things I want to say; I'm just not sure anyone wants to hear them. I've said before that an unplanned pregnancy isn't a problem, it's the symptom of a problem. I was thinking the other day about how placing a child for adoption screws with you mentally and then I realized, I've always been screwed up mentally; placement just gave me something to blame my dysfunction on.<br />
<br />
I'm working through the dysfunction the best I can. Some days are easier than others. Many days lately have been harder. I've been missing my dad like crazy lately. I was watching TV at the gym and there was an ad for breakfast cereal that made my throat fizz up. The commercial showed a man playing catch with his son in their backyard and I thought of something I have not thought of in probably 15 years.<br />
<br />
I played softball for 3 or 4 years when I was a kid and to help me improve (I was beyond awful) my dad would play catch with me in our backyard. Once I quit I shoved that memory away and I honestly forgot that we ever played catch, even when I remembered playing softball. But then this Frosted Flakes commercial came on and I thought, I'll never play catch with my dad ever again (even though I haven't done so since probably 1993), and it just about killed me.<br />
<br />
Everything I did with my dad is something I'll never do with him again. He's been gone for almost seven years, and every now and then I look around and realize how little of him is left anymore. I hate those moments. That's when I have to look in a mirror and smile, the genuine smile I don't usually show because I don't like the way my nose crinkles or the shape of my mouth and chin. But I give that smile to the mirror and I look at the lines fanning out from the outsides of my eyes. These lines should horrify me; I'm not yet 32 and I have a murder's worth of crow's-feet. But I look at them in the mirror and I think, <i>Oh, there you are, dad.</i> And I miss him maybe an ounce less.<br />
<br />
<br />
I forgot how cathartic it is to write things down. I should do this more often. Blogging, I don't know how to quit you. Self-criticism, I don't know how to quit you, either.<br />
<br />
Frosted Flakes, I don't want to quit you. I'll meet you in the kitchen in five minutes, even though you made me cry. Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-6935249995269400192014-11-03T20:47:00.002-07:002014-11-03T20:47:41.362-07:00Some Thoughts on Why I Chose AdoptionNovember is National Adoption Month. Yes, again. I swear it was just National Adoption Month like a week ago but you know how these things sneak up on you. I mean, here we are, already a full month into Pudding Season and it barely feels like a day. But I digress.<br />
<br />
I had this wild idea on November 1st that I was going to post <i>every single day</i> this month, just like I did that one year. Then I laughed at myself, because if my ADD has reached the point it has where being paid isn't motivation enough to get work done at work, I sure as shoelaces don't have the brainpower to post thirty times this month, particularly when I haven't even managed to post once a month this year.<br />
<br />
I think that sentence made sense. Also I don't know if "sure as shoelaces" is a thing but the phrase that came to mind included a word that, while it begins with the same "sh" sound as "shoelaces," is not one I have ever used on this blog before to the best of my knowledge because my mother raised me better than that.<br />
<br />
Of course I'm sure she also thought she raised me better than to have a baby with a guy I met on MySpace, but there you are. Roo got here how she got here and she's my favorite, so ... you know.<br />
<br />
I'm just full of asides today. Positively bloated with them in fact. Sorry.<br />
<br />
I turned 31 last month. It was a much more low-key celebration than 30 last year. My mother took me out to lunch, and I had dinner with some friends. My favorite part of the day is the time I spent with Roo and her family at a park. I took off my shoes and ran - "ran" - around the playground with Roo and her sister. We pretended we were some sort of fairies from a cartoon both of them seemed familiar with but that I had never heard of. It was great fun.<br />
<br />
I let the girls lead me on a long walk to the far corner of the park and back (I think we were meant to be on some sort of fairy rescue mission) and on our loop around to the playground I ended up walking next to Roo. <br />
<br />
As a general rule I've never seen any notable physical similarities
between me and Roo. She is a tiny, adorable girl clone of H. Her eyes
are a different color but the shape and poetic depth match his - I
always thought his eyes held galaxies. It sounds almost unbearably
saccharine to say that I got lost in his eyes but it's the truth. Roo's
eyes have that same sort of dreamy quality. She inherited H's
ridiculously long, dark eyelashes, too. I wish that H and I had gotten
along as well as our genes did. Roo is excellent work.<br />
<br />
As I said, I don't see much of myself in Roo at all but I had this moment walking next to her, when I realized she was walking fast like I do, when I wondered if a casual observer would have spotted any similarities in our strides - or our ear shapes, or our postures, or our hands. Would Roo look like she were mine if someone didn't know any better?<br />
<br />
I don't need her to. I don't necessarily want her to. I just wondered. Because as we walked it hit me, the magnitude of what I did when I created life. Here was this perfectly formed person, a complete and unique entity. A life. A whole human, complete with hopes and dreams and a sense of humor, and I made her from scratch. <br />
<br />
I say this not to wound any of you but because it was a vaguely terrifying thought. I had no idea what I was doing when I got pregnant, I really didn't. These teenage girls who think they're just having babies - they have no idea, either. Babies grow up. One minute you're going to the doctor to hear a heartbeat for the first time, the next minute you're pushing a five-year-old on a swing and watching her point her toes as she tells you you're not pushing hard enough. "I want to go higher," she'll insist, and it will hit you that this is only a fraction of what she wants, and then you'll begin to understand the enormity of what you undertook when you created life.* <br />
<br />
This is why I chose adoption for Roo. Because I knew I could give a baby what she needed but, as the saying goes, babies don't keep. People who tried to talk me out of adoption insisted that today's parenting magazines and websites were misleading me - babies don't need much, and they need love most of all. I won't argue that. But babies grow up. Toddlers need more than babies, and grade-schoolers need more than toddlers, and then they become adolescents, and then, heaven help us, teenagers, and the older they get the more they need - not just temporally but emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.<br />
<br />
I knew that I could provide everything that a baby needed. But I also knew that my baby would grow fast, and I knew that my ability to provide wasn't going to grow proportionately. I didn't want Roo to struggle or suffer while I tried to figure out how to make it work. She deserves better than that. I wanted more for her than that.<br />
<br />
As I walked next to her, this perfect little person with dirty feet and a messy ponytail and a few blades of grass stuck to her leg, I had the thought that this was one of those rare, beautiful, perfect snippets in the space-time continuum. It was a beautiful day, warm for October, with an overabundance of bright sunshine and fresh air. I was walking across a field of slightly prickly crabgrass, matching strides with my favorite person in the whole world, and we were both very happy. <br />
<br />
If I had to choose a single moment to live over and over again, I would have a hard time picking just one but this moment on my birthday would be a top contender. It was maybe twenty or thirty seconds from start to finish but for that short stretch of time absolutely everything in the world felt okay. I haven't felt that in a long time. It was glorious.<br />
<br />
If I were Roo's mother** I am sure that I would enjoy countless such moments. I would. Roo and I would have great fun. But our lives would be so, so difficult. Those moments would be a sharp contrast to the constant struggle to stay above water. I could have done it. I could have kept her and been her mother and somehow made it all work.<br />
<br />
But this is so much better - the way things are, I mean. Whatever else happens in her life, Roo got the best possible start. She's got the very best parents who love each other so much, and who love her and her siblings deeply and forever. Roo is confident and secure and well-adjusted and kind and buoyant and about six hundred other adjectives that I can't even use to describe myself at thirty-one. Adoption was the best choice I could have made. Roo herself is the proof.<br />
<br />
I get uncomfortable when people try to pretty up what it means to be a birth mom or turn the choice to place into some kind of fairy tale. There can be so much beauty in adoption, but there is always pain. No woman sets out to become a birth mother. I don't think it's the first choice for very many women. It's beautiful and it hurts. <br />
<br />
I am not brave or selfless or an angel or a saint. I'm not extraordinarily strong. I'm not a hero. I'm a bundle of flaws and good intentions and fleeting hope and once upon a time I fell irrevocably in love with this small person and every single day I was her mother she broke my heart because I knew she wasn't going to be my daughter forever and it terrified me. But I always knew.<br />
<br />
I don't know if I've ever said that before on this blog, but there it is. I knew the second I first saw her tiny body in an ultrasound that my baby wasn't mine. When I was settled into a hospital room to recover from my c-section I looked up into the doorway every few minutes for at least four hours, waiting for someone to come in. I didn't know what they looked like then but I was watching for Roo's parents.<br />
<br />
When I saw their picture for the first time, I knew. I saw their firstborn in their picture and I thought, <i>that's Roo's sister</i>. I saw P and M, and I thought <i>Oh, there you are.</i> And it scared me. <br />
<br />
Adoption is scary. It's one of the scariest things I've ever done. But it's also my favorite thing I've ever done; it's the thing I am most proud of. It's brought me the most joy.<br />
<br />
That flawless moment walking next to Roo at the park didn't fill me with any kind of desperate longing for her to be mine. There was no sadness that the fantastic little girl matching my steps isn't mine. I was happy because she was happy, and she was happy because she has a happy life. Not a perfect one, but a happy one. She bounces back quickly when things don't go her way. She notices the lovely little things in the world and they fill her with joy. She looks around and sees possibilities. She dreams.<br />
<br />
That's what it's about, isn't it? Everything else is just filler. <br />
<br />
I want to be like Roo when I grow up.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
*I posted a picture of my three-year-old self on Instagram last week and
when my mother saw it she said, "That's my baby," and she had this look
on her face as though she were blindsided that that baby had just turned
31 - as though I had <i>just</i> been three and she couldn't quite account for the passage of time.<br />
<br />
**Please don't comment and argue that I'm still her mother. Please just don't. Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-81528699127294203342014-09-22T13:48:00.001-07:002014-09-22T13:48:53.242-07:00Some Thoughts on Adoption, Five Years Post-Placement<div class="MsoNormal">
Greetings, Blogland! I haven’t blogged in pretty
much forever, which is weird. I used to blog so much in the early
days after placement and it seems kind of weird now that blogging was
such an integral part of my life. It’s not even
something I think much about anymore, which is good. I mean, if I do
stop to think about it, my brain kicks into overdrive and I end up with
thirty drafts of new blog posts, so it’s probably just as well.<br />
<br />
I'm trying to be less of a perfectionist so I'm blogging today even though I feel that my thoughts are disorganized and not particularly pretty and I don't even want to read them for proofreading purposes. Allow me to apologize in advance for the scattered messiness that will follow. I probably should have taken a Ritalin. Thank you for reading and I'll try to disguise my ADD better next time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Roo is five, you guys! Holy cow. She started
kindergarten and is doing so, so well. M had her call me to tell me
about her first day. Roo was really excited about lunch and recess, and a
few weeks ago M told me that Roo has memorized all
of her vocabulary words for the year and then some. She is pretty much
the cleverest kid ever and I am very proud of her.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I got to hang out with her a few days after her
birthday and we had so much fun. She is very imaginative and very chatty
and happy and easygoing. I was such an anxious child; one of my fears
for Roo was that she would inherit my worry (I
worry about worry). But she is SO
not anxious. Every good thing about her I credit to her amazing
parents. I don’t want to start a nature-vs-nurture debate but I know
what I was like as a kid – I was born worried – and
I feel confident that Roo is the way she is because of the way she’s
being raised.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I love that she has the parents she does. I didn’t
know how awesome they were when I picked them but I couldn’t possibly
have chosen any better. I’m probably making myself a target here but
adoption has been the best thing on earth for
Roo and so I count it as the best thing on earth for me. I know that
mine is a best-case scenario and that tons and tons of birth moms and
adoptive couples aren’t so lucky. Every day that I spend any time at all
on the internet I am reminded of that.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Roo is doing very well. I, on the other hand,
have what I will euphemistically refer to as “things going on.” I feel
happier now than I have in a while but pretty much the first nine months
of my 31<sup>st</sup> year were rough. I was
attacked by a feral pack of feelings and I had difficulty in fending
them off. I still have problems with them at times but I am making
progress in that area. Being an adult human female is hard sometimes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
A few weeks ago was my five-year placement
anniversary. It was such a non-issue, you guys, you wouldn't even believe it. M texted me and we had a lovely conversation that way but most of my feelings on the 9<sup>th</sup>
were about my dad because I’ve been missing him
like crazy lately. Five years is a pretty good chunk of time for a
birth mom, I think, and I thought that maybe I ought to write about my
feelings about adoption these days. As I said before I think Roo’s
adoption was the best thing in the world. But other
than that, you know what? I don’t think about adoption that much. I
just don’t.<br />
<br />
I know a lot of birth moms who feel this lifelong connection to
adoption. Many of them are in school for social work. Many of them spend
a lot of their own time and money and a lot of effort in assisting
expectant and birth parents, and I respect them so much for it. I’m
just not one of them. I still talk at high schools on occasion but I
don’t feel this deep need to make an adoption my life’s work. My inner
10-year-old wants to be a writer, thankyouverymuch, and and while
adoption is a part of me because Roo is, my
feelings are for her and her adoption, not every adoption and every
person involved in adoption. I don’t feel the need to connect to a
greater sisterhood of birth moms. It's not what I need at this point in my life. I have dear friends who are birth mothers but the ones I'm closest to get me on a level that has nothing to do with adoption and everything to do with who we are as human beings.<br />
<br />
I don’t think that being a birth mom is the most
interesting thing about me and I don’t want it to define
me. I don't like a lot of what I see various adoption communities becoming on the internet. I don’t like the way that there’s this us-vs-them division between
birth and adoptive parents, I don’t like the way birth moms get idolized
or vilified or any of that. A birth mom was a fleshed-out person before
she placed, and placement doesn’t change
that about her. There’s good and bad in all of us and I’ve been beating
back the “hero” label for years because I’m not a hero, I’m the 0.10 %
who got pregnant on the pill, who carried and delivered a little girl
she loved more than life itself, a little girl
she loved enough to give a better life, even though it wasn’t with her.
<br />
<br />
Blah. I'm probably making enemies left and right here, aren't I? It's not that I object to there being this greater adoption community, or that I don't think people should let it be their life's work. It's just not *my* life's work.<br />
<br />
Five years post-placement, I don't think about adoption much at all. I think about Roo, who happens to have been adopted, but that does very well for me for now.<br />
<br />
She really is the most fantastic little kid and I feel privileged to get to watch her grow up and spend time with her. She saved me. I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't gotten pregnant when I did. I don't like to think about it. But I've had to lately. I've gotten myself into a few messes lately and wondered what's going to save me this time. I felt for a few months this year that perhaps nothing would; that I was finally just going to self-destruct.<br />
<br />
But one of the things that I have come to realize about myself during this difficult year is that for as much of an emotional train wreck as I am there is some part of me that refuses to give up. There is some part of me that made myself get up every morning and go to work and smile when people said hello to me and continue to exercise most days even though all I wanted to do was sleep for the next five years until my current problems work themselves out.<br />
<br />
I didn't used to have that inside of me. I know that I didn't because nine years ago when I started therapy it took very little to break me into pieces. 22-year-old Jill would have cracked starting last November, with almost no provocation. I am profoundly grateful for this strength I've found, and I do believe that it grew from placement.<br />
<br />
I've wasted a lot of bandwidth comparing the death of my father to the placement of my daughter. My general conclusion is that my father's death was harder because I still can't make it okay, because I don't see any good that came of it. I haven't necessarily changed my mind about that but I do feel strongly that adoption required more of me than pushing through my grief did, and for precisely the reason that I always concluded my father's death was harder: because adoption was a choice. I chose this hurt. I chose to smash my heart into bits, even though it felt like little of it remained after my dad died.<br />
<br />
I placed Roo on purpose, and it changed me fundamentally and deeply and forever. It hurt worse than anything in the world has ever hurt me and I can say for certain that it is the best thing I have ever done in my life. It made me stronger in a way that nothing else could possibly have done.<br />
<br />
Roo saved me the first time around and placing her made me strong enough that this time I can save myself. I don't know how I'm going to do it but I know that I can.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure of many things. I don't know what the next year of my life is going to look like. I'm not entirely certain what the next week is going to look like. But one thing that I know for sure, as Oprah would say, is that if I had to live my life over a thousand times I would place Roo for adoption a thousand times more.Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-48242601819219828882014-07-07T18:53:00.001-07:002014-07-07T18:53:16.033-07:00FiveDearest Roo,<br />
<br />
Today you are five years old. How did that happen? I swear you just barely learned to walk and now you're reading chapter books and dancing and playing tennis and starting kindergarten in the fall. How did you grow up so fast? You're taller every time I see you, and smarter. You are the most fascinating little person I have ever met. Everything about you is interesting to me. You are my favorite in all the known world. There is a light in your eyes that fills my soul. When you smile, it seems impossible that there's anything other than joy in the world.<br />
<br />
Do you have any idea how amazing you are, Roo? Everything about you is a miracle to me. I haven't found the words in any language to properly express how much I love you. It's not something I can explain. It's something that I feel. I didn't know I could love anyone on earth even half as much as I love you.<br />
<br />
I was scared when you were born. You were brand-new and tiny and I knew what I wanted for you; I knew what you deserved. I was scared that I didn't have a way of making sure you had everything in the world that you deserved by merit of the love I felt for you. I wanted to be the best mother in the world because you deserved it.<br />
<br />
I couldn't do it. I certainly couldn't be the best father in the world. You deserved that, too.<br />
<br />
As desperately as I loved you I could never quite shake the feeling that I was raising someone else's child. The moment I first saw you my heart claimed you but some ineffable part of myself wouldn't settle down. A few hours after you were born, when I was recovering in a hospital room and you were burrito-wrapped in your bassinet, I found my gaze moving from your sleeping face to the door. My rational mind expected no visitors but the waiting part of myself kept watching the doorway. I didn't dare use words for what I was anticipating at the time but the truth is I was waiting for your parents to come in. <br />
<br />
I took you home and you were mine for nine fragile and beautiful weeks but the entire time, I knew.<br />
<br />
I have never fought anything in my life as desperately as I fought to be your mother. I warred with myself for the first seven weeks of your life, searching for some way to change what I felt in my heart. I wanted you so badly! I had already been through so much pain. I had already broken so many times. I couldn't bear the thought of shattering again. I loved you so much! How could I not be your mother?<br />
<br />
Then I found your family. I saw their picture on my computer screen and the part of me that waited in my hospital room stopped waiting. It wasn't your dad or your mom that did it, either. Would you believe, darling Roo, that the first member of your family I found was your big sister? I was ready to keep looking at profiles and reading letters but I saw your sister in that photograph ... I looked at her dear, perfect little cherub face and I thought, <i>that's Roo's sister.</i> I knew she was your sister. I knew. I looked at your parents after that but it didn't matter who they were, because if they were your sister's parents they were yours as well.<br />
<br />
No matter what else happens in my life, no matter what I believe or disbelieve, no matter what circumstances change, I will never believe anything contrary to this: your sister was meant to be your sister, and you were meant to be hers. I have never known anything to be true as strongly and solidly as I knew that the two of you were meant to be together when I saw that picture, and nothing anyone ever says is going to change that.<br />
<br />
I love that you girls are such good friends. I hope you always will be. I hope that you always take good care of each other. <br />
<br />
There's more to your story that your parents have told you, or will tell you when you're older, and more that I need to tell you as well, but I'm saving that for you and only you. But today, on your birthday, I want you know two things for sure.<br />
<br />
The first is that there's no doubt in my mind you were meant for the family you've got. You belong together. I couldn't have placed you with any family in the universe but theirs. I couldn't have done it! I tried. I met with other families and I wanted them to be right but none of them were and it wasn't until I met your family that I knew why no one else would do.<br />
<br />
The second is something that I hope is already a solid and immovable fact in your mind: I love you. How inadequate those words sound! They're overused. They've lost meaning. But in the absence of any others, I'll use them over and over again and hope that repetition will lend them weight. My dear little Roo, I love you. Nothing in the known universe will stop me from loving you. Any good thing I ever accomplish in the world is because of my love for you. Any improvement I make, any happiness I find, any good and worthy thing I do is a manifestation of my love for you. My task as your birth mother is to take the love that I have for you and spread it around.<br />
<br />
Never doubt, not for a second, that you are loved. There's no one else in the world for whom I'd break my own heart. Only you.<br />
<br />
You were worth it. You always will be.<br />
<br />
Happy birthday, darling girl.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
<br />
Your birth mother JillJill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-9708344498904061802014-06-30T11:30:00.000-07:002014-06-30T11:30:01.481-07:00DueI've had a lot of feelings lately and I'm going to address most of them in my next post, but today I want to talk about one set of feelings in particular.<br />
<br />
I haven't been happy for a while now. It began with what my father used to describe as "general malaise." Then my discontent started creeping into other areas of my life, slowly and a little at a time, the way that hot cheese will escape the end of a Hot Pocket when you cook it too long. <br />
<br />
I was talking to a friend about feeling unhappy and she asked what changes would need to happen in my life for me to feel happy instead. I thought that a good start in answering was to list the things that I felt were contributing to my unhappiness, and I had an epiphany of sorts about the way that I've been seeing myself. In order to get you there, let's go back a few years. <br />
<br />
Five years ago, June 30th was a Tuesday.<br />
<br />
I wish I
could say that I know this because I have the savant-like ability to
name the day of the week that any given date fell on, like the girl with
autism in that one Baby-Sitter's Club book that handled the issue of
autism badly, even for a children's book from the 80s. <br />
<br />
Alas,
that is not the case. And parenthetically, precious few of the books I
loved as a child have held up well over time from a literary standpoint.
<br />
<br />
I
remember that June 30th, 2009 was a Tuesday, because it was my due
date. Roo's due date. I knew that she wouldn't be born on her due date,
because pretty much no one delivers on their due date. But the date
still felt significant, because it was the date I'd had in my mind for
nine months, and reaching it felt like a great accomplishment. So even
though I knew she wouldn't be born that day, I felt like something should
happen to mark the occasion of my due date.<br />
<br />
Nothing did. It was a perfectly average Tuesday in every way, except for the fact
that I was really super-duper pregnant and Roo kept kicking me in the
kidneys (they must be pleasantly squishy or something, because she <i>always</i> kicked them). She stayed snug and warm in my belly for another week, and absolutely
nothing happened on my due date. Despite my expectations, my hopes, and
my timeline, all I got was a backache. <br />
<br />
To quote my friend Rob, isn't that just like life?<br />
<br />
I got to thinking about that the other day - about expectations and plans and
mental due dates. How many times in my life have
various due dates come and gone with nothing to show for them? Dozens,
at least, if not a hundred or more. But despite a dearth of any
savant-like skill with dates, I do tend to remember them, and more often
than not I use them as a way of measuring my progress, or more specifically my lack thereof.
<br />
<br />
Three years ago I realized that it had been a decade
since my high school graduation (May 24, 2001) and I quite naturally
took inventory of
my life in that space of time. It was an eventful decade, but I still
felt like a failure, because I was single and fat and working part-time
for $8 an hour. I always thought I'd have a college degree and a husband
and children and a Volkswagen by the time my ten-year reunion rolled
around. I had nothing to show for the decade that had elapsed since high
school. It's been thirteen years now and I've still got nothing to show. <br />
<br />
Even
the revised life plans that I made when I placed Roo didn't come to
fruition. I knew where I wanted to be when Roo was 1 year old, and 2
years old and so forth, and I am not in any of those places or stages
of life. But, I told myself, that's okay. I just need to adjust my
timeline. Change my when-Roo-is-four goals to my when-Roo-is-eight-or-nine goals. <br />
<br />
I'd
been feeling better about things last August,
but then I took an online survey. I don't typically do that but at
that time every single Target receipt I got had an invitation on it, and
I needed
to kill time while my cupcakes were in the oven. Nothing cuts to the
heart of your insecurities quite like answering demographic questions. I
already knew all of these things about myself, but it wasn't until
Target asked me on one page that I thought, I am in my late twenties, I
am single, I have never been married, I have no
children, and I make less than $30,000 a year. That cheered me right up,
let me tell you. I was glad to have cupcakes to look forward to; I
needed them.<br />
<br />
And then last fall I hit another due
date, another deadline I set for myself. I turned 30. It wasn't as
scary as I thought it might be. I actually had several days of birthday,
culminating in a party where my fantastic friends surprised me with
this cake:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv8JQNwgLME6WnDZhyxql3wU6s5KUXUFpp_yDUmkRVI289kPo5T0tL2p3mjNiLVRyonME2OGFSnsEKcS5rRpf0Uctyn47pDDFvQBdPpSwcA2mjji2gUMN4ijogmv7X8s_ryVdOv7HHxSlD/s1600/IMG_5048.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv8JQNwgLME6WnDZhyxql3wU6s5KUXUFpp_yDUmkRVI289kPo5T0tL2p3mjNiLVRyonME2OGFSnsEKcS5rRpf0Uctyn47pDDFvQBdPpSwcA2mjji2gUMN4ijogmv7X8s_ryVdOv7HHxSlD/s320/IMG_5048.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(How <i>you</i> doin', Tom Selleck?)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I
should mention that the very first thing I did in my thirties was put
my contact lenses in, and then put my glasses back on. Isn't memory loss
supposed to start in your forties? Anyway. After my week of birthday, I
thought, well, shoot. I'm 30 now, and all I have to show for it is half
of Tom Selleck's torso.* </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
All
of those demographics that Target reminded me of (and more) kept coming to my
mind. No husband - not even a boyfriend (not since the Bush
administration, how's that for a frame of reference?), not much
income, no children, thighs like a t-rex. It's a depressing way to look
at your life, and the other day, when I thought about changing things, I
wondered - at what point do I stop defining myself by the things that I
lack?<br />
<br />
Because that's what I've been doing since my birthday and probably my entire adult life. When I look
at these due dates, at these deadlines, I feel that I've fallen short
because of what I don't have. (And before you suggest counting my
blessings, know that I actually have a list of my blessings. I am a
compulsive list-maker; if you ever want to know what my faults are I
have a Google doc I can show you.) I didn't used to do that. When did I start? When did I stop seeing myself as a whole person with innate value and start seeing myself as a collection of empty spaces?<br />
<br />
My only consolation, if you can call it that, is that I know I'm not alone in this. I think it's a societal disease, this idea that who we are is what we're missing. I know plenty of other women who are put into boxes marked Single and Childless. How messed up is that? I've written before about how labeling birth mothers dehumanizes them. It's true for everyone, and especially when that label implies that they've come up short, that something is missing. <br />
<br />
I want to get married. I want to be a mother. But I want to be happy even if neither of those things ever happens for me. I want to feel whole just the way that I am now. I want to see myself as the sum of what I do have, good and bad, and not as a list of unfulfilled dreams. I want to be enough. I want the woman that I am right now, right this second, to be enough for me to be happy.<br />
<br />
When I was a child I was focused on what I could do, what I did well, and what I wanted to do. I didn't ever feel like I wasn't enough as I was. What changed in the past twenty years? I mean, obviously plenty of things have changed, but who I am fundamentally, as a human being, as a child of God - what's really changed? Nothing has changed. If I was enough then, I'm enough now.<br />
<br />
I don't mean to imply that there's no room for improvement. I want to end each day as a better person than I was when I began it (how's that for an unattainable goal?). But I'm tired of feeling inadequate because of the things I don't have. Here's the thing - I'm never going to run out of due dates. I'm never going to stop having occasion to mark my progress and reevaluate my life. I don't have a lot of control over that. What I do have control over is how I let these due dates affect me.<br />
<br />
Roo will be five in a little over a week. Another milestone - another deadline. I am light-years away from where I wanted to be when she turns five. I may never get to where I wanted to be at this point in my life. That doesn't have to matter. I can still be happy with where I am.<br />
<br />
I know I'm not going to get there right away. It takes time to change the habit of being dissatisfied. But I want to start now. I want to learn to be happy with myself and my life, no matter what. It's time. I'm due. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<br />
*The left half. Well, my left, his right. </div>
Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-65383104675204681082014-06-19T18:42:00.000-07:002014-06-19T18:42:19.496-07:00On Parenting and Being an AdultRoo's birthday is coming up in a few weeks. I'm not sure where the last five years went but she's starting kindergarten in the fall and she has already started reading chapter books and is generally much smarter than any five-year-old has any right to be. She is my favorite.<br />
<br />
That Roo has the parents she does feels like a gift to me. The more I get to know people the more I realize that P an M aren't just excellent parents. They are exceptional human beings. The world could use more people like them. I look up to them in so many ways and I hope that if I ever grow up, I end up being their kind of person. The only downside I can see to Roo being their daughter is that children so rarely appreciate their parents. I hope that Roo is the exception and that as she gets older she realizes how amazing her parents are and how blessed she is to be their daughter. I hope that as she gets older she knows that I wouldn't have placed her with just anyone, and that in fact I couldn't possibly have placed her with anyone on earth but P and M - not for a second.<br />
<br />
I have never worried even once about whether Roo is happy and healthy and loved. She has such a good life and such a good family. I used to wonder if, as Roo got older, I would wish I had parented her but the opposite is true. The older she gets, the more I love my choice and the less I care what anyone else thinks of it. Things people might say that used to offend me just make me laugh now. I wish that I were this certain of every decision I've ever made in my life!<br />
<br />
But even though I don't regret my choice, I do still wonder sometimes what life would be like for me and Roo if I had parented her. I don't consider things too deeply because I can't wrap my mind around custody arrangements and child support and I honestly don't know where I would be living or working right now. But I do think, if I had parented, I would have an almost-five-year-old now. I would have registered her for kindergarten. How scary is that? I don't have a clue how any of that works. How do you know you've found a good school? A good teacher? How do you prepare a child to go from preschool to kindergarten?<br />
<br />
I'll confess to ignorance in pretty much the entire realm of childcare at this point. I have no idea how much a child is supposed to eat or how much sleep they should get every night. I don't know when naps stop. I don't know what you're supposed to teach them and when. How much TV is too much? Do kids still get chicken pox? So many questions.<br />
<br />
I know that most people don't know any of these things when they have a baby. They just figure it out as they go along, which is kind of a terrifying thought, isn't it? All these people who haven't a clue what they're doing are raising children, and those children are going to be adults someday whether they're raised right
or not. It sounds like a terrible idea. Who came up with this? Somehow it works and enough of us make it to adulthood (relatively unscathed) to keep the world going. I'll never understand it.<br />
<br />
P and M seem to have the whole parenting thing figured out. They're not perfect but I think they do a better job of it than anyone else I know (although I will admit to a slight bias in their favor). I think it's because they were ready for parenthood when their firstborn was placed with them. They were absolutely ready to be parents. They were prepared. They stay calm. They make rational decisions. They are adults.<br />
<br />
This is, I think, my problem with the idea of me registering a child for kindergarten. I don't feel like enough of a responsible adult to be trusted with that kind of decision. I know myself. I do stupid things more often than I remember to eat and I make bad decisions almost exclusively. I had to have help picking a health insurance plan and I don't actually understand any of it. I once ate half a can of chocolate frosting in a single sitting. My mother could make a list entitled Ridiculous Reasons My Daughter Has Phoned Me and the Equally Ridiculous Questions That Followed. (I once left her a voicemail that went something like, "Hi Mom, this is Jill, your youngest child. I think I poisoned myself. Will you call me back when you get a minute? No rush.") I will make it through an entire day off work without remembering that I'm supposed to eat regularly. Last year I bought a t-shirt with a pattern of unicorns on it and I wear it to work (also, ask me about my whale shirt). <br />
<br />
The idea that I am a both a registered voter and a government employee should terrify you. I am thirty years old but make no mistake, I am not an adult.<br />
<br />
I used to bristle at the idea that as a birth mom, I chose adoption because I wasn't ready to be a parent. "I was ready!" was my battle cry. I thought that I proved it by parenting Roo for nine weeks. I think I even blogged about the not-ready-for-parenting school of thought, because I remember writing the phrase "I was absolutely ready to be a mother."<br />
<br />
But what I've come to realize in the past little while is that, no, I absolutely was not. I wanted to be a mother. I wanted it desperately. But that doesn't mean I was ready. Looking back I can see that. And what's more, I still don't think I'm ready.<br />
<br />
I want to repeat that because when I realized it, it hit me with great force. I am not ready to have a child. I'm 30. When I'm in a quiet room I can't hear my heartbeat because my biological clock is ticking too loudly. I am jealous of pregnant women I see. My insides feel all squishy when I see babies. My mind is blank of every thought but one: I want one of those! Babies are awesome and at my age, when I see one I am biochemically predisposed to want one of my own. <br />
<br />
But that's not enough. What on earth would I do with one? For the most part I'm no better off than I was five years ago. I make a lot of the same stupid choices and I have some of the same bad habits and I am an absolute child about things for the most part. The biggest difference between the Jill who placed Roo and the Jill who is typing this is that the latter is five years older and needs a haircut.<br />
<br />
I don't want to discount any personal growth I might have done. I am a slightly better person right now. But I don't think I'm any better prepared to be a mother.<br />
<br />
I already know I'm going to get comments from mothers telling me, "Nobody is ever really prepared for parenthood. Nobody is ever really ready." People are going to tell me that you figure it out as you go along, that you get ready as you parent. People are going to point out that plenty of people who aren't ready to be parents still have kids and make a decent go of it. And I believe all of that.<br />
<br />
But believe me when I say that if I met an amazing man tomorrow and we fell in love and got married, I would think long and hard before having a child right away. I have more issues than Newsweek. I know I'm not ready to be anyone's mother. And isn't this the perfect time to figure that out, now, while I'm not anyone's mother? <br />
<br />
I wasn't ready for Roo and I'm still not. I am so, so grateful that her parents were ready, and still are. I couldn't have placed Roo with just anyone. I love her too much for that. I could only have placed her with them and I'm so glad I did!<br />
<br />
I think there will come a time, maybe a few years from now, when I stop panicking every time a bill comes in the mail, when I do my taxes before April 15th, when I give up napping under my desk at work, when my therapist no longer calls because he's worried about me ... there will come a time when I unironically describe myself as an adult, when I will see babies and think not only of how much I want one but of how much I have to offer to one as a mother. It's going to be a good day. <br />
<br />
I'm just not there yet.Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-5173488849482978622014-06-01T20:57:00.000-07:002014-11-29T18:08:17.043-07:00Let it go<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Last night I attended Roo's last dance
recital. Dance is boring, she says, so she's going to try something
new in the fall. She danced pretty well for a four-year-old. It
looked to me like she knew the choreography better than any of the
other little duck-costumed preschoolers on the stage. Her face really
sold it for me, too. This girl was serious about her duck dance. M and
I sat next to each other and we both took video of Roo dancing. It
was one of those moments that could have been photographed for a PSA about open adoption. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After the recital M found Roo among the
lines of tiny dancers filing out of the auditorium, and my heart felt
full to burst. To someone who doesn't understand the beauty possible in adoption this will sound weird or even awful,
but it makes me so, so happy that M is Roo's mom. They belong with each other. I see the two of them together and I think, that's what I want, if I ever have the chance to be a
mother again.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don't feel a smidge of sadness about
the almost-five-year-old who danced so enthusiastically in a sparkly
duck costume last night. She's got as good a life as any little girl
could ever hope to have. She's pure sunshine - goodness and sweetness
in human form. She makes me happy. It's impossible for me to feel any
pain where she's concerned. In that sense, as far as placing a child
for adoption goes, I am way beyond “over it.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But this afternoon I got a reminder
that there are some things I might never get over. It's a reminder
I've gotten several times before but I keep managing to push it out
of my mind. And, just like so many of life's disappointments, this one is because of laundry.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was a mother for nine weeks before I
placed Roo for adoption. When you've got a baby, you've usually got
this entire collection of things for the small human in your
care. It's quite amazing how many things accumulate for such a tiny
person. I had a crib and a car seat and a stroller and a Pack and
Play and crib bedding and blankets and burp cloths and dozens of
teensy little outfits and socks. There were pacifiers and miniature
fingernail clippers and bottles and stacks and stacks of other things
that modern society says are required for the well-being of a
ten-pound person. I spent every penny I had on accouterments for my
baby. And I was happy to do it. I loved every last accessory.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Then one day I didn't have a baby
anymore.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But I still had all this stuff. Scads
of it. Boxes and boxes worth of baby things. Most of them I was able to put aside without an overabundance of pain. Clothes were a different story. The last load of little
laundry I did, the one after placement, just about killed me. I
folded up clean Onesies and sleepers and knew that I wasn't going to
put them on my baby ever again. I didn't have a baby to put them on.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Eventually all of Roo's things were packed into Rubbermaid storage boxes, which were
labeled and tucked away into a back corner of the garage. The crib
was taken apart and bubble-wrapped and nestled with the mattress on
top of the boxes. The car seat and stroller were mummified in plastic
and hidden with the rest of the proof that I used to be somebody's
mother.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My mother consoled me with the idea
that in a few years I would likely be unwrapping and
unboxing everything with my husband, getting things ready for the
child we were expecting together. I clung desperately to the idea of
this storage being a temporary thing. I thought, I will be a mother
again before this pink-patterned car seat expires.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But I wasn't. Roo turned two and her
baby things remained untouched. I considered selling them but I
panicked when I tried. I wasn't ready to let them go. If I ever
thought of the boxes after that I decided to worry about selling
their contents when Roo was three. I would be ready then. But I
didn't think about the boxes very often. I wasn't at my mom's house
very often and I certainly wasn't spending time in her garage. Roo's
third birthday came and went and her baby things never came to my
mind.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I found some way to block from my mind
the existence of those boxes and that shrink-wrapped furniture. I
would see baby clothes at Target and have vague memories of how, in
my early twenties, I used to collect little outfits here and there for
some future child but my mind never jumped from that collection to
the storage boxes. I managed to forget about the sad reminders of my
interrupted maternity until last month.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My sister-in-law is pregnant and due in
August. This pregnancy is something of a miracle and, with more than
four years having passed without a new niece or nephew, I am almost
desperately happy at the thought of holding a Barber baby again. My
sweet nephew Elliot died two years ago, before he was born, so every
day Becky is pregnant with this little girl is an answer to prayer.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My brother and his family were in town
for Easter. They're getting ready to move to Texas this summer and
somehow or other it came up that they were going to have to buy a new
crib and mattress for Baby Girl. My mouth knew what to say before my
brain did.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I've got a crib and mattress in the
garage. It's yours if you want it.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
They said that they did, and I loved
the thought of their miracle baby sleeping in Roo's old crib. I felt
ready to let those things go. I was proud of myself. I was finally
ready! They reassured me that I could have both items back when I
needed them but I said I didn't think that day would come and they
were welcome to keep what I gave them. And then the conversation
moved on, and again I forgot about the things in my mom's garage.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Today my sister-in-law sent me a text
message asking if my offer of the crib and mattress was still good. I
said that it was. She asked if I still had the bedding and I said I
had everything. When I used the word “everything” I was thinking
of bumpers and blankets and I was ready to part with it all but then
Becky asked what I meant by “everything” and I suddenly
remembered the box of baby Roo's Onesies and sleepers and I lost it.
I went full-on Kim Kardashian with my ugly crying.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I want my sister-in-law to have the
crib and mattress. I want her to take the box of bedding. I'm ready
for that. But those tiny clothes … will I ever be ready to let them
go? Roo starts school in the fall. How am I still haunted by her
gingerbread jammies? How is it that five years later the thought of
her pink polka-dot Onesie reduces me to tears?
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I have a box full of baby clothes that
I'm not using, that I may never use. I want to let it go. I want to
want Becky to take them. I don't want tiny striped socks to have this
kind of hold on me. What's it going to take for me to be ready? How
long will it be before the ghost of the baby who was mine stops
casting a shadow over a box of clean laundry?<br />
<br />
I don't know. I know plenty of birth mothers, including several who parented before placing, but none who placed before I did. I don't have anyone to look to as an example of what trajectory my grief hoarding might follow.<br />
<br />
I've passed the point where I'm hanging on to little laundry for some future baby. I wasted a lot of time with motherhood as my only life's goal. It would be fine if I were married or expected to marry but I have to think differently as a single woman in my stage of life. I have to plan for a future where I'm the only one who's going to take care of me because there are no guarantees. I know that I wouldn't marry me right now. I've got too much baggage and I probably always will. I expect to unpack it on my own.<br />
<br />
The memory of the newborn I placed is strong enough to keep that box of baby clothes in my mom's garage. I just wish that the thought of the five-year-old that baby became was strong enough for me to let the box go. I'll get there someday. Someday I will be able to open that box, to save a pair of jammies or two as a reminder, and let the rest of it go. <br />
<br />
Maybe that day will be sooner than I think. The crib and mattress will be loaded into a Texas-bound van in July. And a few days before that, Becky and I will open the boxes that I haven't touched in five years. We'll pick out sheets and blankets for her tiny miracle. Becky is one of the strongest women I know. Maybe her strength will make me brave and we'll open the box that hurts me the most.<br />
<br />
I've cried alone over these things for so long. Maybe crying over them with someone else will give me the courage I need to finally let them go. </div>
Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-76720170120965010832014-05-09T13:32:00.000-07:002014-05-09T15:46:20.806-07:00(Good?) AdviceI've mentioned before that, for one reason or other, people in the adoption community will occasionally come to me for advice. Bad idea, people. I once advised a co-worker to take naps under her desk. I am full to bursting with bad ideas that amuse me. Which isn't to say that I intentionally give bad advice; rather that I seem to be incapable of giving good advice because it simply isn't in me. I, too, take naps under my desk. <br />
<br />
I digress. People will ask me for advice and sometimes I will offer it. Today I am offering advice to a group who have not asked for it, because someone has suggested that I am uniquely qualified to do so. I was asked by someone who works with birth mothers to advise women who have recently placed children for adoption. I asked what "recently" meant and was given a nebulous response that I promptly threw out. For our purposes today I want to go beyond the weeks and months immediately following placement, because I've beaten the dead horse that is post-placement grief for these many years and I'd like to find another carcass to swat at. I want to talk to women who are out of the fog that settles when relinquishment papers are signed, but who have not yet hit the one-year mark. If you fit into this category, what follows is for you. (If you don't, all I can tell you is that life is full of disappointment.)<br />
<br />
So, you've placed a child for adoption recently but you have reached the point where you are awake and dressed more days than not and you're no longer crying yourself to sleep. Good job! I knew you could do it. I wish I could tell you that it's a calm ocean and clear skies from this point forward but it's not. For the rest of your life, you're going to have little moments where it hits you that you once placed a baby for adoption and how could you possibly have done that? Who <i>does</i> that?<br />
<br />
You did. You did, and it was awesome, and you're awesome. So what if a tiny lost sock at the grocery store makes you teary-eyed. You made a family. You win. And, hey, free tiny sock.<br />
<br />
Anyway. I want to tell you some things today that no one told me when I was where you are. I don't know if they qualify as "Things I Wish I'd Known" but they are things to know, in any case, and maybe you'll find them helpful. <br />
<br />
So. (A needle pulling thread ...)<br />
<br />
You're probably at the point where people no longer have to drag you bodily to social functions. You find yourself wanting to go out and see people, even if you are slightly terrified that adoption or your baby will become a topic of conversation. Be careful where you go and with whom. I said in a previous post that your surprise pregnancy was a symptom of a greater issue. I believe that. I wasn't living a happy, wonderful life when I got knocked up. There were so, so many other things going on.<br />
<br />
I'd bet a tenner that it's the same case with you. Hence my caveat. If you go back to the same friends and situations you were in before, I hope you've got the birth control thing figured out because if you don't you're likely to end up pregnant again. I know (and dearly love) a number of repeat offenders. I'm not saying it's easy to change your life or lifestyle. I'm just saying, be careful. Placement can be a fantastic re-set button. Whatever agency or organization you placed through should offer post-placement counseling (if they don't, they should). Use it. Become a better person. Therapy is a beautiful thing. Figure out why you ended up where you did, and resolve to stay away from there from now on. <br />
<br />
Here's a fun fact for you: for the rest of your life, people are going to misunderstand you and your story and adoption. It hurts right now when it happens. It bothers you a lot. It feels personal and offensive and is the catalyst for many a crying fit. You will hate everyone.<br />
<br />
Here's another fun fact: it will bother you so much less as time passes. As you become more and more comfortable talking about adoption, correcting or dismissing people will take zero emotional toll on you. You will be much less defensive. You're still going to blurt out "placed" when someone says "gave up" but you won't tear up if they insist that their terminology is right or ask why you didn't want your baby. (I tell them it's because she threw up on my sofa. Bad joke. Sorry.)<br />
<br />
You will also, in perpetuity, encounter people who think you made the wrong choice or that adoption damages children. Right now it hurts like hell when you hear this. It makes you angry and defensive and frustrated and you will rant. Oh, how you'll rant! But you will come to understand that it doesn't matter if everyone you meet for the rest of your life thinks you did a bad thing. You know you made the right choice, and your placed child is happy, and no one else's opinion matters or ever will.<br />
<br />
Friends and family will ask about your placed child less and less. It will seem like you're the only one who cares or even remembers. This will bother you. Eventually this too will pass. I let it go with some people, and I brought it up with others. It turns out that many relatives weren't sure what I felt comfortable discussing. They weren't sure if mentioning Roo would be painful for me. The more I told happy stories about her and open adoption, the more questions they were comfortable asking. I still have relatives who pretend she doesn't exist. That's on them. I still love them and enjoy making them uncomfortable by showing pictures of Roo being her adorable self.<br />
<br />
The media is never going to get adoption right. You'll be happier if you avoid movies and TV shows with adoption-related plots. I stopped watching the show "Glee" when a pregnant Quinn was counseled to give her baby to "Someone who really wants it." I knew when I heard that line that adoption wasn't going to be handled in a sensitive or accurate manner. I don't miss it.<br />
<br />
I know some birth moms who go out of their way to watch movies and shows with adoption in them so that they know what bad ideas they're going to encounter and have to correct when they talk to people. If you want to do that, more power to you, but I hope you like the phrase "gave up" because you're going to be hearing it a lot. Also, let's compare our lists of things that "Juno" got so, so wrong. Mine is 15 items long.<br />
<br />
Here's something I do wish I had known four years ago when I was approaching Roo's first birthday. It won't always be like this. The pain or the relationship or the need for visits and contact. It will all change, and it will be a good thing. My relationship with P and M is a continuously evolving thing. Because we are all adults and are willing to communicate openly and honestly, it gets better and better. I don't see Roo nearly as often as I used to. I don't need to. It's not that I wouldn't be happy to see her more often. It's more a matter of weeks and even months will pass and someone will ask when I last saw Roo and I'll think, wait, when <i>did</i> I see her last? The need to reassure myself that she's happy and healthy and loved is gone. The desire to see her and her family because I love them pops up every couple of months. <br />
<br />
At some point you will realize that although your love for your placed child hasn't changed or dimmed a tiny bit, it fits into your heart differently. You feel that love for a person who is 100% someone else's child, someone you don't know as well as they do. You will realize it, and it will be beautiful.Your love won't feel like a beautiful burden. It will feel like a bird in flight.<br />
<br />
I spent several years overwhelmed by the love that I have for Roo. There was so much of it and I didn't know what to do with it. I had a mother's love in my heart but I wasn't a mother. Then I saw this post on <a href="http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/43835301885/when-my-husband-was-dying-i-said-moe-how-am-i">Humans of New York</a>. A woman's dying husband told her to take the love she had for him and spread it around. I decided to do that with my love for Roo. It has made all the difference in the world.<br />
<br />
There will come a time when having placed a child for adoption will cease to be most important thing about you. Your birth child will cease to be your whole world. It is scary and you might think it's never going to happen with you, because you love your child too much. But here's the truth: I love my Roo with every bit of my heart, and I will often pass several days without giving her more than a moment of thought.<br />
<br />
It has to be this way. It's better for both of you. Your placed child deserves a birth mama who has used her experience as a stepstool rather than a crutch. Neither of you benefits if you spend the rest of your life obsessing and ruminating and crying. Even someone who loves and lives and breathes music has to turn it down sometimes and enjoy the silence. It's the silences that make music beautiful.<br />
<br />
It's the time that I don't spend with Roo that makes our visits so precious to me. It's the weeks or months that pass without hearing her little voice that make every word she says my favorite word ever spoken. If I thought about her every second of every day, I wouldn't appreciate what a wonderful little person she is to think about. <br />
<br />
When I was where you are now, I felt fractured without Roo. She was my whole heart and my whole life. She is neither of those things anymore. She is still infinitely dear to me and I think I'll always love her the best and the most. But I had to step back. You will too. Roo is P and M's daughter. For real. I had to let her be completely theirs to love her completely. I placed her on September 9th but I didn't let her go until nearly 2 years later. I didn't start to heal until then. I wasn't sure I would. I was afraid to step back and figure out who I was without her. I thought it would break me.<br />
<br />
In letting her go, I became whole again.<br />
<br />
You're going to get there, too. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait for you to see.Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-8668400754694081412014-04-27T16:11:00.000-07:002014-04-27T16:11:44.061-07:00Visiting Hours<div class="MsoNormal">
I just want to take a moment to express my stunned semi-disbelief at the
fact that Roo will be five years old this summer. Five! You guys,
seriously. I swear, she <i>just barely</i> learned to walk. <br />
<br />
I
got to see her a few weeks ago, which was fantastic. I mentioned this
to one of my friends and she seemed unclear on what happens when I do
see Roo, and I got to thinking how many times people misunderstand
openness as it pertains to me and my relationship with Roo. So let's
clarify at least the visiting part of that, and let's use a lot more words than are necessary because
that's what we do here at The Happiest Sad. Well, that and the occasional meme.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4qjNYOjelQm09O96SxUjPNwbuF-nqXtwLoQ9mrhka8RdqYhyphenhyphenDh2WP7f-9s3ZsNjJLl-iPVYx3i9LkTObQmPhi5W28hCtdAsx8j1-2XnL-2byX-lvBSVxRHndNYSEItq6DeUpmgrz3TxCL/s1600/8f2xs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4qjNYOjelQm09O96SxUjPNwbuF-nqXtwLoQ9mrhka8RdqYhyphenhyphenDh2WP7f-9s3ZsNjJLl-iPVYx3i9LkTObQmPhi5W28hCtdAsx8j1-2XnL-2byX-lvBSVxRHndNYSEItq6DeUpmgrz3TxCL/s1600/8f2xs.jpg" height="320" width="259" /></a></div>
<br />
First of all, let's clarify the word "visit." I'm not sure when or where I settled on that word to describe spending time with Roo. The word "visit" conjures up images from my childhood of spending time with my maternal grandparents. "We're going to visit Grandma and Grandpa DeWitt," my mom would say, and there was always this element of formality where you had to sit in a chair and make polite conversation and you weren't allowed to ask why everything in the curio cabinet smelled like an improbable cross between dust and aspergillis. Those visits certainly weren't much fun. The only good thing was that my grandfather - eleven years older and three times more patient than his wife - would eventually take pity on Little Jill and give her one of those miniature ice cream cups with the wooden spoon that fitted into the lid. <br />
<br />
I am thirty years old but when I see those little ice cream cups I swear I can still feel my grandmother's disappointment looming over me like a rogue weather system. Bless her heart.<br />
<br />
I digress. <br />
<br />
What I really do, I think, is hang out with Roo and her family, but it sounds weird to say you're hanging out with a four-year-old, because if I'm honest she and I probably have different taste in movies and the last deep conversation we had was about gummy bears. So let's go with the word "visit" and pretend we grew up with the kind of grandmother who baked cookies and showed love. Bless her heart.*<br />
<br />
Visits with Roo and her family are my favorite and they are awesome. There is no formality to them. It's just time spent with my friends. I use the word "visit" to describe any time I spend with Roo's family. I have been to dance recitals, we have all gone out for breakfast (and often lunch, and once dinner), and we have spent many happy hours at parks and playgrounds. The latter is where we hang out the most because it's the most fun for the kids</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Roo always says hello to me. She says, "Hi, Jill!" and she smiles and it is awesome. Her big sister says hi to me, too, and I usually get a smile from their baby brother. M and I will talk and catch up for a bit until Roo insists that I play with her. "Jill, I want you to come play with me," she has said, and how do I say no to that? I can't. At that point I basically just let her boss me around for an hour or two. I have gotten so, so much sand in my shoes. You wouldn't believe it.<br />
<br />
She has a very good if imagination when it comes to play, but she also has favorite things. Every playground we have been on has been a pirate ship. Roo seems to like the idea of a pirate ship. Once we made sand angels - maybe that's an Arizona thing, but it's like a snow angel only you're in the sand - and Roo's big sister said, "Hurry, get on the pirate ship, you're getting covered in water!"<br />
<br />
Roo was feeling stubborn. She did not want to stop making sand angels. "I'll be fine," she told her sister. "I'm a mermaid." She's a problem solver, isn't she?<br />
<br />
We are very often mermaids, or pirates, or mermaid pirates or pirate princesses. A few weeks ago when we were pirate princesses we used our rainbow power to subdue a particularly mean eel.<br />
<br />
Roo likes to swing and climb and I have held her little shoes many, many times so she could climb better with bare feet. I always tell her how proud I am of her and I try to
compliment her on that sort of thing more than on her general adorableness.
When she climbed high even though she was scared, I told her she was
very brave and that I was proud.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She knows that I love her but she is still a little kid, so when it’s time to
leave she gives me a cheerful, “Bye, Jill!” and runs off, and I usually have to stop
her for a hug. I always ask first if I can get a hug and if I can give a
kiss. She always obliges. I tell her I love
her and she will usually reciprocate. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I dearly love her siblings as well and so I will
give them hugs and tell them I love them, too, because it's true and because I don’t think any
child can ever hear enough that they are loved. After my last visit – a
few hours at a park, I told Roo and her sister
that I had fun and that I always have fun with them. “We have fun with
you, too,” Roo's sister said. So many warm fuzzies, you guys. <br />
<br />
You might have noticed that at no point do I attempt to parent Roo or offer parenting advice to her parents. This is where a lot of people get confused. I think there's this misconception that openness is a shared custody agreement. So I want to be very clear: P and M are Roo's parents, one trillion percent. That's what I wanted for her. I'm just a friend of the family who happens to have birthed one of the family's kids for them. P and M are doing an awesome job at the whole parenting thing. It's not my place to interfere.<br />
<br />
I have been asked, along the custody line of thinking, if I get Roo all to myself at visits. I don't. There have never been any just-Roo-and-Jill visits and I'm totally okay with that. I love her whole family so, so much. I would be sad if I didn't get to see and spend time with them too.<br />
<br />
I end up seeing Roo and her family every couple of months or so. This works out well for all of us. M and I text pretty frequently and keep up with each other on social media. We've worked together on adoption-related events in the valley so I see her often, which I love.<br />
<br />
The other question I want to answer is whether visits are emotionally difficult for me. They are not. When I first placed I was worried that visits would be like placing Roo all over again - I'd get a few hours with her and then have to let her go. But visits have always been good for me, from the very first one. They allow me to see the good that came from the choice I made to place. I get to see firsthand that Roo is happy and loved and has an awesome life. I get to know her and be part of her life. I do cry when I drive home from a visit, but they're happy tears because I feel like I don't deserve the blessing of this amazing open adoption and yet I have them anyway.<br />
<br />
Let's be honest - I do a lot of stupid things. I struggle to be a kind and compassionate person and I'm more narcissistic than anyone has a right to be in their thirties. If life were about fairness I would never see or hear from Roo again. Every single day I thank God for these blessings I don't deserve. I thank Him for letting me have her for a little while, and I thank Him for letting P and M have her forever. I am so glad she's theirs.<br />
<br />
Every time I see Roo with her family, I remember why I chose adoption, and why if I had to do things over, I would choose it again without hesitation. As badly as it hurt at first, it doesn't hurt anymore. And Roo's happiness is worth it. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br />
*My grandmother loved me in her own way. She was just stubborn and set in her ways and didn't care much for my father, and I am like a short girl clone of my dad so I probably never stood a chance. She was a good mother to my mother and that's what matters at the end of the day, right?<br />
<br />
Bless her heart. </div>
Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-39913817926489419022014-04-05T14:44:00.002-07:002014-04-05T14:44:57.704-07:00On resemblances and regrets<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> <i>I started a draft of this blog in an e-mail to myself at work and when I copied and pasted into blogger the formatting got all borked. I tried to fix it but I stopped accruing html skills ten years ago. Apologies.</i></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i> So if the font is inconsistent in size or serif, please know that it bothers me as much as or more than it bothers you. </i></span></span></span></i></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">A
few days ago M Instagrammed a picture of Roo at the Phoenix Zoo. I have
looked at this picture probably twenty times because Roo is pretty much
my favorite thing
in the history of ever. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Most
people I know will insist that Roo looks just like me. I’ve never seen
much of a resemblance; she looks much more like H than like me. But no
one ever met H,
and people tend to see what they’re looking for, and Roo did get half of
her genes from me. But saying that is misleading, isn’t it?
Scientifically it’s more accurate to say that Roo got half of her genes
from my parents. The reason that biological siblings
sometimes look nothing alike is that each person is the result of a
random combination of their grandparents’ DNA. This explains why in my
family, siblings look like this:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvFdoopSckn0UjqHh3l3CLTLwg4MJYunaxCBmJ_kA-JvzQIlir2kcrzJe9VN_sB9bXnx5v-q8HY3jJsmmFmRPYsFsH_YlfJ0Wc9Jh4voVxvK0NIH3nYs12RB0H58Vp3nQ5vzzcD73jK2BS/s1600/siblings.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvFdoopSckn0UjqHh3l3CLTLwg4MJYunaxCBmJ_kA-JvzQIlir2kcrzJe9VN_sB9bXnx5v-q8HY3jJsmmFmRPYsFsH_YlfJ0Wc9Jh4voVxvK0NIH3nYs12RB0H58Vp3nQ5vzzcD73jK2BS/s1600/siblings.png" height="177" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We're all white. Does that count as a resemblance?</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">and cousins look
like this:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiNtXmSCD1UWWIvkrAM_NpwJwhZ7t_dzi9_KxgjotZd509hbsW14zyCl99h6EDRwwb0bxLI0En-DmXdm1j13VNwPGM7FhXhbSzjdCq-9lQdWAiEQ9qSI5nnCLUz3uF7CekZNmLi-9GqEgP/s1600/cousins.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiNtXmSCD1UWWIvkrAM_NpwJwhZ7t_dzi9_KxgjotZd509hbsW14zyCl99h6EDRwwb0bxLI0En-DmXdm1j13VNwPGM7FhXhbSzjdCq-9lQdWAiEQ9qSI5nnCLUz3uF7CekZNmLi-9GqEgP/s1600/cousins.png" height="191" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Definitely related.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">If I were better at math
I think I would have become a geneticist, because this stuff fascinates
me to no end. </span></span></span><br />
</div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Anyway.
I’m aware of Mendel's laws and yet I was surprised when I saw this picture of Roo in front of
the baboons,
because I didn’t see a resemblance to H or to me. I saw a resemblance to
my sister. My first thought was, sheesh, I don’t even look like my
sister. My next thought was that here is this little person who looks
something like my sister, and my sister has never
met her, and probably never will. My sister shares DNA with Roo. My
sister’s kids share DNA with Roo. From the grandparent-gene perspective, my
nieces and nephews could end up looking a lot like Roo. And they will
never meet. </span></span></span><br />
</div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I
wondered, for the first time ever, how the other members of my family
feel about Roo’s adoption. I know that they think I made the right call
and that they are proud
of me (I think). But I wonder what they think of Roo herself. I wonder
if there is a sense of loss for any of them. My oldest brother met Roo
and has met P and M as well. But my other brother and my sister never
met my little girl and I can’t imagine any circumstances
in which they would. They have to have come to this conclusion as well.
Does it bother them? Has it occurred to any of them that their kids
share DNA with Roo, too? </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">My
pregnancy has to have raised awkward conversations between my oldest
brother and his kids. They lived in town at the time. At that point I’m
sure the only birds-and-bees
conversation that had taken place involved married mommies and daddies,
or if they didn’t, the mommy-without-a-daddy thing probably wasn’t
presented as a viable option. I know that my sister told her kids that
they had a new cousin when Roo was born. And now
I wonder, what was the conversation like when I chose adoption? How do
you explain to a child that her cousin isn’t her cousin anymore? </span></span></span><br />
</div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I
wonder especially about my brother Christopher’s family. His youngest,
Violet, was born exactly three weeks after Roo was. What kind of
conversations went on in
their house? My youngest nephew was still a baby when I placed Roo, and
my youngest niece was born six months after placement. How will they
find out about Roo, if they do at all? I mean, I’m a blabbermouth about
adoption but I don’t know how my siblings have
chosen to handle the issue in their own families. </span></span></span><br />
</div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I
get that parenting is pretty much all awkward conversations, but how
many awkward conversations have I personally been responsible for? I
wonder now. I never wondered
before, but I wonder now how my siblings explained things to their kids. About Roo when she was mine and about Roo when all of a sudden she wasn't. I never considered or appreciated this burden before. I never cared. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I care more now, I think, and I feel guilty that it's taken me so many years to care. Who am I that I wouldn't give a thought for five years to how Roo and her adoption affected people other than me and Roo and her family? </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">She
will be 5 in three months, and yet this is the first time I have ever
stopped to think about any of these things. I’m not sure what that says
about me as a sister,
or as a person. I mean, I know that I’m an inherently selfish being, but
honestly, I should have considered these things before. I should have
considered them many times. How am I just now realizing, at thirty years
old, that I am not an island?</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I wonder how much of my lack of consideration for this is due to the fact that my mother was adopted. For my whole life I have simply accepted that I share DNA with people I will never meet. I'm not just talking about my mom's birth family, either. I have cousins on my mom's side that I have never met, and cousins on my dad's side I've only met once or twice. I'm half envious, half mystified when I meet people who are close to their entire extended families. It's nothing I've ever experienced. Is that sad? It sounds sad, I think. I've never given it too much thought. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">But whatever the reason, I'm only now starting to wonder if my family is similarly blase' about having biological relatives they've never met. And I wonder if they include Roo in that relative count. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I think maybe it's time for me to have a few awkward conversations of my own. </span></span></span></div>
Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-88269295417206663312014-02-17T14:11:00.001-07:002014-02-17T14:11:44.772-07:00Hopes and Fears*Last week was an adoption picnic and I went to it, as I go to every adoption event, because I knew Roo was going to be there and I will take any chance I get to admire the fantastic little girl who used to live in my womb.<br />
<br />
Roo will be five years old this summer, and frankly I don't know how that happened. I swear she just barely learned to read (before she was three, you guys!) and now she'll be in kindergarten in the fall. Because I don't see her every day, she always seems so much more grown up each time I see her. Taller - although not much; genetics are not on her side as far as height goes - and smarter and more independent.<br />
<br />
Gone are the days when Roo was a tiny baby whose decisions were made for her. She has her own mind and she does as she pleases, within the limits set by her parents. Case in point: when Roo's daddy brought her to the picnic - she had been at a birthday party earlier - she didn't want to socialize. She wanted to play on the playground and I could barely get a hello out of her. She was too focused on climbing the jungle gym.<br />
<br />
I watched her run off in her princess dress and for a moment I missed the tiny, chubby baby I used to be able to hold captive in my arms. It was easier to feel connected to her then, when I could hold her warm weight and clearly remember her little feet kicking me from the inside.<br />
<br />
I missed the darling toddler who would play pretend with me because she was the age when children will play with anyone who sits down with them. I felt less connected then but she was still so small and she was easy to distract in my favor.<br />
<br />
I watched Roo climb higher and higher - surprisingly adept at keeping her dress in place as she ascended - and I realized, maybe for the first time, that openness is not a choice that Roo made for herself. It's a choice that was made for her. She knows who I am because her parents thought it would be best for her and for me. She did not ask to meet me. She did not ask to have me in her life.<br />
<br />
And I realized that the time may come when she does not want me in her life. It may not come, of course, and I hope it doesn't, but as I watched her climb I thought, I have to prepare myself for that eventuality. If the time comes that Roo would rather not have a relationship with me, I will have to find a way to be okay with that.<br />
<br />
I don't know any adults who grew up with an open adoption because it's such a relatively recent phenomenon. I know adults who have reconnected with their birth families, but none who grew up with a birth mom in their lives. What will my presence do to and for Roo as she grows up? Will I be a benefit to her or a burden?<br />
<br />
Such heavy thoughts for a picnic. This is what happens when you use caffeine as a substitute for sleep.<br />
<br />
Roo grew tired of the jungle gym and came over and we had an Arizona snowball fight with the rest of the picnic attendees. We made play dough shapes together ("Don't make any more seahorses," she told me. "Make something else") and she made me a valentine card and we watched the ducks swim in the pond.<br />
<br />
("I wish that I was a duck," said Roo, "so I could swim all day and people would feed me." She looked pensive and then added, "But Mommy would miss me if I were a duck here.") <br />
<br />
For now, Roo is happy to play with me when she's not asserting her independence. My hope is that she will always be happy to see me. That she will be able to feel my love for her. That she'll be a happier, healthier person for having an open adoption that includes her birth mother as a sometimes presence in her life.<br />
<br />
But my hope is also that she will make the kind of choices that will result in peace and happiness in her life, whatever those end up being. My hope is also that if the time comes when she feels I am a hindrance rather than a help, that she will be strong enough to let me go. I don't want to be an obligation to her. Openness was chosen for her as a benefit, not a burden. I don't ever want to be a burden.<br />
<br />
I don't want to not be a part of her life. The thought that someday Roo might not need or want me around scares me. And I don't want it to happen, and I don't anticipate that happening, I really don't. But I want the choice to be hers, when she's old enough to make it. <br />
<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<i>*Dear Keane: please forgive me for stealing your album title for my blog post. Hopes and Fears is my favorite of your albums, and "This is the Last Time" got me through a rough patch. I love you guys, even though I hated the heck out of your collaboration with K'naan.</i>Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-34391105491589603302014-01-22T18:48:00.000-07:002014-01-22T18:48:29.966-07:00If You Want to Help a Birth MotherIn my local adoption community, I am seen as a success story. Not as any kind of hero or role model, but as a success. I placed my baby for adoption after a brief stint single parenting. I went through the messy grieving process and came out of it a better person. Four years later I have a career of sorts, an apartment, a car, and mental health. I am doing well. I have a good relationship with the child I placed and with her family. I've got 99 problems, but adoption ain't one.<br />
<br />
I know way too many birth moms who can't say the same. I have seen open adoptions - and birth mothers - fall apart spectacularly. I am more acutely aware than ever that I hit the jackpot as far as adoption is concerned. I wish everyone could be so lucky. <br />
<br />
<br />
I think this is why, in the last three months, I've been asked for advice by adoption caseworkers and their ilk. They all want to know the same thing: why did things work out well for me, and how can they ensure similar successes for the birth moms they work with?<br />
<br />
I wish I knew. I am hesitant to give advice because every situation, every adoption is its own little planet. Every person is different and every adoption is different and things can change so quickly. I've never wanted to set myself up as an example of what to do or how to be. That makes me very uncomfortable, particularly when in adoption, two people can do exactly the same thing and end up with vastly different results. <br />
<br />
I've tried to explain this, but still I'm asked, "What can we do to help birth mothers?"<br />
<br />
I'm expected to have some exclusive insight as a birth mother. But all I can think of is how right after placement, there was almost no help on earth for me - not that there was none offered, but that nothing worked. The only thing that made me happy was seeing my baby girl and how well she was doing. I lived for her and for those moments. Other than that, there was too much going on to be helped by any single entity or program. I had too many different issues.<br />
<br />
That's the real gist of it, isn't it? There are always too many things going on in a birth mother's life. We can talk all we want about how there ought to be support and programs to help women who have just placed a child for adoption deal with that issue. And I'm not saying those things aren't important. But what we're forgetting is that so often, an unplanned pregnancy isn't the overarching problem. It's a symptom. When a woman is facing an unplanned pregnancy in the kind of situation where she's considering and choosing adoption, the pregnancy isn't her problem. If you want to help a birth mom, you have to realize that.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Not that there's ever one single
underlying issue. There are dozens. Low self-esteem, co-dependence,
abuse, depression, anxiety, daddy issues … sometimes it's a combination.
But part of what makes placement so gut-wrenching is that you've got
the grief of placing a child layered on top of these other issues
that were never treated. In my personal experience, if you want to help a birth mom, you
have to help restore her sense of self-worth. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm not saying that every single birth mom has made horrible life choices or gotten herself into a bad situation. But the vast majority of those I have met (and I include myself in this number) ended up pregnant because a lot of other things were going on. My pregnancy was a symptom of a much larger problem. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I've always hated the term "crisis pregnancy" because it sounds like some sort of emergency or disaster. My pregnancy wasn't like that. The fact is that it saved my life. I was self-destructing spectacularly before I got pregnant. Roo saved my life. If I hadn't gotten pregnant, there would have been a crisis situation. If you want to help a birth mother, don't look at her pregnancy as a crisis. Look at it as an opportunity to make positive changes in her life. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So, adoption professionals, here's my advice to you. If you want to help a birth mother, stop looking at her as a birth mother. Look at her as a person. She had problems before placement and she's going to have them after. There is no one-size-fits-all help for her. Don't put her in a box. You can do better than that. She deserves better than that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-77389522734858829992013-12-15T18:30:00.001-07:002013-12-15T18:31:12.924-07:00In Which Jill Word-Vomits Some of Her Ugly FeelingsThis blog used to be a painfully open book about every single thought and feeling that I had about adoption. It didn't occur to me to filter what I wrote, because it didn't occur to me that anyone would ever really read it.<br />
<br />
People read it. I have been told that it was helpful, but mostly I find myself embarrassed that I shared as much as I did. If I could go back I would probably say a lot less. But I can't go back.<br />
<br />
What I can do, and have done, is be much more thoughtful about the things that I share. Because I was so candid in the past I find myself being excruciatingly careful in choosing every single word anymore and as a result I don't blog nearly as much as I used to. I'm a worrier; I don't know how much I have mentioned that in the past but the first 25 years of my life were basically one long panic attack. As I've grown up I've gotten better at channeling my worry when I can and stuffing it down when I can't. My blog became one of the places I shifted this mental energy. I agonized over every word of every post and quite frequently I would write entire posts - they would take hours! - and then I'd decide at the last second that they weren't good enough to share.<br />
<br />
It's exhausting. I'm tired of worrying so much. I'm going to try to worry less and just say what I feel. It worked for me in the past; I think it's what grew my readership. I've never been numbers-focused in my blogging. I don't care how many people read it; I just want the people who do read it to get something out of it.<br />
<br />
So, I'm just going to get some feelings out right now. That's what I used to do. I'm going to try doing it again. And I'm not even going to proofread. How's that for living dangerously?<br />
<br />
I turned 30 in October. I had a great week of birthday celebrations but then it ended and I felt like I had this itch I couldn't scratch. I'm not where I wanted to be at 30. I don't feel like I have much to show for my life so far.<br />
<br />
I want a husband and I want children. I want children very, very badly. Not having any has made me miss Roo more lately. Not the real Roo, who is four, but my baby Roo, the tiny newborn who for a brief time made me a mother. I miss her. I miss being her mom. Babies are awesome. It seems like everyone I know is either engaged (seven engagements in two weeks, I kid you not) or having a baby, and I can't even get a first date.<br />
<br />
In the 4-ish years since placement until the end of November, I was asked maybe a total of three times whether I had any kids. It just never came up for some reason. Then this past week I was asked twice if I'm a mother. The second time was at work. A very adorable and chatty five-year-old asked whether there were any lollipops in the library that she could have, and I apologized, telling her that we don't usually keep candy there. She felt bad for me.<br />
<br />
"Next time I come in I'm going to bring you some candy. I'll bring lots. You can have some and you can take some for your kids. Do you have kids?" <br />
<br />
I don't even know why my brain did what it did but for some reason I said, "I have a little girl." I felt like I was hearing myself say it more than I was making the conscious decision to speak.<br />
<br />
"Well, she can have some candy, too," the girl told me, and then her grandmother said they had to leave. <br />
<br />
And I was really glad there was a line at the circulation desk, because I think if I hadn't had work to do right then, I would have gone to my desk in the back room and just cried. Because I don't have kids. Because I don't have a husband or even a boyfriend. Because I don't have any money, or any plan for the rest of my life, or anything that I thought I would have at 30. Because maybe I never will.<br />
<br />
I always get depressed around the holidays. It used to start at the beginning of October but I was still pretty happy then and I thought maybe I'd get a break this year. I was wrong. I've been a mess since just after Halloween, and I've spent the past 2 weeks in particular desperately fighting off a panic attack. It's like swatting a fly that won't go away. No matter how many times I beat back those feelings, they keep pushing at me.<br />
<br />
It's exhausting. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of constantly thinking and feeling. I wish I could just shut that part of my brain off for a few weeks. I wish I could stop worrying and just enjoy my life and be happy with what I have instead of defining myself by what I lack.<br />
<br />
That's the trick, though, isn't it? Because the world I live in is determined to define me by my lack. No kids, no husband. No college degree. Not tall. Not thin. Not pretty. Not enough. (I've had self-esteem problems lately, too, in case that isn't coming through.) It's hard to remember the good things about yourself when society only sees the bad.<br />
<br />
One of my problems ... blah. I wasn't going to mention it but as long as I'm being honest, I'm going to just be completely honest and get it all out there.<br />
<br />
I've kind of lost my head over a guy I know. He doesn't feel the same way about me. My friends and my mother and my therapist all have opinions on the matter but I don't feel comfortable with any of the advice I've been given. In the meantime I have all of these stupid feelings jammed inside me and I can't shake them. I am desperate to shake them. I have spent hours asking God to take away my feelings for this guy but whether I have them for a reason or I'm just not strong enough to get rid of them, the feelings are still there.<br />
<br />
This, too, is exhausting. It's like having a toothache that doesn't go away. Some times it hurts worse and some times it's not as bad, but the pain is always there, waiting for a bad time to remind you of its presence. <br />
<br />
I have had many days lately where I think that this whole adult human thing just isn't working for me. Of all the stupid things I've done in my life, being an adult is on the top of the list.<br />
<br />
I know that what I need to do is focus on all of the things that are amazing in my life. Lately I have come to truly realize and appreciate how fantastic Roo's open adoption is. I feel like my relationship with Roo and her family just keeps improving, and it is a great blessing in my life. I'm a lucky girl. I know way too many birth moms whose open adoptions haven't turned out the way they'd hoped or planned.<br />
<br />
I am so, so proud of Roo. She is the most awesome little kid ever. She is very smart and very cute but more importantly she is very kind. It does me a lot of good, when I'm feeling like a wreck and a failure, to look at Roo and her life. No matter what else happens to me, no matter how many things I mess up, I grew and gave birth to this precious little girl, and I found her family. I love the way that she is being raised. I think she's going to be unstoppable when she's an adult (and maybe even before then). How lucky am I to be able to see these things firsthand?<br />
<br />
I am trying really, really hard to stay positive and to have hope. I had a motto for myself this year that I abandoned ages ago - probably back in March - that was cheerful and optimistic and then life happened. My new motto is something I try to remind myself of every single day -- <br />
<br />
It's not always going to be like this.<br />
<br />
It's not. It won't. Things are already different than they were a year ago, and next year will be different, too. "Different" hasn't meant any of the changes I had hoped for but at least if I have problems, they're different problems. I like variety in my heartache. But I do hope for less heartache.<br />
<br />
I hope that someday I will have the opportunity of falling in love with someone who loves me back. I hope that someday I will remember how to sleep. I hope that someday even if I don't have what I wanted for myself, I'll be happy with what I have. I hope that someday I will make Roo and her family proud of me. (I should want my own family to be proud of me, but they know me too well for that. Best to stick to attainable goals.)<br />
<br />
I will. I have to believe that. And in the meantime, I will follow the brave example of Liz Lemon:<br />
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<br />Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-64355766053581639212013-11-11T15:26:00.000-07:002013-11-11T15:27:08.983-07:00What Still HurtsLast week I got to be on a panel at an adoption conference. Two other birth mothers and I answered questions from new birth moms and expectant parents, and I think it went really well.<br />
<br />
One of the questions we got was whether placement still hurt years later. I said no, and it was the truth. It hurt a lot for quite a while but that's in the past. But lately I have been thinking about the circumstances that led me to choose adoption, and I realized that that's where the pain comes in. That's what still hurts. <br />
<br />
I may write about all of these circumstances in the future but today I'm going to focus on the one that tapped me on the shoulder yesterday and said, "Hey, I know you were happy a second ago, so I just wanted to remind you that you should probably fall into a bout of tears and self-loathing."<br />
<br />
Yesterday was H's birthday.<br />
<br />
There's no point in remembering an ex's birthday, but I always remember dates, whether I need to or not. I'm sure that I have been vaguely aware in past years of H's birthday, in the same way that I am vaguely aware of minor holidays like Arbor Day or the start of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brumalia">Brumalia</a>.* But I never thought much about it, and I doubt that I would have thought much about it if I hadn't been trying to do a favor for a friend.<br />
<br />
Saying I was doing a favor for a friend makes it sound like I was being generous and thoughtful but the fact is this favor included scouring Pinterest for a picture that in the end I didn't even find. What I found instead made me think of H, and I cried.<br />
<br />
What I found was <a href="http://www.pinterest.com/pin/399694535650500599/">this.</a> More pictures and the full story can be found on the photographer's website <a href="http://www.amelialyon.net/personal/introducing-sweet-lola-dee.html">here</a>. Go ahead and look, I'll wait.<br />
<br />
.<br />
.<br />
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<br />
Good? Okay.<br />
<br />
Anyway. The four pictures from the pin broke my heart. I thought back to my time in the hospital four years ago. It's nothing I would have wanted photographed. It's nothing I want to remember.<br />
<br />
I've always wanted to be a mother. I know that's probably appallingly unambitious in today's modern, post-feminist society but it's the truth. In my younger years I used to imagine what my life would be like when I brought my first child into the world. The reality was so far from what I'd imagined, it was devastating. I cried through most of my time in the hospital and very little of my tears were due to physical pain. I cried because this wasn't how I wanted to begin my motherhood. This wasn't how any baby ought to be welcomed into the world.<br />
<br />
I had imagined a devoted husband holding my hand, telling me I was doing great. I had imagined both of my parents in the waiting room, talking about the day that I was born. I imagined my brothers and sister anxiously waiting for my parents to call so they could tell their children about a brand-new cousin. I imagined dozens of people - friends, family, church members - all excited about the birth of my child.<br />
<br />
Instead, it was just me and my mother. She cried a lot, too. The fluorescent lights in the hospital buzzed in and out and at times the room I was laboring in seemed so dark that I fought my contractions, unwilling to deliver a baby in a place so devoid of light and joy.<br />
<br />
I am grateful that my mother was there with me. But her emotions got the better of her. She tried not to cry in front of me but there was nowhere for her to go. "This isn't right," she sobbed at one point. "You should have a husband and he should be here with you. You shouldn't be alone."<br />
<br />
I needed her to be strong for me, but she hardly had enough strength for herself. I didn't blame her. I blamed myself.<br />
<br />
You may be wondering where H was during all of this. I have no idea. The last time we had communicated I had been planning on placing my baby for adoption and although I had vacillated between placement and parenting since then, I knew better than to bother H with my ambivalence. He had been very clear that if I chose adoption he would be out of the picture.<br />
<br />
It wouldn't have been any better with him there at the hospital. He wasn't my husband. He didn't want this child. He didn't love me. I don't think he ever did. And I felt ... oh, so many things. But mostly I felt as though I had given him too much of myself already, trusted him with too much of who I was. There didn't seem to be anything left of my identity that he hadn't colored. I wanted to labor without him, to try to find myself somehow in the beautiful, terrible pain of giving life. <br />
<br />
I have learned over the years to not dwell on dark days. I take from them what they have to give me and I leave them behind me where they belong. But every now and then something will take me back down the rabbit hole of my past. Every now and then I get a reminder that once I gave my whole soul to a man with the most beautiful, sad brown eyes, and that he didn't want it. We created life together and it still wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. There was nothing on earth I could do to make him care, to make him love me.<br />
<br />
Oh, don't mistake me, please. I don't need him to love me now and I don't need him to have ever loved me. I was foolish then; I still believed in fairy tales. I'm smarter now. I know better. It just stings, the remembering does. The thinking. The wondering.<br />
<br />
H was my first boyfriend. H was my only boyfriend. No one wanted me before and no one has wanted me since. If I didn't have eight years of therapy to lean on these facts would break me. Even with the therapy it's easy, when my defenses are down, to imagine that no one will ever want me. It's easy to imagine that my choice is between loneliness and cats. Out of everything emotionally wrenching thing that has happened to me since I found out I was pregnant, that's what still hurts. <br />
<br />
Thank you for slogging through these emotions with me. I promise my next post will be happier and include a picture of my Tom Selleck birthday cake.<br />
<br />
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<br />
*Oh, don't pretend you don't remember the start of Brumalia. I can't be the only one ... well, I guess I can. Never mind. Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-1458948674134694452013-10-17T13:08:00.004-07:002013-10-17T13:08:58.869-07:00What's Your Excuse?Oh, Internet. I can't leave you alone for one minute, can I?<br />
<br />
I went to New York City last weekend and when I got back, everyone online was raising a stink about a photograph.<br />
<br />
I'm not going to post it here because reasons, but if you have spent any time on a computer in the past week you have probably seen it. It's a photograph of a mother with her three small boys. The mother is wearing a body-baring sports bra and booty shorts, so we can admire her impeccable abs. The caption at the top of the photo reads "What's your excuse?"<br />
<br />
"What's my excuse for what?" I thought, because I enjoy being deliberately obtuse. But obviously, this woman is asking what my excuse is for not having a body like hers.<br />
<br />
There are a lot of things I'd like to say to the world about pregnancy and childbirth and a woman's body. But <a href="http://www.beautyredefined.net/">Beauty Redefined</a> says it better than I could, so I'll let you go there. The world isn't very kind to women who don't bounce back from a pregnancy with the speed and precision of a celebrity. You know what makes it even worse? Not having a baby to show for it.<br />
<br />
I think that even though society has these expectations of new mothers, we're willing to make allowances for a woman if she's pushing a newborn around in a stroller. "Her midsection is doughy," Society says, "but she did have a baby a few months ago." When I went to the store with Roo, my baby belly was excused. I had proof that there was a purpose to how I looked.<br />
<br />
After placement? I was just another fat girl. No one could tell that my body had done something amazing in growing a human from scratch. No one could tell that I emotionally gutted myself to give that tiny human a wonderful life. And it didn't matter - in the eyes of the world, I wasn't a birth mother or a woman or a child of God. I was just fat.<br />
<br />
I don't like that word, by the way. Fat. I don't like the way it's defined today and I don't like the way that it's used. My sister-in-law doesn't allow her children to say it. They're allowed to speak in terms of healthy and less healthy, but never fat, and they understand that you can't tell if someone is healthy just by looking at them.<br />
<br />
I've struggled with my weight and with disordered eating for 2/3 of my life. When I was 19 years old, I finally got skinny. I had flat abs and slim legs and I fit the societal definition of health because I could wear a certain jeans size. It's worth noting that at that point in time I still wanted to lose 10 pounds, because according to the Body Mass Index I was overweight. But, hey, I was skinny - my body looked a lot like What's Your Excuse Lady's, right down to the washboard abs, so I must have been fit, right?<br />
<br />
Wrong. I had hypertension, my cholesterol and triglycerides were atrocious, I was sleeping 3-4 hours a night, I was a mental health disaster, and I got winded if I tried to run from the front door to the sidewalk. My physical appearance gave the impression of health, but I was as unhealthy as it was possible to be without a fatal disease. <br />
<br />
I looked good, and I was constantly given compliments on my appearance. But my looks didn't tell the whole story. <br /><br />What's Your Excuse Lady is probably much more physically fit than I was at my thinnest. Or, you know, maybe she isn't. Because all I know about her is that she looks fit. What's Your Excuse Lady might find my body repulsive, and wonder why it looks this way. I'm single and childless - why am I not working out an hour each day? <br />
<br />
For the record, here are my abs as of three weeks ago:<br />
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Please note the myriad stretch marks. I am very proud of them. Roo gave them to me. When I see them, I think of her and how much I love her. You may also notice a few odd little horizontal white scars. Those are from the surgery to remove my gallbladder. Because when I was skinny and by all appearances healthy, I had gallstones. (When my gallbladder was inspected post-surgery, they lost count at 15 gallstones.)<br />
<br />
These are my abs, and I am, at the age of 30 years minus a week, the healthiest I have ever been in my life. I probably can't convince you with the picture above, but it's true. I can do 10 pushups with perfect form. I can hold a full squat for a solid minute. I can do a 20-minute ab workout without a struggle. I can run - not super fast, but I can do it. My cholesterol is on the low end of normal. My triglycerides are perfect. My blood pressure? 93/50. I am happy and mentally healthy and, by the way, I weigh 155 pounds. <br />
<br />
So, what's my excuse? <br />
<br />
My excuse is that I think there are at least 600 things in this world that are more important than flat abs. My excuse is that "have a perfect body" isn't anywhere on my list of priorities - health, yes, "hot," no. My excuse is that I am so much more than what I look like. My excuse is that I would rather live a full and interesting life and have a doughy belly than spend 365 hours a year at the gym. My excuse is that I have value and worth beyond my physical appearance.<br />
<br />
My excuse is that I am capable of doing things, not just being being looked at. My excuse is that I am strong, and strong doesn't have a single look, nor should it, nor should we expect it to. My excuse is that I earned this stomach, stretch marks and scars and all, and I love it. My excuse is that I am happy with who I am, regardless of the fact that no one covets my abs.<br />
<br />
My excuse is a precious, perfectly imperfect little four-year-old girl named Roo who is going to take her cues about health and worth and womanhood from the influential women in her life. She is blessed with an intelligent, clever, and media-savvy mother to guide her, and I am so glad! I can't talk M up enough. If I ever grow up I want to be just like her.<br />
<br />
I don't know how big of an influence I will end up having on Roo and the woman that she becomes, but I refuse to take any risks. I refuse to sacrifice any part of myself at the altar of "hot," because I don't want Roo to think it's something I place any value on. <br />
<br />
I know that her parents will teach her well, as they already have. But if she ever looks to me as an example or a role model or even just as a genetic roadmap, I want her to see a woman whose imperfections give her strength. I want her to see a woman who is more concerned with making the world beautiful than she is with making herself beautiful.<br />
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My excuse is that I don't want the person I love most in the world to ever have to feel she needs to make excuses for the way that she looks. She is more than her body. She is precious to me because of who she is, not because of her looks. <br />
<br />
I have made a lot of excuses today, but you know what? I don't need them. There are only a handful of things you can tell about me by looking at me, and none of them are important. <br />
<br />
Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-37400816416411043932013-09-09T22:50:00.000-07:002013-09-09T22:50:29.298-07:00Four Years, and Five YearsI neglected to celebrate my blog's birthday at the end of August. I did have cake, but I didn't blog. I never blog anymore, you guys. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
But one day I won't neglect to commemorate is today, the 9th of September. This is going to be as unfocused as all get out, but I have things to say. Today marks four years since I placed Roo for adoption. It also marks five years since my dad died. I remember thinking, back in 2009, that it was a good idea to place Roo on the anniversary of my dad's death, because that way I would have one day a year to feel sad and I could be happy the rest of the time.<br />
<br />
Worst idea EVER.<br />
<br />
I find myself experiencing a sort of mutant weather system of feelings this time of year because I'm thinking of two different life experiences and processing the emotions that each of them brought, and sometimes the hot and cold fronts collide and there are violent storms. Last Monday I felt every feeling I have ever had all at once. I ended up slumped on the floor in my closet, sobbing to the point of hyperventilation. I had to go <a href="http://www1.macys.com/shop/product/jessica-simpson-shoes-emmly-flats?ID=704341&CategoryID=13247&LinkType=PDPZ1">shoe shopping</a> to make it okay. <br />
<br />
I'm sure I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. When I grieve placement, it's nothing to do with the real Roo, the world's awesomest four-year-old. My grief is for my baby, my tiny newborn. I miss being a mother, and I miss being her mother in particular. The fact that I have a milestone birthday coming up and that I am still very, very single only compounds that pain. I want children. I wanted Roo. I want more just like her. Letting her go was the hardest thing I have ever done. Losing my dad was awful, but placement in the moment was a million times worse.<br />
<br />
But it's okay now. It is absolutely okay. <br />
<br />
I was going back through my archive and reading what I wrote on previous September 9ths. I had this to say in 2010:<br />
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in;</style>“A year later, I would do it all over
again in a heartbeat. Yes, it hurt. It hurt for a while. But time has
dulled the pain, and continues to do so. Roo's happiness is worth
every tear. If me being sad for a while is the price of her being
happy forever, I'm glad to have paid it.”</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I stand by the words of Past Jill. She was pretty insightful. I miss her sometimes. I haven't had a single insight lately. Well, that's not entirely true. But my last insight was inspired by a YouTube video; it wasn't much to brag about. (Also, the video was the one about what sound a fox makes.)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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I miss being a mother when I stop to think about it. But every single day, I miss having a father. My dad was a pretty awesome guy. My mother is fond of saying that he was the most fascinating person she had ever met. She's not wrong. I had a great dad. He's been gone for five years and I still can't make it okay.<br />
<br />
Tonight I went to the planetarium at Mesa Community College and watched the coolest video of the universe, as generated by computers, set to the music of Pink Floyd. It was absolutely amazing, and I wanted to cry because my father would have loved it. When I was a kid he would take me outside after dark, set up his telescope and teach me about the stars. He pointed out planets and constellations, and the occasional airplane, along with the thought that he liked airplanes because it was nice to be going somewhere.<br />
<br />
He has been gone for five years and I still miss him so much it hurts. I have made so much progress with adoption in four years; the pain is hardly worth mentioning because it is so fleeting and faint. It's a good place to be in. I wish I could get there with my grief for my dad.<br />
<br />
I have always liked the idea of space travel in theory but in practice it scares me. Too many things can go wrong, and there is precious little keeping you alive. When my family was in Washington, D.C. for my sister's wedding, we went to the National Air and Space museum and saw the tin cans they used to use to send astronauts into space. I could not believe how small they were, or how thin. A million things could have gone wrong and the men inside would have died pretty horrible deaths.<br />
<br />
"I could never go up into space," I told my dad.<br />
<br />
"Really?" he said. "I'd go in a second. I want off this planet. We're all trapped here, you know." (Only my father would feel trapped on a planet the size of ours.) <br />
<br />
He's not trapped here anymore.<br />
<br />
There are a lot of things I don't understand about the afterlife, but personally I like to believe that my dad has seen planets and stars and galaxies and that they are every bit as amazing as he used to imagine. <br />
<br />
Today was a good day, it really and truly was. I am blessed to have a lot of people in my life who love me and who say nice things to me when I need a boost. I had an entirely adequate day at work (good as it gets with the government). I had the very best time at dinner with Roo and her family - they are my favorite people ever - and I felt so purely happy! And the planetarium was amazing, and I was there with friends. It was a lovely day, better than I expected and certainly better than I deserve.<br />
<br />
There was just this moment when I got home a little before 10:00. I hadn't been home all day, and my apartment was dark and empty. I was reminded of the day my dad died, when my mom and I went home to a dark, empty house. I went to the kitchen (tonight, not 5 years ago) because I thought eating my feelings* might help, but mostly I wanted a cookie and there were no cookies, so I cried instead. <br />
<br />
And then I went on with my night, and here I am. I have survived another September 9th, and I only cried once. My sister-in-law said on Facebook that instead of just being sad today I should use the day to celebrate the choice I made for Roo and the awesome person that my dad was. I like her idea much better than the crying that has been my tradition. Every September 9th that passes is a reminder that I am so much stronger than the things life throws at me. I'm not broken. I'm not bitter.<br />
<br />
I'm better. <br />
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*Eating my feelings is number 148 on my list of faults. I don't recommend listing your faults. You will not be a happier person. You will, however, have a humorous anecdote to share when making small talk. So it's up to you.<br />
<br /></div>
Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-26358488298249248592013-08-22T13:02:00.001-07:002013-08-22T13:02:47.674-07:00AnniversaryI'm usually pretty good at remembering important dates. I'm pretty good at remembering unimportant dates as well. For instance, I remember that my high school graduation was on May 24th, 2001 (it was Bob Dylan's birthday). I remember that my mom's due date for me was October 6th (sorry, Mom). I finished beauty school on October 17th. I know my therapist's birthday.<br />
<br />
I certainly prided myself on remembering every Roo-related date. I think I've blogged about most of them, likely extensively because after four years of blogging, I think I've covered almost everything extensively.<br />
<br />
But when I woke up this morning I noticed the date on my phone and I thought, today was important once. The letters and numbers glowing on the screen didn't tell me why I ought to remember August 22nd. I stared at them for a minute and then the screen dimmed and just as they disappeared, I remembered that in 2009, August 22nd was a Saturday. It was the day I decided I needed to place Roo for adoption.<br />
<br />
Despite my unnecessary thoroughness on many other Roo- and adoption-related topics, I don't think I've said much about the circumstances that led me to decide once and for all that adoption was right for Roo. And I'm still not going to. I'll probably get there eventually, but today is not the day.<br />
<br />
Today I'm just going to remember. I went to bed on August 21st, 2009, as someone's mother and I had no reason to believe I wouldn't always be her mother. When I went to bed on August 22nd, I knew my time as Roo's mother had an expiration date. It was devastating and terrifying for me, and absolutely the right choice for Roo.<br />
<br />But I don't want to dwell on the sad. That's not what I want to remember today. What I want to remember is how I changed as a mother that day, once the decision had been made. I can't say with any objectivity whether I was a good mother to Roo. I know I certainly loved her more than I had ever loved another human being before. I know that I would have done anything in the world for her. I still would. <br />
<br />
But I had never taken care of a baby before. I'm the baby of my family so I didn't have any younger siblings to practice on. And I was raising Roo alone. It was stressful and lonely and I worried constantly. It seemed like there were a million things to do, and no time to do any of them. I did what I could while Roo napped, but I was so tired, and so lonely.<br />
<br />
Then came the 22nd. I had not yet found P and M. I didn't know how much longer I'd be Roo's mother. I just knew it wasn't going to be long. I knew I had to maximize my time with this tiny person I loved so much. So I stopped trying to get things done. I stopped getting anything done at all, and I started holding Roo while she napped. I spent dozens of hours sitting on the couch with a sleeping baby in my arms. I hardly ever put her down. I thought of Albus Dumbledore telling Harry Potter that Harry's mother's love for him was in his very skin. I hoped that Roo would somehow absorb my love by osmosis.<br />
<br />
I stopped stressing out about the future - mine and Roo's - and started enjoying the moment. Every second I had with Roo became precious. She would be tiny for only so long, and she would be my daughter for an even shorter time. Deciding to place Roo for adoption made me a better mother to her. The last two weeks I had her were the happiest sad weeks of my life, and I miss them terribly.<br />
<br />
Today, on this almost-forgotten anniversary, I'm going to take a lesson from the Jill of 2009 and slow down. I have become so impatient lately, and I feel like I am always in a rush, always stressed, always worried. It is too easy to forget that my life isn't always going to be like this. I'm not always going to have this job, this apartment, this social circle. Things will change. Things are changing already. I'm going to be 30 soon. I need to stop rushing to the next thing and enjoy the moment. It will be gone before I know it. <br />
<br />
I'm going to start by enjoying some ice cream. <br />
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***</div>
<br />
Oh, and speaking of anniversaries, this blog is almost four years old. There are a handful of you readers who have been around pretty much from the beginning, and I thank you for it. It hasn't always been pretty - my blog or my life - but it's been one heck of a ride, and I am so blessed that I haven't had to go it alone. All of y'all, seriously - thanks for reading.Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-37035916606574950122013-08-06T00:05:00.000-07:002013-08-06T00:05:04.538-07:00BirthdaysRoo just had a birthday. She's four years old. I have found that whatever age she is becomes my favorite age for a child to be. Every birthday she has is the best birthday. <br />
<br />
I can't speak from experience but it seems to me that when you're a parent, your child's birthdays are a bit of a production. There are presents to buy and a party to plan and of course there will be cake, because as Julia Child pointed out, a party without cake is just a meeting. I suppose a lot of these things are up to the family and child in question, but regardless of what exactly goes on the point is that something goes on, because a child's birthday is special.<br />
<br />
So, how do you celebrate the birthday of a child you gave birth to but are no longer parenting? I'd like to say that I've got it all figured out, and that my handbook on birth mothering is going to be published in the fall. But the truth is that I don't have a clue how you're supposed to celebrate the anniversary of the day you gave birth to someone else's child. I've done it four times and I still don't know what I'm doing.<br />
<br />
The consensus among birth mothers I have talked to is that birthdays are
hard. I've heard this from women with open adoptions and women with
closed adoptions, from married birth mothers and single birth mothers,
from those who've had children since placement and those who haven't.
Even in the best of situations, birthdays can be bittersweet. <br />
<br />
I don't know that I would classify Roo's birthday as a bittersweet day. I wouldn't want to paint it with such broad strokes. Every year has been different for me. I haven't had exactly the same feelings or done exactly the same thing. My emotional needs have been different each year as well, and my schedule, and Roo's family's schedule, and so many other things change from one July to the next.<br />
<br />
Every year so far, I have had a visit with Roo around her birthday. Her family has been very kind in obliging with this, sometimes at the last minute (July 7th crept up on me this year). It's never been so important to me to see her <i>on</i> her birthday, but I like to see her within a few weeks of it, so that I can take a million pictures and give her presents and tell her how fantastic she is. <br />
<br />
On Roo's birthday itself, I will inevitably look at pictures from when she was brand-new and I will cry unattractively and hold the blanket M made for me and allow myself time to be sad and miss my baby. The amount of time I spend feeling sorry for myself depends on the year. I think I was sad for about fifteen minutes last year, for instance, but this year I cried for over an hour. In my defense, I was alone for a lot of the day, and my mom was out of town, and my plans with a friend fell through, and I was stressed out because I was facing a 12-hour drive the next day. <br />
<br />
In general I'm happiest when I treat Roo's birthday like an extra birthday for me. There are no presents, but I like to make a cake (I adore cake) and go out to lunch with my mother or a friend. I make an effort to look nice, because it is a special day. Anyone I talk to that day has to hear at least 15 Roo stories, and look at every picture of her I have on my phone. Actually, that tends to happen to anyone who asks, "How's Roo?" But people must not mind too much, because they keep asking. <br />
<br />
For the most part Roo's birthday is a joyful day for me. I know that she's happy it's her special day, and it makes me happy that she's happy. There's just that little edge, that reminder in the periphery of my joy that although I have a mother's love for Roo, I am not her mother.* I celebrate her birthday without her.<br />
<br />
But it's not such an odd concept to celebrate someone's birthday without them, is it? I think of my dad each year on his birthday. I make a cake for him, too. I look at pictures. I watch a movie or TV show that we used to watch together. I remember him and I miss him and I love him, even though he's gone. <br />
<br />
It's the same with Roo, even though she's alive and well. Every day, but especially on her birthday, I remember her, and I miss her, and I love her. I celebrate in my own way, and if that way happens to vary from year to year, or even from hour to hour, so be it. The details aren't what's crucial. The important thing is that Roo was born, and she is amazing and lovely and fantastic, and the world is a better place because she's here. Everything else is just filler.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
*I know I'm going to get the same comments I get every time I make this statement, the comments that I am still her mother, and people are certainly entitled to that belief, but I don't share it. I'm her birth mother, not her real mother. That's good enough for me. Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-25533974014704081682013-07-15T17:19:00.000-07:002013-07-15T17:19:03.352-07:00FAQ: What About H?Today I am going to answer a question that I have been getting a lot lately from people I know when I have been talking to them about adoption. It's a series of questions actually, and they're all about Roo's birth father, H.<br />
<br />
I've mentioned him before and I used to mention him a lot, particularly in years past when I was still angry at him and wanted to hurt him for hurting me. I don't think I've mentioned him in quite a while, and I only really talk about him in therapy every so often, so newer readers of this blog and more recent acquaintances may not know much about him.<br />
<br />
Parenthetically, if you're dying to know more about him and you're emotionally buoyant you can go back and read the posts tagged "boyfriend" but for today, all you need to know is that we met on MySpace in 2008 and that he is to this day the only man who has ever told me I was beautiful. (I don't know if he meant it or if he had just been single for longer than he liked. I suspect the latter.)<br />
<br />
I digress. <br />
<br />
Q (and Q, and Q, and Q, and Q): Do you ever hear from H? What does H think about the adoption? Does H get to see Roo? Do you want him to? Do you hate H? <br />
<br />
A: I'm going to answer the last question first, because it's important, and I want to make it very clear: I do not hate H, and I never did. I used to be angry with him, and I used to want to hurt him because he hurt me and punish him for breaking my heart and leaving me alone and pregnant.<br />
<br />
But I have an excellent therapist, and I have reached the point where 99% of the bad feelings are gone. I'm going to allow myself 1% because when I'm having a really bad day I sometimes still stew about how I had a baby with a guy and even that wasn't enough to make him stay, and what does that say about me? I must be completely unlovable.<br />
<br />
Hey, we all have those days, right?<br />
<br />
Right?<br />
<br />
Just me? <br />
<br />
Anyway. I have actually had many moments wherein I simply felt grateful to H for giving me Roo, because she is the best thing that ever happened to me. It occurred to me the other day (Father's Day, in fact) that I am terribly grateful for every single one of H's character flaws. Because if he hadn't been exactly the man he was four years ago, I wouldn't have placed Roo for adoption, and that would have been a shame. <br />
<br />
I have never thanked him personally, because I haven't actually seen him in person since 2008 and we have not communicated since right after Roo was born. This does not surprise me or hurt me at all; he told me when I was pregnant that if I chose adoption he would essentially disappear. <br />
<br />
I don't know how he feels about the adoption. I don't know if it's something that he ever thinks about. To the best of my knowledge he has never met Roo or had any contact with her parents. Do I want him to? I'm going to play politician and give a non-answer. I want what's best for Roo, and I trust P and M to make that choice. If the time comes when they feel that a relationship with H is in Roo's best interest, I will support that.* She's their child and it's their decision to make, not mine.<br />
<br />
I don't know where H is now or what he's doing. I told that to a friend the other day and he said, "Isn't it weird? Someone can be such a big part of your life for a while and have such an impact on you, and then you don't see them again for the rest of your life."<br />
<br />
It is weird. It is weird to think that I had a baby with this man, H, and he's no part of my life and never will be again. It's weird that our genes are forever merged in Roo, but that our lives are so separate. It's weird, but it's okay. <br />
<br />
I used to think that I needed to confront him to find closure, which terrified me, but I was wrong. I've made my peace with him, and I hope that he's made his peace with me.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
*I'll confess to the odd sporadic desire for H to meet Roo, but it's a selfish one. I sometimes think that if H ever thinks of Roo or adoption, it might be with anger or bitterness towards me and how things turned out. In my more fanciful moments I think that it would be nice if he could see her - see what a fantastic little person she is, how smart she is, how happy she is, how beautiful. It would be nice if he could see what a good thing came of our relationship and out of adoption. I think it might be beneficial. But beneficial to him and tangentially to me, not necessarily to Roo at this point. I'm glad it's not my call to make.Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-18378037061314710732013-07-07T17:09:00.000-07:002013-07-07T17:10:07.419-07:00FourToday my baby girl is four years old. Not a baby anymore, but I always think of her as my baby girl. I'm not quite sure how it's been four years already. And also, I'm not quite sure how it's only been four years. Sometimes I find it hard to remember who I was before her. I don't think it's anything worth remembering. I wasn't a very happy person and I hadn't done much with my life. But then, four years ago, I first met my baby, and I fell deeply and irrevocably in love.<br />
<br />
I became a different person that day, in that moment. My heart grew and changed I hardly knew myself, and it was a good thing. I haven't gone back. Being first Roo's mother and then her birth mother has made me a better woman. She saved me. I owe her so much!<br />
<br />
I am the woman I am today because I love this little girl. Every good decision I make, every right and good and kind thing I do, it's all because of her. I want her to be proud of me. I want to be someone she can look up to. I'm not there yet, but she inspires me to try. <br />
<br />
I know that I'm pretty selfish with details about her. But she really is the most fantastic little person I have ever known. She is so smart, and so happy, and so sweet, and exceptionally cute. She talks constantly, and she's an excellent reader. She has a lot of confidence for such a small person. I love her like crazy, and I am more proud of her than I can say.<br />
<br />
Happy birthday, Roo! <br />
<br />Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-53156543840980531862013-06-12T17:57:00.001-07:002013-06-12T17:57:40.136-07:00Remembering<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
You know what I love? Going on vacation. I should do it more often. Two weeks ago I took a trip to San Diego, which was lovely and amazing and fantastic and wonderful and lots of other words that I tend to apply to both important life experiences and particularly good pizza (but I repeat myself). </div>
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I went with my friend Emily and she unwisely allowed me to plan our itinerary. I tried to warn her that I have military fangirl tendencies* but she wouldn't listen. I think she regretted this when we ended up on the Russian submarine that is part of the <a href="http://www.sdmaritime.org/">Maritime Museum</a>. Also later on when my camera and I wanted to spend 4 hours on an <a href="http://www.midway.org/">aircraft carrier</a>. I probably should have joined the Navy in my younger years. I may have missed my calling in life. </div>
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Fortunately for Emily I only planned for one day of "Oh my gosh, look at that navy shipyard!" We spent the next day in <a href="http://www.balboapark.org/">Balboa Park</a>, and we both touched dinosaur poo.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNf1924wd2sXHKZR-bPxi4C2nGhy9SMIDrsM1OhiufFDehmcam0EdRvIJpxCYjRnJYOs50HiW4H81B1uYCzCsllpzzF1yo5LR1vemBrUtkwkTlmi9uaD5WgB_XQBEgKQH0ObIqktIg1t2Y/s1600/IMG_3051.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNf1924wd2sXHKZR-bPxi4C2nGhy9SMIDrsM1OhiufFDehmcam0EdRvIJpxCYjRnJYOs50HiW4H81B1uYCzCsllpzzF1yo5LR1vemBrUtkwkTlmi9uaD5WgB_XQBEgKQH0ObIqktIg1t2Y/s320/IMG_3051.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
(Yes, I got sunburned. Laugh. Laugh at my pain.)<br />
<br />
Anyway. Day three of our trip included a visit to Sea World. I've been to Sea World before, but it was a while ago. And by "a while ago" I mean "in 1987." A few things have changed at Sea World in the past 26 years, but it still felt vaguely familiar to me because I remember being there when I was little. I didn't think I would remember, because I had a traumatic encounter with a puffer fish and I thought I probably repressed most of that particular vacation. But I got back to the penguin exhibit, and I saw this:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiY9B6f_VFlIvotwHTW99_tzxitvRF5VN7n98A11lvTcHLQz608RsVJrccE3BZh2wCQKKVFG987QjJE7OhHW7XaH_wzLxHu286TLDdyWF7dSTC4DeaBRZBcTqil-srymYDEHwTkaGhQGhq/s1600/IMG_3700.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiY9B6f_VFlIvotwHTW99_tzxitvRF5VN7n98A11lvTcHLQz608RsVJrccE3BZh2wCQKKVFG987QjJE7OhHW7XaH_wzLxHu286TLDdyWF7dSTC4DeaBRZBcTqil-srymYDEHwTkaGhQGhq/s320/IMG_3700.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
and I remembered. (Unfortunately, I also remembered the puffer fish.) <br />
<br />
Roo is the same age now that I was then. Roo is at an age where she will remember things. I suspect that, because she is so clever, she will probably have memories of being younger than she is now. I have memories of being about 18 months old. (I know that Science would probably call shenanigans on that, but I know what I remember.) But my clearer memories start at about three-and-a-half, Roo's age.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to my point (hey, I've got one this time!). I've been more aware during the last couple of visits that Roo is forming memories of me. It's made me more than usually grateful for the progress I've made and for the person I've become. I'm far from perfect - every day I seem to discover some new flaw or weakness** - but I am so much better than I used to be, and I think I'm starting to be the kind of person Roo can be proud of.<br />
<br />
I certainly wasn't there a few years ago. I forget that at times. Fortunately(?) I got a reminder the other day. I decided to start using Twitter again last week because I don't want to miss my chance to be personally victimized by Amanda Bynes. While I was trying to decide what to say to my two followers, I felt this compulsion to read through old tweets, and it was educational. I used to be a hot mess, you guys. If you don't believe me, feel free to browse the blog archive. Scary stuff. <br />
<br />
But I think my wrong turn down memory lane was useful. Sometimes I need a reminder of how far I've come. Four years ago I was unemployed and poor and alone and eight months pregnant. Just look at me now - still poor and alone, but now I've touched dinosaur poo!<br />
<br />
Seriously, though. I used to have more issues than Newsweek, and I am so, so grateful that at that time Roo was too small to get a sense of my personality. I'd hate for her to remember me the way I was when she was a baby. I hate to remember me the way I was when she was a baby.<br />
<br />
I have decided, however, that every now and then I need to remember. Especially lately. I've been frustrated with where I am in life (single, poor, have touched dinosaur poo). I thought that my vacation would be a break from feeling like the last single woman on earth, but it wasn't. I felt like I was surrounded by couples in love - is it normal to see so many kissing people in public? - and the fact that Emily spent a lot of time text messaging her boyfriend didn't help. (I still love you, Emily.)<br />
<br />
But there are worse things in the world than being single, and I've been through those things. More importantly, I've made it through them, stronger, happier, and better. And that's something worth remembering.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
*Raise your hand if some of your happiest childhood memories are of watching "Wings of the Luftwaffe" on television with your father.<br />
<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
<br />
Just me? Okay.<br />
<br />
<br />
**A comprehensive list of my faults and weaknesses is available upon request.Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-87847832597444534952013-05-21T10:44:00.000-07:002013-05-21T10:44:30.610-07:00Mother's Day, Take FiveThis month I celebrated my fifth Mother's Day and my fourth Birth Mother's Day. I’ve written before about Mother’s Day. Every year. I did it in <a href="http://www.thehappiestsad.com/2010/05/birth-mothers-day.html">2010</a>, and in <a href="http://www.thehappiestsad.com/2011/05/birth-mothers-day.html">2011</a>, and again in <a href="http://www.thehappiestsad.com/2012/05/birth-mothers-day.html">2012</a>. (click for link)<br />
<br />
I was going to repeat myself, because I do that a lot. I'm not one to stop talking just because I've run out of things to say. I had a Mother's Day post planned. But more than a week and seven drafts later, I've given up. I don't have anything else to say about Mother's Day.<br />
<br />
I'm sure it won't always be that way. It is entirely possible that next year will warrant multiple blog posts about this particular greeting-card holiday. But this year, I think I'm good.<br />
<br />
I got a video of Roo wishing me a happy Mother's Day, and it's pretty much the only thing I needed, even though I didn't know I needed it until I got it. Can you believe Roo will be four years old this summer? I swear she <i>just barely</i> learned to walk. Anyway, this video is the best Mother's Day gift I could have gotten, and I kind of didn't care about anything else that happened that weekend. My sister sent me a card, which was unexpected and thoughtful and lovely. And, to cap off my weekend, when I was on the way to Casa Grande with my mother, I saw the Wienermobile headed south on the 10.<br />
<br />
The only thing that bothered me all weekend was a few hours after the Wienermobile (there aren't too many occasions to use that phrase, let me tell you). My mom and I had gone to Casa Grande to take my grandmother to lunch for Mother's Day. After we ate we talked for a while. When we said goodbye, my grandma wished my mom a happy Mother's Day but she didn't say anything to me. I was surprised at how much that bothered me.<br />
<br />
My mom reckons my grandma didn't want to bring up what she might consider to be a painful subject. That makes sense, I guess. My grandma isn't the sort of person to talk about painful things. When my dad called to let her know his cancer was back and he was going to die soon, she said, "Well, these things happen," and then told him about a problem she was having with her satellite dish. My grandma will be 87 next month, and she's outlived her husband and 4 of her 6 children. She knows what it is to hurt. She just doesn't talk about it. <br />
<br />
I don't know how to not talk about it. Maybe it's a generational thing, maybe it's seven years of therapy taking root in my brain. I just don't know how to not express a feeling, even if I'm only talking to myself.<br />
<br />
But then, Roo's not a sad feeling or a hurt. Roo is my happy place. I'm sure she has moments with her parents where she is absolutely rotten but the advantage of being her birth mom is that I don't have to see any of that. She always behaves herself around me (because kids save their worst behavior for their parents) so I can pretend she's a little angel all the time and refuse to believe otherwise. <br />
<br />
Anyway. Where was I?<br />
<br />
Mother's Day. Not a big deal this year. I have had too many other things on my mind. It's not that I love Roo any less, or that I feel less like a mother or birth mother than I did in years past. The fact remains that I spent 41 weeks growing a small human from scratch (just two ingredients!) and 36 hours of labor attempting to evict said small human, who then had to be surgically extracted (yes, there's a scar; no, you can't see it). That will always be part of me; having Roo helped make me the person I am today. <br />
<br />
But I'm much more well-rounded than I was in years past. There are more things competing for attention in my brain. My feet still itch (not literally; see my previous post for clarification), and I'm trying to plan three different trips before my birthday, and I'm turning 30 this fall and not taking it particularly well, and the Summer reading program is about to start at work, and this stray cat in my neighborhood has decided it belongs to me, and I frequently have to open the patio door and yell, "Stop meowing! I'm not letting you in! You are not my cat!" and the last time this happened two police officers heard me and I was too far away to offer a proper explanation.<br />
<br />
("You don't have normal problems, do you?" my mother often asks.)<br />
<br />
It's nice to have reached a point in my life where being a birth mother doesn't define me. It used to define me; the first year after placement it was pretty much my whole self, and it took another year before I didn't feel disloyal for not wanting it to.<br />
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I'm proud of myself for taking a whole week to write about Mother's Day. I'm proud of myself that Mother's Day is such a non-issue for me, that it was a blip and not a breakdown. I've come a long way. <br />
<br />
I've been blogging much less frequently than I used to, and last night when I was waiting to fall asleep I figured out why.<br />
<br />
I started this blog for Roo - to tell her story, so she'd never have to wonder why she's where she is and so she'll never doubt my love for her. Over time it's become less about Roo and more about me, which parallels my life pretty neatly. I have different things to say now. But because so much of my readership found me because of adoption, I feel like there are things I should be saying and writing about.<br />
<br />
The problem is that I want to write about those things less and less. I feel like I've said it all before. I'm not done blogging, not by a long shot, but I think that much less of what I write is going to be so narrowly focused on adoption. This is my blog. I ought to be able to write about whatever I want, and tie it to adoption as loosely as feels appropriate, if it feels appropriate at all.<br />
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If you're okay with that, stick with me. I've got a lot more to say. <br />
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Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980531981336832789.post-59190539719431226132013-04-09T00:37:00.000-07:002013-04-09T00:45:15.971-07:00Itchy FeetThis is going to be one of those personal posts that has very little to do with adoption. Except that it kind of has a lot to do with adoption, eventually. I promise.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Lately I've been restless.<br />
<br />
I should be more specific. I tend to be restless physically as a general rule. I can't remember the last time I sat still. But lately I've been mentally restless as well, and it's getting worse.<br />
<br />
I'm convinced it's a genetic trait. My paternal great-grandmother (for whom Roo was named) was born to an unmarried mother, her biological father having been the sort of man who does not stay in one place for very long. She married a man, my great-grandfather, who was also the restless sort. They had two sons, and their second-born became my grandfather.<br />
<br />
But years before that, he got itchy feet. (Not literally.) At the age of sixteen he fudged his birthday and joined the United States Marine Corps. They gave him a gun and a knife, and then they shipped him off to the Pacific to fight in the second world war. When he got back, he married my grandmother. After a few years they moved. And again a few years later. And again a few years after that.<br />
<br />
When my dad told people he moved around a lot as a kid they assumed his father was in the military, and he was. But my grandfather was in the Reserves after the war. The constant relocation was his own choice. He worked as a pipefitter and a foreman and he had a temper. Every couple of years he'd get sick of his boss, quit his job, and move the family to a new place. The wandering life seemed to suit him.<br />
<br />
It did not suit my father. He wanted roots. Once my oldest brother started school, my parents were settled, and if my father occasionally felt restless like his father he hid it well with car trips or new ways of arranging the furniture. I spent the first 18 years of my life in the same small town ... and I hated it.<br />
<br />
My father wanted roots; I wanted wings. I felt stifled; trapped. I was envious any time there was a new kid at school; I felt they'd seen more than I had, experienced more, been more free. My world was so small. I grew to resent it. I took any chance I could to shake things up. When we had a family trip planned, I would pack my suitcase weeks in advance (and end up unpacking one day at a time because I had nothing to wear). I loved moving furniture around, painting walls, planting flowers. Anything to shake up the monotony of my tiny world. Every couple of years I had to do something, anything, to make a change.<br />
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I never outgrew it. At college, I was the girl who would say yes to any trip, anywhere (even an ill-planned trip in an aging truck to the top of a mountain, in the snow, at 2am, to help my friend Connie look for her camera. None of us brought a flashlight, and I was wearing flip-flops. Sorry, Mom). I was desperate for new experiences, new people, new scenery.<br />
<br />
Since the age of 14, I haven't done any one thing for more than two years. I had one job from 14 to 16 and another from 16 to 18. Then college for roughly two years, another job for two years, 16 months of beauty school, a salon job for about two years. Then two years of unemployment, during which I grew a human being in my free time. Then my library job - one position for a year, and 18 months in my current position.<br />
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And I am getting restless. I don't know how to have the same job for so long without getting itchy feet. I keep shuffling pictures around at my desk, trying to make things look new. But I'm starting to feel trapped again. It hit me a few months ago. I was refilling my water bottle and my brain was idling and I suddenly couldn't remember what day of the week it was. This happens regularly, but that day I realized that it happens regularly. That there is precious little to distinguish one day from the next. That the past year of my life has flown by as if it had hitched a ride on a cannonball. I had this horrifying feeling that the next two, five, ten years of my life could easily be the same kind of a blur.<br />
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I managed to shake the feeling for a few months but it's back in full force. My twenties got away from me and if I keep on keepin' on, my thirties will be an endless cycle of damnation - work-sleep-work-sleep-work-sleep. No progress, no change. There is no opportunity for advancement at my library, and the county has not given pay raises in over five years. I have reached a dead end. I'm not unhappy with my life, but I feel like there has to be more out there for me and I find myself getting more and more desperate to find it. <br />
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So a few weeks ago I reminded myself that I am not a tree. America is a big country - the land of opportunity. I have options. I'm not stuck. I can go anywhere I want. I started looking for library jobs in other cities (thank you, Houston, for letting me know how grossly underpaid I am). I imagined myself in Illinois, in North Carolina, in Texas, in Virginia. My itchy feet danced at the thought of a fresh start, a new city, something different to get tired of in two years.*<br />
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I would be alone in a strange city, and that made me a little nervous. But, I asked myself, isn't it worth the risk? What do I have to lose? What is there for me in Arizona?<br />
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And right away I knew the answer. Roo. Roo is here in Arizona. She is my precious, amazing, wonderful little anchor to the Grand Canyon state. Roo is here. How can I go anywhere else?<br />
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I am so spoiled to live so close to her - in the same city, maybe a dozen miles away. When I want a visit, it's a matter of weeks and very little planning (on my part, anyway). I've been able to go to her dance recitals and play with her at the park and have breakfast with her at a restaurant. I could do none of those things if I lived in Houston, for example. Visits would have to be carefully orchestrated, and they would be expensive for me. I'm afraid I'd feel I was missing out on the little things - things I'm invited to now because I'm close but that might slip past if I lived a thousand miles away because it would be so difficult for me to go. <br />
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Roo is getting older (she will be four this summer. Four!). The older she gets, the more important it is to have a good relationship with her and her parents. I don't ever want her to feel abandoned by me. I want her to be able to see me when she wants to. To get to know me if she wants to. I don't want to be some distant figure, someone talked about but not to.<br />
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The simple thing to do would be to find something new here in the valley. A new apartment, a new job. But ... I can't explain it. Arizona almost feels too small. Yes, all 113,990 square miles** of it. I have lived in Arizona for thirty years. I know it too well. It's too familiar. There's nothing new here for me, and my feet want to go somewhere new.<br />
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But how can I even think of going anywhere that Roo's not?<br />
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Yes, I know that I'm being stupid and that Roo probably wouldn't be bothered by my relocating. The truth is that I'm the one bothered by it. The thought of moving away from her scares the heck out of me. And yet the restlessness grows.<br />
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How can I make my feet agree with my heart? I wish I knew. I don't know if there's a compromise. I don't know which part of me is going to win.<br />
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But I do know that it's time to start rearranging the furniture. <br />
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*If you're thinking the whole two-year-itch thing means I'd make a good military wife, you're probably right, and I've thought so too. But single Mormon military men aren't exactly thick on the ground in the Phoenix metro area. So if you know of any, do a girl a favor, won't you?<br />
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**Thank you, Wikipedia! Also, I know that people have these ideas about Arizona because of Sheriff Joe. So I would just like to remind you that we are also the state that brought you Grumpy Cat. You're welcome, America.Jill Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00077847438322979630noreply@blogger.com10