The Happiest Sad

Adoption is Kind of Like an Isuzu Pickup

2012-02-05T20:53:00.006-07:00

You know what I think is awesome? More and more, when I use the phrase "open adoption," people don't stare at me, uncomprehending. Openness is becoming less foreign, and that's great. But you know what familiarity breeds?

No, not contempt, but good guess. Familiarity breeds questions. I love questions. People don't learn if they don't ask. So, here's a question. Why is openness in adoption important?

It's probably pretty obvious on my end of things. I love Roo, and I can't begin to imagine the hurt if placement had been goodbye. Openness is good because I love her and I still get to see her - to watch her learn and grow and see how happy she is.

But I think that the biggest benefit of openness is the one that affects Roo and her parents as much as me - knowledge. We all know each other, know about each other. If questions arise, they can be answered. I love stories as much as I love questions. So, to illustrate the importance of openness, here's a story about a truck.

My dad used to drive a little white '92 Isuzu pickup truck. It wasn't the smoothest ride around, it had a manual transmission, and I don't think it got great gas mileage. But it was his truck, and he drove it every day.

Eight, maybe nine years ago (I've lost track), the Isuzu was stolen from where it was parked right next to a neighborhood watch sign (I guess "watch" doesn't mean they'll actually act). I read somewhere that most car theft takes place between 1 and 5 am. I believe it. The truck was still there when I went to bed at 1:30. When my dad woke up at 4:45 for work, it was gone.

He called the police to report it, and the dispatcher said, and I quote, “Oh, that's too bad.” I don't know if it's still this way but at that time car theft was a huge problem in Maricopa County, and I guess the police just didn't care that much anymore. They just sort of shrugged.

Anyway. The truck was never found. I kind of thought maybe it would turn up eventually near the border or something, especially once my parents replaced it, but it never did. I know rationally that the truck is long gone. I will never, ever see it again.

But even though I know this, I find myself looking for it. Not all the time, mind you. But any time I see a white pickup truck, I do a double take, and I check the make and model. I check for a back bumper (ours didn't have one), for the Isuzu logo in the front grill (my dad removed it). I know I won't see it, but I think I see it all the time. Because I don't know what happened to it, and I don't know where it is, and what if it's out there somewhere and I miss if because I'm not vigilant enough? What if I stopped looking, and the next day it passed me in the street on my way to work?

There is a gap in my knowledge of the Isuzu. That gap keeps me wondering.

My mother was adopted. There was a gap in her knowledge of her biological family. It kept her wondering. While my mom never felt a gaping void in her life where her birth mother would be, her attention was always piqued if someone said she resembled someone they knew. She had questions. Who was this person she looked like? How much did she look like them? She knew it was a long shot, but the gap in her knowledge - Who do I look like?* kept her wondering. There was no void, but there was a gray area. Because my mother didn't have concrete answers, a part of her was always looking for someone out there who might resemble her.

This is the benefit of openness. Roo will never have to be vigilant, on the lookout. She knows what I look like and who I am. If she wants to see people she resembles … well, I think she resembles her parents, oddly enough, but she'll know where to look for a biological resemblance if it ever becomes important to her. She won't have to wonder. She will know.

It goes both ways. I think that if I didn't have an open adoption, my attention would be drawn to every little toddler girl I saw. I'd be searching faces for something familiar – an eye shape, a little chin, H's nose. I would know that it was unlikely I'd run into the child I placed, but I would be unable to keep myself from looking just the same, the way that I look for my dad's stolen truck.

I've often wondered if my birth grandmother, Roberta, ever looked for my mother in a shopping mall or on a crowded street. If she ever stared a little too long at a woman the same age as the daughter she placed, wondering if that familiar eye shape was just a coincidence. Part of me hopes she didn't. I want to believe that placement benefited Roberta as much as it did my mom. I want to believe that she was able to move forward. But as a birth mother myself, I can easily picture her looking for the child she placed in the faces around her, even if unconsciously.

I think of my grandparents, too. They met Roberta once, when she handed them their new baby girl. Did they ever look for her in a crowd? Did they ever think they saw her selling perfume at Macy's or counting their money at the bank? Did they, too, look for my mother's nose on women they met the way that my mother did?

This is the blessing of openness. There is no searching, no wondering, no gaps. Roo will know her story from start to ... well, not finish, because it's not over, but from start to present. She knows me, her parents know me, and I know all of them. We are friends. If questions arise, they can be answered. None of us will have to search for each other. There are no gray areas. There is knowledge, and there is peace.

*My mother didn't feel "different" for being adopted, but her thing was always, "Who do I look like?" For this reason I find it deliciously ironic that not one of her four children resembles her (my brothers and I look like my dad, and my sister looks like my dad's paternal grandmother). This is also the reason that I think it's funny when couples who are hoping to adopt tailor their search to increase the odds that the child they adopt will look like them. Biology is a crapshoot! I look nothing like my mother and she gave birth to me.

Also, for the record, not looking like my mother hasn't damaged me, and until I was a teenager I didn't even look like my dad very much. So if you're operating under the theory that adopted children suffer because they don't look like their families, disabuse yourself of that notion. Plenty of biological children don't look like their families, either.

Here's the Thing

2012-01-28T19:46:00.004-07:00

Time was, I'd look at women who were several years post-placement and wonder about them. They seemed detached from adoption, and it scared me. I couldn't fathom that I would ever not feel exactly the way I did then – intensely focused on adoption and especially on Roo.

I knew that I used to be a fairly normal person (don't laugh) before I got pregnant, but it was hard to remember. My brain was a computer, the c-section was a software upgrade, and my new default setting was Roo. All Roo, all the time. I thought about her nearly constantly. In the weeks after placement I would look at the clock and try to guess what she might be doing. I wanted to know absolutely everything, and the fact that I didn't was a source of some irritation. It didn't hurt, but it itched a bit, and I had to remind myself not to scratch it because if I did it would hurt and it would bleed.

Some time in the past year – the past six months, more precisely – it stopped itching. My software updated while I was idling, in sleep mode, one fix at a time; and before I was completely aware of it, version 2.0 was gone, the bugs of version 2.5 were gone, and I was running on 3.0.

I still think about Roo, of course, but it's in smaller doses these days instead of incessant background noise in my head. I think of her here and there, or when there are reminders or I look at pictures, or when someone compliments me on my necklace. It feels a bit odd when I consider it. I used to have her on my mind constantly, like a radio that was always on, and I had to make an effort to think of anything else. When did that change? What happened to the radio? I'm trying to remember when I flip-flopped, when Roo ceased to be my be-all-end-all, the center of my world.

I feel disloyal writing those words – that she's no longer the direct center of my world. Part of me feels that I'm betraying my love for her if I don't think about her enough, or expend enough mental energy trying to remember the exact color of her eyes. Part of me feels that I have to prove my love with rumination, with what-ifs, with wondering. But that's not reality.

Reality is that I am not her mother; I am her birth mother. Reality is that as much as I love her, there has to be more to me and to my life than birth motherhood. Reality is that if I spend every waking hour thinking about Roo, I'll be good for nothing. Reality is that I was somebody before I had Roo and placed her, and that I'm still somebody after it. Reality is that my software is going to keep updating and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I do love her. My goodness, I love her! But I had to turn the radio down. Sometimes I turn the volume back up a bit – when I'm looking at pictures, or reminiscing. Most of the time I keep it down. I have to. What good would it do Roo for me to spend the rest of my life fixated on her? Furthermore, what good would it do me?

I'm allowed to be selfish like that on occasion. I put Roo first 2 ½ years ago; I made sure she was taken care of. Now I have to do the same for myself. I am just starting to figure out who I am and where adoption fits in my life. At the risk of sounding trite, I have only scratched the surface of who and what I want to be. I'll never get any deeper if all of my focus is on being a cheerleader for adoption.

Adoption is still an integral part of who I am. I don't think I'll ever not want to do outreach or blog or share my story. But I don't want to arrange my life around adoption. The reverse holds more appeal and feels like a better balance.

I am certainly not closing my adoption, and I don't think that will ever appeal to me. Openness makes me way too happy for that. But I've spent the past month or so kind of removed from the adoption thing beyond my contact with P and M, and it's been a nice break. It's been good to re-evaluate the role I want adoption to play in my life – or rather, the size of the role I want adoption to play in my life. It will always be a part of me because of the depth of my love for Roo. But I want to be something more than her birthmother, than a birthmother. I'm comfortable with that role, but I want there to be more to me than just that, if that makes sense.

This means I'm probably not going to get back to blogging twice a week again. I'm going to try for once a week, because I do still have so much more to say, and as I recall I haven't gotten past the delivery room in Roo's story, still haven't gotten to the why of things as much as I meant to. And that's important. Roo is important! This blog is for her. I want her to be able to read it when she's older, to understand how much I love her and how she's changed me for the better. She won't see that unless I do change.

I have changed. Now it's time to do something with it.

The Big Question

2012-01-14T13:39:00.005-07:00

I think this is the longest I've gone without posting since I started this blog. It feels like a very long time. It's been a long time since I've done several things, actually. If you've e-mailed me in the past month or so, you probably think I'm a huge jerk for not writing back. I'm sorry. It's on my to-do list. But the list is long, and the fact is I needed a break from a lot of things, and I took it.

Anyway.

I get asked lot of questions about adoption and being a birth mother. Some of them are smart questions and some of them are stupid and some of them I hear over and over again. But I think the question I get asked more than any other is probably the most important one. It's one of the first things people want to know.

Why did I place Roo for adoption?

It sounds like a simple question, and it sounds like it should have a simple answer, but it's more complicated than that. I mean, there are a LOT of reasons I placed Roo for adoption.

The simple answer is that I placed her for adoption because I love her. For some people, that's counterintuitive. If I loved her, I'd have kept her, right? But I love her enough that I put her first. I love her too much to take a gamble on her future.

There are other answers I can give, that I do give. One is that I chose adoption because I wanted Roo to have married parents who were absolutely committed to each other and to their family. I wanted her to have the stability of that kind of home. I didn't want her going from my house to H's with no real routine or consistency. I wanted her to have parents who believe the same things, who want the same things, who agree about the best way to raise and care for a child. I didn't want her to ever feel like her loyalties had to be divided between parents, or that by choosing the ideals and beliefs of one parent would be a betrayal of the other.

That's not a criticism of H, by the way. I don't hate him or think he's a bad person or anything. I hope he's happy, quite honestly. But the fact is that he and I are very, VERY different people, and we believe different things and have different priorities, and I didn't want Roo to feel she had to choose between us. That's a lot of responsibility for a child. It would be a lot of responsibility for an adult!

I chose adoption because it's important to me that Roo grows up knowing who she is - a precious daughter of a loving Heavenly Father who has a plan for her and her life. I wanted her to go to church every week, to learn about her Savior. I wanted her to have an eternal family. (<--link)

There were other spiritual factors. I knew that this was the most important choice I could be faced with. I prayed about it more than I've prayed about anything in my life, and God's answer to those prayers was pretty clear. I knew what He wanted for Roo.

But none of those factors, either alone or combined, could have pushed me to sign the papers I signed, to place my precious baby, were it not for what I think is the most compelling reason of all. I did what I did, I chose what I chose for pretty much one reason, and one reason alone.

I placed Roo for adoption because I met her parents.

I knew when I met them that they were her parents and that she was their baby. That same part of me that said "Mine" when I first laid eyes on Roo, said "Theirs" when I met P and M. I can't explain it. I can't make logical sense of it. But when I met them, I thought, this is why I couldn't do it before. This is why, as much as I loved the other couples I met, I couldn't place my baby. Because she wasn't their baby. She was P and M's all along.

I've been criticized before for my somewhat liberal use of the phrase "meant to be" when it comes to placing Roo. But you know what? I don't particularly care. It doesn't matter to me if people believe it was meant to be or if they believe that I'm deluding myself to ease the pain. What matters is that I believe it. That I know it. That Roo's parents know it, and that as Roo gets older, she'll know it, too.

I placed Roo with P and M because she is their daughter and once I met them, once I knew that, I knew that I would feel guilty for the rest of my life if I didn't place her. I couldn't not do it. The choice was made. And I would make it again in a heartbeat, a million times over. It's as simple as that.

Grief and Healing, Part 3

2012-01-01T15:21:00.002-07:00

Happy 2012, blog peeps! Now that I've depressed the heck out of you with parts 1 and 2, I want you to cheer up, okay? Here's the ostensibly helpful conclusion. Your results may vary.

So, how do you heal? How do you move forward? First, figure out what you need to make things okay enough ("enough" being the operative word) – openness, therapy, keeping busy, acknowledgment from family members. Ask for it. Ask for it until you get it.

Write down your feelings. Don't worry if it sounds pretty or if you can't spell or if you have terrible handwriting. You don't ever have to read what you write, but getting it all out on paper (or computer) can be immensely therapeutic. Find things to look forward to. Maybe it's a visit with the adoptive family. Maybe it's a vacation, or going back to school, or work. Maybe it's going to Target to buy mascara. But it's important to have little things to look forward to, to give yourself a reason to get off the couch.

In psychology classes, you learn about something called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Basically, if your most basic physical needs aren't being met, none of the rest of your needs stand a chance. This applies especially after placement. If you're not eating and sleeping, your mental needs sure aren't going to be met. So, eat regularly. Go for walks. Brush your teeth (for many reasons, please brush your teeth). Get plenty of sleep. Do your hair and put on makeup. Go outside in the sunshine.

You need to let yourself feel everything your brain wants you to feel, because you need to get it out to get over it. It might help to have a blanket or stuffed animal you can hold to remind you of your baby, sort of an object to pour your grief into during those times. The sooner you get it out, the sooner you can move on. But know your limits. If it gets to be too much, take a break. You can come back to it later. Don't force yourself to face things that hurt. If you need to avoid the baby aisle at Target, avoid it (I still do). If other people's baby showers are too much, don't go. If you feel like you can handle it, or if you want to get it over with, by all means do it, but don't force it if you're not ready.

Here's the truth: people are going to say the wrong things. There's not much you can do about it, it's a fact of life. Someone asked me once, “Jill, what are the right things to say?” I don't know, but I do know that it's really easy to identify the wrong things :) Try to be patient with them. Before you were in this situation, you probably wouldn't have known what to say to you, either.

Grief isn't easy. Ask for help when you need it – from your parents, your caseworker, the adoptive couple, your friends, your bishop or other clergyman. Tell them what they can do for you. If you need someone to listen without offering input, tell them, “I'm not looking for advice. I just need to vent.” This is important, because people are going to have a lot of advice, much of it unsuitable. If you don't want advice, tell them to just listen.

Remind yourself why you made the decision you did. It won't take away the pain, but it will remind you of its purpose. You're hurting now so your baby doesn't have to later. It won't always hurt, unless you want it to. It might hurt when you don't want it to, but they key is not wanting it to hurt. That's where you make progress.

You have to decide if this experience is going to break you or not. But remember that being broken isn't a badge of honor. Being happy, at peace, “moving on” isn't a betrayal of your love. You don't have to be miserable forever to prove that you love your baby or that placement was hard. You can move on, be happy, become better and still love him or her with everything you have.

The children we place won't want to grow up and find that placement has ruined, damaged or broken us. They want to be proud of us. They want to see us succeed not because of placement but in spite of it. We didn't place just so we could make ourselves better. But we can make ourselves better because we placed.

This experience will change you. It's up to you whether the change is good or bad. Who do you want to be? What do you want to make of your life? You don't have to decide everything now, but try to have a few ideas. Set goals, even tiny ones. Tiny ones are good at first. Don't tell yourself that now it's time to get your master's degree. Tell yourself, I'm going to take a class or two next semester and see how it goes. Go from there. Small changes are easiest. Don't look for a career right away when what you need is a job. If you want your own place, don't start looking into buying a house. Again, start small. Don't make any major decisions while in the throes of grief. Wait until you've got a clear head, whatever that means for you.

Your grief can be productive. It can help you grow. It should help you grow. It's up to you. I know birth moms who have gone through this amazing growth during their pregnancies, and gone right back to the party scene after placement. I know birth moms who have gotten pregnant again right away, even though their circumstances haven't changed. That doesn't have to be you. It's never too late to change your life. Be better. Start today.

Here's the thing - grief doesn’t ever completely go away - you grieve because you love, so as long as you love, you’ll grieve. But you can live with grief without it consuming your life. You can learn to live with it, and over time you'll realize it doesn't hurt much any more. The grief is there, an old friend, a lifelong companion, but a comfortable one.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her book “On Grief and Grieving,” said, “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal, and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.”

You are not the same person you were before placement. I know I'm not. And I wouldn't be that girl again for anything in the world. Placement has taught me so many things I couldn't have learned otherwise (even though I wish I could have). God put Roo in my life to help make me the woman He wants me to be. I am better, stronger, happier than I ever was before, than I ever could have been without this experience. Even with the pain, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

My pain has taught me how to be happy again. It is precisely because I hurt so much that I am able to be as happy as I am now. Kahlil Gibran said that your joy can fill you only as deeply as your sorrow has carved you.* I believe that. We're going to be the happiest women in the world someday - we will hold so much joy! The potential is there. We just have to work for it. Grief is work, but it is rewarding. It has molded and shaped me and made me who I am, and I am so grateful.

*I paraphrased for clarity. The exact quote, if you're interested, is "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

The Ghost of Christmas Past

2011-12-24T23:52:00.008-07:00

It's Christmas tomorrow. In a few minutes, really, as it's almost midnight. I should be asleep. I wish I were asleep. I'm sick (I think Santa misread my letter because I know I didn't ask for sinusitis) and the urgent care doctor said I should get plenty of rest.

He also said I had tonsilitis, despite the fact that I don't have tonsils, but I've decided to believe that he knows what he's talking about anyway. Hey, maybe my tonsils grew back. Can tonsils grow back? I need to ask Google.

But I can't sleep, and not just because my head is a mucus factory (that mental picture is my Christmas gift to you). I keep thinking about Christmas. Not tomorrow, but last year, the year before, the year before that, and twenty-some-odd years of Christmases past.

(This post isn't going to be about adoption, in case you were wondering. This post is about my dad.)

Some families have stars, but we put an angel on top of our tree.

(Please excuse the inadequacies of my mobile-phone photography)

My mom bought it from the Avon catalog probably before I was born. It was always the last decoration to go up, and although my dad didn't make a big deal of many things at Christmas, he made a big deal of this. The tree wasn't complete without the angel. If I close my eyes it seems like just a few years ago that I was holding the angel carefully in my little hands while my dad picked me up to reach the top of the tree, telling me, "Hold on tight, okay? Don't drop it." My brother Chris and I would fight over who got to put it on. There were a few years where my dad would lift Chris to put it on, then he'd take it off and give it to me so I could put it on. I suspect that in those years, after I'd been put to bed (always first, since I'm the youngest) the angel was removed again so Chris could have the satisfaction of putting the angel on last.

That angel is on top of the tree in my living room. Every time I see it, I remember being a kid, excited about little things like that. I remember my dad, who lifted me up to put the angel on for years after Chris lost interest, even when I was probably much too heavy. It wasn't until I turned 10 or 11 and lost interest too that my dad started putting the angel up by himself.

I wonder if he ever grieved that - the loss of that simple tradition, the young children we once were. I know that Roo seems taller every time I see her and I think, she's growing up faster than seems fair. I'm sure my parents felt the same way. I'm sure my mother looks at me now sometimes and thinks, how is Jill an adult already? It was just a few years ago she started kindergarten. I think that, too.

I didn't think much about my dad being the one to put the angel up until three years ago, the first Christmas after he died. My mom and I put up our little tree - four feet tall, pre-lit - and the last box I opened had the angel in it. There was this moment when I put this last decoration on the tree, and it hit me - the last time I put the angel up, I had help. My father was lifting me up. The last time my hands were on this piece of nostalgia, my father was alive and I was young and I thought he would live forever because he was my daddy.

I always miss him more at Christmas, and I don't know why. My father wasn't a big fan of Christmas. I know that his faith in God was strong. But he had little patience for the commercial side of things - for the flash and the expense and the hassle. I think he saw the modern Christmas celebration as something for the wealthy or the unwise with money. He hated that the birth of Jesus Christ was, for most people, a secondary part of Christmas.

I know that Christmas was hard when he was a kid. His family never had money. One year finances were so tight that my uncle Danny stole a Christmas tree because they weren't going to have one otherwise. Up until I was probably 8 or 9, we bought a fresh tree every year, and there was always a moment when my dad took his wallet out to pay that he sort of stopped, and I know he was thinking of the year Danny stole a tree.

We didn't have any of the kind of traditions that were a given - there were things we'd do for a year or two, or once every few years, depending on circumstances. But there were several years when we'd all sit together and my dad would read Luke 2. He had a very distinct way of reading aloud - sometimes he'd run words together and sometimes he'd pronounce them each more slowly and distinctly - but I found it comforting. I miss the cadence of his voice, his speech patterns. I miss the sound of him speaking, and as the years roll on it gets harder and harder to remember the exact pitch and I think, I heard that voice nearly every single day for 24 years. How can I forget it in only three?

But it's slipping away, and I've no choice but to let it. I'll add it to the list of things I don't remember about my dad anymore. I cry every time I add to the list, and I cling more tightly to the things I do remember about him. How has it been three years already? It seems like yesterday.

I miss him. I miss him every day, but I miss him especially at Christmas. I think it's because enough of what I still do remember about him has to do with Christmas. Probably because my brain has pushed aside memories of school and friends and Girl Scouts and piano lessons and made room only for memories that it thinks are important and valuable, like Christmas.

There are very few Christmas decorations and songs and other things that don't remind me of my dad in some way. I hear "White Christmas" on the radio and I can remember my dad singing along with it, doing his best Bing Crosby impression. There are ornaments from my childhood that I broke more than once and each time it was my father who patiently repaired them with Super Glue. My mom bakes homemade cinnamon rolls every December and when I eat one I think, Dad loved these. Even the act of fluffing my artificial tree's branches reminds me of him, because he was allergic to pine trees and the year we bought a fake tree was probably the happiest Christmas he'd had in ages.

When we opened presents on Christmas morning, it was always my dad who got the camera and took pictures. He never told us to say cheese. He'd just say to my brothers, "Hey, boys," and when they looked up, he took their picture. He was funny that way. We never believed in Santa - my parents didn't feel comfortable lying to us - so I knew, the year I pulled the funnies off a brand-new dollhouse, that it was my dad who had stayed up late putting everything together. He installed batteries, he assembled bikes and inflated their tires, he put stickers on little toys and games. As soon as a toy was unwrapped, my dad would make sure it was ready to be played with.

He was always putting things together, fixing things, finding things, improving things. It wasn't until he was gone that I really appreciated how many things he did, how his mind was always working, how he was always figuring out how things worked and what he could do with them.

But he was most of all a good father, the very best in the world. I always knew that he loved me. He told me so every night before I went to bed, so that when I fell asleep his words were still in my ears. On Christmas, at bedtime, he told me he loved me, and he always said, "Merry Christmas, Jilly Bee" and smiled at me, that smile that I can see traces of in my own face sometimes in the mirror if I turn my head just so and crinkle my eyes like he did.

He's been gone for three years, and I still don't know what I'm going to do without him.

Merry Christmas, Daddy.

Grief and Healing, Part Two

2011-12-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

I feel like I ended part 1 in an awkward place. But it was either there, or at the end of this part, and I felt it was best not to try anyone's patience.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

So, what is this process of grief? If you've ever taken a psychology class you've probably heard of the five stages of grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Accptance. These don't go in order, you may not experience all of them, and you may experience each of them more than once.

Many birthmothers would tell you that in placement, denial doesn't often come first – depression and tears do! Placement is hard. You can't really completely prepare for it. I know that when I was pregnant I heard stories about placement being all warm-fuzzies, but no one ever talked honestly about what happened right afterward. It stinks! It's hard. I wasn't at all happy. Maybe you weren't either. That's okay. Keep in mind that the time after placement being insanely difficult doesn't mean adoption was the wrong choice. It just means you love your baby an awful lot. It hurts because we love our children and we aren't parenting them, because of a lifetime of experiences with them that we'll miss, because it hurts not being around them. I've never met a birthmother who hurts because she feels she picked the wrong family or because she's worried that her child is going to be hurt or neglected or damaged in some way by the family he or she was placed with. If you feel any of those things, definitely talk to your caseworker about your concerns and do it right away. Knowing that despite our pain, the babies we placed are happy and healthy and loved gives us something to cling to when the pain is bad. Cling to it! Ride that horse to safety.

As far as the stages of grief go, it's worth noting that they may manifest differently in birth moms than they might in someone grieving a physical death. With denial, for instance, you obviously can't pretend you didn't place your baby, because if you hadn't, the baby would be with you. But some birth moms may want to pretend that they never had a child in the first place. They may opt for a closed adoption and never speak about it or the child they placed. The problem with this is that pretending it didn't happen doesn't mean it didn't happen. Closed adoption is fine if that's what works for you, but let yourself grieve before you close the mental door on this part of your life or it'll come back to bite you.

Anger is a big one – the birth moms I've talked to have expressed anger at God for inspiring them to place, at people who were unsupportive of their tentative plans to single parent or marry the birth father, anger at the birth father for being a less-than-upstanding young man, anger at the adoptive couple for getting to be the baby's parents, anger at themselves for getting pregnant in a situation that let them to choose adoption.

Anger is something that as women we tend to push back the most. But the more anger you let yourself feel, the less anger you'll find yourself feeling. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it's true. If you get it all out, you're done. But be careful in how you let it out. It's so tempting to unload on your parents or your friends. If at all possible, don't. Find a suitable outlet – a punching bag, a therapist, your caseworker, your bishop or other clergyman. Write – but don't send – letters to people you're angry with. Please don't send them. That part is important.

Post-placement, depression is the big one. Those who study grief say the most acute pain post-loss lasts about two months. Your experience may vary. Let it be what it is. If you're got thirty minutes of crying to do, don't stop at twenty. Don't let anyone tell you to cheer up or snap out of it. You're earned your tears with your love. Own them. C. S. Lewis said, “The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.” The "happiness then" is our love.

The depression can be the hardest to get past. In my experience and the experience of other birth moms I've talked to, each day after placement hurts just a tiny bit less – even if it's just a teeny-tiny minuscule bit. You realize you survived the day before, and it gets easier to think you can survive today and tomorrow, too. If it feels like too much, remember the following: Inhale, exhale, repeat. I can't promise that there's a bright shiny light at the end of the tunnel, but I can promise that the tunnel has an end. You won't always feel this way.

In addition to the things you expect, like depression, you may experience other feelings/reactions that you didn't expect and you might feel they are abnormal. They're not. As I said before, the beautiful thing about grief is that what's normal for you is normal.

That doesn't mean it's something you can anticipate. For instance, you may feel a sense of relief that you aren't responsible for the life of a tiny baby, grateful that you're not getting up every few hours with a crying baby. If you hadn't placed, you wouldn't be allowed to be selfish and irresponsible anymore. You still can, and it's perfectly normal to be a little relieved that this is so.

Jealousy is another thing that comes up – jealousy of the adoptive couple, of single parents, of women who marry rather than place, of women who are married and “allowed” to keep their babies, of anyone who didn't have to do what you did and who hasn't suffered your pain.

Aimlessness may push its way to the surface, too. You've spent the better part of a year growing a baby and preparing for his or her arrival. Now you don't have that to do, it's normal to feel adrift and without purpose. One of my birth mom friends said that after placement she didn't feel important anymore. Please don't fall into that way of thinking. You created life, and you helped build a family. You are still very much important.

I can't speak for anyone else, but impatience was a big one for me. Have you ever seen those JG Wentworth ads where people shout “It's my money, and I need it now!” I SO get that. Many of us are told throughout the process that God has all these amazing blessings lined up for us for this thing we've done. It's normal to feel, “They're my blessings, and I need them now!” The fact is those blessings – what they are and when we get them are on God's time, not ours. You may find yourself, like me, two years after placement feeling like very little has changed. Don't give up. (I remind myself of this every day.)

It's also normal to be impatient with yourself about grief – when do I stop feeling like crap? When does it get better? When do I get to move on? Now would be good! Research suggests that six to twelve months post-loss is the hardest time. All the firsts are difficult. But the second year may be harder for you. The good news is, I don't know anyone who's said that the third year is hard :)

Parenthetically, although I just said "post-loss," the first and second years that I referred to are actually the first and second years of grieving. If you placed ten years ago and promptly stuffed all your grief down, you are only just beginning.

What about disconnect? This one is a little scary, but it's a good sign. As time passes, your deep connection to the child you placed won't be as intense. You won't check your e-mail twenty times a day for a picture anymore. You might not read an e-mail from the adoptive couple right away. You might still feel this insanely irrational love for the child you placed, and yet spend most of a visit talking to the adoptive parents instead of gazing in rapt wonder at the life you created.

I should also mention that you may experience several of these feelings at once. It is possible to feel more than one emotion at a time. It doesn't mean you're crazy. It means you're human. You are absolutely allowed to feel happy for someone and jealous of them at the same time. You can feel sad and happy at the same time (and I'm the "happiest sad" chick, so trust me on this one). You can feel grateful and impatient. You can feel depressed at the same time you feel a lot of love.

I want to say a word about love. The temptation is often to jump back into a relationship right away. If the right person comes along, then by all means. But tread lightly. Be careful not to end up with the wrong person again. After placement, you're still learning who you are. You can't get to know another person properly if you're still getting to know yourself. You're not quite you when you're grieving. It's okay to be alone. As Mr Rogers said, "Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing."

Hang in there - part 3 is coming soon.

Grief and Healing, or Something Like That

2011-12-12T22:21:00.005-07:00

I don't know if any of you know this about me, but sometimes I like to talk about grief. And by "sometimes" I mean "at least once a week for the past three or four years." It's kind of become my thing. I guess that's okay.

I gave a presentation at the national FSA conference on grief and healing (as they pertain to birth mothers). I think it went okay. And then, because it was easier than coming up with something new, I gave that same presentation at the regional conference last month. I've had several (and by "several" I mean, "as many as two") people ask me for an outline of my presentation. And since I have been too busy/lazy to blog lately, I thought I would finally give in and post it on my blog. In an effort to stretch out my laziness, I'm going to split it into more than one post. Also, it's kind of long, and I think my eyes would glaze over if I had to sit and read the whole thing, and I wrote it. So I'm assuming that no one else wants to sit here for thirty minutes squinting at a computer screen. Even though some of you probably do that anyway, playing Farmville or watching cat videos on YouTube (my favorite is this one) or whatever it is that people do on-line for the 4-6 hours a day that Google says we're spending.

Wow. Isn't it a shame when bad things happen to good sentences? Let's move on.

So, here it is. My thoughts on grief and healing, as I wrote and presented them (with a few clarifications and additions), minus the insightful comments that other people made during my presentations. Sorry about that. I should have taken notes.

If you've wasted as much time as I have on-line looking at baby animal pictures, you may have seen a photo or two with the caption “You're doing it wrong.” A kitten with its nose in the pages of a book may accompany the line “Facebook: you're doing it wrong.”

You may feel at times like, “Grief: you're doing it wrong.” But the odds are, you're doing it right, because what's wrong for someone else may be right for you. How many of you have ever felt like you were grieving placement improperly: too long, too short, too much, not enough?

[Here I paused for a show of hands]

No two birth moms are going to grieve exactly the same, and that's okay. The intensity and duration of your grief aren't as important as what you get out of it – its productivity. Grief can and should be productive. As long as it's moving you forward in some way, you're doing it right. You won't find yourself moving forward very much at first. Grief is more of a reflex. It's up to you to make it work for you.

And it is work! It's neither easy nor fun, but the only way out, as they say, is through. You can push it back, stuff it down, box it up all you want, but eventually it's going to have to be dealt with. I recommend starting now! It won't get any easier. But it's important.

How many of you have felt like you shouldn't be grieving at all?

[Here, again, I paused for a show of hands]

I think sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that because adoption was the right choice, it shouldn't hurt, that maybe we don't have a right to be sad. But the thing is, we do have a right to be sad. We need to be sad. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross* said, “Grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost. We think we want to avoid the grief, but really it is the pain of the loss we want to avoid. Grief is the healing process that ultimately brings us comfort in our pain. That pain and our love are forever connected.”

When I think of the kind of life I want to live, I think of my Savior. He set a perfect example for us. Do you all remember that short scripture that's so easy to quote? “Jesus wept.” If He wept, I think it's okay for us to weep, too. Emotions - the full gamut of them - are a gift from God. Embrace them.

Give yourself permission to grieve. It is a perfectly healthy response to any kind of loss. I had a birth mom tell me once that she felt selfish for being sad, because she knew adoption was right for her baby. If any of you share that belief, I want to disabuse you of it. Your grief is NOT selfish. You grieve because you love, and it is the most selfless love in the world.

The world won't always understand this. For example: when my father died, my mom was treated with sympathy, kindness, patience, and understanding. No one accused her of being selfish for her sadness. On the other hand, after I placed, people told me I was being self-centered, that I needed to stop thinking about my own pain and do something for someone else, that I needed to snap out of it and move on already. It goes without saying that that kind of attitude isn't very helpful or respectful. If you've been on the receiving end of that kind of “advice,” please disregard it. You need to grieve just as much as someone who has lost a spouse.

Placement is a death, in a way. Your baby is gone – he or she no longer exists. In their place is someone else's baby. And you're not just grieving one single moment of loss but a lifetime of things that won't be as the child grows up - or, rather, things that will be, but without you.

I hope you like depressing cliffhangers, because that's it for part 1! Part 2, which deals with the specific aspects of grief, will be up in a few days :)

*Quote taken from "On Grief and Grieving," by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

In Which December is Also Adoption Month

2011-12-03T11:40:00.006-07:00

I feel kind of bad that I hardly blogged at all for National Adoption Month. I feel like I should have had SOMETHING to say about it, being a birth mother and all. But I guess that's part of why I didn't say more - I am a birth mother. Every month is adoption month for me :)

It's like that for anyone who's been through something big. There might be a day or a month for cancer or adoption or civil rights or anything else. But whereas most people think about it for a day or a month, if it's personal for you, every single day is, for instance, National Adoption Day. It's not a once-a-year occasion.

I don't specifically think of adoption every single day, but I do think of Roo and, as I placed her, adoption is in there somewhere. I can't separate Roo from adoption. Without adoption, I wouldn't be blogging right now. I'd be chasing a two-year-old around, trying to keep her from breaking the ornaments on my Christmas tree.

Or not. It's the weekend, so I might not have custody of Roo today; H would. I know that having to share custody would have broken my heart. I try to remember that kind of thing whenever I get these rosy ideas about what being Roo's mother would be like. I wouldn't even get to be her mother full-time - and not just because of H. I would probably be at work today, because if I'd chosen to parent Roo, I'd be working at least two jobs to try to keep afloat. I'd have to. I mean, I'm falling under as it is with the one job I'm working now, and I only have to take care of me. I can't imagine trying to take care of someone else.

It's just ... I love her. I think I'm always going to imagine what one thing or another would be like, even though I know my imagination glosses over the reality of what it would be like. I can't help but think about her, and I can't help but miss her.

It's not always a terribly sad thing. And over time, it's become something that isn't always Roo-specific. I miss having a baby and I miss being a mother in general.

I've been told by more than one birth mother that I'm lucky because I "got to" parent Roo for a couple of months before I placed her, that they're jealous. I hate hearing that. I feel like it diminishes the difficulty of placement - like it was a breeze because I got to spend time with Roo first, or like I was always going to place her but I parented first just to see what it was like. Whenever I hear placement stories, birth moms say things about how they cherished their time in the hospital because they knew it was their only time with the baby they were going to place. They often say that they wished they had more time.

Sometimes I selfishly wish I'd had less. Not that I would ever, for anything in the world, take back a single second I spent with my baby when she was mine. But the fact that I hadn't previously made an adoption plan, that I planned to be and was in fact Roo's mother, that made it so much harder for me to place her. [I want to specify here that I'm not saying that it was any harder for me to place than it was for anyone else, but that parenting first made adoption harder for me personally.] I knew exactly what it was that I was going to miss. I had been not just a mother but Roo's mother. If I hadn't been above 100% certain about P and M, I never could have placed.

But as I said, I have moments these days where it's not baby Roo that I miss entirely; it's motherhood. I have always wanted to be a mother. I worry sometimes that Roo was my only shot at motherhood. Sometimes I feel okay with that. Sometimes I think, "Roo is enough. The time I had as her mother was enough. If that's all I ever get, I'm okay with that." Other times all I can think is how grossly unfair life is. The key is balancing those times, making sure the former is more common than the latter. I'm not quite there yet.

But I'm getting better.

Guest Blog Alert!

2011-11-26T17:53:00.004-07:00

Today I have a guest post up at Genuinely Jarman. You can read it HERE. It's nothing deep or earth-shattering (not that much of what I write ever is!). I had a few thoughts recently about little things that I didn't expect when I became a birth mother and I wrote them down, and you can read them if you click above.

And that's about it.

Out

2011-11-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

I outed myself at church* a few weeks ago.

I'd been feeling this itch for weeks that I needed to speak up about adoption in my ward. I'd let several opportunities pass by because I didn't know how people would take what I had to say. Finally, the first Sunday of the month, I got up to share my testimony. Normally when I get up, I have an idea of what I want to say. If I don't focus my thoughts ahead of time, I end up tripping on my words and stuttering and it's pretty thoroughly embarrassing. But that day, all I could think was, I need to get up. I need to speak.

I feel like someone in the congregation needed to know that I'm a birth mom. I don't know who and I don't know why, but now they know. I don't remember everything I said, but I know that I talked about how much God loves us, and how our greatest heartaches can bring us our greatest blessings, and then the words flew out of my mouth - "Two years ago I placed a child for adoption."

You want people to sit up and take notice? Announce to a group of ostensibly abstinent people, a group to which you belong, that you once got into a little bit of trouble. One girl actually did literally sit up. I had to smother a laugh.

I like to think that I managed a decent segue from my blurt back into God's love, but I don't remember. All I know is that it's out, and I'm out, and my goodness, but it's a relief! I wish I'd said something sooner. It wasn't as scary as I thought.

Here's the thing - I'm not ashamed of being a birth mom. I think that having Roo and placing her are the absolute best things I've ever done and that I'll ever do. I am proud of the choice I made, and I am ridiculously proud of my little girl.

Keeping silent about my story - not speaking up when I've wanted to in the past - feels like an act motivated by shame, and that's not how I feel. I mean, I do try to choose my words carefully, and I certainly don't introduce myself to people by telling them I'm a birth mother. My adoption story, mine and Roo's, is a precious burden - it's the most sacred thing I have ever been a part of, and I want to do it justice, to explain things the right way when it feels like the proper course of action. But whatever my reasons for keeping things to myself, my silence can be interpreted as shame.

I'm done letting people think I'm ashamed of these things that I've done. If people decide to take my story wrong, to focus on my mistakes instead of the good, then that's their choice. But they're not going to misunderstand my love for Roo or the choice that I made. I am speaking up because I love her.

*Some of the words in this post might be confusing to my readers unfamiliar with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So I've included relevant links in a few words to help explain what I'm talking about. Move the mouse around to find them :)

Lucky

2011-11-11T14:47:00.001-07:00

I've been on sort of a ranting kick lately. I'm sorry about that.

It's easy to fall into the trap of ranting about things because when it comes to adoption, there's never a shortage of misunderstandings, improper terminology, and wrong ideas. I sometimes feel the burden of educating people, correcting their misconceptions, giving them right ideas.

But I don't like ranting all the time, and I can't imagine that anyone likes to read it all the time. I certainly don't want Roo to think, when she's older, that I'm the sort of person who spends most of her time on a soapbox. I'm really not. I'm fairly even-keeled as far as temperament goes (no, really!).

I feel the need to step back today, to cut through the clever (to me) turns of phrase and the whining. Because that's not how I feel today, or even most days. What I feel is grateful - so very, very grateful!

I am acutely aware that my adoption situation is what many people would consider a best-case scenario. Adoption was 100% my choice; I wasn't lied to or coerced or forced in any way. I have a great relationship with P and M. I get e-mail and pictures and videos and visits. I get to see firsthand how clever and happy and absolutely darling my little Roo is, and how she is thriving. I have my blog as an outlet, and my support group as a collective shoulder to lean on. I've been able to process my grief for the most part.

There are a lot of birth parents out there who aren't as lucky. I don't know how they do it.

I'm grateful that I don't know. I'm grateful that things have worked out the way they have. I'm grateful for what a wonderful life Roo and her family have, for how happy they all are and how much they love each other. I'm grateful for the gift of adoption. Although I have days where I miss Roo a lot, I try not to take my situation for granted. I try not to let a single day pass without reminding myself that I have an awful lot to be thankful for.

I am a lucky girl.

Guest Post

2011-11-05T14:56:00.004-07:00

Today I have a guest post up over at Portrait of an Adoption. If you haven't read this blog before, you should definitely start. Carrie is an adoptive mother who writes beautifully about the ups and downs of adoption. She is featuring a guest post on her blog each day in November to celebrate National Adoption Month, and today is my day. Click *here* to read it.

I do want to add a caveat. My post is about the pain of placement, and I didn't try to pretty up the feelings. But I do not feel any of that pain now. I left that dark beast behind me. I am in such a good place with things. So when you're reading, please keep in mind that the pain I described was temporary, that I got through it, that I'm happy now, and that it was absolutely worth it.

I'm Old, and Here's Why

2011-10-28T15:54:00.001-07:00

When I read through this for typos and grammatical errors, I noticed that it felt a lot more melancholy than I intended. It felt very matter-of-fact when I was writing it. So when reading it, please keep that in mind. I am mostly over my October Crabbies and, on account of today being my day off, I'm feeling pretty good. This is mostly my way of explaining why, Crock Pot aside, I feel old, and why I don't mind.

So, my birthday turned out okay. Nothing special, nothing exciting, but that's what happens when you're an adult, isn't it? Nothing is as big a deal as it was when you were a kid. When you're a kid, the whole world stops for your birthday. It's an Event. People fuss over you and pay special attention to you. You get asked how old you are, and no matter what you answer, people are excited for you. "You're four? Hey, that's great! Four is a great age!" There will be presents, and a cake in the shape of an animal. (I had a giraffe cake one year. You can't beat that.)

But when you're an adult, you get, "Oh, happy birthday!" and that's about it. No one tells you, "How exciting to be twenty-eight! It's such a fun age." No one asks, "What did you get for your birthday this year?" Because the answer is usually just, "Older." The question I keep getting asked is, "Did you do anything fun for your birthday?" People don't even assume that I actually did do something fun - they ask if I did. Because I am an adult, and adults are very often too tired to do anything fun, because they spend all their time working, and cleaning the house (even though the house should, by all rights, stay clean, because they are never actually home), and worrying about things like the weather and their car's gas mileage and Kids These Days and how quickly fruit seems to spoil. (Or maybe that's just me.)

Two days after my birthday marked three years since I found out I was pregnant. In my mind, my birthday and that day are inextricably linked. I'm okay with that. Grown-up Jill was born when I saw those parallel pink lines, so it feels appropriate that the two dates should come to mind as a pair. It also means that I miss Roo just a tiny bit more around my birthday, but that's okay.

Grown-up Jill is three this year. She feels much, much older.

I want to make it clear that I've always been bothered by young people who complain about how old they are. That hasn't changed. If you can't rent a car, you are not old, so please shush. I used to joke about being prematurely old, on account of my fibromyalgia (which totally sounds like an old person's disease, doesn't it?) and the fact that I can't get off the couch without making some sort of pained noise, and how I hate most popular music, and having used, more than once, the phrase, "When I was your age."

I didn't really believe that I was old. It was just something funny to say. I knew I still had a lot of growing up to do, and I was okay with that. I wasn't in any great rush to get it over with. I've never understood why younger people are in such a rush to grow up. You have the rest of your life to be an adult - why speed to get there? I realize in retrospect that I probably should have started to grow up sooner, but my parents were very kind in letting me take my time. They didn't rush me. I appreciate that.

Then I found out I was responsible for growing another human being, and that whole no-big-rush thing sort of went up in smoke. If pregnancy didn't grow me up enough (I thought it did), placement sure finished the job. I found that I no longer felt the least bit young. As amazing as it was discover that I could love another person as much as I love Roo, to discover that I could love enough to hurt myself, it was also heavy - it aged me. It's a great responsibility, to love so much. It changed me. I'm so glad it did! But it's a very grown-up sort of change.

I envy birth moms who are able, after placement, to go back to being young and carefree and giggly. I wasn't able to. Although in all fairness, I was never particularly giggly before, and I don't think I've ever been carefree. I was a frequently serious child (thanks to an anxiety disorder), and a serious teenager (thanks to a mood disorder), and a serious young adult (thanks to growing up with anxiety and mood disorders). None of that's gone away.

It's not that I never laugh, or that I'm never happy. I do laugh, quite frequently as a matter of fact, and as far as happy goes, I'd say I'm happier than I've been in a long time. But I still feel old. I guess part of the problem is the people with whom I spend my time. At church, I am part of a congregation of young single adults, ages 18-30. That is a huge age range, I think. I thought it was ridiculous when I was 18 and I think it's equally as ridiculous now. My particular congregation skews young, and there are several girls in it who graduated from high school a few months ago. They are very young, and very giggly, and not the least bit serious. They are legal adults, but they haven't had to grow up yet. They haven't had to be selfless. They have probably never worried about kilowatt-hours or interest rates or insurance deductibles. And that's okay! I'm glad they haven't. Like I said before, I don't think there should be any great rush to be an adult. But being around these people who seem so very young, makes me feel old. I share none of their interests or their current life experiences, and yet I find myself grouped with them time and time again because of the way things are organized - we're all 18-30! We're all alike! Psh. The more I'm around them, the older I feel.

Then I go to work. In reality, I am not really that much younger than some of my co-workers. I think the biggest difference is that they're married (or were married) and have kids, and I am ostensibly this young, selfish, single person who never has to think of anyone else, and who has less money deducted from her paychecks because there are no dependents on her insurance. Any time anything age- or life-related comes up, I hear, "Yeah, but you're still young," in a very dismissive tone, as though because of my apparent youth, I wouldn't know what it's like to be an actual grown-up.

Every time I hear that phrase, hear the word "young," I think, I don't have the words to explain how little you understand. I'm not young. I haven't been young in a long, long time. I can't remember the last time I felt young. Even before I placed, even before I got pregnant, there was my dad's death, and his cancer before that. I vaguely remember thinking once or twice back in beauty school that I was kind of still a kid, but my mind blurs. Was it beauty school? Or was it college before that? Those phases of my life sort of run together in my memory. They feel like ages ago. I think it's probably been six or seven years since I felt young. And that ship has since sailed.

I don't mind. I'm quite comfortable being an adult. There is something very improving about rising and falling on my own merits or lack thereof. It's something I can recommend with great enthusiasm. I've embraced it. I want Roo to be proud of me, and I don't think she would be if I regressed after placement, if I clung desperately to my youth. Instead, I cling to my love for her. I want to set a good example, the kind of example I owe to her because of my love. If Roo were to grow up and be in my situation - not a birth mom, but single and alone in the world at my age - I wouldn't want her to be giggly and carefree and a child. I would want her to be responsible, to take care of herself, to work hard. I know that she has an excellent example in her own mother, but should she ever look to me, I'm mindful of what she'll see. I want her to see maturity and responsibility and contentment and faith in God. I'm working on them, and they're not conducive to the prolonging of my youth.

I'm not young, and that's okay. I'm okay.

And in case you're wondering, for my birthday, I went to my mom's house for dinner, and my brother and his family came, and there was a cake in the shape of a rectangle, and I got older.

In Which Jill Counts Her Blessings in a Roundabout Sort of Way

2011-10-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a while. I haven't had much to say. I'm not comfortable with blogging just for the sake of blogging. I think that if I don't have anything to say, I should keep quiet lest I prove that I don't have anything to say.

I don't have anything adoption-specific to say today, but I do need to whine, and I don't see my therapist, John, until next week. This month is our 6th anniversary. I should buy him a present. Six years is ... what, wood or iron or something, right? I miss John. I used to see him a lot more but he's decided that I am a functional adult - or, at the very least, that I'm no more messed up than the average American - and so I only see him a few times a year now.

That's okay, I guess. I mean, I am busy. I pretty much live at the library now. I got a really nice promotion so I work full-time and I have benefits and everything. I also have a desk now, and an official Maricopa County ID badge. Also, to answer the question that people always want to ask about working for the government, no, this does not get me out of jury duty. I got a summons for November 1st.

Anyway.

Part of why I haven't posted is that I've been sort of a bear lately. Well, not all the time. I mean, I've been a bear quite a bit lately, but I've also had plenty of those overwhelmed, sobbing-on-the-couch moments, so I've been like a bear with a mood disorder. I blame the calendar - it's October. I always get depressed in October.

Part of it is my birthday (this Sunday, if you were wondering), which is usually not a particularly happy occasion, and part of it is what my birthday represents - another step further away from the life I thought I'd have, and another step closer to dying alone in a house full of cats. Except that I'm allergic to cats, so they would have to be robot cats, which concerns me, because what do you do if your robot cats don't get along? Can they be re-programmed? Should I get a robot dog to keep them in line? So many questions.

In addition, I can think of no less than twelve years when weird or bad things happened on or around my birthday. Car accidents, panic attacks, deaths, hospitalizations, 9-hour solo shifts at the hair salon ... and, most notably, a positive pregnancy test. Happy birthday, right?

Every year I think, this year will be different - nothing bad is going to happen, and my birthday will be a happy day. I am very nearly always proven wrong. Good things have happened - the first birthday I had after placement was made quite happy by a great visit with Roo and her family - but it seems like it's rare that I can shake what I have come to refer to as my birthday curse.

All week I've been waiting for something to happen. Nothing too bad yet - although I did find out the other day that a man I greatly admire has a girlfriend who is roughly half my size and has limbs like a stick insect. But that's okay. In twenty years, those stick-insect arms will probably become brittle and arthritic, and my chubby arms and I will have a house full of robot cats for company.

I digress.

While nothing catastrophic has occurred, a lot of little things have gone wrong. I could list them, but I'm trying not to dwell on them, because when a lot of little things add up, they're something big. Like library fines. Twenty cents per book per day for an overdue fine doesn't seem like much, but if you have eight books that are two weeks late, you've got a fine of more than twenty dollars, as I explained to an irate patron today.

But I don't want to focus on my ruined Crock Pot meal, or my three new bruises, four scrapes and blood blister. I want to forget that my electricity went out while I was at work the other day and I had to replace the contents of my refrigerator. And I am not even going to get into how many stupid mistakes I made at work this week (27) or how many times people swore at me (2). I don't want to get so shortsighted that these individual twenty-cent fines are all I can see.

Because a year from now, when I'm panicking about turning 29, I'm not going to care about any of that. I probably won't remember any of it. It's not going to make a difference. It's not important. Two years from now, when I'm sobbing into my breakfast cereal over my lost youth on my thirtieth birthday, I won't remember this year, or next year. Ten years from now ... well, ten years from now I'll be pushing 40, and that's scary. But the little things are going to fall away and I'll probably have ruined so many Crock Pot meals that I'll have learned to like them that way and I'll be able to do my job in my sleep and maybe I won't bruise so easily as I get older. But what's important to me right now, and what will be important to me next year and the next year and in ten years and every year after that, is that the Unexpected Birthday Occurrence of 2008 brought me Roo, and that I placed her for adoption, and that it is the best thing I have ever done.

There's some vaguely cheesy quote out there about how this thing and that don't matter but what matters is that you make a difference in the life of a child. I'm too lazy for Google right now. But it's true, isn't it? None of this, not the Stick Insect Girl or the Crock Pot and certainly not the robot cats, none of it will matter in the long run. What matters is Roo. I feel cheesier than a fondue pot for saying so, but what matters is that I made a difference in her life (and the life of her family) - and that she's made a difference in mine.

And nothing, not even a lifetime of bad birthdays, can take that away.

Hey, maybe John was right. Maybe I am functional after all :)

Open Adoption Roundtable #30

2011-10-10T22:04:00.003-07:00

If you are a regular reader, you might be puzzled by the #30 in the title (I've never done 1-29), as well as the phrase "Open Adoption Roundtable."

Allow me to explain. No, wait, allow the creator of the Open Adoption Roundtable to explain, as follows: "The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community." (See *here* for more.)

While I've been on the e-mail list for ages now, I have never felt the urge to participate. I'm not sure why. I'm also not sure why I felt the urge to participate today, but I did, so here goes. Prompt #30 says, "Do you remember the first time you heard about open adoption?"

(Allow me to apologize in advance for how scattered my thoughts are, and for any typographical errors. It's just been one of those days.)

I'm not sure I remember exactly - I can guess. I don't even remember when adoption itself was introduced to me. As far back as I can remember, I knew that my mother was adopted, and that it was a good thing because it meant she was special - her parents picked her, and they loved her. Personally, I always got the impression she was their favorite, but that might just have been the way I saw it as a child.

So adoption, in my mind, was closed adoption. There was no contact with the biological family, no connection. Although my mother occasionally put her name on adoptee-rights mailing lists, her heart wasn't in it - she didn't feel a void in her life. She mentioned, when I asked, that she was mostly curious about what her birth mother looked like, and she (my mom) wished that her birth mother could see that she was happy, and that adoption had been the right choice.

I know that my grandparents wished they knew more about the young woman who was in their lives for a matter of minutes. I imagine that they had questions for her, both for their own peace of mind and that of the tiny baby they'd been entrusted with. But what they knew about her was little enough to fit into a text message. They learned to live with it.

I had more of a thirst. When I was a teenager, or maybe 20, I was able to do some digging and I found my mother's biological family. She had a half-brother 5 years her senior, and two younger half-sisters. Her birth mother had died a few years before, and had never told anyone that she once placed a baby for adoption. I remember wondering how a person could keep such a heavy secret for over forty years. But, I thought, that was adoption for you.

Fast-forward several years to my first meeting with a social worker. I was only a few weeks pregnant at the time and the cells dividing inside me didn't even seem real yet. The social worker, S, discussed what she called my "options" with me, and adoption was one of them. I tuned her out because I wasn't particularly interested in adoption. I vaguely remember the phrase "open adoption" being thrown around but it didn't mean much to me. S told me about a few birth mothers she had worked with who had placed very recently, and I think she said something about visits or pictures. This caught my attention, and it mystified me. Visits? Who on earth would do such a thing? In my mind, adoption meant a signature on a legal document and silence for at least 18 years. It meant unanswered questions. That's just the way things were - right?

The next week I met the aforementioned birth mothers, and they showed me pictures of the children they had placed. They talked about how much they missed their babies, but how nice it was to be able to see them and know that they were okay. The fact that they spoke so openly about things threw me. Adoptees, I expected to speak. But because of my mother's experience, I thought that birth mothers would want to keep secrets.

The more I heard these women speak, the more I thought to myself that if I were ever to choose adoption (not that I EVER would, I thought), openness was the only way to go. I imagined how alone my biological grandmother must have felt, and how hard it must have been for her to hand over her newborn baby girl to two strangers and just walk away, never knowing for the rest of her life if her baby was happy and cared-for and loved.

Because of my situation - parenting for a bit before placing - I knew that I had to have an open adoption or no adoption at all. I had such a connection to Roo. The thought of never knowing anything about her was too much. I needed openness. I needed it then, and I need it now.

I need it for myself, if I'm honest. I don't think I could have healed if I hadn't been able to see Roo and hold her and tell her I love her after placement. I don't think I could have stood not knowing what she looked like or if she was happy.

But I think that as time passes and Roo grows, the openness will be less about me and more about her. I think of my mother, wondering for years if she resembled the woman who grew her and gave her life (she does, for the record). I think of her wanting to tell her birth mother that adoption was the right choice, that my mom has had a happy life. I think of my grandparents, wondering about the young woman who gave them their daughter. Roo won't have to wish or wonder - she knows what I look like. I know that she's happy. P and M know who I am.

Every adoption situation is different; I know that. I mean, I would never presume to tell someone how to fold an origami crane when I've only ever folded a chicken. But I do believe that open adoption, when it is done right and for the right reasons, is the very best kind of open adoption. Everyone benefits - the adoptive parents, the birth parents, and the child most of all.

Isn't that what adoption is all about?

Up and Away

2011-10-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

First of all, I want to thank the awesome peeps who commented on my last post. I got a lot of really good feedback, and I feel like slightly less of a brat than I did before. I'm going to try to be more patient ... and also more direct.

And now for something completely different. (Happy birthday, Monty Python!)

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I've been feeling the urge to tell more people about my being a birth mother. I'm not sure why, but the itch is there. It's a little bit annoying, to be honest. I mean, I don't think I will ever be so blasé about adoption as to throw it out there when I first meet someone. When someone says, "Tell me about yourself," I never say, "Well, for openers, I'm a birth mother." My experience with adoption was and is much too significant, much too important to be mentioned in the same breath as an introduction.

But when it feels right, I've been speaking up more and more. There's always this brief moment of panic where I wonder, what will they think of me? But more often than not, the reaction I get is, "Wow!"

I don't know if it's because people are genuinely impressed or because they don't know what else to say. I'm content to believe that it's the former.

Still, every now and then, I'll hear that phrase so loathed by every birth mother of my acquaintance: "I could never do that." It doesn't matter how the person means it, it's still cringe-inducing. But you know what makes it worse? When people specify what "that" is - "Oh, I could never give my baby away."

You know what? I could never give my baby away, either.

I promise I'm not being deliberately obtuse. I know what people mean when they say "give up" or "give away." But I didn't give Roo up, or away. I placed her. I will very nearly always correct someone who says "give up" or "give away." I don't even think about it most of the time. If it's a situation where someone else is talking and I'm supposed to be listening, I'll catch myself interrupting with "placed" every time the other person says "gave up." I can't help it.

Usually when I correct people, they'll brush my correction aside. "Same thing," they'll say. But ladies and gents, it is absolutely NOT the same thing. There is a difference between placing, giving up and giving away, and I can tell you right now that only one of them applies to adoption as I've experienced it.

In case you weren't aware, I like words. I like learning them and what they mean and I like using them correctly. I adored semantics before I even knew what that particular word meant. Can we talk about words here for a minute?

Even before I ever thought about adoption, the word "placed" always brought to mind care and deliberation - it's a verb one would apply to the action taken on something that is precious and important. I might drop my purse, I might set down a book, but something of value, a piece of fine china, for instance, is carefully placed on the table or in a cabinet. I toss my mail on the counter, but I place my jewelry on my nightstand. When I place something, I don't let go prematurely. I make sure that it's just where I want it before I loosen my grip - I make sure my target is stable. I slide my water pitcher into the refrigerator, but I place my full glass of water on the table. I take care. Placement is always done deliberately. When I care about an object, I don't let it go. I place it.

"Gave up," on the other hand, suggests something that should be the object of less care. People give up things that are bad for them - their vices. You might give up smoking. You might give up sugar for Lent. You might give up drinking soda. There are other uses for "gave up" though. People will give up on a sports team that isn't going to win (maybe next year, Dodgers). If something is too hard, what do you do? You give up. You quit. Giving up is quitting. I don't know about anyone else, but I sure didn't choose adoption because I wanted to quit being a mother. "Gave up" is a poor, mean way to describe the impossible choice a birthmother makes. Saying a birthmother "gave up" her child makes it sound like she was a drug user who couldn't kick the habit, or a selfish person who didn't want to bother with parenting.

I didn't give up my baby. You know what else? I sure as heck didn't give her away.

Have you ever wandered through the cosmetics section of a department store? There are signs everywhere for free lip gloss, bonus eyeshadow compacts and miniature bottles of perfume that can be yours with a purchase of $40 or more. Do you know what those little freebies are? They're giveaways. The samples of medicine or cereal or granola bars that come packaged with your Sunday paper? (I don't know if they do those other places, but in Phoenix sometimes you get NyQuil or Frosted Flakes with your newspaper.) Those are giveaways, too. Giveaways are cheap. They cost the giver either very little or nothing at all. Of course, you usually have to pay for those one way or another - your $40 purchase, or a newspaper subscription. If a giveaway is really free, it's usually given in the hopes that it will entice you to spend money - the giver stands to gain from his or her generosity.

That doesn't sound much like adoption to me, either.

But, hey, I'm talking about giveaways as a single word. I've forgotten semantics. What people have said is that I gave my baby away. Really? Gave away? Well, if I ever decide to replace my couch, I'll give away this one. I won't sell it, because it's not really worth anything. I'll put an ad on Craigslist and give my couch to the first person to contact me. People give things away because the things are no longer wanted, no longer needed, and have no value. If it's worth something, you sell it, you don't give it away.

Place, give up, give away. Which one of these three sounds the most appropriate given what you know of adoption from my blog? I love my little Roo. I always will. I wanted her. I needed her. She has infinite worth. She is dear and precious and very much loved. Because I love her more than I ever thought one person could love another person, I placed her. I took deliberate care. I didn't give her up or away, and I never, ever could, not in a million years.

So, please, don't tell me that either of those is the "same thing" as placement. They are worlds apart. I know which one I did and why. If I correct you, it's because I want you to know too.

The Worst Person in the World

2011-09-30T22:31:00.001-07:00

I need an outlet today. I need to get something out of my brain. It's only vaguely adoption-related, and it's nothing I'm proud of, but I need to get it out just the same.

I never watched Keith Olbermann's TV show - I had to Google him to figure out how to spell his name. But I am vaguely familiar with one part of the program because of an episode of "The Simpsons." Apparently Mr. Olbermann liked to single out individuals with whom he disagreed and label them that day's Worst Person in the World.

I'm not sure by what authority he makes such claims, or in comparison to whom. If Keith Olbermann had ever met my high school band director, Mrs. Woodard, he'd think Ann Coulter was just a sweetheart. Mrs. Woodard was a musical Mussolini. When I quit band after my sophomore year, she spent ten minutes yelling at me and telling me what an awful person I was and how I was a quitter and loser and I'd never amount to anything and how she was ashamed of me. Apparently this was meant to convince me to stick around.

I digress.

Most of the time I think I'm a pretty decent person. I'm not perfect, but I think most of us have our moments, don't we? Most of the time I am mostly good, and I do the best I can. It's human nature to judge people and to compare ourselves to others. As long as I keep it to myself, or between myself and God, and remind myself that I probably shouldn't be judging, I think I'm doing alright. I am much less judg-y than I used to be.

But every now and then I'll have a thought that is perhaps not very kind, and I wonder if anyone else would be as mean, or if Keith Olbermann was mistaken because I am the Worst Person in the World. I don't want to think these thoughts, but they keep popping up and several of them have been doing so regularly since my mom got married last December.

Usually it happens when I hear my mother's husband say he has eleven grandchildren.

My mother has eleven grandchildren. She's only got ten, strictly speaking, but she likes to count Roo, too. I mean, Roo's already got grandparents and everything, and I don't count Roo when people ask me if I have any children, so it's a little funny for me, but whatever. If my mom wants to count Roo as #9, she's allowed.

I actually insisted that she count Roo at first, because after I placed it seemed like most people I knew expected me to just move on with my life and pretend I never had a baby. My mom counting Roo as her grandchild was an acknowledgement to me that even though I wasn't a mom anymore, I had had a baby, and I still loved her. I was mostly fine with my mother counting Roo until last December, when my mom got married.

I am not at all fine with my mom's husband (let's call him Rick, just for fun) counting Roo. I have mentioned this to my mother on many occasions. I don't feel that Rick has any right to claim Roo as a grandchild, because he's never met her and isn't likely to, and he's never going to be a part of her life. He doesn't get to claim Roo. Not as far as I'm concerned.

If I'm honest, and I know this is just me being juvenile about my mom re-marrying, I'm not 100% comfortable with Rick claiming he has any grandchildren at all, because none of them are his kids' kids. They're all my mother's grandchildren. Rick isn't the least bit bothered by this. He started calling himself “Grandpa” pretty much the day he proposed to my mom.

My brother's youngest, L, was born two months after my dad died. His birth was a great blessing - he came when we needed a reason to be happy, something to celebrate. Of course, this means that L never met my dad, which is very sad.

A few weeks ago, Rick mentioned that L is his favorite grandchild, because L never knew his Grandpa Willy, so Rick is the only grandpa that L has ever known. That bothered me. What kind of person would take joy in the fact that a little boy never got to meet his own grandpa? It made me think unkindly of Rick, and I'm still bugged by it.

Am I awful for thinking these things? Am I awful for being bothered by these things that Rick says? Am I awful for not wanting Rick to claim Roo as his grandchild? But she's totally not his grandchild. Not at all. He doesn't get to claim her. He hasn't earned that right. He won't. It's just … I feel very, very protective of Roo and her story and the part that my dad played in everything (being such an awesome dad that I wanted the same for Roo, etc). Rick's presence in anything Roo-related feels intrusive. He doesn't belong.

Speaking of, as long as I'm admitting to being this selfish, horrible little brat, here's the other Rick-related thing that grates on me. Rick has, on more than one occasion, told people that he and my mother have nine children.

Um, excuse me? No, no they do not. He has five and she has four. THEY do not have any kids together and, parenthetically, as my mother is 54 I'd lay money down that they aren't going to. When Rick says things like that, I feel like he's pretending that my mother wasn't married to my father for 32 years. Rick and my mother don't have any children together. Rick is not my dad. I don't need Rick to be my dad. I have a dad. He's “laid this mortal by,” to quote a hymn, but he is still my father and he will be forever.

Am I awful? I need honest feedback here, because if I'm an awful person I should probably see my therapist more often and learn to make a conscious effort to be less awful. Even if I am awful, though, is it normal to be awful about these sorts of things? Even if you remove adoption from the situation, would it be normal to have these feelings about Rick, or am I just a rotten human being?

It's nothing personal against Rick - just the language that he uses. I mean, he's a nice enough guy, and he and my mother are happy together. But he's not my father and he never will be. Which makes it uncomfortable for me when Dad-related things come up, and there's Rick. It's intrusive and uncomfortable, and the fact that it's such an issue for me makes me feel like the worst person in the world.

In Which Jill Feels the Need to Disagree

2011-09-23T20:58:00.003-07:00

(or: I Hope You Like the Word "Mistake" Because I'm Going to Use it a Lot in This Post)

There's a birth mom blog out there that I read every now and then. I know some people who love this blog but I'm not one of them. I don't mean that in the sense that there's anything wrong with this blog or the woman who writes it, because it definitely fills a need. It's just not a good fit for me.

The blog author has a number of opinions I don't share. Which is fine! There are those who need and appreciate her perspective. I just don't happen to be one of them. But I do read now and then because the psych-major part of me finds it terribly fascinating how two women can experience the same thing (placement) in such different ways, and come away from it having learned different things and with such different perspectives.

Anyway.

I've never felt the need to comment before - well, maybe once, but when I was about to, I saw that someone else had commented with the sentiment I was going to express (and they put it better than I could have), so I left it alone. But a couple of weeks ago, I read something that rubbed me the wrong way. I want to address it here.

I don't make a habit of addressing other people's words on my own blog. Normally I would respond to something I don't agree with in the comments of what I will call, for lack of a better word, the offending post. I do my best to disagree agreeably. I did just that - I left a comment on the post in question. The blog author moderates comments, however, so my response didn't show up right away.

I waited a few days. And a few more days, and a few more. When two weeks had passed, it occurred to me that the blog author might not be willing to post a comment that disagreed with her. Maybe she felt I missed the point of the post (which is entirely possible, as I tend to be a bit thick-headed at times, and the part I took issue with wasn't the main point of the post). Maybe she thinks I'm an awful person for saying what I did. I don't know. All I know is my comment was rejected. I can live with that.

So I'm going to disagree here on my own blog, because although I may be biased I think my disagreement is important. My point is important. It may not be important to this other blogger, or to any of you, but it is important to me, and this is my blog, so here goes.

I'm not going to quote exactly, because if you didn't read the original post I don't want you to go Googling it to figure out who wrote it. I don't know this birth mom personally so I don't want to judge her or her situation and I certainly don't want to see her or her blog attacked based on my opinion. But I'm really, really bothered by some of the words she used.

The gist of what she said was that we (birth moms) owe a debt of gratitude to adoptive couples for "cleaning up our mistake."

Um, excuse me? My mistake?

I am grateful to P and M for a great many things, but not once has it ever occurred to me to see their adoption of Roo as "cleaning up my mistake." Just the thought of using that kind of language to describe it makes me angry.

I made a lot of mistakes, but Roo isn't one of them. Getting pregnant with her might not have been my intention, but I don't see it as a mistake. Conceiving her, carrying her, giving birth to her, taking care of her until I found her family, and placing her for adoption are collectively the best thing I have ever done. I love Roo more than anything. But she's not just my tummy baby or P and M's daughter. Roo is a precious, cherished, beloved daughter of God.

The one thing Roo is NOT is a mess to be cleaned up. She's not a "mess," or any kind of mistake, and I didn't place her to clean anything up, to fix anything or to hide anything. I placed her because I love her and I knew that adoption was what was best for her.

I also can't imagine that P and M saw adoption as a way of cleaning up my personal "mistake" - they barely knew me, why would they do me that kind of favor if that phrasing (cleaning up a mess) were accurate? The adoption of their little girl wasn't a dreaded inconvenience or a hassle or a personal favor. It was something they'd prayed for, something they wanted very, very badly.

I am grateful to P and M - for the great parents they are to their children, for the good examples they are to me, for their love and prayers and support and openness, for a million other things. But I've never looked at things as if I owe them something for taking a "mistake" off my hands. Nor do I think they owe me anything. I think we're square. They owe Roo unconditional love and care and support and a happy childhood and all the other things parents owe their children. I owe it to Roo to make myself a better person for having had her. But that's where any sense of debt ends.

The fact that this birthmother referred to her placed child as a mess to be cleaned up hurts my heart. Badly. She's certainly allowed to feel that way if she wants to, but I'm allowed to feel the opposite. I would hate for someone who doesn't know about adoption to stumble on a post with that kind of language and get the wrong idea about why a woman might place her child for adoption. I would hate for someone to read that and think that birthmothers see their placed children as mistakes, as things to be ashamed of, to be hidden or cleaned up.

Shame is the last thing I'll ever feel about Roo, no matter how she turns out. I am proud of her and the decision I made for her. I was recently given a new assignment in church, in a position of leadership with the women of my congregation. I mentioned this to an acquaintance of mine who is just learning about adoption, and I said, sort of jokingly, that I couldn't wait until an opportunity arose to tell the women of my ward that I had a baby. This acquaintance, C, jumped in quickly.

"Oh, you shouldn't feel like you have to tell anyone. No one needs to know," she said.

"I don't have to tell anyone," I said, "but I want to. I'm not ashamed of Roo. I like to tell people about her."

C seemed unconvinced. I am convinced. I'm not proud of a lot of the decisions I made three years ago. But having Roo isn't among them. She's nothing to be swept under the rug. She's nothing to be ashamed of or hidden.

I love Roo! She's my little friend. I think she's the most wonderful and amazing person in the world. It is precisely because I love her so much and because I think so much of her that I placed her. It had nothing to do with me or my past or my future. It was all about Roo.

How To Irritate an Adoptive Mother

2011-09-18T18:20:00.001-07:00

I've found that in adoption circles, I am known as the "Happiest Sad Chick" but more specifically I'm remembered for two pieces of writing: my piece on cold risotto, and my rant called "How To Irritate a Birth Mother."

I've gotten quite a bit of e-mail lately on the latter; I can only assume I have new readers who have only recently discovered it (Hello, new people!). A few weeks ago, I heard from one of those new readers, Sharon. She is the mother of an absolutely darling little girl named Ava, who was adopted. Sharon blogs about adoption and other things at I Believe in Miracles. (I love this post from a few days ago.)

Sharon contacted me to see if it would be okay if she pulled from "How to Irritate a Birth Mother" for her blog, and I was very interested to see what she came up with. You can read the results here: *click*

I loved reading Sharon's take on some of the stupid questions I get. I suppose that it's naïveté on my part that I never considered adoptive parents having to answer stupid questions about birth parents, too. In this respect I suppose I'm lucky - I only have to answer stupid birthmother-related questions. Couples who have adopted get stupid adoptive parent-related questions AND stupid birthmother-related questions.

Click on over to Sharon's blog for her take on stupid questions, and stay for a while to read some of the inspiring things she's written about adoption. Parenthetically, she lives not far from a place called The Lion Park so her blog also has pictures of Ava petting a lion cub. You have no idea how jealous I am :)

Everybody Hurts

2011-09-14T21:41:00.003-07:00

Several times in the past few weeks I've heard or read birthmothers express that although placement was a hard thing, there was an accompanying sort of peace and comfort. This isn't something I've never heard before. I heard it all the time when I was pregnant, and also right after I placed. It made me feel abnormal and dysfunctional, because I didn't get any of that. I mean, I knew that I'd made the right decision, and I felt like God was with me. But God was with me in the sense that ... how can I put this?

Okay, remember the '96 Olympics? More specifically, Kerri Strug's vault on an injured foot. She was hurt, and she knew that she was hurt, but her coach didn't say, "Oh, hey, Kerri, why don't you sit this one out? Your ankle looks pretty bad."

Actually, maybe he did, but considering what I have read about her coach, I very much doubt it. I suspect it was something more along the lines of, "You've got the rest of your life to fix this ankle, and only another 90 seconds to do this vault," followed by a couple of swear words in Romanian.

That's how it was for me after placement (minus the swears). God knew that I was hurt, and He put His arm around me, but he didn't let me sit out my second vault. I had to sprint down the mat again and trust that the landing wasn't going to kill me.

So I've always felt like a bit of an outsider when birth moms talk about how they were on a spiritual high after placement, or how they feel like God took away their pain, or how it wasn't that hard because it was the right choice. None of those things fits my situation.

But every woman is different. I've found that comparing myself and my situation to others isn't ever a productive activity. I decided a while ago that I was just different, and that was okay. Maybe placement would have felt different, maybe I would have handled it different, if it had happened within a week of Roo's birth. Maybe if I met other birth mothers who parented for a while, their placement pain and grief would fit with the pattern of mine and I wouldn't feel so maladroit.

I don't know. But here's what I do know: we don't always remember things the way they happened. At my birth mom group tonight, I heard a woman talk about how she had this peace and calm after placement, and how at times she missed that feeling. I know this woman, who placed a few months after I did, and I was there at group the first time she came after placement. She didn't seem to be particularly peaceful or calm. She was a miserable wreck. So it was strange for me to hear tonight that she remembers things the way she does. I suspect that the peace she has with her decision now has colored her memories of her pain. It got me thinking about the other placement stories I heard during my pregnancy and later.

Most of what I heard seemed to be really happy stories, about how even though placement wasn't fun, it was beautiful or peaceful or something like that. I wonder now - how many of those stories are true and how many of them are memories recalled by women whose pain was simply too stale to properly recount? I mean, I'm not saying anyone was lying, or even that they weren't remembering correctly. For all I know I just encountered an unusually high number of women for whom placement wasn't a gut-punch trauma. But I think, the odds are that one or two of them are like my friend who spoke tonight.

That's not a bad thing. I want to stress that. I think that we remember things the way we do for a reason. It's like ... well, to use a relevant simile, it's like childbirth. When you're in labor, it is awful. It's uncomfortable at best and excruciating at worst. It hurts! You don't forget that pain right after the baby is born. The baby makes it worth it, of course, but the pain was recent enough that you're not going to soon forget. You've got a good point of reference for a ten on the pain scale hospitals use. You see your OB-GYN a few weeks after the baby's birth for a check-up, and she asks you about your pain. You might be uncomfortable, but compared to the pain of actually getting the baby out, you're at, what, a two?

But the older the baby gets, the fuzzier that pain memory gets. Your lack of sleep doesn't help your memory any. But while you remember childbirth being painful, you find that you can't quite remember how bad a 10 is. You think, I was uncomfortable then, but my head really hurts now. This migraine is an 8 on the pain scale. By the time your child is two, if a pregnant woman asks you about labor, you'll brush off their concerns.

"It hurts, but you get through it," you tell her. "You won't remember it when you hold your baby." Which is a lie. I still had staples in my gut the first time I held my baby. But time has made the pain memory fuzzy. So, maybe you've decided to have a second child. You can handle the pain of childbirth, you think. And then labor starts.

My mother recalled her second labor once. She said that once things got started, she remembered really fast what it felt like, and she thought, "Oh, no. It really was that bad." But until that moment, she didn't remember the pain properly, and it's a good thing because if she had, my oldest brother would be an only child and I wouldn't be here.

I was going somewhere with my analogy, I know I was.

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Oh, right. Placement. I think that time, and acceptance, dulls the memory of placement pain for some women, and when they recall their experience, it turns into a lot of unicorns and rainbows that weren't really there, or that were there but only for a few minutes at a time.

I think that, for one reason or another, some of these women need to forget their pain. Maybe they're going to need to go through something else painful in the future and if they recalled placement exactly as it was, they wouldn't be able to handle it. Maybe their pain has served its purpose and it was time to send it packing. Maybe they don't need it anymore.

I believe that God had, and still has, a purpose in the way I've grieved and hurt after placement. I absolutely believe that He is going to use it for my good. Maybe it's because He doesn't want me to have a metaphorical baby again for a while - maybe I need to remember to keep myself from making decisions that are going to cause me to hurt again. (I should mention that I don't think of placement as a decision that caused me to hurt - I think of the bad decisions I made that led to my pregnancy as the ones that caused me to hurt.)

I don't know what that purpose is yet. Maybe I never will. I do know that every woman who has placed a child for adoption was hurt by that choice on some level. Everyone handles their hurt differently, but everyone hurts.

I don't hurt like I used to. I hope I never do. I do wonder if someday I'll be the one describing placement as a peaceful thing but I'd rather not be that girl. My pain has strengthened me. The memory of that pain is a reminder that I can be strong when I need to be. It's a reminder that there are things - and people - in this world worth hurting for.

Not every problem I have is going to be a second vault. But if a twisted ankle sneaks up on me, I know I can handle it. I can land on one foot again if I need to.

I did it before. And I would do it all over again in a heartbeat - for Roo.

Two Years

2011-09-09T08:56:00.002-07:00

Today is the second anniversary of the hardest day of my life. Two years ago, I signed a piece of paper (in triplicate) that said I was no longer a mother. I signed the paper, and I handed my baby girl over to her new parents, and I went home with empty arms.

Sometimes I can't believe I'm still here, because just the memory of the pain of placement is overwhelming. Nothing in my life has ever been as excruciating as placing my baby for adoption. I couldn't have even begun to imagine feeling that kind of pain until I felt it. Once I felt it, I couldn't imagine that I could hurt so bad and still be alive.

And yet ... there's none of that kind of pain today. Today isn't a sad day for me. It's a happy day - not even a happy-sad, just a happy-happy. Roo has been in her family for two years, and I think that's a great thing. I am happy for her. I want to celebrate! I hope it's a similarly happy day for her and her family. I hope they're celebrating.

Two years ago, P and M each wrote me a letter, and they gave the letters to me at placement. When I'd stopped crying long enough to read them later that night (or the next day, I don't remember which), I started crying again, because each letter was just so perfect. P and M both managed to say exactly what I needed to read. I took great comfort in their words. I read those letters at least once a day for a week. Then I read them once a week.

Once a week faded into once a month, maybe, and eventually the letters stayed put in my nightstand drawer. I knew they were there if I needed to read them, but I didn't need to anymore.

Last night, I was having a really hard time with things. I felt stuck, like nothing in my life is ever going to change no matter what I do, and I missed Roo. Not two-year-old Roo, but my newborn baby, the one who was mine. I decided I needed to re-read my patriarchal blessing (click the words if you don't know what they mean). I dug through the mess of papers in my nightstand drawer. I found a copy of my blessing, and two envelopes with my name on them - my letters.

I read my letters from P and M again, and I cried again. It has been two years since they were written, and I'm in a completely different place now, but both letters still said exactly what I needed to read. I am so grateful for them! I was grateful for them two years ago, and I'm just as grateful for them now.

More than that, I am grateful for the people who wrote them. I couldn't have placed Roo with anyone else. I am so glad that she gets to be their daughter!

I got to see Roo last week. I don't think I wrote about it, but I saw her and her mommy. It was wonderful. The best part of our visit was towards the end. Roo had been answering every question with "no."

I'd ask, "Roo, do you like chocolate cake?" or "Is pink your favorite color?" and she'd give her little mischievous smile and say no. So I expected a no when I asked her another question.

I asked, "Roo, do you know that I love you?"

No small smile this time, but a bright one, and she said, "Yeah."

And then she went right back to answering no to every other question, because she is two. I wanted to make sure, so I asked her again if she knew that I loved her. I got another "Yeah." My heart melted.

Two years ago, when she was tiny, I placed her for adoption. Today, she knows that I love her.

I am so blessed.

"Real" - a Rant

2011-09-03T18:33:00.006-07:00

I don't know if anyone else does this, but quite often I'll hear someone say something and it will take an hour or two for my brain to process exactly what they said. If I'm lucky, it won't be a big deal, but sometimes it's the sort of thing where I think, hours later, "This is what I should have said."

I had just such a moment this past week. A woman with whom I am becoming acquainted was talking about adoption. I don't know if she reads this blog, but I hope so, because I want her to know what I should have said on Wednesday.

I had mentioned that Roo looks like P and M. It's not particularly important to me that she looks like them, but the fact is that she does, and that's what I said. This woman - I'll call her C - said, "Isn't it funny how that happens sometimes?"

"It is," I agreed.

"I know a family who adopted kids who look just like them. You look at their family and you can't even tell which ones are their real kids."

I heard the words, but I didn't process them properly. If I had, I never would have let them slide like that. I never would have let the conversation continue from there. But I did. And I hate it. I had a prime opportunity to correct a misconception, and I didn't. I want to do it now, as I should have done it Wednesday.

C, I know what you meant to say. I know that when you said "real" you meant biological. But here's the thing - you didn't say biological. You said real. Adopted children are real children. Roo is 100% real, and 100% really P and M's daughter. She is their real child.

You're new to the adoption world, C, so I don't blame you for using incorrect language - most people do. But I want to correct it, because if you're going to be coming to my birth mom group to support your friend, if you're going to be around people who are so intimately acquainted with adoption, you're going to have to change your vocabulary.

All adopted children are real. They are real children. Being adopted doesn't mean they're not their parents' real children. Ask any parent who has adopted - their kids are their kids, all of them, no matter what.

If Roo isn't her parents' real child, what is she - Pinocchio? Psh. Roo isn't going to grow up wishing on a star that someday she'll be real. She is her parents' real child. She was from the moment they first held her. I think they would agree.

Maybe I'm belaboring the point here, but I want to make it abundantly clear. Adopted children are their parents' real children. I don't believe for a second that P and M (or any adoptive parents, for that matter) consider their children to be anything but their real kids.

Blood doesn't make a family. Love makes a family. It makes them real.

Really.

Just Me and My Memories

2011-08-29T23:55:00.004-07:00

I always remember dates. I'm not sure why. I can tell you important dates, like family birthdays and wedding anniversaries and the day I first went to the temple. I can also tell you other dates that I don't have any real reason to remember. I know the date I started beauty school, the date I started working almost every job I've had, the date I bought my houseplant, the date I graduated from high school. I remember the birthday of my childhood best friend. I remember dozens of random dates, and every time they roll around again, I'll think, it's been X years since this happened. I don't know if anyone else does this, but I do. Let's call it part of the magic that is me.

So, today is August 29th. For another few minutes, anyway, and by the time anyone reads this it will be the 30th, but work with me here, okay? It's the 29th, and it's been the 29th all day, and all day, I've been thinking, it's the 29th.

Two years ago I started this blog. I don't know whether I chose the date intentionally or not. In retrospect it feels sort of symbolic for me to have started blogging on August 29th because my blog marked the beginning of the end - the end of my time as Roo's mother, the end of the life I'd grown to love. Three years ago on August 29th, it was the beginning of the end of something else - my father's life.

My mother said today that she can never remember, but that she knows it was the end of August. I thought, how can you not remember? August 29th is practically part of my genetics at this point. August 29th was the date that my mother came into my bedroom and told me that she couldn't wake up my father.

I tried to wake him up, too. I don't know why I thought I could when she couldn't, but I tried just the same. He was breathing, so I guess I thought he'd come around. I remember my mother looking a little lost, and asking if she should call an ambulance. I said she should, and she called. We followed the instructions of the 911 dispatcher and moved my dad so he was lying down. I went outside to wait for the ambulance. It was one of the blue ones. They had the lights and sirens on. Some part of my brain registered that they'd made good time, and I reminded myself that it was an ambulance, and that making good time was kind of a thing with them.

I led the paramedics into the living room. Four of them started working on my dad, and a fifth sat down with a clipboard and started asking my mom questions. She couldn't answer them; I think she was in shock. But I could. I explained about the brain cancer, the surgeries. I gave him dates (I always remember those) and brought over bottles of prescription pills so they'd know what my dad had been taking - an antibiotic, a steroid for the post-surgery swelling, and Temodar for the cancer.

In the midst of this I heard someone call out my dad's blood pressure, and when I heard the numbers, I knew he wasn't ever going to wake up. I was right. He died eleven days later and I was the one to call my brother and sister to tell them.

It is the curse of this memory of mine that although I cannot remember math from a class I took four times or any of the French verbs I learned last semester, or the names of people I have met more than once, or what comes after the part about the country folk being "up and to arm" in that poem about Paul Revere, I can remember in excruciating detail August 29th of 2008. I remember to the minute what time things happened. When my father said he had a headache. When the ambulance was called. When my mom and brother and I got to the emergency room at Gilbert Mercy.

I've been looking at the clock all day, thinking: this is when this happened, or that. Three years ago this is where I was, and this is what was happening. Three years ago right now, for instance, I was on my way to St. Joe's in Phoenix, where my father had been transfered. I remember thinking how quiet the freeways are at night, and how peaceful the city seemed. It felt wrong for things to be so tranquil when the future was so scary and uncertain. It seemed unfair that people were sleeping soundly in their homes while my home was never going to be the same again. I envied them their peace, their sleep.

My dad died on September 9th, but I don't grieve much for him that day. In my mind he was gone on the 29th. I grieved today. Oh, how I grieved!

I spent much of the day at my mother's house, which might have been a mistake. I love my mother, but the house is so full of reminders - here is where the EMT with the clipboard sat. Here is where my father's prescriptions were. Here is where the couch was, the couch on which my father fell asleep for the last time. Although it's my couch now, and I'm sitting on it as I type this (sometimes I hate my couch). It's not just the memories, though. It's my mom's new husband.

It was hard today to think so much of my father, and to see my mother happy with someone else. I'm glad that she's happy, of course, but it was still hard. It was hard for my mother to ask me, when I drifted off for a moment or two, what I was thinking of, and to tell her how I was reliving that day - That Day - knowing that her husband was in the next room, and that he could probably hear. I didn't want him to hear. I didn't want him to know these details that are etched so deeply in my memory. It felt wrong. I don't know why.

I digress.

I wonder if, two years ago, I picked the 29th on purpose. I know that I knew what anniversary it was, what significance the day had. I'm not sure. But I'm glad that I picked it. Because this day, this sad day, has other memories attached to it. It's not just the day I lost my dad. It's the day I sat at my computer and tried to think of a name for this new blog I wanted to start for Roo. It's the day when I watched my baby sleep and thought, this really is the happiest sad. It's the day when I started something new that would prove to be more therapeutic than almost anything else has ever been in my life.

I like the contrasting memories. I think this is part of why I chose to place Roo on the 9th. I wanted to blend the memories of these two very different September 9ths, as I'd done with the 29th of August. Although I find that, in retrospect, the roles of peace and pain are swapped from the 29th. My father was the pain and adoption was my peace. My father's death on the 9th was a surprisingly peaceful thing. Placement was pain.

I would never be foolish enough to claim that time heals all wounds. I don't believe that. But I do believe that time changes them. I think sometimes it changes them enough that we can live with them. Maybe some people mistake that for healing. I don't know.

I'm certainly not going to say I've healed. Look at it this way: I had a c-section to deliver Roo. I was cut open, and sewed back together. That wound has healed. I know it has healed, because it no longer bleeds or hurts and I forget I've even got a scar there most of the time. I know that it once hurt, but I find that I can't remember what the pain felt like.

It will never be like that with my dad, or with placement. I may not be bleeding as I did initially, but it's a wound that still hurts from time to time. It happens much, much less frequently with the placement pain, because I took the time to grieve properly. I put off grieving for my dad. It hurts. Sometimes it bleeds. I know the scars are there. I remember the pain. The trick is to keep the pain in the past. Some days are easier than others.

But here's what else I know - there's a difference between being scarred, and being broken. And I am not broken. These dates that are written on my heart, they're not the days that I was broken. They're the days when I got knocked down.

But I got back up.

Happy Blogday!

2011-08-28T11:57:00.001-07:00

Happy birthday to my blog! Strictly speaking, I'm a day early. Tomorrow, my blog will be two years old. I feel like I should throw a party for it or something. There definitely needs to be cake. Of course, I think most occasions call for cake. If I found out I was going to need kidney dialysis, I would probably mark the occasion with cake.

Anyway.

I thought one way to celebrate would be to finally publish the Facebook page for this blog. What Facebook page, you ask? Why, the one right HERE (I think that's the right link). I've been thinking about it since July, and I thought my Blogday was an appropriate occasion for this kind of shameless self-promotion.

I've considered a Facebook page on and off for a while now but I always decided against it because I thought, what kind of ego do I have that I think my blog needs a Facebook page? Do I think I've got so many fans that people are just clamoring for one more way to adore my blog? It felt like way too much of an ego thing, even though that was never my intent when I considered it.

For the most part, I figure if people want to keep up with this blog, they'll ... you know. Read the blog. It's not tricky, really. And for people who thought I personally was kind of cool, they could friend me on Facebook. I used to have a little clickable picture in my sidebar for just that purpose.

But ... I don't know. I got more friend requests than I expected to, and from people I've never met. And while I am very flattered that people wanted to be my friend, I felt a little uncomfortable sharing so much of myself (and the occasional Roo picture, although I'm careful with privacy settings on those) with people I don't know very well or at all.

Not that you probably particularly care about that (unless I didn't accept your friend request, in which case I apologize), but I'm getting to a point. The point is that I do want people to have a way to connect with me elsewhere, if they want to, and I thought a Facebook page might be a good way to do that. It's safer for me, privacy-wise, and it would give me a chance to share some of my adoption-related thoughts on Facebook without boring my non-adoption friends. Also, if you don't have a Blogger account (or, like my mother, you have one but never log in) and don't want to miss when I post something, you can be a liker on Facebook and keep up that way.

I'm not saying you have to "like" me on Facebook. I totally understand if you don't want to. But if you want to, now you can. I plan on being very liberal with the "block" button to keep the meanies away, and I promise to keep the ego to a bare minimum.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl

2011-08-21T20:46:00.003-07:00

I was going to write this whole long post about my stay in the hospital, but I couldn't decide between including all the little details and giving a general overview. I'm still not sure. It's a very personal thing, labor. I think I'm going to go with an overview. I feel like I sometimes share a bit too much of myself on this blog, and while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it is nice to keep some things to myself. I've already written it all out for Roo on the blog I keep just for her.

So this isn't going to be too detailed, but I've written it out the best I can. I was surprised to find in writing it that I feel bad that P and M missed it, that they weren't there. I wonder what things would have been like if I'd found them sooner, if they had been there for Roo's arrival. I feel a little guilty. I wouldn't trade my time as Roo's mother for anything in the world, but I do feel guilty for what P and M missed. Obviously, their version of this story contains a lot more detail :)

I was induced not long before 9pm on Sunday, July 5th. Twelve hours after that, my water broke. I got an epidural on Monday night, and … I was still pregnant on Tuesday morning. I figured the baby would come when she was ready. I wasn't worried.

My doctor was. “You're still pregnant,” she said, looking stunned.

Figured that out all by yourself, did you? I thought. But I just smiled and answered in the affirmative.

"You shouldn't still be pregnant." Her eyebrows narrowed as she perused my chart. "We're going to need to do a c-section," she concluded.

I worried then. I'd imagined childbirth going any number of ways, but none of my scenarios included being carved open like a Thanksgiving turkey. But my baby needed to come out, and my body didn't want to cooperate. The appropriate arrangements were made, and I was wheeled into an OR.

They pulled a partition up so I couldn't see below my own sternum. I didn't need to see. Thanks to my childbirth classes, I knew exactly what a c-section entailed. I was just grateful my doctor has very small hands. I didn't need someone with David Letterman-sized paws digging into my uterus.

I couldn't feel anything. It was nice. The doctor told me I'd feel a bit of pressure. Not much else was spoken that I could hear. Finally, she told me it was time, and a few seconds later Roo was born. They showed her to me, and in that moment, I was forever changed. I took one look at her, all tiny and pink and bemused, and I fell deeply and irrevocably in love.

I had thought more than once during pregnancy that if adoption were the right choice, I'd know it when I “met” my baby. I suppose I thought I'd just look at her and know. How stupid I was! No one could possibly look at their newborn baby and think, right then, who wants her? Because I wanted her, and I never wanted to let her go. I loved her so much already. Adoption was off the table in that instant, and I resolved never to think of it again. This amazing, fantastic, most perfect little person in the world was my baby. My mind was made up.

A nurse came to check on me in recovery and when she saw that I'd shaken off the drugs I'd been given she lifted Roo, wrapped up like a little burrito, and put her in my arms. I looked at my baby, and she looked at me, and nothing else in the world mattered.

Back Home Again

2011-08-15T12:14:00.002-07:00

Did you know that from my house in the Valley to the Davis Conference Center it's exactly 735.9 miles? True story. My car's trip odometer says so. Also a true story: Gasoline is about thirty cents per gallon more expensive in Utah than in Phoenix. I paid three and a quarter in Mesa and $3.69 in the middle of the Beehive State. Scandalous! They have refineries there. Gas should be cheaper. Although how sad would it be if BP lost money that way? I know I'd cry myself to sleep. So $3.69 it was.

(I first typed that as $369, which reminds me of a truck I saw near Anthem on my way out of the Valley. It was for sale, but the guy had put a $ in front of his phone number, which confusingly took up two lines. Dear guy in the red truck: your late 90's low-rider Chevy isn't worth $623,000 dollars. You might want to fix that.)

Anyway. I think I was trying to make a point, and here it is: I'm tired. I drove 13 hours on Thursday (and lost an hour thanks to the inanity that is Daylight Saving Time) and 11 hours yesterday (not sure how that worked out but I'm going to credit taking highway 89A instead of 89), and the blog post I planned about the conference is going to have to wait.

But you know what? As excruciatingly dull and butt-numbingly long as the drive was, it was worth it. I met some really cool people and learned a lot of important things and gave what I think was a pretty darn good presentation. And I had homemade brownies and ate them on a patio overlooking pretty much all of North Salt Lake (thanks, Becky!). I think that adoption people are the best people. You know that song about how people who need people are the luckiest people in the world? (I hate that song.) Well, I think that adoption people are the luckiest people in the world - or if not the luckiest, the coolest. Some of my favorite people in the whole world are my adoption friends.

I found myself thinking frequently of Roo, and wondering what she was up to. I do that sometimes. But I thought of her, and pictured her sitting with a book and carefully turning the pages as she does, or imitating everything her big sister does, or swimming or coloring or just being adorable, and I thought just as frequently of how very grateful I am for what adoption has given my little Roo. I'm willing to take credit for how cute she turned out, but everything else she is, is a result of her mommy and daddy.

I heard one adoptee say on Friday that she wouldn't be the person she is with the great life she has if she hadn't been raised in the family she was raised in, and she was grateful to her birth mother. I loved hearing that. I think, that's going to be Roo someday with that sentiment, happy and successful and smart and saying, “I am who I am because P and M are my parents, and I'm so glad my birth mother placed me with them!”

I'm glad I placed her with them, too. I'm thankful every day.

In Which a Lot of Whining Occurs

2011-08-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

The FSA National Conference is in a few days. Y'all are going, right? I'll be there, of course (please say hello if you see me; I promise I only bite on Tuesdays). August used to feel very far away but now the whole thing will be over in a week, and I'm looking forward to it. Not that I'm not excited, because I am, sort of, but I've been feeling kind of blah lately and I think if I weren't presenting I'd just say to heck with the whole thing and stay home. Google Maps rather optimistically calls my drive 11 hours and 39 minutes. Google Maps has clearly never made the trip before. I have, and when you factor in breaks for eating and fueling up, plus the nightmare that is Utah road construction, it was closer to 14 hours last year. (Utah's roads have been under construction for the past 80 years or so. I've decided this is their way of taking the state motto of "Industry" to heart.)

Last year after the conference I stayed for a week with a friend in Provo. This year is different, and I'll be driving home only three days after I drive up. My back hurts just thinking about it. In case you're wondering, I'm driving instead of flying because while a flight was about the same as driving, if I flew I would have to rent a car, and that would break the bank. So I'm not stupid, you see. Just cheap.

There are other little things that are bothering me about this whole thing. For openers, I had to submit my presentation for approval, which I totally understand, but now I feel this pressure to only say what I've submitted so I don't accidentally say something I'm not allowed to. I don't like doing public speaking that way; it feels inorganic and uncomfortable. Also, I am totally unprepared to present without staring at the words on my computer screen. This could be a problem.

Another thing is that I'm missing work so I can go, and while I'm happy to get a break (if you call 24+ hours of driving in five days a break) I already accidentally calculated how much money I'm not making when I'm gone. Also, I'm funny about how certain of my work tasks are done, and I just know that my co-workers are going to mess them up while I'm away and I'm going to have to fix things when I get back.

Did I mention I'm not looking forward to the drive? I'm really not. Although I'm considering some sort of audio tapes to learn a foreign language on the road (learn Swedish? Ja!). But it's just ... it's such a long drive. I could never be a long-haul trucker.

And then there's my brain. Have I mentioned before what a scary place my brain is? It's terrifying. It never shuts up. My brain wants to know why, nearly two years after placement, I'm still so "into" adoption.

Don't get me wrong. I know plenty of birth mothers who are several years post-placement who are still involved in the adoption community. But it seems like most of them have also moved on in the sense that things are happening in their lives. That's where my brain gets stuck. It wants to know why they get to move on and I'm still alone in my boring little world. It seems grossly unfair. I know, of course, that life is very rarely fair but, to quote a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, couldn't it be unfair in my favor?

I honestly believed that two years after placement I would be married or at the very least have a busy social calendar and go on dates. It sort of bites at me that, work aside, this trip to Utah interferes with absolutely nothing. My mother and my boss know that I'm leaving town, and that's about it, because there's no one else to tell. I am so sick and tired of being lonely. It bothers me that there's no one to inform of my plans.

I know that faith in God includes faith in His timing. I just wish He'd throw me a bone, give me a hint, something. I just wish I had a reason to believe that things won't always be exactly the way they are now, and I don't have one yet. It would be nice if God would say, "Hey, Jill, be patient a little while longer, good things are coming." Or even, "I hope you like the quiet, because you're going to grow old with a lot of it." I mean, I need to be able to plan for the future. I want to know if I should give up hope. If I'm going to be alone forever, I have to plan for the acquisition of a lot of cats. Should I start collecting them now? Inquiring minds want to know!

Okay, I think that's all the whining I'm going to allow for myself for today. I need to stop so I can psyche myself into being excited about the driving I get to do this week. I'm going to need to start now if I want to convince myself I'm excited about it by Thursday morning. I don't think I'm going to believe myself. Wish me luck.

I'm a Birth Mother, and I'm Okay*

2011-08-01T23:05:00.007-07:00

I used to be very careful about sharing my adoption story.

That probably sounds like a load of hooey coming from someone who has blogged about every adoption-related mood swing for the past two years, but work with me here, okay? My blog is a different beast. It's an entity. It's not like it's the first thing that comes up if you Google my name.

Actually, the first thing that comes up if you Google my name is the website for a Juno-nominated singer-songwriter from Halifax. You'd have trouble finding me at all if you Googled my name. I sort of like it that way. But I digress.

Blog aside, I didn't - and still don't - go broadcasting my story to every person I meet. It's not a shame thing, I promise. Adoption is the least shameful thing I've done in my life (I think Tamra said it that way first, but I liked it, so I'm using it). It's more a matter of ... well, shoot. It's lots of things. Part of it is that I don't feel like everyone deserves to know about it, because it's something that's precious to me. Part of it is that I'm never sure if people are going to feel the need to "educate" me about adoption (because it's a topic I clearly know nothing about). Part of it is that I feel that saying I'm a birth mother is insufficient I want to say more, to tell my story, and maybe there's no time, or the time just isn't right.

Whatever the reason, I have, in the past, tended to be a bit closed-mouthed about things around most people. I don't think anyone in my new ward (church congregation) knows that I'm a birth mother. I liked it that way. I was very comfortable with that.

But lately I feel the need to out myself. I find myself thinking at church each week, is there some way I can tie adoption into this? Is my experience even a tiny bit relevant to this topic? I've found myself trying to make it fit so I can unburden myself. Suddenly, for a reason I'm not entirely sure of yet, I feel almost desperate to tell people, "I placed a baby for adoption, and it is the best thing in the world."

It's a nice feeling. I used to wonder at birth moms who were so comfortable with things that they would often lead with their birth mother status. "Hi, I'm [name], how are you doing, and by the way, I'm a birth mother." I thought they were crazy! Why would they want to start new friendships and relationships with that kind of trammel? But I understand now. I think it comes from finding a sense peace and acceptance with both the adoption and the circumstances that led to it. I think that now I've forgiven H and found my happy place, it's a natural progression. I am totally cool with this area of my life, so why wouldn't I want to talk about it?

But there's a bit more to it as well, or at least there is for me. It's not just adoption that I've had to come to accept. It's myself. I've always had ridiculously low self-esteem (high school sure didn't help). It's only very recently that I've started to believe that I have value - not in spite of, but because of what I've been through. That's huge for me. I think that's the place I had to get to before I was completely okay with telling people I'm a birth mother. Two years ago, I never thought I'd get there. But here I am, and the words want out. They're on the tip of my tongue more times than I can believe. I wasn't ready to talk before, but I think I'm ready now.

I've got a lot of catching up to do.

*This post title is a reference to the Lumberjack Song, which can be enjoyed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zey8567bcg

Footprints in the Sand

2011-07-26T11:43:00.002-07:00

Note: I've been hanging on to this post, unsure whether I ought to hit "publish" or not. Part of me feels like maybe it's a little bit too self-congratulatory or smug. I didn't write it with that angle in mind, but I'm a worrier, and I worried that it came off that way. I let my mother read it, which may or may not have been a mistake, as I doubt very much she would notice if I was being self-congratulatory. She's my mother and would probably see that sort of thing as a sign of self-esteem.

Suffice it to say that this wasn't written with smugness in mind. I don't think I'm, like, Captain Awesome or anything. But I am better than I used to be, and I wanted to write about why. So here goes.

There's this poem you've probably read before about God and footprints in the sand. I'm not going to re-post it because I'm too lazy to Google it and I think it's probably got a copyright, not that that ever stops anyone.

I will summarize, however. The gist of it is that in our darkest times, God picks us up and carries us through the pain. As a child, I thought, Isn't that nice? But the older I got, and the more pain I experienced, the less nice I found it. I mean, it's a lovely sentiment, it really is. And it's true that God doesn't ever abandon us, especially in times of pain and sorrow. But what I object to is this idea that He carries us, lifting us up. I've not once found that to be true.

Maybe it's true for you; I can't speak for anyone but myself. If it is true for you, well, you probably don't need to read the rest of this. In fact, you probably shouldn't, because I may unintentionally offend you (sorry). But if it's not true, if you've also wanted to cry foul when someone quoted the Footprints poem to you, read on.

I've been thinking a lot lately about pain. I have fibromyalgia, which is a chronic pain condition, so I'm no stranger to hurting. Every day when I wake up, something hurts. Add to that my father's death and Roo's placement and I think I'm something of an expert in what it is to hurt. Through my life, whenever I've hurt - physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally - I've turned to my Father in Heaven in prayer. More than once I've asked Him to lift me up, to carry me through, to take the pain away. That particular prayer has never once been answered as I've asked. Prayer didn't make placement easier by one iota. My Heavenly Father has never once picked me up. But, if we're sticking with the poem here, there has never once been only one set of footprints. God has never seen fit to lessen my pain. But He has been with me through every step of it. He has never left me to suffer alone, not once. His answers to my prayers are often along the lines of my mother's response when I'm hurting: "I know. I know it hurts. I'm sorry."

I don't think I'm introducing a new concept when I say that pain brings strength. Think of your muscles. When you work out - lifting weights, for example - the exertion damages your muscles with thousands of tiny rips and tears. They hurt, don't they? But the body is an extraordinary machine; it heals itself. As the body repairs the muscle, it builds under the tears, making a bigger, stronger, better muscle than before. Or in other words, pain is gain.

When I was still only a few months along in my pregnancy, I heard one birth mom's account of her placement experience. I want to relay this carefully, because I have so much respect for this woman and her story and I know that what happened worked for her. Let me simply say that she concluded her story by saying that placement only hurt a little bit for a very short time, because God picked her up and carried her through - He took the pain all away. I'm quite sure I internalized that, because the pain of placing Roo was very different, and I felt misled and lied to.

I envied this other birth mom for her pain-free placement. In my darker moments, I hated her and her whole happy story. But in the time since then, I've come to pity her a little, as I pity anyone who blithely says that they prayed and God simply took their pain away. I think, if she didn't hurt, how did she grow? Because I have grown immensely from and through my pain. It has shaped me into a bigger, stronger, better woman than before. I'm not advocating intentionally causing pain as means of personal growth, but when it happens, go with it.

I think it's a mistake to assume that if God loves you He'll carry you through your pain. The God I worship loves me enough to let me hurt when I need to hurt so that I can grow into the woman He wants me to be. He doesn't leave me to suffer alone and He never will. He doesn't carry me, but He puts His arms around me. He says, "I know it hurts. I'm sorry." His footprints are right there in the sand next to mine. He walks with me through my pain, and I am a better woman for it.

I am thankful to my Father in Heaven for answering my prayers in His way, for letting me learn and grow through my pain.

Time

2011-07-21T10:50:00.002-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about Roo lately. It was just her birthday, as I mentioned. She's now two years old.

I'm not still hung up on her birthday. I mean, the first birthday is supposed to be the hardest, as all the firsts are, and I handled that well enough. And I did pretty well this year, too, which disproves the idea I once read that for some people the second year is harder than the first. I had wondered about that, since I did so well with her first birthday.

But like I said, it's not so much the birthday itself that's stuck in my brain. What's giving me a mental itch is the fact that on this birthday, Roo turned two. I know I've said that already, but it's important. My little girl is two. Which means that if I'd not placed her, I would be the mother of a two-year-old. And that's what gets me.

I know that much of the time people think a birth mother choses adoption because she's not ready to be a mother. That may be true for some women, but it wasn't for me. I was absolutely ready to be a mother. I wasn't a stupid teenager. I was 25, 26. I was more than ready for motherhood. Adoption wasn't about readiness. I think that's where it still stings. Because I'll be 28 this year and it occurred to me a few months ago, 28 sounds like a really good age at which to have a two-year-old, doesn't it? I know that life rarely works out so neatly. But that's part of it as well. I guess I can't help but think that if things had gone differently at any point in my life I could be the mother of a two-year old right now, and I'm not, and it hurts.

I recently read an article about adoption in the New York Times *here* and there's a line on the end of the first page that I like.

... a new mother cannot know the value of the thing she subtracts. It is only through time — when my son turned 4, and I was 27; when he turned 6, and I was 29; when he turns 10 this year, and I am 33, and ready for children — that I begin to understand the magnitude of what I lost, and that it is growing.

This is what people don't always understand about adoption - it's not an event, it's not a clean cut. I'm always going to be a birth mother, and there are always going to be things I miss, things I wonder about, things I don't have. It's not always a sad thing, but I do find myself wondering every so often if Roo has a favorite food or if she likes bath time or if, like me, she takes her shoes off whenever she can.

I didn't anticipate wondering about those things. It was a bit simpler when Roo was a baby, because a baby is ... well, a baby. But babies grow up. Roo isn't a baby anymore, she's a little person. And it's different. It's always going to be different now, I think. Once Roo crossed the line into toddlerhood, things felt a little different - not because of anything with P and M or with Roo herself, but because of time.

She's still very small, but I do wonder as time passes how much more things will change, how much more she will change. I mean, two years ago Roo was barely out of my belly. Today she can walk and talk and dance and sing and swim and do all sorts of amazing things that children do every single day but that were never special until Roo did them. The second year of Roo's life was much different than the first for me, and I wonder about the next two years.

I'm trying not to have a pity party about any of this, though. I don't have any cake, for openers, and you can't have a proper pity party with cake. And really, I'm not devastated by things. I had a perfectly lovely visit with Roo and her family very recently. The "magnitude of loss" isn't necessarily this traumatic thing for me. It's just sort of ... a benign entity most of the time, I think. It's the what-might-have-been that's never far away. Even though I've never second-guessed my choice to place Roo with her family, I've also never been able to outrun the what-might-have-been. It's always nearby. It's an old friend. It's not a sad thing. I just ... I wonder. I always will.

But I also think of how much I've grown and changed for the better since I placed Roo. Not that I would recommend pregnancy and adoption as a means of maturing, but they certainly got the job done for me. I'm not going to be twenty-eight with a two-year-old. But if things worked out the way I always wanted them to, I wouldn't be the woman I am today (and I think I'm pretty awesome at times, between you and me) and most importantly there would be no Roo.

It's funny how it always comes down to that sticking point for me. Any time I think, I wish X had happened, or Y, I remember that if any part of my life had been a few quirks away from what actually occurred, I wouldn't have gotten pregnant. And where would I be without Roo? Who would I be? I can't say that I'd go back and change anything that led me to Roo, because having her is the best thing I've ever done or will ever do. I may always wonder, but it's worth it.

Here's the Problem: A Warning

2011-07-17T11:32:00.002-07:00

I've been thinking about this post for a while, and I had decided to abandon it, because it's the sort of thing that could potentially humiliate me. The nice thing about this blog is that I write it, so I'm able to control how I appear through what I write, and because I don't typically ever meet my blog readers, you are all none the wiser. I put a few pretty words together to give the impression of cleverness and think, ah, I've fooled them again.

But I don't reckon that's fair. Although I'm careful for the most part about what I share, I do pride myself on my honesty, so I've decided to admit to something I am not the least bit proud of. And in case you're tempted to offer it as a suggestion, please keep in mind I am already in therapy (although my therapist totally says I'm functional now, so there).

With that in mind, here's the post. Please feel free to laugh.

I was thinking about things the other day (I do that sometimes), and I decided that I sort of wish I had never mentioned that I'm going to be teaching a class at the FSA conference in August. Not because I'm not excited about it, or because I think I'm going to do poorly. I regret it because now people know, and several of them have said they want to come hear me speak.

I don't have a problem with public speaking. If I had a topic and a few minutes to prepare, I think I could comfortably address the United Nations. The problem is that after I speak, or maybe before, people are going to want to talk to me. Public speaking? Check. Social interaction? Um ... no.

Ladies and gents, I am Lord Mayor of Awkwardtown. I don't know how I was elected or why, and I'm not sure what's wrong with me. I've decided to blame it on high school. All those years ago, when everyone else was out socializing and learning how to interact with people, I was locked in my bedroom reading French existentialist philosophy and listening to The Cure. So now most of society knows when it's polite to make eye contact or smile at someone or exchange pleasantries, and I'm stuck thinking things like, "I smiled at her earlier and said hello. Should I smile again? Should I say hello again? If I do will she think I don't remember our exchange from earlier?" And by then, whoever I should have interacted with will have walked past and seen me looking thoughtfully bemused, which unfortunately comes across to most people as disgruntled or dyspeptic.

I work at a rather large library with around thirty other people, and every single workday my mind races - how many times do I smile and say hello? Was that a courtesy "how are you" or does he expect an answer? Do people think I'm pedantic for saying I'm doing "well" instead of "good" like everyone else? How long do I hold eye contact? (I read somewhere that too much is unsettling and you should focus on other parts of the face near the eyes for the count of seven each - seven seconds on the forehead, the cheeks, et cetera. But what if my lips move while I count? How do I explain that one?) How was that social smile, because it felt to me like I was accidentally imitating this angry chimp I saw on TV who bared his teeth as a sign of aggression. Do other people know that most other primates show their teeth as a sign of aggression and not cheer? Do other people think about that when they give social smiles?

Most importantly, can people tell by the look in my eyes that even though I'm smiling at them I'm actually thinking of a television program about chimpanzees that I watched in 1998?

And then there's physical contact. Oh, man. Don't even get me started. I've mentioned before that I give awkward hugs. I can't tell you how many hours I've wasted wishing I lived someplace like Japan where people don't even shake hands as a general rule, they bow (or at least that's what popular culture has led me to believe). Instead, I live in America, where sometimes people like to hug. I think part of my difficulty in hugging comes from the fact that I used to have a weight problem. The weight is gone but the awkwardness is residual. Even though I'm not a heifer anymore, I'm not exactly willowy, and it seems like very often the person who wants to hug me is rather lithe, and I feel like Jack Black with David Letterman's hands. We'll hug and I think, is this how narrow a woman's shoulders are supposed to be, and if so how come I ended up with my pipefitter grandfather's supraclavicular muscles? She must think I'm a tank. She must think I have to shop at a men's big and tall store for shirts. Not to mention, I'm always afraid people's hands are going to land on a particularly flabby patch of back, despite having relatively few of those now.

And where do I put my hands in a hug? What if I accidentally touch someone where they don't want to be touched? How long should a social hug last? How can you tell whose arms should go on top? What if the other person is going for a side hug and you go full-frontal? How tight should a hug be, and how close? What if my deodorant isn't as powerful as the brand's ad campaign led me to believe? What if my shampoo doesn't smell as good as I think it does? What if the other person's jewelry gets stuck in my hair? (You laugh, but that's happened more than once.) What if my clothes smell more like work than Woolite?

There are days where I think if someone reaches out to hug me I might just shriek and run in the opposite direction.

And then, as if physical contact weren't bad enough, people want to talk. I like to talk as a general rule. I think I'm pretty good at it. But I'm best at it when it's one-sided. Conversation is much trickier. I'm not nearly as clever with words in conversation. I tend to get nervous, for openers, and nerves make me stutter. No, not the typical, almost charming stutter that Colin Firth affected in "The King's Speech." Mine is more of a parade of ums and uhs and other random nonsense syllables with which I intended to begin words when I started out. And even when I can get words out, the letters those words are made of don't form the proper alliances. They get knotted. I end up spouting things like "Creen Queek" instead of Queen Creek. My nervous conversation is a stream of the world's least funny Spoonerisms.

It would be tolerable if I were unaware of it. But I am overly aware of it to the point that I am often unaware of anything else. Sometimes I'll recall an exchange and think, it's really a wonder I ever ended up pregnant.

Have I scared you off yet? You may be tempted to follow my lead on the whole running-off-screaming thing.

I'm not saying I don't want to meet any of you. I would love to meet any of you who go to the FSA conference, I absolutely would. I'm making the 12 hour drive and I'm almost never in Utah, so we may as well say hello. But consider yourselves warned. I may end up looking at your hair and counting instead of making eye contact, I'll ask if you had a "drong live" to the conference, my social smiles could incite chimp riots, and I have abnormally well-developed deltoids.

But you know what? My presentation is going to rock.

I'm Ambivalent About Blog Awards

2011-07-15T18:58:00.006-07:00

Is it just me, or has this year gone by twice as fast as normal? I have no idea how it's the middle of July. It feels like May at the most. I worry that sort of feeling means I'm not a kid anymore. I actually have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that I'm not a kid anymore. For instance, I'm not sure when it happened, but all of a sudden I like Fleetwood Mac. And the other day at work, I had to hold something away from me to read it.

I think there was supposed to be a point to that, but I don't remember what it was. Sorry.

This post has a point, though, and here it is: I'm ambivalent about blog awards.

I used to covet them, because I didn't have one. So I made my own. He lives in my sidebar. His name is Captain Cluck and he's yours for the taking (assuming you are interested in having a picture of a zoo chicken in your blog's sidebar).

Then someone gave me a blog award, and I was happy. I felt ... oh, validated, I suppose, and appreciated. I posted about it and felt good about things because finally I had an actual blog award, and that was that.

Then someone else gave me a blog award, and I felt like kind of a jerk. Because I don't think anyone wants to read a blog all about how amazing someone thinks she is. But on the other hand, it's nice of people to give them out, and I don't want to be ungrateful. I don't want someone to say, "Hey, Jill, here's a blog award!" and have my response be, "Oh, hey, that's nice, but everyone already knows how big my ego is - I have SO MANY other blog awards, I'm not even going to bother with this one."

So I would like to say both I'm sorry, and thank you, for my newest blog awards. They are courtesy of mom/birth mom/surrogate mom blogger Tanya, who writes here: (click).

(If I were cleverer/less restless I would put the pictures next to each other instead of one above the other, but it was one of Those Days at work, so one above the other it is.)

As you can see, I am apparently both versatile and lovely, neither of which are words I think I have ever used to describe myself or my blog, but at least Tanya thinks so. See, I'm not being braggy or obnoxious. I'm giving someone else's opinion of me, or rather my blog, and it happens to be a good one. So that's less obnoxious, right?

Right?

Thanks, Tanya :)

I think I'm supposed to nominate other people but I never do. Is that obnoxious? Should I nominate people? I just don't want anyone to feel left out; that's my problem. If I nominate other blogs it's like saying I think those blogs are better than the other blogs I read, and I have a hard time choosing favorites. (I have a hard time choosing things in general. I have only two kinds of cereal in the house for this very reason.)

I may nominate someone later on, but as I said, this was one of Those Days at work. I think there is a disruption in the space-time continuum at my library. I swear I worked at least 15 hours today.

I digress. The other thing I'm supposed to do is mention seven things about myself. Because, you know, I don't talk about myself enough as it is. Let's do four and call it even.

1) My personal motto is a Jewish proverb: Man plans, God laughs.

Story of my life.

2) I once had a fleck of oregano lodged in my right tonsil. Have I mentioned that before? It seems like I may have but I don't remember.

3) I once concluded a story about a nativity made of white chocolate by saying, "I ate the baby Jesus last." (I have decided that if I ever write my memoirs, that phrase will be the title.)

4) This isn't about me specifically but rather librarians in general (not that I am a librarian; that honorific requires an advanced degree). When people find out I work in a library, they always have some story, and then they say, kind of jokingly, "I bet you guys talk about customers all the time," and they end with a nervous laugh, clearly hoping to be disabused of that notion.

So I'm sorry to say that yes, we do talk about you. We talk about you a LOT. We talk about the stupid questions you ask, and the excuses you give for lost books, and the ridiculous things you say to us. Some of us even write these things down and are planning both a blog and a book about them.

We spend hours talking about you. So be nice, turn your books in, pay your fines, and don't ask how we're doing alphabetical order these days.

Visit

2011-07-08T20:56:00.005-07:00

It seems like it used to be that when I had a visit with Roo and her family, I'd re-hash it in detail on my blog. I suppose some part of me felt I needed to do that - to record it, perhaps, or to show how nice it was to have an open adoption.

I used to be a lot more open about my open adoption, I think. But Roo's getting bigger, and I find that the more time passes, the less comfortable I am sharing too many details about Roo or her family. I'll still blab about my own thoughts or problems, but I feel very protective of P and M and their family, and I don't ever want them to feel like every word that passes between us or everything that happens is going to end up on my blog. So I share a little less of the physical details and a little more of the emotion on my end. I think it's a happy medium.

So.

I had a birthday visit with Roo and her family. It was great! Roo seems much taller than I remember from a few months ago, and a bit more grown up. I had a marvelous time just watching Roo be Roo, and after a little while she warmed up to me, having decided maybe I was trustworthy after all - I do have all those books in my apartment. Roo loved my books. She was very careful about taking them off the shelf one at a time and putting them back where they belonged.

We sang songs and did puzzles and had cupcakes and opened presents and even got a little cuddle in at the end. It was a wonderful visit. My apartment has memories now. It's a strange thing for me. In a way, Roo being here made this place feel like home more than anything else I could have bought or done. Memories live here - patches of floor are no longer simply things I step on. Now I can think, Roo sat here. She sang a song over here. She danced over there. I can think, this is how high she could reach on my bookcase. There were once cupcake crumbs here, a delicate sprinkling of them like glitter from a fairy wand. There is a line of blue crayon on my coffee table that I may never wash off, because Roo put it there.

I am so thankful for visits, for openness. I am thankful for those crumbs, that crayon mark, these memories. I am thankful to P and M for sharing their little girl with me. I am thankful that I can see for myself what Roo is like and how happy she is. I can tell her myself that I love her. Today, I got to do just that, and I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

Two

2011-07-07T09:40:00.003-07:00

Today is Roo's second birthday! Hooray!

Two years ago today, at exactly this time, my obstetrician pulled Roo out of a gaping incision in my abdomen. (It sounds so pretty when I put it that way, doesn't it?) After 36 hours of labor, the final hour of which I had to go without an epidural, my favorite little person in the whole wide world made her debut.

The time since then has been the most challenging and rewarding two years of my life, and I wouldn't trade a second of it for anything in the world. I am so very thankful to my Father in Heaven for trusting me with Roo, for letting me love her first. She is the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful, clever, and sweet little girl I have ever known. I am a better person for being her birth mother. She inspires me every day to make something of myself so she can be proud of me.

I love her so dearly, I don't have the words to express it. I am so thankful for Roo, and for P and M for being such wonderful parents. It would be enough for me, I think, if they were simply good to Roo, but they're good to me as well. What would I ever do without them? They spoil me.

And today their baby girl is two. What a wonderful day!

Happy birthday, Roo! I love you.

"I Want You To Know I Am Happy"

2011-07-01T21:57:00.006-07:00

Did any of you peeps see this article on the interwebs?

(Click Here)

It's about how birth families and the children they placed are finding each other on Facebook. I should mention that I specifically didn't read the comments, because I can't imagine many of them are happy or positive. Not that everything has to be happy and positive, but I also don't have to read things that aren't if I don't want to. So there.

Anyway.

I thought it was an interesting article. Facebook has made the world a lot smaller, hasn't it? It's easy to connect with people you might never have found otherwise. Decades ago when many of these birth mothers placed, they never would have imagined that someday it would be this (relatively) easy to reconnect.

Certainly they wouldn't have dared to hope to read the following in their inbox sixteen years after placement:

“I never blamed you or my father. I know you gave me up because you loved me. My mom always told me that you loved me. I read all the letters and saw all the pics you sent and I want you to know I am happy.”

Isn't that amazing?

I think sometimes I take openness for granted. I've said before that I don't think I could have placed in a closed adoption. My selflessness has limits, and that's one of them. But I think I take for granted that I know what Roo looks like and what she's up to.

I know that she's happy. It's a beautiful thing.

Because of openness, Roo's biological origins aren't shrouded in mystery. She won't grow up wondering what I look like or who I am. She'll know that I love her not just because her parents will tell her, but because I'll be able to tell her. She won't have to poke around on the internet in a decade, hoping for a clue, armed with only a name or a date to aid her search. She won't need to. She'll know.

I was asked once if openness ever made things harder - maybe not all the time, but every now and then. Obviously I can only speak for myself, but that's never been the case. Openness is the reason I was able to place, my greatest comfort in my grief, and the impetus for me to move forward. I don't have to wonder, I don't have to worry, and I don't have to Google.

Roo is happy. I know.

2011-06-28T22:08:00.002-07:00

I will be back to blogging in July, I promise. All work and no play make Jill a dull girl, and lately I have been too dull to write anything relevant. But stick with me, okay? I've still got a lot more to say, and I plan on saying some of it very soon.

2011-06-21T00:27:00.001-07:00

I haven't blogged much lately at all, and I feel the need to empty my brain, so here goes, in no particular order. Also, I'm tired, so this is probably going to be more moody and introspective and goofy than usual, but here it is.

I've been missing Roo a bit more than usual lately. I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's because her birthday is coming up. Maybe it's because I've been seeing more babies than usual at work. Maybe it's because I've been able to spend more time with my brother and his family these days, and seeing his kids makes me wonder what it would be like if I had a kid, too.

Whatever the reason, I find myself thinking more about her than I usually do. Two years ago she was still snug in my belly, kicking and stretching at odd hours and making me perpetually uncomfortable. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days, physically miserable as they were. There was a peace in knowing that she was always with me, that she was healthy and happy and had everything she needed,

It's not that I worry about such things now. Although I don't get the updates I used to right after placement, I know that Roo is well. She has wonderful parents who love her dearly. I don't have any reason to think she isn't the happiest little girl in the world.

But this happy little girl isn't mine, precisely. She's P and M's. I love her, but the more time that passes the stranger it feels to love her so much. I suppose that some part of me thought maybe I would love her a little less as she got older and became more of a stranger to me. But my heart doesn't work that way. I don't think it will matter how old she gets or how she changes. I love her just the same, just as much.

I find myself thinking a lot about my birth grandmother lately, too. Sometimes I wish I could talk to her, to ask her questions and borrow some of her strength. I often wonder where she got it, how she was able to place her baby girl and pick herself up so quickly, never speaking of what happened to anyone. I wish I could ask her if her love ever changed, if she ever stopped wondering.

Is it strange to miss a relationship I never had? I think I do. I miss Roberta. I like to think, in my more fanciful moments, that she would have understood me, that she would know just the right things to say to me when I miss Roo too much. I don't know why I think she would have any special insight. I mean, I'll talk about things at my birth mom group and no one there has ever shared a mind-blowing insight that made things all better. But group is funny that way. I don't go because of what people have to say. I go because of the feeling there - that even if no one knows what to say, they know how I feel - maybe not exactly, but they get the idea.

Usually they do, anyway. But sometimes things come up and I think, who on earth can I consult about this? For instance, after placement, I just boxed everything up and put it away. I have all of the accouterments needed for taking care of a baby. The only thing I'm missing is diapers. I put it all away hoping that I would meet someone and marry and have another child within a few years of placement. But the more time that passes - the more I get a sense of what the next several years of my life are going to be - the more I think it's foolish to hang on to things. I'm obviously never going to marry, which means no children, which means I have no use for Onesies and blankets and a crib. I have these moments where I think I should just list the lot of it on Craig's List and be done with it. But I don't feel like I'm quite ready for that. It would be nice if I could talk to someone about it, someone who would understand, someone who could say to hang onto things for four years but not past five.

Although I suspect my mother would be happier if she didn't have all my Roo things in her garage through 2014.

I think I'd be happier if she didn't, too.

There was a time, probably a year ago, when I thought that I could never leave my mother's house, because that's where my memories lived - of my dad, and of Roo. I thought it would hurt too much to live someplace memory-free, somewhere no one I love has ever been. But I think moving out was a good thing, because I find more and more than the real pain comes in being in the same place as those memories. When I go to my mom's house, I'm crushed by them. I think, here's where I showed Roo off to my grandmother. Here's where my father sat to listen when I played the piano. Here's where Roo's crib was. Here's where I gave her a bath, and here's where I paced the floor with her when her tummy hurt too much for sleep.

It's overwhelming. Sometimes I can't breathe in that house. It feels haunted. My apartment is much safer. There are reminders of Roo, but they're mostly tucked away, or if they aren't I know exactly where they are, so I don't have to confront anything I don't want to. I don't have to grieve when I want to be happy. It's easier to avoid the pain. Things will sneak up on me at my mom's. I'll be minding my own business, picking up my mail or catching up with my mother, when a memory will catch my eye or tap me on the shoulder.

It's exhausting.

I wonder sometimes if that's why I've slept better since I moved. There are no memories here. My apartment is a blank slate, nothing hanging around waiting to invade my dreams. Not that I've been sleeping great, but you know those nights where even though you're tired you can't fall asleep no matter what, and you lie there for hours and hours until finally it's time to get up and you're still awake? I've only had one of those nights since I moved.

But at the same time, there are moments where the emptiness of my apartment is a little lonely. Here, where no memories live, it's almost as though I never had a father, never got pregnant, never brought a baby home and was her mother. Here it sometimes feels like Roo was never mine at all, and the love I feel for her is that much more puzzling.

I need to create new memories here - happy ones, so that it's okay if they decide to intrude. I've never been very good at creating happy memories - why is it so much easier to remember unhappy things? - so I'm going to have to practice.

Maybe I'll start with my houseplant, Rufus. I think he's gotten complacent. I'll re-pot him, give his roots room to stretch, and watch his leaves perk up. As the weeks pass by I can look back and think, remember when I re-potted him, and I was worried he wouldn't like it? See how happy he is now, how much better he is. He only needed a little breathing room.

Just like me.

Unrealistic Expectations, Take Two

2011-06-14T21:05:00.001-07:00

I was asked once if I felt like my blog gave couples unrealistic ideas about what to expect from an adoption. You can read about that here. Here's the flip side of that question.

Are you worried that a birth mom might read your blog and get the wrong idea about adoption? It's not a happy-sad, it's a sad-sad, and I think you are making a mistake by not telling that part of it.

Um, have you read my blog?

If you think my view of adoption is a bit too rosy, I suggest you go back in my archives to September of 2009. I was NOT happy. I was a wreck. It was not sunshine and ponies. It was hell. It's certainly not anymore, but I was very unhappy for quite a while.

I can see where you might think that I mislead people about adoption if I were to set myself up as the official birthmother spokesperson. If I claimed that I spoke for others, then yes, I would absolutely be guilty as charged.

But I've never claimed to speak for anyone other than myself. My blog is about my experience with adoption. Yours may differ, and that's fine. Yours will differ, in fact. Each adoption is unique. No other birth mother is going to have the exact experience I had. Adoption can be a wonderful thing, but much like a weight loss program, results may vary.

I credit my readers with being smart enough to know that this blog is just one person's story - mine. I've never once had anyone tell me that my story misled them or gave them incorrect ideas about adoption or what placement is like. If anyone has felt that way, they've kept it to themselves. But I think I've made it abundantly clear that adoption is hard. I certainly don't think anyone is going to read my blog and think that placement is one big party.

If you have a burning question for me, e-mail me at thehappiestsad AT gmail DOT com or use the Formspring widget in my sidebar.

Boundaries

2011-06-07T23:49:00.003-07:00

Today's post is lifted from my Formspring because I've been too lazy to write out anything new. But I thought it was a good question, and I don't know how many people ever look at my Formspring (I forget sometimes, myself) so I thought I'd borrow (also, I may have edited it a bit).

Anyway. Here's today's question:

Did you and P&M have a formal discussion about boundaries or did everyone just get it? How do you guys handle behaviors or situations that make the other feel uncomfortable?

We've never had a big talk about boundaries that I can think of but I also don't think we all just "get it." Little things have come up here and there and when they do we very respectfully say, "This isn't working for me/us, this is why, this is what would be better."

Communication about this sort of thing can be very awkward and intimidating, you're always worried about hurt feelings or saying the wrong thing (or maybe that's just me). And in the interest of brutal honesty, in a couple of instances my knee-jerk reaction was to take it personally, but I got over it because I know that it's not meant to be anything personal. I know that P and M love me no matter what, and they want the very best for Roo (which includes her having parents who don't feel uncomfortable about things with her birth mother).

I know that before placement, and during placement itself, we always hear that adoption is about love. Well, it's about love after adoption too. P and M have been very good about addressing things and at the same time emphasizing that they still love me and care about me. I try to do the same. When I start to feel awkward or worry about things, I remind myself of that. And I remind myself that they're not just a couple I placed with. They are Roo's parents, and she loves them, and they love her. It helps keep things in perspective.

Allow me to state, as I have before, that our relationship certainly isn't perfect (whose is?), and that your results may vary. But, short answer, it's sort of a situational thing. I trust them to let me know if I overstep my bounds.

A Few Things ...

2011-06-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

And by a few, I mean ... oh, let's say, three followed by seven, and here they are.

1) My deep dark secret is no more! Ladies and gentlemen, I have a library card.

[As soon as I can find the cable that connects my camera to my computer, I'll put a picture of it here. "It" being of course my library card, not the cable that connects my camera to my computer.]

One of my co-workers, with whom I am Facebook friends, found my blog, read my post about my secret shame, and offered to help me out. So last Saturday, when no one was looking, she re-activated my account and gave me a new card. It was all very stealthy, and I expected to be caught several times. I am just not cut out for espionage.

Thanks, Alexia! I'm glad you're back :)

I cannot even say what a relief it is to have that little matter taken care of. I no longer live in fear of being found out, and I won't have to endure the humiliation I would certainly have faced if I'd been found out.

2) I recently had to submit a detailed outline of my FSA presentation to the people who are in charge of that sort of thing. In the process of researching some of the things I wanted to discuss, I ended up sobbing about my dad's death for about twenty minutes. Am I wrong in thinking it bodes poorly for me that I'm supposed to be talking about grief and I seem to be struggling with it myself?

But it's not the same kind of grief, really. Death and placement weren't the same kind of pain at all. It's not that one was worse than the other, because I think they both rank pretty high on the rottenness scale, but the pain was definitely different. So maybe my presentation won't be so bad, after all. I mean, I do feel at least moderately qualified to talk about making placement grief useful. I don't feel remotely qualified to talk about grieving the death of a parent. I'm still trying to get the hang of it.

Onward now to happy thoughts, like the fact that for some reason,

3) People seem to like me. I'm always sort of surprised when people like me. But Mary likes me well enough to give me a blog award! Mary blogs at Genuinely Jarman and is an adoptive mama. I think the title of her blog fits her because she is a very genuine person. I love her thoughts on birth mothers; you can read them *here.* Mary gave me this:

Wasn't that nice of her? Thank you, Mary! It looks so pretty in my sidebar by Captain Cluck and friends.

There are rules with this but as usual I'm weaseling out of some of them. Well, I say some, but I mean most. I'm already blathering today so I'm going to do the bit where I tell seven things about myself, and here they are in no particular order:

1) I've had four surgeries in the past eight years. All four made my life a million times better, particularly the fourth one, which brought Roo into the world!

2) My biggest fear is fish. I think they are the nastiest, creepiest things in the world, and I have no sense of humor about them.

Let's change the subject.

3) My driving record is immaculate - not so much as a warning from a police officer. (This is a happy consequence of being a good driver.)

4) I have an Arizona cosmetology license, and I used to work at a children's hair salon.

5) I grew an inch taller between my 19th and 20th birthdays. I hadn't grown before that in nine years.

6) I started my first blog in 1997, before it was even called blogging. You think the internet is full of whiny emo crap now, you should have seen it in the days of Geocities and Tripod.

7) I don't know what I'm going to do if I have another baby girl someday, because I gave Roo the only girl name I really like.

Anyway. That's probably a lot more information than you ever wanted about me, but there it is. Thanks again to Mary for the blog award!

I'm supposed to give this award to at least five other people, but I can never choose, so as usual, if you're reading this and you've always wanted a blog award, it's yours for the taking, because you are all awesome.

Five Days in July

2011-05-26T23:15:00.001-07:00

I am horribly behind in telling Roo's story. I'm not going to get all caught up today, but I thought I'd at least get a bit more of it written down. Maybe it'll be easier to write than I think it will.

My due date had passed. It sneaked up on me, really. It seemed like I ought to still have three weeks left. I felt horribly unprepared. Some days it was all I could do to take care of myself. The thought of caring for a tiny, helpless newborn was overwhelming. I secretly feared I wouldn't be able to do it. And what if I was a horrible mother?

To make matters worse, I began having nightmares about my baby being injured - being dropped, or falling, and they terrified me more than anything in the world ever had before. I didn't want my little girl to ever hurt. Ever. I wanted her to be happy and safe and secure, and I wanted her to have everything in the entire world. I didn't ever want her to feel scared or confused or worried or sad. I recognized that I had very little control over quite a bit of that, and I hated it. I already loved my baby girl so very much. I felt that she deserved better than me but I was too selfish to let her go. I just couldn't do it.

The day after my due date, I had a visitor - a woman named Cindy from my mother's ward. I was acquainted with her, and I knew she knew I was pregnant, but she had her own struggles and I couldn't imagine why she would have taken the time to come visit me.

Cindy brought me fresh-baked bread. She teared up when I answered the door. She said that she was very proud of me, and that she loved me. She said she admired my strength. Her kindness was overwhelming. I wrote in my journal that night, "Kindness is a funny thing that way. Sometimes it's more overwhelming, more of an emotional blow than cruelty or apathy." I cried for twenty minutes after Cindy left, completely undone by a simple act of kindness.

I had a doctor's appointment on July 2nd, a Thursday. I spent 20 minutes hooked up to a couple of monitors - one for the baby's heart rate, and another for my contractions. I read a months-old issue of People magazine while the monitors beeped and clicked. When the technician returned and checked the results, she said I'd been having a few small contractions, and had I felt them? I hadn't, but I was excited at the prospect. The technician checked the other monitor. She also performed a brief ultrasound, checking fluid levels and fetal movement.

"You've got a happy baby," she told me.

My doctor felt that I should be induced. "Well, what about Friday?" she asked.

"Tomorrow?" I asked. "Friday is tomorrow."

She made a face. I think the weekend had caught her unawares. She instead scheduled me for Sunday the 5th at 7pm. I don't know what it says about my maturity that my first thought was, Sunday at 7? I'll miss "The Simpsons."

My contractions grew stronger as the day passed. I could feel them now. My mother refused to let me drive anywhere alone, afraid that my labor would progress suddenly and she'd have to come rescue me anyway. She didn't make me feel particularly calm about being induced. She was induced with her first baby, my brother. That was nearly thirty-four years ago, and she still winces and clutches her stomach at the mere mention of the word "induce." It made me nervous. It was amazing how quickly I went from not wanting to be pregnant anymore to not wanting to not be pregnant quite so soon.

I knew that my relationship with my mother was going to change when the baby was born. My mom had taken good care of me throughout my pregnancy. In a funny way, it was like I was her little girl again. I knew that my own maternity would change that. It made me sad. I didn't feel ready. It was stupid, because I was 25 years old, but I still felt like a little kid in so many ways.

I tried to take my mind off things by narrowing down my list of baby names. I got down to three or four that I loved but I couldn't commit to one yet. I wondered if that meant something. Adoption was still on the back of my mind. I thought, maybe I can't choose a name because I'm not supposed to be the one who names her.

Sunday the fifth arrived. I was depressed. I knew that I was supposed to be excited, but all I wanted to do was cry. I was terrified that I was going to be a bad mother, that I would grow to resent my baby for the way she changed my life. I worried that I wouldn't bond with her, that I wouldn't be patient enough, that I would always love her a little less than I should because of who her father was (I don't, for the record).

I thought more about adoption during the first week of July than I had ever before. The prospect of someone else raising this baby used to frighten and depress me. But the thought suddenly didn't feel as awful as it had before. I wasn't sure what to make of that. I hoped it was nerves.

I loved my baby girl so much it hurt. I only wanted what was best for her. But what if that wasn't me? What if I wasn't meant to have her? Would I know somehow? I hoped so. And I hoped that I was meant to have her, because I didn't think I could handle one more devastating loss in my life.

I hated that this was my line of thinking a few hours before I was scheduled to be induced. It seemed like I should be thinking something else, anything else. I should have been doing something other than thinking myself sick.

Suddenly, it was half past six, and I realized I wasn't quite ready to go. I rushed around (as well as I could with an overdue baby in my belly), putting a few last-minute things in my bag and double-checking what I'd packed already for myself and the baby.

My mother put my suitcase in her car while I hefted myself in. I was tired and nervous and overwhelmed. My throat fizzed with unshed tears. We were running late; I could cry later. I knew that my tardiness wasn't criminal - it's not like they could start the induction without me. But I've always hated being late. I urged my mother to drive faster.

She found a parking space and we headed into the labor and delivery triage area. It was 7:20. I gave the receptionist my name and she disappeared to get my paperwork. There were five pages, and my name was on the top of each one. No, wait. My name was at the top of four of them. Someone else's name was on the top of the fourth page.

"Oh, sorry about that," the receptionist said, shuffling a few papers at the desk and finding the page that was mine. But the misplaced paper got me thinking. It hadn't occurred to me before then that I wasn't the only woman having a baby that night. That probably sounds terribly self-centered of me, but it's true just the same. I wondered about this other woman - Teresa - who was also filling out the stack of having-a-baby paperwork. I wondered if she was married, if she had any other children, if she was nervous. I wondered who was going to be in the delivery room with her. I wondered if people were excited for her. I hoped so.

My paperwork was processed and my mother and I were shown to my room. There was a hospital gown folded up on the bed and the nurse told me to put it on. My mother settled our belongings while I went into the bathroom and changed. I closed the door behind me, and I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror over the sink. I realized then that this was the last moment I was going to be wearing these maternity jeans as a pregnant woman. When next I put them on, I would be a mother. I stood there for a few minutes, memorizing the feel of wearing clothes and not being hooked up to monitors so I'd have something to cling to during my stay. Slowly, I donned my hospital gown. The motion had an air of finality about it.

For some reason, I thought of the movie "Men in Black," where Will Smith's character is told that the suit he's given is "the last suit you'll ever wear." It sounds stupid, but I had that kind of feeling just then. Like this was the last hospital gown I'd ever wear. I knew that once I opened the bathroom door, I was no longer myself, Jill, a pregnant woman, a person. Once I opened the door, I would become a patient. Things would happen, and be done, and it was slightly terrifying. I hate being a patient. I hate disappearing into a chart. I knew that once I was out there, there would be monitors and tests and an induction and eventually and IV, and I would simply be a room number to the doctors and nurses.

I stood there in my hospital gown. The air felt different already. The gown had changed me. Wheels were in motion.

I opened the door.

Sorry

2011-05-20T11:19:00.001-07:00

When a baby is born, one of the first things parents seem to do is count fingers and toes. I'm not sure who in human history decided that a newborn's extremities were the best indicator of health, but the tradition remains, and countless babies are unwrapped from their hospital blanket burritos so their tiny fingers and toes can be counted.

It's easy to count what you can see. Two eyes, two ears, one nose, two lips, ten fingers, ten toes. Unfortunately, what you can't see can be just as important as what you can. You can't easily count the lungs or the chambers of a heart. You also can't count the number of kidneys your newborn has. Unless there's some sort of health problem, you may never know.

My father was born in August of 1956. He had ten fingers, ten toes, the proper number of eyes and ears and lips and limbs, and only one kidney. That his missing kidney went unnoticed is hardly anyone's fault. As I said, they can be tricky to count. It wasn't until the 70s that my father suspected there was anything any more abnormal about him than a few deformed ribs.

When it was determined more than a decade later that my father had only one kidney instead of the usual pair, and that he needed surgery, my grandmother's reaction was swift and sure. She felt guilty.

The argument could possibly be made that her guilt was appropriate - the lack of a second kidney ostensibly points to a problem during gestation. But she didn't smoke or drink or have any health problems. The missing kidney was a fluke; nobody's fault. But you see, this was only half of the problem. There's another part of my grandmother's guilt. She didn't only feel guilty that my dad was short a kidney. She also felt guilty because she didn't know. In her mind, she should have known somehow that things were awry, and she should have known at the moment she counted little fingers and toes at Silver Cross.

There's a point to this story, I promise, and here it is: irrational guilt is part of parenthood. It's part of life in general if you've got the same kind of quirks that I do, but it's for sure a part of parenthood.

I'm not a parent right now, but I am a birth parent. One of the fun (ha-ha) things about being a birth parent is that you get to experience many of the worries and fears and stresses of a parent but without any of the rewards of parenthood (not that being a birth mom doesn't have its rewarding moments, but it's different than being a parent). One of those characteristics I have discovered is the aforementioned irrational guilt. It's not quite the same as my grandmother's guilt, but I think that in some ways it's more vexing. Because if something goes awry, I feel bad not just for Roo but for P and M, for not doing my part to make sure their daughter is as flawless as possible.

It's more than slightly ridiculous, but I've found that I always feel like I should apologize for anything about Roo that isn't perfect. If she gets a cold, I want to apologize for her immune system (even though she is an exceptionally healthy girl). If she doesn't smile for family pictures, I want to apologize for her being uncooperative. If she climbs on things when she's been told not to, I want to apologize for her stubbornness.

That's stupid, isn't it? None of those things are under my control. I took good care of myself during pregnancy so Roo would have the best start she could. I grew her a healthy, perfect little body. I took good care of her. She's 22 months old now; surely any little quirks she has are from P and M, right?

I'm sure they are. At my Christmas visit I got a kick out of seeing Roo sitting with M for a story, and they had absolutely identical facial expressions. I can already see many mannerisms Roo has learned from her parents. That only makes sense. They are her parents, and she takes cues and learns from and mirrors them. I recognize very little of myself in Roo. She is every inch P and M's daughter. She has exactly the personality and temperament and quirks that I would expect a child of theirs to have. She's a perfect match for them. I credit them entirely for what a sweet, clever girl she is. If I credit them for her good points, can't I also put her faults in the P and M column? (Not that Roo has many faults at all, of course.) I absolutely can. Who Roo is and who she will become doesn't have a lot to do with me beyond the choice I made to place her with her parents.

So why do I feel guilty when Roo gets a sniffle?

I'm not sure. When I was putting together some information for P and M prior to placement, I made a list of all the things that run in my family (heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, cancer, etc.) and I felt awful, like maybe I should also write an apology for some of the lousy DNA Roo may have inherited. I love P and M dearly. I did almost instantly. So I suppose part of it is that I feel like they deserve the very best children in the world, and I so wanted Roo to be that for them.

I'm being ridiculous again, of course, because I have no reason to believe that she isn't perfect for them. It's not as though they complain to me about Roo. I've never heard them complain, and I don't think they ever would. Roo is the best little person she could be. I really couldn't hope for anything more for her. I guess it's just this lingering fear I have that some of me will show up in Roo, and she'll be hopelessly neurotic like I am, or her childhood will be one long panic attack like mine was, or she'll lack proper social skills like I did. I worry about that sort of thing a lot, actually. I am desperate for Roo not to be like I was. So far she seems to have gotten the very best of me and H with none of our faults (unless you count being very chatty as a fault, which I refuse to do). But what if that luck doesn't last?

I guess the "what if" is where I need to stop worrying, because I know that no matter what quirks Roo ends up with, P and M can handle it. Their path to parenthood has strengthened them and taught them things that I'm sure they'd rather have learned some other way but they've learned them just the same. They'll be able to help Roo with whatever might come up. They'll get through it just fine.

I hope I will, too. But I know I won't be able to stop myself from saying "sorry."

Hey, Peeps ...

2011-05-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

Are any of you going to the FSA International Conference this August? I went last year, and it was amazing. Registration has already started (info here). If you aren't planning on going, you should. It is going to be extra awesome this year.

Do you know why?

Because I'm one of the presenters!

I've been teamed up with a birth grandmother and we're going to be talking about grief. It will be epic, I promise. Well, maybe not epic, but it won't be boring.

As with last year (and every other year, I think) the conference is free for birth families. Which means that my presentation will at least be worth what you pay to get in :) If nothing else, birth moms, it's always nice to be among people who aren't going to judge you for an unplanned pregnancy, because they've all been there too.

And for those of you who think, "I should be so lucky as to get pregnant on accident!" there are like-minded people there for you as well. It'll cost you, but I think it's more than worth it for the information and the chance to meet with a whole heck of a lot of people who have been or are in the exact same boat as you.

Go. Sign up. Now.

(Birth) Mother's Day

2011-05-08T23:29:00.004-07:00

Warning: I'm happy. If you're not happy, this will probably make you throw up a little. Everyone is entitled to their unhappiness. Very often it's justified. I'm not going to judge. But I am happy, and I would hate to be responsible for someone being sick. So, read on with caution.

I had most of a post written up yesterday about Birth Mother's Day. I didn't like most of it. It felt like a repeat of what I wrote last year. I think Birth Mother's Day is a lovely idea, but I don't really need it. I'm comfortable sitting through the odes to motherhood recited at church with a secret smile. I don't particularly celebrate Mother's Day, though, either. Not for myself. I try to do something nice for my own mother, to let her know how amazingly blessed I am to be her daughter.

Y'all, my mom is awesome. Even if you discount the fact that I was her fourth child in six years, and made her violently ill during pregnancy, and weighed much closer to nine pounds at birth than I'm sure she was really comfortable with, she's still an amazing woman. I think that even years from now, if I have several children of my own, it won't feel right to celebrate Mother's Day for myself. It's her holiday, not mine. Only if I were to be as awesome as she is could I feel comfortable calling the day my own. And I've got a long way to go to be as awesome as my mom.

She gave me flowers today - daisies, my favorite. Red gerbera daisies, specifically, which are my favorite favorite (and she always remembers that), and after our family dinner tonight, after hours of talking and laughing and enjoying one another's company, when I gave her a big hug and wished her a happy Mother's Day, she whispered "You, too," because she gets it. My mom gets it.

She was there for those weeks when I was a mother, and I think she cherishes them nearly as much as I do. I believe this about her: No matter how many other children I end up having, when she wishes me a happy Mother's Day, she'll remember Roo. I don't know if that's true of anyone else, but it's true of her.

I love you, Mom.

***

Even though I don't make a big deal of Birth Mother's Day, yesterday P and M sent me five - FIVE! - videos of Roo being darling - singing and talking to her mama and generally being fantastically cute. How awesome is that? P and M are so thoughtful. Five videos is an embarrassment of riches. I am a spoiled girl. So, even though I had to work, and our computers were down and patrons were a little crabby about it, and I had a headache, I ended up having a very happy Birth Mother's Day after all.

And I had a happy Mother's Day as well. Maybe it's because I've found my happy place with adoption, but it was absolutely painless. Whereas last year I think I mostly thought of Mother's Day in terms of my lack (or my lack from the year before when I was pregnant), this year I thought of my own mother, and then I thought of Roo. I'm not her mommy, but I did grow her a body and find her family, and that counts enough for me. I've felt a mother's love. For the first time, today, while I was in church, listening to a talk about motherhood and charity and love, I realized that I will find a way to be happy if I never have more children. Because I had Roo, and I love her, and if it needs to be, it can be enough.

That sounds a bit maudlin. I don't mean for it to. Yesterday and today were both happy, hopeful days. I've been quite ridiculously happy all week, actually. New Roo videos made me even happier. I am so well-adjusted, it's disgusting. I have unofficially graduated from therapy. John has marked me as "as needed" in my file. We've run out of things to discuss. It feels amazing. Most of my session with him the other day consisted of eating Red Vines and talking about how amazing I am (and I am not even kidding). Although considering I still paid for the hour, John probably has the last laugh there.

Being happy makes for a boring blog, doesn't it? I've meant to post again all week but I couldn't think of much to say besides "I'm happy, life's good," and that makes for a short post. I am working on finishing up Roo's story. I have probably forty-something unfinished posts on a variety of other topics. I'll get to them eventually. I do have some sort-of exciting news to share in a few days (I'm excited about it, anyway). I am far from done blogging about adoption. I think, even if I do get to the point where I don't have anything left to say but how happy I am, I'll keep posting just that a few times a month, because I think people need to read it.

In short: I totally double-dipped on the mothering holidays, I'll probably be blogging forever, and I am happy. Very happy. The end :)

My Biggest Secret

2011-05-01T11:14:00.001-07:00

Today I am taking a break from blogging about adoption. I'm going to write about something else instead. I'll probably start doing this from now on, every so often, just to cleanse my blogging palate. I thought today was a good day to start, because I have something I need to get off my back.

I have tried very hard to keep this blog from being a place where I re-hash all of the mistakes I've made and list all my sins. The past is firmly behind me. I've never been the type of person to have a lot of deep, dark secrets but on the rare occasion where I have one or two, I keep it to myself.

But lately something has been bothering me, making my brain itch. It's my own personal tell-tale heart, and I'm afraid one of these days I'm going to just snap at work and the whole sordid tale is going to come spilling out. Sometimes I feel it on the tip of my tongue, biding its time until the moment when I'm less vigilant. I can't let that happen, not in public. And so I feel the need to unburden myself. This may not be the appropriate place or time, but I don't know what else to do.

Okay. Deep breath. I can do this.

.
.
.
.
.

I work at a library, and I don't have a library card.

Phew. There, I said it. It's out.

I used to have a Maricopa County library card. I had one, and I used it all the time, and I still have the 13-digit card number memorized. I went to the library all the time, and I checked out hundreds of books. But what with school and work and other things, I got lazy about returning them. The fines piled up on my account. I went to the library less frequently in an attempt to incur fewer fines on my account. But going less frequently meant that I wasn't turning books in as frequently. Three times in six months I paid astronomical sums in overdue fines. I felt sick about it. I thought to myself, if I'm going to spend so much money on books, I might as well be buying them.

That was when I started going to the book store, and that's how I ended up with more than 45 boxes full of books by the time I moved. I lost count of individual books somewhere in the thousands. I always meant to go back to the library at some point, but it just never happened.

Last October, when I applied for the library job I have now, I thought to myself that I had better go back to the library and get a card and get myself re-acquainted with the stacks. I never did. I got the job, so figuring out where different parts of the collection had been moved to was taken care of. But now I've been at the library for six months, and I don't have a library card.

I cannot possibly get one now. How would I ever live it down? My co-workers all know me by name. I don't mean to brag or anything, but I'm very good at what I do, and my hard work has been noticed. I have a certain reputation at work. If it got out that I don't have a card, I would be ruined. I have considered going to one of the other county libraries to get a card there, but mine is the closest by far and I'm not sure I want a card badly enough to drive 12 miles out of my way for one.

I thought at first that maybe I could get by without one. But my co-workers keep recommending books and asking me about bestsellers. I keep seeing books I want to read but can't afford to buy. Something's gotta give. I'm afraid this won't end well for me. I am going to end up completely humiliated. But the good news is, there are books written about dealing with that kind of embarrassment, and we have them at my library, and when all is said and done, I'll finally be able to check them out.

Peace

2011-04-23T13:04:00.006-07:00

I got to see Roo and her family today!

It was such a good visit. I mean, they're all good visits, but each one is just so awesome. P and M and their two little girls are some of my favorite people in the entire world. How can I not have a great time with them?

Roo showed off all sorts of fascinating and wonderful skills, such as pointing to me when asked where I was, climbing on things she wasn't supposed to climb on, answering questions with the phrase "I don't know" (darling!), tilting her cheek in my direction so I could give her a kiss, and singing "Jingle Bells." I may be slightly biased, but I think Roo is the most advanced toddler in the world. I expect she'll be splitting the atom by the time she's in kindergarten (although if she's only gotten to learning to read by then, I'll still be pleased).

It was so much fun to just watch her. She's a busy girl, and very happy. P and M tried to get her to do her "serious" face for me, but she would only smile. Roo has the best smiles - her whole face lights up. I had a wonderful time talking to P and M and watching Roo and her sister talk and laugh and play and be their awesome little selves. It was such a good visit! I know I've said that already, but it's true. I had such a wonderful time.

On the way home, I cried. I was a little bit sad the visit was over, of course, but that's not why I cried. I cried because I was just so darn happy! I was so happy I thought my heart would burst. Roo is the happiest little girl. She is smart and happy and healthy and clever and absolutely everything she ought to be. She has the best family in the world, with a sweet and silly big sister and parents who love her to bits. They are happy - Roo is happy - and their happiness is contagious, and it was too much, and I cried hot, happy tears the whole way home.

In the time immediately after placement, I was desperate for peace, for the contented joy that comes from making a good choice. It seemed to elude me, and that elusiveness compounded my grief. I began to doubt that I would ever truly have the peace I wanted about placement. I found it today. I think it's been building all along, but this afternoon I realized it's complete - I don't know how or why, but today's visit pushed the last piece into place. I've felt the happiest sad. Today was the happiest happy. Everything just felt so right. And this feeling, this deep and profound peace ...

It was totally worth the wait.

Saturday

2011-04-21T18:18:00.003-07:00

I wrote this two weeks ago. I wanted to make a minor edit before posting ... and then I forgot until a little while ago. So "today" is April 9th in this post.

There's a song in the LDS Children's Songbook that begins with the line, "Saturday is a special day" (it is, you see, the day we get ready for Sunday). The older I get, the less special Saturdays seem to be, because after a few years the luster of doing laundry and sweeping the floors tends to wear off. But today really was a special day, because it was an Adoption Academy day.

Have I written before about Adoption Academies? I don't remember. I'm also too lazy to go through my archives and find out. In short: Adoption Academies are put on every three months by FSA to help couples meet the education requirements for certification. I'm sure they do them other places, maybe a little differently and with different names. But here in the Phoenix area, they're called Adoption Academies, and Roo's parents have been the ones in charge of the Mesa ones since a little bit before I met them. Part of the academy is a birth mom panel, and since P and M know me and my story, they've asked me to be on the birth mom panels they've arranged since I placed Roo. That's what I did today. But because I love adoption, and because P and M do such an amazing job, I stayed the whole day instead of just being there for my part.

It was awesome. I know I toss that word around like confetti, but I really do mean it. It was awesome. Everyone did a good job - all of the panelists, and P and M. I cannot even imagine how much work it is to put one of these things on, but I think it totally paid off. Today left me with the warmest, fuzziest feeling about adoption. And I am not being facetious. It was the best Saturday I've had in ages.

Oh, and my mother was on the adult adoptee panel. I love to hear her talk about adoption, because it wasn't something she ever used to feel comfortable talking about. My father was the first person she ever told that she was adopted. They'd been married six months at the time, and she told him the night before they were going to be sealed in the temple. Isn't that crazy? My mom never had any issues about being adopted, but I think it took her a while to feel like talking about it was okay. I am very proud of her.

The birth mom panel was after lunch. I don't really get nervous about that sort of thing anymore. I guess I've done it enough times now that it's not stressful. It went pretty much the same as other birth mom panels have gone. But something unusual happened - or rather, didn't happen. I've lost count of how many times I've told my story and Roo's. Dozens, certainly. And every time, I cry.

I didn't cry today.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I think I might have cried, if I'd had more time to blather. Not that I didn't have plenty of time, but for some reason I feel like I skipped some parts of my story today - idiot that I am, I somehow completely glossed over the part where I met P and M and chose them, and that's one of the best parts of the story! Anyway. I got choked up for sure. But I didn't use a single Kleenex.

This bothers me. How could I not have cried? I've never not cried. I AlWAYS cry. I didn't think I could get through my story without crying. I guess I wonder what it says about me that I didn't. Does it mean I care less? I certainly don't care less. I'm getting teared up just thinking about Roo and how much I love her and what an amazing little person she is.

I don't know why I didn't cry. I guess it's not really important. If tears are a measure of love, I've certainly proven the depth of my feeling over the past two years. A few months after placement I was starting to consider buying Kleenex by the case and recommending that friends and family buy stock in the company. Perhaps I've just gotten most of my tears out of the way. I don't know.

It shouldn't matter. I know that I love Roo, whether I cry about it or not. But maybe that's it - I know, but I feel like maybe the couples who were there won't know unless I prove it by crying. Is that ridiculous? I think it's ridiculous, but the thought is there just the same (it is absolutely exhausting inside my brain).

I digress. Today was a fantastic day. And M said something about maybe having a visit in a few weeks! That would be amazing. It's nothing definite, but even so it was so awesome of her to suggest it. It means a lot. I've sort of had this itch lately to see Roo again. But what's kind of funny is that I'm almost as anxious just to see P and M again. I really do love them, and it was so good to be able to see them today and talk for a little while. I wanted to brag to every person I saw today that P and M are "my" couple, that these awesome people who put on such a good academy are Roo's parents.

I am glad that they're Roo's parents. I'm glad for her, and I'm glad for them. They are my favorite little family in the world.

I'm rambling, aren't I? Oh well. I think a little ramble now and then is a good thing, provided you know when to quit.

Which I do :)

Good Grief

2011-04-17T11:49:00.001-07:00

My father died on a Tuesday. It was a glorious, sunny day in September, probably too hot for most of you but I'm cold-blooded and had things been different, I'd have been outdoors soaking up all that lovely sunshine. Instead, I was inside a hospice room standing next to my father's bed while he drew his last labored breath. It was one of the most surreal moments of my entire life. It was painful, but also oddly peaceful. I can't account for the calm that I felt as I called my brother and sister on the phone to give them the news. I can't explain the evenness of my temper in the hours that followed. I think it was a gift from God.

But it was fleeting. The next several weeks were excruciating. I hadn't experienced that kind of grief before, and it was unnerving. One moment I was watching a Dodgers game on TV, the next moment I was curled in the fetal position on the couch, sobbing to the point of hyperventilation. I'd go from laughter to tears to laughter again, then to a sort of numb emotionlessness. This cycle repeated several times a day. I pretty much stopped eating, and I lost 15 lbs in 18 days (which I don't recommend).

In the throes of this crushing grief, I made a few poor choices. One of them was to attempt to repair my relationship with H, which is how I ended up with a positive pregnancy test six weeks after my dad died.

It felt like too much to handle. As if it weren't enough to be jobless and single and to have just lost my father. Now I had a pregnancy to deal with as well. I thought more than once that if God only gives us what He knows we can handle, He must have me confused with someone else.

But there was a blessing to my pregnancy as well. It was a new sort of grief, something else to think about when I woke up in the morning, and it proved to be a most welcome distraction. I had a reason to eat again. I had to eat! I knew how crucial the first few weeks and months are for the developing baby. I ate again, and I ate well.

Food wasn't the only thing to think about, of course. There were a lot of things to work through with my pregnancy. My grief for my father was still mixed in there, but it wasn't as high on my priority list. I had these moments where I missed my father something awful, but always things seemed to come back to my pregnancy and the baby and what I was going to do. Then I had Roo, and that was its own adjustment, and then I placed Roo. I placed her on the anniversary of my father's death. My grief was mixed once more. After placement, my grief was much more selfish. I missed my dad, but I was so wrapped up in the pain of placement that it didn't signify. I pushed it down to deal with it at a later time

I find that, now that I'm in such a good place with adoption, the grief over my father that I've suppressed for so long is pushing its way back to the surface. I feel a little ridiculous at times - he's been gone for nearly three years. how is it that I still have these moments of such exquisite grief? It's not as though he's any more dead now than he was then. Still I find myself every now and then crying to the point of dehydration because I miss my daddy so very much.

Of course, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Grief never goes away. The final stage of grief is acceptance, not elimination. I mean, just the other day I got distracted by some newborn Roo photos and I had a twenty-second gasping, sobbing fit and nearly hyperventilated.

Then I was fine. But I've spent a lot of time working on getting to fine with things with Roo. I don't suppose I've put as much work in on mourning my father. I'm taking a writing class this semester, and I find that I mention my father in every single journal entry. I'll think of something he used to say to me, or something we used to do together, or wonder what he would have thought of this or that. I'm surprised at how much pain I've still got stuffed down there. I find myself putting off the homework for my writing class because I know it's going to end with me sobbing on the sofa. The sofa itself probably doesn't help. It's the one from my mom's house, the sofa my dad was sitting on when he lost consciousness. He'd had a stroke, but we didn't know it yet. We thought when he sat down he was just going to take a nap, but when my mom went to wake him to ask about his pain, he wouldn't wake.

Sometimes I hate my sofa.

I sort of hate that I've come so far with my grief over placing Roo only to slip back a few notches on the grief scale with my dad. It seems unfair that I should have to go through some of these emotions again. I think that part of me thought that my pregnancy sort of took the place of my grief, and that I wouldn't have to process it. Clearly, I was mistaken. It really stinks.

I hate that he died. I hate that he's not here now, that I can't show him pictures of Roo or get his opinion on politics or music or school or anything else. He's been gone for 2 1/2 years now but I still find new things that I've never done on my own before. Taxes, for instance. My current job is the first I've had since before he died, and I've never had to do my taxes on my own. I use the easy form, but I do not have a head for that kind of paperwork, and in any case I always felt better when my dad looked things over before I mailed them off.

My car needed new brake pads. I had to pay for it. I've never done that before. My dad took care of our cars. We'd go to a tire place for flat repair and rotation, but he did everything else. Now I always feel like I'm being ripped off when I take my car to a shop, because I have only a vague idea of how much parts cost. I wish I'd paid more attention when my dad showed me how to do routine maintenance. It kills me that I can't change my own oil. I know he showed me once. Why didn't I pay more attention?

I suppose I thought he'd always be there, that I could ask him to show me again some day. I think I thought that about a lot of things. It's why I don't remember the stories he told very well. I thought I'd hear them again. I didn't ask for his opinion on a college major because I thought I could ask later. I didn't know there wouldn't be a later. Who would have thought he'd die so young? And of a brain tumor, no less. Who the heck gets a brain tumor?

My father did. He was very zen about it, too, which sort of irritated me. "Why not me?" he asked. "I'm not so special that I can't get cancer." But to me, he was. He was special. He was my daddy.

He still is. And I miss him.

Yeah, That's Right, I'm Everywhere

2011-04-12T18:49:00.001-07:00

Today I have a guest post up at the AARKS Law birth mother blog. It's about what I thought I knew about adoption before I was a birth mother, and what I learned after I placed. Before I was a birth mother, I thought I knew absolutely everything there was to know, and after I placed, I learned what an idiot I used to be.

Anyway, click on over and give it a read. The intro is HERE and the post is HERE.

Did You Know?

2011-04-07T21:54:00.000-07:00

Did you know that if you Google "cold risotto," my blog is the first search result on the list?

I found this out the other day when I heard from probably the fifth or sixth person to find my blog when looking for recipes. If I'd known that risotto was such a popular search term, I'd have chosen my analogy a bit more carefully.

Good for You!

2011-04-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

When I was pregnant, actually telling people that I was pregnant was done on a need-to-know basis. You may recall that I didn't tell my extended family I was expecting until two weeks before my due date. I tend to procrastinate doing things that I know are going to be painful or awkward, and this was no exception.

Some people I figured I'd tell eventually, but I knew I wasn't ready yet. Of course, things rarely work out as neatly as we plan them, and when I was probably three or four months along, I went to the dentist. I expected the hygienist to begin, as she usually does, by asking if there had been any changes in my health. This visit, however, was different. I'd barely sat down in the chair when Brittany, the hygienist, said, "Dr. D. wants a few x-rays today."

Radiation? Back up the bus. I wasn't even sure if I could safely get x-rays while pregnant. Out came my news. "Oh, congratulations!" Brittany said. That wasn't a word I heard very often, and I smiled.

I went to the dentist again three months later (I have bad teeth so I go twice as often as most people). This time quite a bit of the work was done with me reclining instead of flat on my back, to accommodate my pregnancy. The next time I went to the dentist was three months after that, when Roo was only a few weeks old. It was the first time I'd gone anywhere without her.

("Wow, how did that feel?" my therapist asked when I told him about it later.

"It was nothing special," I said. "I've been to the dentist before.")

I told Brittany all about my darling little girl, and I think I must have shown her a picture on my phone. Anyway, not too long after that I placed Roo with her family. And a few months later, I was back at the dentist's. Brittany was happy to see me. "And how's your beautiful daughter doing?" she asked.

Oh, crap. What was I supposed to say now? I weighed my options. The pain of placement was still fresh and I wasn't sure I wanted to get into it. I thought, I see Brittany for 30 minutes four times a year, and her hands are in my mouth for most of that time. What difference does it make if I tell her or not? I decided to tell her the truth ... or at least, part of the truth.

"She's doing great!" I said, my voice full of all the false cheer I could muster. "Growing like a weed."

"They grow up so fast," Brittany agreed, and then she asked me if I'd been flossing. I exhaled sharply, glad that was over with. Each visit was the same after that - she'd say hello and ask how my daughter was doing, and I'd tell her, only omitting the fact that Roo wasn't actually my daughter anymore.

Then, a few weeks ago, I had dinner at my mother's house. Somehow we ended up talking about braces (she has Invisalign) and she told me she'd been to the dentist the week before.

"Brittany cleaned my teeth - you know her, right?" my mom said.

"Of course."

"She said she's seen you around at a few YSA activities."

Brittany was LDS? Hmm. I wondered what she thought of the fact that I, ostensibly a single mother, was spending so much time at singles events, away from my child.

"Oh, that's nice," I told my mother, and I changed the subject (which is easy enough to do with my mother, because she has ADD). But I kept thinking about Brittany going to the same activities I do, and wondering.

So, a week ago Tuesday I had another cleaning appointment. Brittany came out to the waiting area to get me. We made small talk on the way back to the room. I set my purse down and made myself comfortable. Brittany made a few notes in my chart, and asked if there were any changes in my health history.

"Nope," I said.

"How's your job going?"

I gave my usual response - "Oh, you know. Books in, books out."

Brittany smiled. "And how's [Roo's real name] doing?"

I tried to remember if and when I'd mentioned Roo's name before. Did Brittany have a really good memory, or was that sort of thing in my chart? I panicked a bit at the thought of Roo being in my dental chart. I'm not sure why. But all I said was, "She's doing great!"

"Who does she stay with during the day while you work?"

Oh, expletive. Really? I thought. It was 7:20am, I'd gotten four hours of sleep and I'd skipped breakfast. I wasn't really in the mood to explain things. I'm not ashamed of my decision, but it's the sort of thing that I don't like being pushed about. I talk about it, and about Roo, when I feel like it.

Except, it seemed, for this morning. But this was no time to be shy.

"She's at home with her parents," I said, all cool nonchalance.

Brittany's eyebrows migrated north towards her hairline. "Oh!" she said. There was a beat before she said, "You put her up for adoption?"

I hate that phrase. Put her up. It always makes adoption sound like an auction. I didn't put Roo up on the auction block. I placed her, thankyouverymuch. But I didn't want to make a thing of it.

"Yep," I said.

"Well, good for you!" Brittany said. "Do you still get to see her?"

"Yeah." Good for you?

"That's great. So, Dr. D. wants to get a few x-rays ..."

Good for you? Good for you?

Brittany was already draping me with the lead apron, but I was still hung up on those three words. Good for me? What the heck was that supposed to mean? I wanted to ask her, but Dr. D. wanted all of my teeth x-rayed, and that kept my mouth busy.

Good for me? No, really, what does that mean? Does it mean good for me, or good for me? I wish she'd thought to put more emphasis on one word or another. It was my own personal "These pretzels are making me thirsty" moment. Did Brittany mean I'd done something good, that Roo's adoption met with her approval? Or did she mean that placing Roo was a good thing for me? Like I did it because it was in my best interests?

Good for me? Who says that, anyway? What the heck kind of reaction is that to the news that a woman has placed her child for adoption? Good for you? How am I supposed to take it? I suppose that a normal person wouldn't "take it" at all. Anyone else would let it go. But I'm not most people. Two things I know about myself very well are that I value precision in language, and I have a hard time letting things go.

Good for me? Good of me, perhaps. Good for Roo. Good for me? I don't know about that. Not that placing Roo has been bad for me. It was awful at first, but things are so much better now. Adoption has turned out to be a wonderful thing for me. But I get uncomfortable with that line of thinking. I don't like to focus a lot on how great things have been in my life since placement, because I feel like doing that makes it sound like placement was a selfish thing, something I did for me, because it made my life better. I'm not saying I have to suffer just to prove to Roo that placement was a selfless decision. But I have a hard time thinking of placement in the context of how much better my life is now.

Good for me? Maybe. But that's not why I did it. And it's not even why I try so hard to make something of myself now. It's for Roo, all of it. I placed her for her, and I want to be someone she can be proud of.

I guess a good start would be to stop obsessing over three little words spoken by my dental hygienist.

Okay

2011-03-28T20:48:00.004-07:00

I miss my little Roo today. I didn't miss her all day, but my apartment is quiet and lonely, and on nights like this when I don't have anything to do, it's a little harder to see pictures of other people's pregnancies and babies and not miss my newborn Roo and the time I spent as her mother.

I wish I could go back in time, just for a few minutes. I'd go back to when Roo was about six weeks old. She was very snuggly. She'd rest her little noggin right on top of my heart, cheek squished against my sternum, and sleep for hours. I think that part of the reason she has such a nice round head is that she only slept on her back at night. I nearly always held her at nap time, listening to her breathe while she slept. At the time I felt a little guilty for idling so much, but I am so thankful now for the dozens of hours I spent holding her while she dreamed. I couldn't have imagined then how precious those memories would be.

I wish I could inhabit one of those moments right now. Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago that I was pregnant, that I had a baby, that I was a mother. I can hardly believe it was only two years ago that I was pregnant.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to my pregnancy, too. Fibromyalgia aside, pregnancy agreed with me. I enjoyed it. I loved the feel of Roo's tiny feet kicking at me from the inside. I miss that. I miss knowing that no matter what the future might hold, at that moment my baby girl was safe and warm and mine.

Not that I worry about Roo at all. I know that she's safe and warm and well-fed and happy, in addition to being darling and sweet and the cleverest toddler in the world. But the Roo that I miss and the Roo who will be two in a few months are different Roos. I love Roo with my whole heart and I always will, but she's not mine.

Newborn Roo was mine. That's who I miss. But it's okay, you know? I can miss my itty-bitty baby and I still feel okay. I mean, it's not fantastic fun, but I haven't even cried my eye makeup off. I could totally still leave the house without scaring people.

It's nice to be able to miss baby Roo and not be devastated by it. I suppose I could be devastated by it, if I allowed myself. But I don't. It's no longer a productive part of my grief. In the wise words of Albus Dumbledore, "It does not to do dwell on dreams and forget to live." Missing Roo is a part of living. It's just not the biggest part.

I miss my little Roo today. And I'm okay.

2011-03-26T23:11:00.002-07:00

I don't remember the exact date, but I know that it was near the end of March three years ago that I first met H. I was thinking about that a few nights ago. The weather was just the same as it was that night, ever-so-slightly cool, a gentle breeze, and a bright, almost-full moon. It was a beautiful night. I was so naive then. As time passed I wised up a bit, but on that lovely March night I couldn't fathom how drastically my life would change in the next several months.

I don't know how many times I have replayed the night I met H over and over in my head, wondering if I could have said or done anything differently to keep myself from heading down the path I took, if there's anything that would have made a difference. Sometimes the scene plays in my head like a movie, and I cringe as each moment unfolds, charmed even in retrospect by how lovely the night was and how well H and I got along, but a little nauseated knowing where everything was eventually going to lead. It's like watching a scary movie and shouting at the lead, "Don't open the door! The killer's in there!" The past is a movie, and I'm just as powerless to change it.

But I've come to realize each time I take that particular stroll down memory lane that I wouldn't change it if I could. If anything had been different, I never would have ended up pregnant, and if I hadn't gotten pregnant, there would be no Roo. Wouldn't that be sad? I don't like to think about a world with no Roo. I don't like to think about a me without Roo. Heaven only knows who and where I would be.

I feel like I've finally reached the point where I can look back on some of the time I spent with H and not feel like dry-heaving. (I know, I'm quite the romantic.) We were happy for a little while. It's not always easy but I try to remember those times instead of the darker ones that followed. We were happy the night we met. Maybe I'm getting sentimental in my old age, but despite everything that transpired three summers ago, I can look back on that moonlit night and be grateful, because it led me to Roo, and I'm grateful for her most of all.

Dear M,

2011-03-21T22:13:00.004-07:00

I wasn't very eloquent earlier. I guess I got nervous. I don't know why, but I did just the same. There were things I wanted to say but I couldn't get them out. I do much better with a keyboard and a few minutes to mull things over. I don't know if you'll ever read this, but I thought I'd write it out anyway on the off chance that you might at some point.

Congratulations! You made a beautiful baby, absolutely perfect. I know that all newborn babies are cute, but some are really squishy or splotchy or have lumpy heads. Your little one is exceptionally cute. You should be proud. You did something amazing - you grew a person! And you did a really good job. I am proud of you. I know that the past several months haven't been easy, to put it lightly. I couldn't have handled things as well as you have when I was your age. You are a strong woman.

I think part of my speechlessness earlier was because I wanted so desperately to find the right words for a situation where there are no right words. What comes next is going to suck, no two ways about it, and there's nothing that I or anyone else can say to make it suck less, or to help you understand that it won't always be this way. You've got to figure that out for yourself, in your own way. Oh, M. My heart hurts for you already. It doesn't matter how prepared you think you are, you're not prepared for what comes next. There's no way to plan for it. I wish it didn't have to hurt. It seems unfair that doing such an amazing thing should hurt so much, but that's the way of things. I know that you can do it, though. You'll find your way through and you will be a better, stronger person for it.

I guess I'm not doing much better now than I did earlier. I still don't know what to say. Just know that you're in my prayers, and you've been before, and you will be in the future. I'm here if you need me. I know people like to throw that phrase around a lot, but I really mean it.

Take care of yourself. You are still important. You were important before this all came about, and you're just as important after it. You are an amazing woman. Don't ever forget it.

Love,
Jill

Story Time

2011-03-19T15:23:00.010-07:00

I thought I would take a break from adoption-related blogging to share a personal story. I've had a bit of writer's block lately and I'm hoping that telling this story will help get the words flowing a bit better. Anyway.

Today I am going to share a story about balloons.

I moved into my apartment on January 1st. It is a beautiful apartment, much nicer than I had any right to expect, but it's mine just the same. One of the things I liked about it is the sliding door in the living room that leads to a surprisingly spacious patio. The patio is shaded by a roof but also by this big gorgeous tree right outside. So I can open the curtains and let the sunshine in without raising the temperature of my apartment by 15 degrees (which is a hazard here if you've got an un-shaded window).

The day after I moved into my apartment, January 2nd, I opened the curtains to let a little light in. I discovered that three mylar balloons were attached to a tree branch outside my patio.

"Oh, how nice," I said to myself. "It's someone's birthday." They looked to me like the sort of balloons a little girl might have at her party, and I thought that perhaps my downstairs neighbors, who I hadn't yet met, had a little girl, and that they'd put the balloons in the tree for her birthday. I pictured a small party on the downstairs patio, with party hats and a pastel-iced cake and a pigtailed birthday girl.

I went to church that morning with that delightful image in my mind. When I came home from church several hours later, the balloons were still in the tree. "Perhaps," I said to myself, "the party was just this afternoon, and they haven't yet got around to taking down the decorations." When my family came over for dinner that evening, I pointed out the balloons with a smile.

The next morning, I opened the curtains so my houseplant Rufus could get some sun. To my surprise, the balloons were still in the tree. This puzzled me. Didn't the birthday girl want her balloons in the house where she could be a nuisance with them? I squinted at the pink ribbons to which the balloons were attached. To my surprise, the ribbon was not neatly tied, but rather a tangle - knots tied in knots. Closer inspection (in the form of my leaning dangerously far over the edge of my balcony) showed that the balloons were not tied to the tree branch. They were stuck to the tree branch, and it didn't look intentional.

Well, this was interesting. Some little birthday girl had lost her balloons. But I told myself, a storm was in the forecast, and the wind would certainly remove the balloons from my tree. I went inside and closed the patio door. I noticed a splash of pink on my floor. I poked at it with my foot, which turned pink. I turned around and saw the sunlight catching on the heart-shaped balloons, causing the pink to bounce from the surface of the balloons to the surface of my living room floor.

This vexed me. And as the sun rose higher, my living room was bathed in a rosy glow. This vexed me further. But, I thought, the wind was coming in a few days, and my problem would be solved. I learned to be careful in my living room when looking up, to make sure a ray of mylar-assisted sunshine didn't burn my retinas.

The storm came, and the winds blew. A large branch of the lovely tree snapped, and hundreds of leaves were blown away. The tree no longer provided quite the degree of shade it had before. This wouldn't have been a problem, except that the weather had failed me. I kept my curtains open the night of the storm, which gave proof through the night that my balloons were still there. Oh, the rain had hit them, certainly, and other storms did as well. They looked shabby indeed by the middle of February. And at this point, one of the heart balloons had conceded defeat and, deflated, was carried away by a breeze. The other heart balloon, which had by now lost a great deal of its luster, had more room to wiggle with the absence of its twin. Now I found that it was impossible to sit on the sofa and not be blinded by a piercing beam of sunlight. I couldn't predict when they'd hit. The breeze was fickle. Just when I'd convince myself it was safe, the wind would shift.

It was quite the inconvenience, but I grew used to it. After a few weeks, I even began to enjoy the flashes of blinding pink on my living room. It reminded me a bit of a suncatcher I had as a little girl. I'd enjoyed the rainbows my suncatcher made, and I learned to enjoy the pink graffiti in my living room. Where I had once checked the balloons each morning for signs of wear and tear, I now simply averted my gaze when I opened the curtains.

A few weeks ago, after a late-winter storm, I arose one morning to find that the dark pink balloon was gone!

I hardly knew what to do with myself without that last heart balloon fluttering at me in the breeze. But as the weeks passed, I grew accustomed to a single annoying balloon in my tree. I re-learned what times of day it was safe to sit on the couch or at the kitchen table. I adapted, and I marveled at the tenacity of that balloon that should have blown away ages ago.

This morning I opened my curtains as usual. I didn't think to glance outside. I was busy getting ready for work. But when I got home from work and sat down on the couch to relax for a moment, I looked out the sliding glass door to my patio, and much to my surprise ...

... the birthday balloon was gone. Only a knot of filthy ribbons remains.

And that's that.

Oh, I suppose there ought to be a moral. Good stories have morals, right? Well, let's see ...

In many ways, my experience with the balloons is a lot like life. Life is full of annoyances, some of which we have to face every single day, but if we stick it out ... um, the weather will get rid of them? Something like that. Sorry, morals aren't my forte.

But the dang balloons are finally all gone! Isn't that exciting? I'm excited.

.
.
.
.
.
.

Maybe I should stick to writing about adoption.

Jealousy

2011-03-12T17:46:00.001-07:00

I am not usually a very jealous person. My life is imperfect, but I am all too aware that everyone else's life is imperfect as well. The more I learn about other people, the happier I am that I'm myself.

I know of several couples who have had babies placed with them recently. I am so happy for them! One couple in particular were my unofficial favorites (I love you all, but sometimes I was hoping they'd be matched with before anyone else). I cried happy tears when I saw pictures of their beautiful new daughter.

But I was surprised that I also felt a little twinge of jealousy. I was confused at this emotion. I know plenty of women who are pregnant or who have newborns, and I don't feel any particular sense of envy there. Maybe it's because I've been pregnant, and I've had a baby. For some reason it's different with most adoptive couples. I've been thinking about it, and I have a theory as to why it is. I'm probably going to repeat myself because I think I've blogged about this before, so bear with me.

When I was pregnant, no one was happy for me. I can count on one hand how many times congratulations were offered. I can count on one hand the number of people who came to visit me and Roo at the hospital. What I heard most were judgments, of both my character and my fitness as a mother. These judgments weren't rendered by strangers, either. They were given by friends and family, the people who know me best. They had considered my maternity and found me lacking. The people who knew me better than anyone else felt that I had no business being a mother.

Consider now the course trajectory of the adoptive couple. People hope and pray for them to become parents. A caseworker, someone who was a stranger a few months ago, signs a sheet of paper that says they would be amazing parents, that any child would be lucky to be in their home. They may never be parents in this life, but they have been found worthy of that task if they are ever blessed with it. When it's announced that they've become parents, there is jubilation. There will be multiple baby showers, more gifts than triplet babies could ever need or use, professional photography. A wonderful couple has finally received the blessing they wanted most!

Twenty months ago, I received the blessing I wanted most, too. Where was the jubilation on my behalf?

I feel like a petulant child for writing that. Really, the world wasn't awful to me. There were people who were kind and loving and supportive. I guess I just wish there had been more than a few. I wish that it were easier for me to see myself as a mother again in a few years. Being very much single certainly doesn't help. And I suppose that's another part of the jealousy, isn't it? These couples who are certified to adopt - they may never be chosen by a birth mother, but they've at least got each other.

Don't mistake me. I really don't sit around and cry about being single. It happens on occasion, as I referenced in a previous post, but not too often. In the words of a bumper sticker, "I feel so much better since I gave up hope." It's just that my apartment is very quiet, and I get lonely sometimes, and if I'm honest this isn't the life I pictured for myself a decade ago when I started planning for my future. I thought I'd be married by now. I'm not.

So I find myself jealous of adoptive couples here and there. It's nothing I'm proud of, and I hate it when I'm this petty and self-centered. I'm happy for these people, all of them, I really am. I just wish I had a bit of what they have - a bit of any of what they have.

I'm working on it. This counts as official notice to my friends and family that when the time comes that I adopt either a highway or a zoo animal, congratulations are both expected and in order :)

18 Months

2011-03-09T11:11:00.001-07:00

Today marks 18 months since placement. I had to count back a couple of times to make sure the number was right. That means that Roo is 20 months old, which is just crazy. How could she possibly be almost two already? My tiny baby isn't a baby any more. Of course, "my" tiny baby isn't mine any more, either, but that's okay.

An acquaintance asked me the other day about Roo, and they called her my daughter. Those words threw me off a little. My daughter? I don't have a daughter. The issue of how to refer to Roo is sort of a tricky one. I've heard some birth moms use the phrase "birth daughter" or "birth son" but that never felt like a good fit for me. She's always just been my little Roo. Mine not because I'm her mother (I'm not), or because I'm her birth mother (which I am) but because I love her. I think that, no matter how old she gets or how tall she grows, she'll always just be "my little Roo" to me.

I wish the English language had better words for relationships. As much as I love English, sometimes I find it lacking. I wonder if the Germans have done any better. They have a lot of good words for which there are no English equivalents. Maybe the Germans have a proper word for what Roo is to me, or for what I am to her.

I digress.

18 months ago, my heart broke. I smashed it to bits with my signature in triplicate. I did it on purpose, and I'd do it again. Not for me, or because I enjoy suffering, or because I feel like it made me a better person. I'd do it again for Roo, because she was worth it. I was asked once, "How could you place your baby?" All I can say in response is, how could I not? How could I look at all the things she could have with P and M and tell her no? I couldn't. I couldn't settle when it came to Roo.

I am so very happy with the life Roo has. I couldn't ask for anything more for her. Well, maybe a baby brother at some point. (Roo would be awesome with a baby brother. She's very sweet with her dolls.) But, babies aside, Roo has everything I wanted for her. She has an amazing family and a delightfully happy life. How could I not be happy when she's doing so well?

My heart shattered 18 months ago.

It's better now.

No News is Good News

2011-03-03T11:41:00.003-07:00

I feel like I've been neglecting my blog lately. I used to blog much more frequently, and I had a lot more to say, and I felt very passionately about the things that I wrote.

I don't mean to imply that I feel any less strongly about what I write anymore, but it's true that I don't feel the burning desire to blog as much as I used to. I've started ten different posts in the past month and I haven't finished any of them. I just don't care as much.

Let me hasten to assure you that this is a good thing. Blogging is a wonderful outlet for me when I need to work things through and when I have something I want to say. I just don't have as much to say or to work through these days. I'm probably a more boring person for it, but I really am very happy with the adoption part of my life lately. Roo is flourishing (have I bragged yet about how she learned to count to ten ages ago?), I'm pleased with the level of openness I have with P and M, and I haven't had an adoption-related crying fit in weeks. Those times when I miss Roo - Roo today, newborn Roo, or the Roo who might have been - or get to thinking too much about how hard placement was, or think about the heartbreak faced by people I know and love who want to adopt, those times don't come up as much anymore.

Which isn't to say that I haven't cried. I'm going to be brutally honest here and confess that every time I hear of the engagement or (planned) pregnancy of a girl who is not old enough to rent a car, I go into a little sad downward spiral and if it happens two or three times in a week, I'll sob into a tray of marshmallow Peeps for a few minutes. I've hidden a lot of these people on Facebook (19-year-olds, all) because their constant chirping about stupid things ("Soooo glad I'm getting married so I don't have to finish college!") brings out Crabby, Bitter Old Jill, and I'm trying to tramp her down until I'm at least thirty.

Where was I?

Right. Adoption. I am in such a good place with adoption right now! I am very happy with how things have worked out for Roo and for me. I cannot even begin to say what a perfectly wonderful, amazing, sweet and clever toddler my little Roo is. I am so happy for her and the life that she has. If someone had told me 18 months ago that today I would have the peace that I do, I would have snapped at them and told them to keep such comments to themselves, only not that nicely. For sure, not that nicely. And then I would have cried about it.

I'm not sure what the turning point was for me. I'm not sure when it got easier to the point that it was just easy. I've tried to look back over the past few months and see what's made the difference. I can't say exactly. To be fair, life is not all unicorns and rainbows. I am perfectly miserable about a lot of different things right now, and a few days ago I cried for a few minutes at the sight of something that reminded me of when I was a mother. But it passed. It always does.

I placed my little girl for adoption, and I am happy. Roo is happy, so I am happy.

I'm not done blogging. Not by a long shot. Neither am I naive enough to think that because I've got such peace now, my days of adoption-related sob-fests are over. But my lows aren't nearly as low, or as frequent. So, the times when more and more days pass between blog posts? Those are good things. No news from me is good news.

If you read this right after I posted it you'll notice that I've edited this post. Someone sent me a super nasty message about it a few hours ago and to keep my migraine at bay, I cut the offending sentences. For the record, I don't hate anyone who marries young (Aubrey married young and I seriously heart her), and I am not a malicious, mean, sad little woman. But thank you, message-sender, for your vitriol. I found your opinions highly amusing.

2011-02-24T12:10:00.002-07:00

Did you know that Glenn Beck's son was adopted? Maybe you did. It's probably one of those things that people who know a lot about adoption already knew. But I'm a little slow, and I only just discovered that the other day when I read birth mom Brit's blog. Her post (here) included a fantastic quote from Glenn's address at the 2007 FSA National Conference. You can read both Glenn's and wife Tania's remarks *here* at the American Fork FSA blog. I read them, and while I very much liked the entire text, one thing in particular jumped out at me from the end of Glenn's talk:

I know with everything in me that our children selected us in the premortal existence. I know that we stood around and we were honored when that soul looked at us and said, “I want you as my dad, and I want you as my mom. Somehow or another we’ll find each other.” It’s not just getting any child. It’s sometimes waiting for that soul who is trying desperately to fulfill their side of the bargain and to fulfill what you guys set out to do in the first place and to be reunited with his family for time and all eternity.

Isn't that beautiful? I believe it. I absolutely do, and no one will ever convince me otherwise. My little Roo, this tiny girl I love so very much, wasn't supposed to be my daughter. She was meant to grow in my belly, but she was meant to be with P and M. I know it. She knew it, too. When she met P and M for the first time, it was as if she already knew them. I believe that she did. She knew who was holding her. She knew they already loved her.

As impossibly hard as placement was, I have never doubted for a second that Roo is in the right place, in the right family. I am so grateful that I was led to P and M, because how sad would it be if Roo wasn't their daughter? Last Friday was the first time that I looked in the mirror and saw maybe a little of what people mean when they say that Roo looks like me. It surprised me - it always surprises me to see any of myself in Roo, because she is a [P and M's last name] through and through. She is perfectly suited to their family. She is their daughter. She's exactly what and who I would expect a child of theirs to be. I love it!

I don't think that I could have said so a year ago. Not because it was any less true, but because for a while I clung to the belief that being this happy with where Roo is was some sort of betrayal of my affection for her. I felt like if I willingly, even happily acknowledged that she was where God meant for her to be, it must mean that I loved her less. Lies! Believe me when I say that I would bleed for that little girl in half a heartbeat. There is nothing in this world that I wouldn't do for her. I love her every bit as much as I ever have, with everything I have in me. She has my heart, and she always will.

There are those who say that the idea of adoption being "meant to be" is a crock, that this is all happenstance, people trying to make the best of a bad situation. Maybe it is for some people. I can't speak for anyone but myself. But it's not that way for me. I believe with everything I have in me that my Father in Heaven meant for Roo to grow in my belly but grow up with P and M. I believe that He has a hand in each of our lives, and that He loves us so much more than we can ever begin to understand.

I don't have words to say how grateful I am to be Roo's birth mother. Just by being born, she helped me get to where I needed to be. I'm glad I could return the favor.

Sisters

2011-02-20T12:38:00.001-07:00

My sister called me a few weeks ago.

That's not a newsflash. She calls on a somewhat regular basis and we'll talk for a while, usually until one of her children attempts to do bodily harm to one of the other two. It's good to talk. I don't know why, but my sister and I get along at least a thousand times better on the phone than we do in person. Perhaps it's something residual from childhood, when I lived to annoy her, and she lived to let me know how annoying she found me. In person, we are awkward personified.

But on the phone it's easier. Maybe it's the thousands of miles between us, the knowledge that if one of us says something stupid, it's easy to avoid each other until the stupidity wears off. On the phone, we can be grown-ups. We can pretend that things between us have always been sunshine and ponies.

I'm told that when I was very young, we got along just fine. My sister didn't like to share things, but I was cute and little and only capable of being a certain kind of annoying. But we shared a room, and the older we got, the less comfortable that room became. We are two very different people, my sister and I. All I wanted in the world was to be just like her. All she wanted was to be left alone. I've lost track of how many hurtful words were exchanged, but I do know exactly how much of my therapy has been spent with me sobbing and asking John (my therapist) why my big sister couldn't just love me.

But I have an excellent therapist. He helped me to get past so much and understand that I didn't have to hold on to the past - I could let go, I needed to let go, and I would be happier when I did. I let go. I finally felt like I was in a really good place with my sister. I no longer cared if she ever changed. I was happy with me, and I was happy with her.

Then I got pregnant.

I don't remember how much I've said before about my sister's reaction to my pregnancy. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that she was not in the "I'll support you no matter what" camp. She made a half-joking offer to adopt my baby, and then spent the next several months telling me via e-mail why my baby deserved better than to have me as a mother. Thousands of dollars of therapy flew out the window. It was like I was seven years old again, crying to my mother that my sister had hurt my feelings. (My mother was unwilling as ever to take sides.)

If I thought that placement would ease that particular pain, I was wrong. I was in the lowest place I'd ever been, and I needed love and support more than ever. Instead, what I got (from my sister and the younger of my brothers) was that I'd done the quote-unquote right thing, and I needed to move on.

My depression turned to rage, especially when my sister announced her pregnancy. It took every iota of self-control I possessed to keep from throwing her words right back at her - "I know you think you're attached to this baby because you're pregnant, but ..." being among my favorites. When my niece turned nine weeks old, I fought the beast within me to keep from calling and shouting to my sister, "You've had nine weeks with her. Was it enough for you? Can you possibly begin to imagine not being her mother after this? Why don't you hand your baby to another couple to raise, right now, after two months, and tell me that the so-called right choice should have been clear and easy."

I didn't. I am immensely proud of that fact. No good would have come of it. A few months later my sister sent me e-mail with a sort of apology for her behavior. I don't want to get into it, because it's private, but suffice it to say that her apology irritated me almost more than that for which she apologized. Apparently, e-mail isn't any better than in person for us. It's a telephone call or nothing.

My sister came to the valley for a visit in September. It was marginally less awkward than usual. We did bond a bit during several phone calls about my mother's lightening-fast engagement and wedding. I suppose that the incomprehensibility of my mother's behavior was the common ground we needed to sort of start over. I remembered what I'd learned in therapy, and I decided I could start over as many times as I needed to.

I digress. That's not what I wanted to write about. I love my big sister. We're in a good place now, I think - unless, of course, she reads my blog (doubtful but still possible), and the preceding hurt her feelings. I hope it didn't. It honestly wasn't meant to. There have been enough hurt feelings between us over the years that I'm certainly not aiming to add to them. I really do love my sister. I'm not mad anymore. The past is past. This post was supposed to be a happy thing about something that meant a lot to me, and now I'm just blathering, aren't I?

Again, I digress.

My sister called me a few weeks ago. We shot the proverbial breeze for a few minutes. Then something happened that hit me like a Taser. My sister asked me about Roo. She wanted to know how my visit went, and how Roo was doing. I don't think my sister has ever once asked me for this kind of specific information. I hardly knew what to say. I had so many questions I wanted to fire back at her - why was she asking? Why now? Had she read any of my blog? Was she taking uppers? Did seeing her own little girl grow and change help her to see a sliver of what placement had cost me? Did she feel bad for being like everyone else and pretending I never had a baby at all? I bit them back. I decided I didn't need to know.

I answered her questions - what words Roo knows, how well she's walking, how happy she is, what a great visit we had. It was fantastic - it was glorious! I could hear my niece jabbering in the background, and I asked my sister about her little girl. I talked about my baby, she talked about hers. Just like we were two normal people. Like there had never been any awkwardness between us. Like we were dear old friends.

Like sisters.

Guest Blog Alert!

2011-02-15T11:43:00.004-07:00

Today I am guest-posting over at A Love Worth Waiting For, which is my friend Lyndsie's blog. She and her husband are hoping to adopt. They already have so much love and appreciation for adoption, which is awesome. They will be great parents.

My post is *here* if you want to give it a read. There have been several recent guest posts and they're all amazing. You should check them out!

Formspring Revisited: Single Parents

2011-02-13T15:49:00.001-07:00

I was asked this question months ago and I thought it was a good one.

Are you friends with any single parents? Is that hard?

I am friends with two single mothers, but they're both also birth mothers, so that situation isn't hard. Both chose adoption for their second children because they knew firsthand how hard single parenting was. I respect them greatly. I think that the decision to place must be that much harder when you're a mother already, and you know you can be a single parent.

Beyond those I consider friends, I am acquainted with several single mothers, and I don't wish to sound insensitive, but seeing how hard their lives are makes me happy that Roo doesn't have to deal with the drama of having a single mom. So, far from it being hard for me, it actually helps reinforce the decision I made. I don't envy them their lives for a second. If it works for them, fine, but it's not something I wanted for myself or for my baby.

That's how I feel now. Things were different when I was pregnant and considering adoption. Seeing single mothers was a lot harder. I always sort of felt that adoption was right, and I was certainly pressured by some people to choose adoption. I'd see single moms, many of them younger and less stable than I was, and I'd think, how come they get to keep their babies and I don't? Why did they get congratulations when all I get is warnings and unsolicited advice? It seemed grossly unfair. It still does, actually. I am a firm believer that if a woman announces she's pregnant, she should be congratulated almost no matter what her circumstances (almost, because sometimes bad things happen that result in a pregnancy). I don't care if she's single, on welfare, living in a van down by the river and has five other children. Babies are awesome. Congratulations are in order (she's already pregnant, so being a jerk about it, even if you feel she's made a mistake, won't change a darn thing).

I digress.

It bothered me that the girls I'd worked with at the hair salon, girls barely out of their teens with strange tattoos and piercings and ex-con boyfriends, got to keep their surprise babies and I, essentially a good, responsible girl, had to give mine up.

But I don't feel that way any more. I wouldn't trade lives with any of them. I didn't give my baby up. I gave her the best life I could. I didn't want her to have a single mother, even if that single mother was me.

Encore?

2011-02-07T21:15:00.001-07:00

When you're a birth mom, you're going to get certain questions. Plenty of them are stupid and insulting and irritating, but you get used to them after a while. You come up with your own carefully crafted responses or ways to brush them off, and they're neither a big deal, nor very thought-provoking.

But some of the questions you get are worth sincere responses, and some of them are worth pondering. I get asked one of those questions every now and then - if I could go back and do it all over again, would I still place Roo with P and M? The answer is, absolutely, unequivocally yes. I would do it again in a second, no question. It has been the best thing in the world for Roo, and things haven't worked out too badly for me, either.

There's another question that sometimes goes along with the first, and it's one I want to answer today. If I found out tomorrow that I was pregnant, would I choose adoption again? Of course, if I found out tomorrow that I was pregnant, I would probably feature prominently in a number of medical journals as the first case of human parthenogenesis. (I cannot even believe that word passed my spell check.) I'm stronger now than I used to be. I can't conceive (no pun intended) of ever again being in a position where I would have to consider adoption.

I don't mean to disparage any birth moms who are in that position, though. Every person and every situation is different. I am NOT going to judge. I know of a strong, amazing woman who has placed two children. I am in awe of her strength. But in my case, with the person I am now, if I'm ever pregnant again, my husband is going to be the first person I tell.

But let's just say that's not the case. Let's pretend I ended up in a similar situation to the one I was in a couple of years ago. Would I place a second child for adoption? Obviously, things have worked out well with Roo's situation. I'd like to say that because of that, a repeat scenario would automatically mean adoption, no question, and the decision would be easy.

I'm not sure it would. I'm sure that adoption would be among the first thoughts to cross my mind, but I doubt very much that the decision would be an easy one. Adoption is never an easy choice. I still remember the acute pain of placement. It's not so far behind me that I can't remember it with clarity. I don't think I could quickly decide to put myself through that again. When I told family members I was pregnant, they all seemed to think the right choice was obvious - of course I was going to place my baby. How could I even think about anything else?

I could think about other things because I loved my baby so much already, and I wanted to be her mommy. Just thinking about being separated from my little girl was too much for me to handle when I was pregnant. It was too upsetting. I would love a second child just as much, and want to be his or her mommy just as badly. I don't think it would be a single iota less painful to consider adoption the second time around. I think it might actually be more painful, because I'd imagine that doing it all a second time would bring back the pain of the first time, and I would miss Roo that much more.

Would adoption be an automatic, a given? Absolutely not.

But the fact is, this hypothetical second child would deserve everything that Roo deserves. How could I deny baby #2 the things I insisted on for Roo? Baby #2 would be just as precious, just as loved - just as deserving of the kind of life Roo has. How could I justify placing Roo but parenting a second child? I couldn't. My own pain would be as selfish a reason the second time as it was the first.

I think that ultimately I would have to place a second child, too, for the sake of that child and my own peace of mind. But it would be an agonizing process, and knowing what I was in for would likely make it that much worse. That's why I am never going to be in that position again. I didn't enjoy it the first time. It's not going to happen again.

Unrealistic Expectations

2011-02-03T12:07:00.001-07:00

Someone e-mailed me a question a few weeks ago and I've been sort of sitting on it since then, unsure of exactly how to answer it because I'm unsure of exactly what the point of the question was.

But I've been thinking about it, and I've got an idea or two about what I want to say, and so here it is.

The question (I've paraphrased):
Do you ever think that your blog might give birthmothers an unrealistic idea about openness and their relationship with their baby's adoptive parents? Or that potential adoptive parents might get wrong ideas about their birth mom's maturity and the relationship they might have?

My knee-jerk response is to be a bit defensive - understandably, in my opinion. My story and the people in it are all precious to me, and I turn into an angry mama bear if I feel like my adoption story is being criticized at all. Take exception to me and my personality and attitude if you want, but you'd just better leave P and M out of it.

But as I've thought about it, I think I can sort of see where this question is going. Mine is a happy adoption story. Maybe it seems too good to be true to people who have had unhappy adoption experiences. Of course, I think y'all know how I feel about people who let their bad experiences ruin things for the rest of us. But I thought, maybe the question-asker is in the pre-placement phase of adoption and isn't sure what to expect. I like that point of view better, and that's the one I will respectfully address here.

As I said, Roo's adoption story is a happy one. It started off as a happy sad, and now it's mostly a happy happy. This is my blog, and I tell the adoption story I know best. I've tried to emphasize that my story is just that: mine. I don't pretend to speak for anyone else, or set myself up as an example of how everyone's adoption should be. I'm not saying, this is how your adoption should be, or how it could be. I'm saying, this is how mine is - it's imperfect, but it works.

I'm acutely aware that my situation is what many would consider a best-case scenario. I know that a lot of people aren't as lucky as I am in that regard. But you know what? There are a lot of negative, angry adoption stories clogging the internet, and I feel like my happy story helps to balance them out.

Every adoption is different, because every person is different and they're going to relate to other people differently. My story - Roo's story - is the way it is because of who I am, and who P and M are. The only adoption in the world that is going to be like Roo's is ... well, Roo's. I do think that maybe my story is an example of the potential that there is in an open adoption and of the kind of growth and healing that openness can foster. If all the parties involved are mature and willing to communicate with each other and be honest, open adoption can be an amazing, wonderful thing.

But it depends on who you are, and where you are in life, and if you're willing to work for it. You get out of a relationship just what you put into it. I'm not going to say that my relationship with Roo's parents is perfect - far from it, with my lousy people skills! - but I do feel like it gets better as time passes. It is continually evolving, and I do feel like we're in a place where if anything needed to change or needed to be said, it could probably be changed or said. I think that's the important thing - not that we're at some level of openness that others perceive to be ideal, but that what we've got works for us, and that we're comfortable discussing things when we need to.

I'll say it again - my relationship with P and M is far from perfect. But no relationship is perfect! Not a single one. People are imperfect. I am an abysmal communicator, and I made mistakes early on in our relationship that I'd take back if I could. But we love each other. They are Roo's parents, and I love them. No matter what happens, I know that P and M love me, too, and most important, they love Roo. I'm not going to say that love conquers all, but it helps.

So, I guess the short answer (I'm no good at those) is that, no, I don't think it does. I'm going to credit my blog readers with being smart enough to know I'm just one person writing about one experience.

Outreach

2011-01-28T17:37:00.001-07:00

I have been busy lately.

Busy is something sort of new for me. I'm not sure I like it yet. I haven't had time to decide. It is nice to have my days full. The less time I have to sit around, the less time I have to decide I am dissatisfied with some aspect of my life. Most of my time is accounted for, and I'm okay with it. It's nice to have things to do.

When I decided to go back to school this semester, I figured that was it for doing adoption outreach. I have school in the morning and work in the afternoon. It made me a little sad to think about, actually, because I love doing outreach presentations. But what could I do?

What I did was jump at the chance to present a week ago Wednesday, because instead of speaking with just any adoptive mom, I had the chance to speak with Roo's mom, M! I'd never done a presentation with her before. I know she's heard my rambling story several times at adoption academies and the like. I've heard her and P's story a few times in bits and pieces. But we've never had the chance to speak together. How could I turn down the chance? I'm blessed with a very kind, very reasonable supervisor at work. My schedule was rearranged.

I don't typically get very nervous about speaking. I never really have. Most people dislike public speaking but I love it. Given a topic and five minutes to prepare, I think I could comfortably address the United Nations. High schoolers are no sweat. But this time I was nervous. I wanted to do well because M was there. I think I felt like I needed to do well to keep from detracting from M's story. I spoke first. I rambled. Boy, did I ramble! I think I overdid the rambling. My words got mixed up, which happens sometimes when too many of them pile up in my brain. As I was speaking I thought, I didn't need to mention this. I should have said that. I forgot something important.

I usually think that, though. I mean, it's a difficult thing, isn't it? Trying to explain to a room full of teenagers that desperately loving my little girl and placing her for adoption aren't mutually exclusive. Just saying "It was the best thing for her" feels insufficient. Even here on my blog, where I have seemingly infinite time to write and edit, I struggle with explaining my decision properly. I'm not sure that the words I want to use actually exist.

Every time I finish speaking to a high school class, I wonder if any of them really understand. I think that when you're younger love is a selfish sort of thing. As an adolescent, it's like that song - you always hurt the one you love. Part of growing up, of being a parent, is hurting for the one you love, hurting so they don't have to.

Well, shoot. Why couldn't I have said that on Wednesday? Oh well. I reckon I did well enough. I only cried once, during the same part of my recitation that always makes me cry. I'm not sure why, but when I talk about seeing newborn Roo for the first time, I turn into a faucet. But I mostly just teared up this time. I wonder if one of these days I'll get through without crying at all.

Then it was M's turn. I loved hearing her speak. I had the thought that the story that she was telling was probably similar to the story she will tell Roo someday about how they became a family. I think I cried more at M's story than at mine. Infertility is simply heartbreaking. I've always thought so in the abstract, but hearing the personal experience of someone I love so much just killed me. But P and M are strong. They weren't content to accept that they wouldn't be parents. Now they have two smart, beautiful little girls. They are a family who can handle anything life throws at them. How lucky is Roo to grow up with that? And how lucky am I that I get to see it?

I am a spoiled girl, really. I know that openness is supposed to be just as beneficial for the adoptee, but while she's still so small, I feel like I get the better end of the bargain.

I could tell during the presentation that it was a little weird for some of the students to see me and M together. I don't know if they could wrap their brains around the two of us being in the same room, sitting next to each other, talking to each other like good friends. I wish I'd thought to explain that better. M is Roo's mommy, the only person I know of who loves Roo as much as I do - she's the only other person who has been Roo's mother. How could I not love M dearly? How could I not be her friend?

It's probably a foreign concept to most people - that a birth mother and the adoptive mother she placed with keep track of each other and stay in each other's lives. It's not what you hear about in the media. It's not what people expect. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Guest Post

2011-01-24T11:07:00.005-07:00

Today I am guest posting on my friend Brittany's blog. Have I ever said how much I love her blog? I love her blog. Click on over HERE and check it out. Or, if you prefer to go directly to my post, click HERE instead.

My post is part of a series of guest posts on phantoms in adoption. It is awesome. The series, not my post. Not that my post isn't awesome, but they're all awesome.

The good news, if you've missed my regularly scheduled blathering, is that I got a bunch of writing done this weekend when I was supposed to be doing homework, so I should be able to post a bit more regularly. In the meantime, for today, there's the guest post.

Busy

2011-01-21T23:27:00.001-07:00

I have been quite the blog slacker lately. It's not that I'm out of things to say. The day I'm out of opinions is the day I stop breathing. I have meant to blog. I know I have. I remember thinking on more than one occasion that I needed to blog about something, and then suddenly a week has passed. I don't know where the time goes, really. One minute I was unemployed and living with my mother, and the next thing I know, I've got my own apartment, I'm working for the county, and I'm back in college for the umpteenth time.

How did that happen? The days used to stretch ahead of me like an open road. Now weeks pass and I remember nothing. It used to take me hours to fall asleep at night. Now I can barely stay awake long enough to pray. I used to eat out of boredom. Now my stomach will growl before bed and I'll realize I haven't eaten in ten hours (hello, unhealthy weight loss). I have become what I used to loathe - Busy. I have become one of the Busy People.

We all know Busy People. They're the people you can't even say hello to without first scheduling an appointment. Any question that begins with "Can you ...?" is never answered immediately - a BlackBerry or day planner is whipped out, a schedule checked. The response is usually that they can't - they're too busy. I used to wonder at that. Who were these people who scheduled their lives so tightly that they couldn't spare five minutes here or there to have a conversation? Why would they do that to themselves? I'm not sure they know. I don't. I'm sure I could come up with something if I thought about it, but I haven't had the time. I'm too busy.

I am so far behind on answering e-mail that it is ludicrous. I've started and abandoned probably a dozen blog posts. Mail is piled up on my counter. I've been in my apartment for three weeks now and I still have boxes stacked up. The walls are bare except for a lone clock. I have things to hang up, things to unpack, things to write, things to say. I'm just too busy.

But I got off work tonight, drove home, and realized that for once, I had the evening free, and tomorrow as well. What am I going to do with all of this free time? The answer, of course, is that I'm going to catch up on all the things I've neglected in the past few weeks. Which means that I think I'm going to be busy.

Lucky

2011-01-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago at my birth mom group, one of the caseworkers mentioned how, years and years ago, a birth mother would likely never see or hold her baby - nurses would whisk the newborn away because it was thought that it would be easier that way.

I knew all this, of course. I've read as much as the next person (assuming the next person has an interest in adoption) about adoption in this country and how it has changed over the years. The fact that a birth mother in the '50s or '60s would never see her baby wasn't new information. But for some reason, when the caseworker said this, I thought of my mom's birth mother.

I've written about her before. I never think of her without marveling at her strength. She would never know what became of the tiny baby girl she loved so much. This was typical of an adoption in 1957. But, perhaps because of the situation - my great-grandfather being the hospital administrator - Roberta got to hold my mother, her baby girl. She had at least one evening with her that I know of (my mom was born at dinnertime), and I think most of the night as well.

I don't think I ever appreciated until that moment a few weeks ago how remarkable that really was! I suppose that if Roberta had placed with any other family, delivery would have been goodbye. How serendipitous, how lovely, that she placed instead with my grandparents! I like to imagine that the hours she spent with her newborn daughter were among the most precious ones in her memory. I hope that they gave her comfort.

After I'd signed my placement paperwork but before I handed Roo over to her parents, I had a few minutes alone with my little girl. I whispered things to her. I told her how much I loved her, and how much her parents loved her, and how happy she was going to be. I think that Roberta must have done much the same thing with her baby girl.

I wonder if she knew how unusual her situation was - if she knew how lucky she was to have that goodbye time. I wonder if she knew of any other birth mothers to compare her situation to. I doubt that she did. In those days, it was a shameful secret. As far as I know, Roberta never told a soul about the baby she placed. I marvel that she was able to carry the weight of that burden alone for all those years. I wonder where she found the strength.

I am more thankful for Roberta than I can say. Her love and sacrifice gave my mother a beautiful, happy, wonderful life. I hope that some day Roo will feel the same way about me.

Nerves - A Confession

2011-01-11T23:52:00.001-07:00

I'm a little hesitant to talk about this, because I'm not sure exactly who reads this blog. There are a few people who I think might read it, and I'm not sure what they'll make of this or think about it or do with the information. I'm also not sure I want to admit to being this neurotic and ridiculous. But in the interest of recording my life as a birth mother, I'm going to write it out anyway and hope that no one's IP has changed (I block a few), and that none of my readers are feeling judgmental. So, here goes.

I almost had a heart attack at Wal-Mart on Saturday night.

Oh, probably not a real heart attack or anything. But I definitely felt like I'd been kicked in the chest, and all the blood in my body shot straight into my cheeks. Another few seconds and I think I would have passed out cold on the filthy floor.

I thought I saw H standing by one of the checkout counters.

I shouldn't have been as shocked as I was, really. The Wal-Mart that I was at is right by his house. I never used to go to it before, but the place I moved to is not at all - at ALL - far from where H lives. Happenstance, really, but the place is perfect for me and I really felt strongly that this is where I'm supposed to be now. When I realized the proximity to H's apartment, I hesitated briefly. I thought to myself that it was only a matter of time before I ran into him somewhere. Could I handle it if I did?

I told myself that I could, that I was a grown-up, that I'd been in therapy for years, that I was mature and calm and collected. I envisioned several scenarios in which I would see H somewhere, and in each one, I was respectful and level-headed and escaped relatively unscathed. I thought, I've got this. I can do this. I can look at and speak to the man like a civilized adult. I felt confident. If anyone ought to be worried, I thought, it was H. How would he react to seeing me? Yeah, I thought, that's what I want to know. Me, I can handle. I can be the bigger person.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am full of crap. Because when I thought I saw him that night, I had a vagal nerve reaction the likes of which I've never dreamed of before. I realized after a few seconds of gaping that the man in front of me was not, in fact, H. I realized after a few more seconds that he didn't even resemble H that closely. I tried to calm down, to shake it off and find what I'd come into the store to buy. But I was spooked. I now half-expected to see H in every aisle. I all but sprinted to the back of the grocery section to get my French toast sticks. Three times more I thought I saw H. Twice it was a man pushing a cart with two small children. The third time it was a woman.

I scanned the store so many times while I was in line that if anyone had been watching me they probably would have expected me to bolt from the store without paying. When I finally got out to the parking lot, I searched anxiously for H's car before dashing for my own and hightailing it back to my place.

I feel like the biggest freaking idiot in the world. What is wrong with me? Why should the thought of seeing H again terrify me so much? He's not a monster. He's just an immature, stubborn man ... and, in a manner of speaking, I took something from him that I can't give back, nor would I give back, which is to say, his daughter. He's bound to be angry about that, isn't he? Or maybe he's shoved that down the way he seemed to do with all of the other emotions he didn't know how to deal with. Maybe he doesn't even think about it any more.

Would that be worse, I wonder? Which would make me feel sicker - knowing that he is still seething with rage, or that he is completely apathetic? I'm not sure. And although I was wrong about being mature and able to handle seeing him again even if just in passing at a discount store, I do still wonder what his reaction to me would be. I mean, we had a baby together. Surely I must cross his mind occasionally, right?

I think I'd feel like less of a spaz for freaking out if knew that the thought of seeing me again freaked him out too. But then, I'm not sure I want him thinking about me often enough to have considered seeing me again. I know I'd be happier if the thought hadn't occurred to me. Until I moved, I thought about H really very little. It was nice. I was happy that way. I love my new place, but I hate that moving here has made me think so much about H again.

Then again, as I said, we had a baby together. I'm probably going to think about H on and off for a very long time. I sort of hate that. I mean, I am appreciative of his genetic contribution. I am very pleased with the results. Roo couldn't be any more adorable or clever or cute or sweet or smart. But I wish that I could think about Roo without having to think of half of the reason she's here.

This is one of those weeks where I really wish my therapist hadn't decided we should cut back to one session a month. I mean, I thought I was quote-unquote over H, for the most part. I really thought I could just be cool about him. What does it mean for me that I'm not, that I can't? How am I ever supposed to have a relationship again when I feel like the specter of H is always hovering nearby on account of my having had a baby with him? I mean, it's probably going to be a heavy enough thing for most guys that I'm a birth mother. The fact that I almost threw up when I thought I saw my ex? That just can't be healthy. It can't be normal. Nothing about being a birth mother is normal, of course. But I figure many birth moms have a wee bit more closure and resolution than I do. Things ended strangely and rather abruptly between me and H. I reckon I'm as much to blame as he is.

The last time I saw him was at the end of November 2008. I was barely two months pregnant at the time. We were supposed to get together again to talk things over but it never happened. We didn't talk on the phone at all. It was either e-mail or instant message or text. After a while, even that stopped. I don't blame H for that. I'm pretty sure I told him to be fruitful and multiply (but not in those words) and to never contact me again. It felt like the right move at the time, but in retrospect I guess I just wish I had a bit more closure. I think that if I did, I wouldn't have had such an insanely extreme overreaction.

I like to tell myself that I am done with H, that I am completely over him, but when things like this happen I am reminded of how many things went unsaid and how unsatisfactory our break-up was. But I'm never going to get that closure, and I have to learn to be okay with that. I have to learn to let go. I have to learn to handle difficult situations. Most importantly, I have to learn to check the parking lot for H's car before I enter a store.

18 Months

2011-01-07T20:57:00.002-07:00

Time was, I used to count Roo's age and the time since placement in weeks. I knew the exact number for both, and even if I didn't blog about it I made a mental note each week, and on the 7th and 9th of each month. I don't do that so much anymore. I have to stop and count back these days to figure out the number, and I can't do weeks anymore. It's months, and I get them mixed up. I have to use my fingers to count it out most of the time.

I guess that the more time passes, the less each week is a milestone of sorts. I remember when the 7th was always a big thing for me. I'd have in mind for days ahead of time that Roo was going to be another month older. These days it'll be the 19th or 20th and I'll think, wait, Roo's gotten a little older. But I've been thinking about today for a few days now, because it's a bit more milestone-y than usual.

Roo is 18 months old today! I've always felt like 18 months was sort of the unofficial dividing line between baby and full-fledged toddler. Roo has been toddling like a pro for months now, but it seems like it's only been in the past few weeks that she's really started to seem more grown up. Did I mention she can count to ten? Little genius, my Roo. (Although she gets her genius from her mommy and daddy - they're both very clever people.)

She gets to go to the nursery in church on Sunday. That sort of blows my mind. How did she get to be so big already? I've got this mental block when it comes to Roo getting older. I think that in my mind part of her will always be a baby. I'm always a little surprised by pictures of her, because she always looks older than I expect. It's as though placement slowed her aging in my mind to maybe one month for every three that really pass. When Roo goes to kindergarten, my brain is going to explode.

I don't really have anything deep or insightful to say about the passage of time - only that the world has been a happier, brighter place for 18 months now, and I think that's a pretty awesome thing.

Why?

2011-01-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

Most of this is lifted from my Formspring but I'm still without Internet access so I thought I'd cheat a little to tide y'all over until I can post regularly again.

There's a question that I seem to be getting a lot lately - why did I choose adoption after nine weeks? What changed for me? I've probably been asked at least three times in as many weeks. I'm not saying it's an unreasonable question. I can see why people might be curious. Of course, I've always felt like my blog was pretty self-explanatory. But then I went back through some of the archives – not much of it, because I hate my own writing in retrospect, but the pertinent stuff – and I discovered that I've been a bit nebulous about this particular issue. I apologize.

I got the question in my Formspring a few weeks ago but I sort of let it float for a while because for some reason, I didn't like the way it was asked. I'm not blaming the asker. I think I was in a funny mood when I read it, and I get a bit defensive about my placement story. I think to me it felt a little accusatory – like I'd changed my mind about wanting to be Roo's mother after having the job for a while, which absolutely wasn't the case. I didn't feel differently. If there was a difference, I wanted it even more than I did right after she was born.

This is a topic that is very dear and precious to me, and so I want to say this carefully and not write down the wrong thing. It's important! How can I best explain this without sharing things that are sacred to me?

Let me phrase it thus: I always knew what Roo deserved, and what she needed. My biggest obstacle to choosing adoption was my fear that it would undo me, that the pain of placement would be more than I could bear. Of course, nine weeks of motherhood is only going to sharpen that kind of pain, isn't it? And I reckon it did, although it's the only way I know. I don't know what it would have been like to place right after Roo was born.

I wanted to be Roo's mommy as soon as I knew she was growing in my belly. I want to make that much abundantly clear. It was never an issue of me changing my mind about being a single mother. Rather, the more time that passed, the more my love grew for that little girl, and the more I loved her the harder it became to deny her what I knew she needed the very most.

When Roo was seven weeks old, I came to realize something important. I realized that although adoption might mean abject misery for myself, not choosing adoption meant abject misery for Roo and for me. I had caught glimpses over the weeks of what Roo's life might be like as she got older, and they terrified me. I came to the point where I knew I would never be able to forgive myself, to live with myself, if I didn't do what was best for my precious baby.

There are other factors and elements that are too personal and private to share, but that's the short version. Basically, I'm a little slow - sometimes it takes me a while to do the right thing. But I did eventually, and that's what's important. I have never regretted it for a second. I would place Roo with P and M again in a heartbeat.

2011-01-01T08:51:00.004-07:00

I've never been one for resolutions, at least not of the new year's variety. It always seemed stupid to me for people to wait until a new year to make changes, or to feel like the whole year is shot if something doesn't happen by February.

I'm more of a new day's resolution person. Why should I limit myself? If I wake up one morning and decide I want to do something, I do it. For instance, I decided in mid-October that I wanted to lose a bit of weight, meaning I would be quote-unquote dieting through my birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Can I brag? I've done fairly well thus far, I think I'm down about twenty pounds. And I still ate a lot of crap.

Anyway. As such, I haven't set any goals for the year yet. My goal for the day is simply to get moved in to my new apartment. I've never moved by myself before. This should be interesting. I'm not really sure how fast a lot of things are going to be taken care of - like the internet. I might be without for a few days. So if I don't blog or answer e-mail, it's not because I don't love you :)

I'm not really sure why I thought it would be a good idea to move on January 1st. I guess I figured, hey, that's the first day of my lease, let's get this thing done. I hadn't counted on this cold spell going on in the greater Phoenix area. It actually snowed in Mesa a few days ago. Snow! And if I'm not mistaken, it is currently below freezing outside. And guess who packed up all of her heavy winter clothes? All in boxes in storage, including this lovely warm Aran-knit sweater I bought in Galway. In my defense, it's usually in the 70s here this time of year. I remember feeling stupid for even buying such a sweater, because when was I ever going to need it in Phoenix? Thursday, and yesterday, and today, for three. And it's in a mystery box.

Happy 2011, blog peeps! Stay warm.

Ch-Ch-Changes

2010-12-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me the other day that I haven't really said much lately about how things are going right now as far as adoption goes. I don't have much to say about it, I guess. I mean, I could go on for days about last Wednesday's practically perfect visit with P and M and their darling daughters. I could write pages about Roo's eyebrows alone (she has very expressive eyebrows). But I feel like I'm in a really good place with adoption in general and my adoption situation in particular. I am content. I still have my moments where I miss Roo terribly, but more and more I find that the Roo I miss isn't the Roo that exists now. I miss the newborn Roo who was mine and I'm sad for what never was, not for what is. Roo has a wonderful life. I am so happy for her!

So, adoption's great. It's the rest of my life that's a bit untidy at present. And when I say "a bit untidy" what I mean is that there has been a great deal of upheaval.

For openers, I am trying to get back into school. I always planned on getting my bachelor's degree before I turned thirty, and the clock is ticking. Financial aid has been one gigantic migraine, and absolutely nothing I'd planned for the coming semester seems to be falling into place.

I started working again at the end of October, which was an adjustment for me. The last time I worked, H was in my life. I was working at a hair salon for a manager who hated me. My financial situation had never looked better, so I put up with the verbal abuse. My father was still alive. It was a completely different world.

Now I have a very different job at a great library, working for and with people who are generally very kind and personable. My pay would have to be raised to reach abysmal, but I'm happy enough. It's strange to be working again. While I discovered that unemployment didn't particularly suit me, I did grow accustomed to it. So, working is an adjustment. I've had to re-learn how to prioritize and manage my time.

I had been working for exactly three days when my mother announced her engagement to a man she had been dating for all of about two weeks. They got married on December 3rd. He moved in. I'm moving out. I found a really fantastic condo for rent a few miles west of where I live now, and my lease starts on New Year's Day. So I have spent much of my time since Halloween packing and planning for my new place.

I realize that at my age it's probably just sad that I still live at home. But still ... I don't know. I guess I always thought that moving out would be my idea, something I did when my finances were in a better state. I never thought I'd be pushed out because my mom's new husband doesn't like me. Which he doesn't.

My mother says he's intimidated by me, which I think is ridiculous for several reasons I'm too tired to enumerate. Suffice it to say that I am not a child - I can tell the difference between intimidation and aversion, and I smell the latter. How awkward is that? I always knew my mother would marry again, but I guess I thought she'd take a bit more time first. I guess I thought she'd end up with a man who could stand to be in the same room as me. I was wrong.

She seems happy enough. I suppose that ought to be enough, that I ought to be happy for her the way I'm happy for Roo. But it's different - very, very different. And selfish, I'll admit to that. I'm being selfish. I'm not proud of it. But the selfishness is there just the same.

With the crazy way things have been going, I am extra thankful for the stability that Roo has. The more time that passes, the more I am able to appreciate her exemplary parents and wonderful life. I mean, it's safe to say that things wouldn't be changing the way they are now if I'd not chosen adoption. But I can easily believe that there would be many other changes, and probably none of them good for Roo. How grateful I am for the life she has! I don't mean to imply that Roo would have been miserable and damaged if I'd parented her. She would have been fine, I'm sure of it. But instead, she's better than fine.

I think that, eventually, I will be too. Things just have to be a little crazy for a while. I'll get through it and be better for it. Hey, I've been through worse! This is kid stuff.

2010-12-23T02:10:00.003-07:00

It is super late, and I am very tired, and I am currently Lord Mayor of Allergy Town, and I should be asleep, not blogging. So I'll make this short and sweet.

Today's visit with Roo and her awesome family? Pretty much the best thing EVER. I am a very spoiled, very happy girl. Also, you should all be insanely jealous of my little Roo, because she is the sweetest, smartest, most beautiful girl in the known universe, and she has the best, most amazing family ever. I love them all forever :)

Merry Christmas, blog peeps!

Awesome Link of the Day

2010-12-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

One of the many wonders of the Internet* is that it allows for the discovery of wonderful things you'd never find any other way. For instance, there are hundreds of websites out there full of pictures of baby pandas. There are websites like Mental Floss that contain more information than you could learn in a lifetime. There are blogs like Cake Wrecks dedicated to the edible foibles of grocery store bakers. And there are any number of pages of awkward pregnancy photos (update at bottom is slightly NSFW). I'll confess, that last one was completely new to me before the days of Google. I guess it's because I'd never really been around pregnant women before, but I had no idea that there was a market for pregnancy photography. There exist a grand total of maybe seven pictures of my mother pregnant, and all of them are snapshots. It never would have occurred to me that parents-to-be would arrange for a photoshoot - of any level of taste.

Granted, there are probably thousands of very tasteful, lovely pregnancy pictures out there, but aren't the awkward ones more fun? It's a pity that couples who adopt don't have the chance to pose for pregnancy photos with Goodyear tires and watermelons.

Well, take heart, adoptive couples! You, too, can have tacky "pregnancy" photos. One adoptive couple decided to do a photo shoot with the aid of a beach ball, and these are the hilarious results: http://www.jejune.net/bits/2010/04/introducing-the-metaphorical-adoption-maternity-portrait-series/

The photo commentary is hilarious, but the blog author - whose friends adopted twins - wrote a lovely bit about adoption at the beginning as well. And she makes a good point - in adoption, as in most of life, you have to have a sense of humor.

*I am aware that 99% of the time, when I use the word "Internet" I should actually be using the phrase "world wide web" and I know they're not, strictly speaking, interchangeable. But I've never liked the word "web" and I think "Internet" is catchier.

Anniversary

2010-12-15T21:29:00.003-07:00

I've been so busy lately that I missed a milestone a few days ago. It's been a year since Roo's adoption was finalized! How cool is that? I thought about it last month on National Adoption Day because I know a couple who finalized their son's adoption that day (Hi, Mary!). I don't remember if I wrote a lot about Roo's finalization last year and I'm too lazy to check my own archives.

But even if I did do a decent write-up, I feel like reminiscing a bit. Finalization was sort of strange for me - I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel. As far as I was concerned, things were a done deal at placement. Once I signed the paperwork, she was theirs. I had a hard time committing to an emotion about things being 100% legally official.

I thought it would be harder. I expected that I'd cry, or that I'd be a little sad at least. I didn't really feel anything, and that concerned me. I knew the court date but not the exact time. Sometime in the early afternoon it occurred to me that it must have been over already. I still didn't feel anything. I suppose there was an underlying sort of sadness, but that was more of an everyday sort of thing.

Then I got the e-mail. P and M sent me two pictures that had been taken in the courtroom. When I saw the pictures, I felt my first real, tangible emotion of the day, and it wasn't one I'd been expecting: joy. I have never seen two people look happier than P and M did in the pictures. Their happiness was contagious. It did me so much good to see how happy they were with their little family - with Roo.

The sealing day was a horse of a different color. It wasn't what I expected. I don't know why I thought anything on earth might go the way I expected, since nothing ever has. I'm not sure what I expected, actually. Not the overwhelming sadness, that's for sure. I'm not going to lie; it was pretty rough.

Then came Roo's blessing day - joy again! It gave me the peace I'd missed the day before. It's hard to believe it's been a year since that day. A year! How did that happen? How did Roo get so big all of a sudden? I'll never know. I do know that one year later, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Placing Roo was the best decision I have ever made. I don't regret it for a second. She is the cutest, smartest, happiest, most wonderful little person in the world. I love her more than I can ever say. I am so very glad I placed her with P and M.

Happy anniversary, P and M and Roo!

"Dating" a Birth Mom

2010-12-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

I was asked a few months ago for a bit of advice. I get asked for advice not irregularly, which is both flattering an intimidating. I don't feel like I know enough about anything on earth to give advice. But people will ask me anyway, and I try to come up with something useful to say.

Anyway. A few months ago, a hopeful adoptive mama e-mailed me. She and her husband were going to meet with a potential birth mother, and she was a nervous wreck. I can't blame her. I'd be nervous, too. And in fact, I was. I'm pretty sure that's what I ended up saying in the e-mail. As nervous as a couple might be, the potential birth mom is just as nervous. It's a pretty intimidating meeting for everyone involved. You want it to go well. You want to make a good impression. You want the other party to like you. Granted, the potential birth mother's got the upper hand here, because the decision is hers to make. But that doesn't mean she's not in a cold sweat at the thought of meeting a couple.

I remember being terrified at the prospect of meeting hopeful adoptive couples. I wanted them to like me, but not because I might give them a baby. I wanted them to like me because they thought I was a good person. I'm sure the couples I met got their hopes up a bit, and I'll confess that I did as well. I'd heard stories from other birth moms about how they felt when they met the couples they eventually chose, and I was looking forward to a heavenly choir of my own, or at least a bit of déjà vu. Neither of which I got with P and M, by the way.

I digress.

I've often found parallels between dating and waiting for placement, and there's another one here - it's overly simplistic and highly imperfect. But even so. Think of meeting with a birth mom as a sort of first date with someone you've met on-line. The comparison isn't a perfect one, obviously, because a birth mom doesn't meet every couple she has contact with. But as far as meeting with a potential birth mom goes, remember, you are attempting to start a real-life relationship, same as you would with dating.

When you were dating, would you assume that every person who asked you out wanted to marry you? Probably not. You're asked out because he or she wants to get to know you better and see if there's the potential for a more meaningful relationship. Likewise, a meeting with a potential birth mom doesn't necessarily mean she's ready to pick you. It means she's thinking about you and wants to meet in person to get better acquainted.

So, let's say you've been on a first date with someone and you had a great time. Maybe they had a great time, too, and they'll call you again and you'll enjoy another date. That would be wonderful, wouldn't it? But say that, although they had a good enough time, they're not particularly interested in a repeat performance. Would you take it personally? Would you see it as a sign that you'll never date again, never marry? Would you feel like this person was your only chance at dating, and give up?

I hope not. You might feel sad at first, and wonder what you did or said that made them lose interest. But I hope you'd feel better in a day or two and realize that just because this person doesn't want to go steady with you, doesn't mean no one else ever will, and it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. You needn't take it personally.

Again, it's not a perfect parallel, but try to keep my clumsy analogy in mind when meeting with birth moms. If you meet with a birth mom once and never hear from her again, try not to take it personally. Odds are, it's nothing you did or said. She simply didn't feel you were right. It's no one's fault. And it doesn't mean you'll never be chosen.

One of the couples I met when I was pregnant had actually met with seven birth moms before being chosen. If they'd given up after I moved on, they wouldn't be parents today. But they had a little faith, and they persevered, and today they have a darling one-year-old girl who is their whole world.

It's okay to be nervous. It's okay to imagine what-ifs. It's perfectly okay to want to make a good impression, and I'd be worried if you didn't think, this could be the one. But it's also okay if this isn't the one. It's okay (or will be, anyway) if it doesn't work out. You might not think so right away. But don't lose hope. Just because this woman isn't your child's birth mom, doesn't mean you'll never be chosen.

I feel like this is probably some of the least-useful advice I've ever given, but I hope it was a little helpful just the same.

If you're in the mood for mostly-useless advice, drop me a line at thehappiestsad AT gmail DOT com.

Before I Forget

2010-12-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

I promise I have actual blog content on the way very soon, but in the meantime, there is something important I need to say.

To the person who found my blog by Googling "can you serve cold risotto," please accept my apologies. And I'm pretty sure you can, in fact, serve risotto cold.

Formspring Revisited: Brothers and Sisters

2010-12-04T10:55:00.001-07:00

Note: this past week has been insanely busy, and I started but never finished six different posts. I plan on finishing them eventually, but I felt bad for neglecting my blog, so I thought I'd post something I wrote a few weeks ago and had floating around in the queue.

It's that time again - time for me to answer a question I've already answered! I'm awesome that way. In case you're wondering, I have considered setting my Formspring up so that whenever I answer a question, it updates my blog. But I don't like the idea of my blog doing anything behind my back. Plus, I usually think of better answers after I've already given answers, and this is another way for me to say exactly what I want to say.

When I answer e-mailed questions on my blog, I paraphrase. I'm going to do a little of that with my Formspring questions, just because sometimes I don't like the way people word things.

How would you feel if Roo's parents adopted again? Would you be upset?

I would never be upset. I wanted Roo to have siblings. I know that a lot of birth moms want their babies to be the first child in the families they place with, so they'll get more attention or whatever. I felt that way at first, but I also worried about my child being sort of the test subject for brand new parents. I know that someone's got to be the guinea pig, but I wasn't sure how I felt about it being my little girl! Also, I wanted siblings for Roo. Many couples who certify to adopt never actually do, and the ones who are blessed with a child have no guarantees that they'll ever end up with more than one child. The thought of Roo being an only child made me sad. When I considered P and M, I liked that they already had a child, because Roo got an instant big sister, and the two of them together are the cutest thing in the world. Even if P and M never do adopt again, Roo and her sister have each other, and they're both adopted, so they have that in common. They're both doubly loved.

So, would I be upset if Roo got a little brother or sister? Just the opposite - I'd be very happy for P and M, and in fact I hope they do adopt again if they want to. I think I'd be a bit sad for them if they wanted to but didn't for whatever reason. I always wanted a little brother or sister, so I would love for Roo to have one or two.

As I said, couples who adopt once have no guarantees they'll adopt again. A such, many couples begin the re-certification process as soon as they possibly can, to give themselves as much time and as many chances as they can to be chosen - and sometimes opportunities to adopt come up before a couple is certified again. I guess that's where my only worry came in, and it's long since past. Although I can't imagine it happening now, I worried for a bit that a chance to adopt again would come up when Roo was still very small, and that as an infant she would have to compete for parental attention with a newborn. But it was only a passing worry, and it passed.

Roo's mom and dad are wonderful parents, and I hope they end up with as many children as they'd like.

And It's Not Even My Birthday

2010-11-28T18:27:00.001-07:00

Let's face it, there's no way to mention you got a blog award without sounding like a horrible braggart. I can't bear a braggart. I had a rather humorous post written up about getting a blog award, and I referenced Captain Cluck and everything. But in the end, I couldn't bring myself to post it, because it felt a little too self-congratulatory. (This post does as well, but que sera, sera.)

But we talked about gratitude in church today, and I thought, if I just let this go without acknowledging it, I'm being ungrateful. Which I don't mean to be. Because I am super, super grateful to get a blog award. And this one came when I was feeling emotionally fragile and needed a little validation.

And here's my validation!

One of my new fave birth mama blogs is called Carrying a Cat By the Tail, and the blogger, who goes by A Life Being Lived, thought I needed a little pink to balance out Captain Cluck and the Daisy on my sidebar. Wasn't that nice of her?

I mean, like I said, I don't want to brag or anything, but I don't want to be ungrateful, either. And I love cupcakes.

Of course, now I'm supposed to spread the love to 5 other people. Sigh. I hate choosing favorites. Some asked me once on Formspring what my favorite adoption blogs were, and I answered, against my better judgment. I do love the blogs I mentioned, but all I can think of are the countless others I love that I should have mentioned as well. So for now, I'm going to be a weaselling weasel, and weasel out of further nominations. I wish I could give it to all of you the way I did with Captain Cluck, because y'all are awesome.

(Y'all know how awesome you are, right? If you don't, kindly click HERE and start believing. Captain Cluck would love to be CTRL+C-ed and CTRL+V-ed onto your snazzy little corner of the blogging world.)

Would the blogosphere explode if I broke the sacred rules of the Blog Award? Like, if I said, "Hey, readers, you are award-worthy, please take this award for yourselves - all of you!" would that be a bad thing? I mean, if anyone can just take one it probably defeats the purpose of them being awarded. Which is probably why I haven't seen Captain Cluck floating around too much - people like the idea of being chosen for something.

Well, too bad. For now, I choose to abstain from further awarding.

Thanks, ALBL! You and your lovely blog are awesome. As a token of my appreciation, please take a chicken.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T21:06:00.003-07:00

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. I know it's trite and cliché, but I feel the need to count some of my many blessings today.

I am thankful most of all for Roo. She is my favorite little person in the world. She changed my life forever, for the better. I am who I am because of her.

I am thankful for P and M. They are wonderful parents, the very best in the world. They love Roo so very much! She is blessed to be their daughter. I am blessed to know them.

I am thankful for an open adoption. P and M spoil me, really. They have sent me so many great videos of their baby girl. I get to see for myself how happy and clever and loved she is. How awesome is that?

I am thankful for all of the amazing friends I have made since I became a birth mom. Adoption friends are the best.

I am thankful for my family, especially my mother and my big brother Scott. Their love and support have gotten me through hard times and I couldn't have done it without them.

I am thankful for a Father in Heaven who knows me and loves me, and who is always there for me, forever, no matter what.

Happy National Adoption Day!

2010-11-20T13:02:00.004-07:00

I've been neglecting my blog lately. Bad blogger! Shame! But I couldn't not post today, even though I am that special kind of tired where it's difficult to string together more than one coherent sentence (bear with me). Because not only is the whole month of November adoption month, but today specifically is National Adoption Day. I think that's what it's called. I'm too lazy to Google it.

(I should warn you, that laziness is probably a pretty good indication of the quality of today's post, so please lower your expectations.)

More than 300 adoptions will be finalized today in the Phoenix area alone. Isn't that awesome? I think this has to be the best day to be a family court judge. So much of their work is to tear families apart. If I were one, I certainly wouldn't mind going to work on a Saturday to put families together.

I personally know of a family whose adoption of a darling boy was finalized today. I am so happy for them! Their finalization takes me back to last December when a judge told P and M that Roo was officially theirs. P and M sent me a few pictures from the courthouse and I remember thinking that the judge looked like a nice man. In the year that has passed, I have seen probably six or seven other courthouse finalization pictures with the same judge, and I always smile when I see him in photographs with these indescribably happy families. I have never met the man, but I will always remember him, because he was the judge who legally, officially, gave Roo a family. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that in a few weeks when it's Roo's one-year anniversary as an official member of the P and M family.

In the adoption blogs I frequent, the focus this month has been on infant adoption, but as I understand it (again, I'm too lazy for Google) the real focus of adoption month is foster children who need forever families. So while I am super happy for the couple I know and their handsome little guy whose adoption is final today, I find myself equally teary-eyed at the thought of older children from the foster-care system who are also getting families today.

I can't say what the statistics are nationwide but I remember reading that in Arizona there are more than 10,000 children in foster care. Doesn't that just break your heart? I'm not going to get all "I believe that children are our future" here, but I do think that every child is precious, and every child deserves a family and unconditional love.

Next week is Thanksgiving, but I am going to be extra-thankful a little early, because as I understand, that sort of thing is not only allowed but encouraged in some circles. I am so thankful for adoption! I am thankful that Roo has an amazing family and all the love in the world. I am thankful for the great life she has and for her happiness. I am thankful for ppen adoption, because it means we all get to be happy - P and M, Roo, and me. I am thankful for P and M, for the great parents that they are, and for their love for each other and for their children. Because of the choice I made - because I was sad for a little while - we can all have what God wants most for us. We can be happy.

I am thankful for adoption in general. It's an imperfect system, I'm not going to lie. But for me - and for my Roo, and her parents and sister - it was the best thing in the world. For my mother, it was the best thing in the world. For at least thirty families I know, it was the best thing in the world. Adoption doesn't always work, but when it does, it is a beautiful thing.

Up the Hill

2010-11-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

I was asked some time ago about grief after placement. More specifically, I was asked what changed for me. What is it that helped me get past the worst of the pain, helped me to turn around, to feel happy again. I've been thinking about it for a while. I wasn't sure I wanted to answer, because it is a story that is meaningful to me personally but that might sound kind of ridiculous when written out. But I thought I'd give it a try anyway, in the hope that maybe someone will read it who is hurting, and I can help them hurt a little less.

The days right after placement were absolute hell for me. To say that I was unhappy would be an understatement of epic proportions. After a week or so, and after the first visit, things got a little easier, but I certainly wouldn't say life got a lot easier after that. It didn't. It sucked less. As time passed, pain started to seep away little by little like a slow leak.

And then, a few months after placement, I hit a standstill. I wasn't as depressed as I'd been immediately post-placement, but I didn't seem to be getting any happier, either. My hike back up the hill of mental health hit a roadblock. No matter what I did or how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to get more than halfway up said metaphorical hill.

It was frustrating, and with that frustration came a number of other little things that acted as a mini landslide, which succeeded in knocking me back down the hill a few feet. I managed to climb back up to the peak I'd reached previously, but nothing in heaven or earth worked to get me to the top of that darned hill. I was ready to give up and pitch a tent.

I grew more and more frustrated and when the opportunity arose to do a school outreach presentation I nearly didn't take it. How, I thought, was I supposed to tell class after class of teenagers that adoption had made me happy when I didn't feel happy at all? I was beginning to think I was never going to be really happy ever again.

But something inside of me wouldn't let me say no, and so off I went, with a caseworker or two and a birth mom who had placed nearly 8 years ago. The birth mom, N, was someone whose story I'd heard before on more than one occasion and I liked and respected her. Since placement, N had married and had three children, and her story gave me hope for my own future. In my crabbiness, I think I'd have snapped at any other birth mom I might have presented with but for some reason I didn't mind N.

I told my story first, and if I was slightly less enthusiastic than normal no one noticed or at the very least no one said anything. After I finished, I gave a small smile and took my seat as N told her story.

It was the same story I'd heard her tell many times before, and I found myself drifting a bit. Then she got to the end. She told the kids that she had worried that the pain of placement would ruin her forever, that it would break her, and she would be forever broken.

Then N said three words I'm sure I must have heard before: "I'm not broken."

Such small words, but she said them with such force, such conviction that I felt them in my soul. I knew N wasn't just repeating a phrase she'd heart before. She was stating the absolute, irrefutable truth. She was NOT broken.

I can't explain it, but those three words changed something in me that day. They grew both roots in my heart and wings to carry them to my mind. They echoed in my head for hours. "I'm not broken."

Was I broken? I didn't want to be. I desperately didn't want to be. It felt wrong to me that I should go through so much pain and heartache and not come through it a stronger, better person. Being broken seemed wrong.

I decided something important that day. I decided that no matter how long it took me to climb that dratted hill, I would climb it. I would not give up, because I was not broken either.

The day N said those words - "I'm not broken" - was a turning point in my grief. I don't think it was until she said them that I realized I wasn't broken, either. I could be, if I so chose, but I didn't have to be broken, not for a second, if I didn't want it. I decided I didn't want it.

That's not to say that my pain is all gone or that there are no hard days and no tears. Certainly there are hard days! Certainly I cry! I still grieve a little. I think I'm entitled to; after all, my heart was broken. My heart was broken. But I was not.

My Father in Heaven asked me to exercise more faith than I thought I possessed and place my precious daughter with two people I had never met. He gave me the strength to do it. He saw me through the hard times afterward. I am not broken. He fixed me. I am whole.

Formspring Revisited: What the H?

2010-11-09T02:16:00.001-07:00

I'm not very good at remembering people's names. Or, if I remember their names, I don't remember their faces. For some reason, these rather important things are hard for me to get the first time or two. But one thing I always remember about a person I meet is his or her birthday.

Tomorrow is H's birthday. I don't think I'll ever forget that. I seem to get a lot of questions about H on my Formspring. Here are a few of them, in honor (if that's the right word) of his birthday.

On your blog what does H stand for? I mean it is obviously the birthfathers name but what is it?

I decided a long time ago I was never going to use my ex's name on my blog, and I haven't changed my mind. H stands for Him. Simple as that.

If you are my friend on Facebook (be my friend?), and you look back far enough, should you ever be that bored, you can find him. But I don't use his real name here and I never will. If you are dying of curiosity and would like a hint, I'll tell you that his name is also a verb.

Did the birth father help you pick a couple to place with?

Hahaha!

No, he certainly did not. He was willing to be involved as much as the law required if I single parented, but if I went with adoption he didn't want a thing to do with me or the baby. And then it turned out he didn't want a thing to do with me during the pregnancy anyway.

So, no. He wasn't involved at all. With anything, least of all the adoption.

I'm not sure how much of a fan of adoption he ever was, actually. I had him served with paperwork that said I planned on placing, and he let it slide. He later accused me of manipulating him out of signing it, and told me that if I was thinking about adoption, I should just sign all my rights over to him. Because apparently to him, if I was considering adoption, it meant I didn't care about the baby and just didn't want to be a mother. Blah.

Was the birth father there when the placement happened?
He wasn't. When I placed, I hadn't seen him for nearly a year.

Does the birth father get the same openness you do?
Not that I'm aware of. I haven't seen him in almost two years and I haven't communicated with him in more than one year, so I can't be sure, but it would very much surprise me. I don't think Roo's parents even know his last name. Well, maybe they do. I can't remember everything I told them about him. I would certainly tell them if they wanted to know. But I'm not aware of any contact.

In Which I Whine Like a Whining Whiner, and Give Up

2010-11-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

I didn't post yesterday. I didn't post yesterday, and when I realized that, I panicked. The challenge! I thought. I missed a day. What to do? I wasn't sure. And then I thought, how ridiculous is this? I am getting stressed out because I skipped a single day of blogging! One day! How ridiculous is it to post every single day?

Today is Saturday - six days into November, and I am already complaining about Mrs. R's challenge to post every day. Actually, I think I've been complaining about it since the 2nd. I'm not usually such a whiner. I apologize.

I think that part of my problem is that I've got a lot of good posts that I have worked hard on. I feel like if I post one every day, I'm wasting them and all the work I've put in. So I have a feeling that about half of what I post this month is going to be sort of a throwaway so I don't use up all the best stuff. Also, I feel like the really good posts might get lost with so many other posts going up. Like my post from the 1st, In Which I Answer A Question No One Asked. I'm proud of it, but I feel like it got lost in the shuffle. I'm not really happy about that. I'm not really happy about using filler or throwaway posts. I post as often as I do in a regular month because I don't want to blog just for the sake of blogging. I like to have something useful or relevant to say. If I don't, I don't say anything at all (for the most part).

I'm not quite sure what to do. I don't want my blog cluttered with throwaway posts. I don't think it's worth it just to be able to say that I blogged every day for a month. And in any case, I'm not sure today even counts since I'm not blogging about adoption, I'm blogging about blogging. Blah. I am not usually a quitter or a giver-upper, but I think I may make an exception in this case. I like the idea of a whole month of blogging about adoption, but at the same time, I think, around here, every month is a whole month about adoption. Not one post per day, maybe, but it's not as though I routinely post about anything else. This is an adoption blog; I post about adoption.

I think that's good enough. It's good enough for me, anyway, and I very much doubt that when Roo is older and reads this she'll be disappointed that I didn't force out a month of 30 crappy posts. I think she'd rather read ten to twelve good ones. I know I would. And I'd rather write them as well. So, hello to National Adoption Month, and goodbye to Mrs. R's Adoption Month challenge. Those of you who are keeping at it, good for you. I'm going to just keep on doing my thing.

The Question Every Birth Mom Gets Asked

2010-11-04T11:52:00.001-07:00

This one's borrowed from my Formspring, and I've expanded the answer. I have a feeling this is going to happen a lot this month.

When you found out you were pregnant did you think about getting an abortion?

Short answer: nope.

Long answer: Define "consider." Did abortion cross my mind? Absolutely. Was it ever an option for me? Absolutely not.

H let me know that he would have been okay with an abortion. I seem to recall that he offered to pay for one if that's what I chose. I've told that to people and they all seem to think it was just awful of him. I don't, because I know him (or rather, I thought I used to). I believe that was just his messed-up way of trying to help.

But ever since I was aware of things like unplanned pregnancies and abortions, I have known that I could never, ever have an abortion. I've always found abortion to be very morally yucky. I wanted Roo before I even found out I was pregnant. Nothing in this world could have changed that.

Who's the Boss?

2010-11-03T10:18:00.002-07:00

I took the "Blog every day for adoption month" challenge last year, and it was actually not as hard as I thought. So this year I thought, I can do this, no problem.

But there is a problem. Today is November 3rd, and I already feel like I've run out of things to say. So I'm going to be a weasel and use some of my Formspring questions and answers to fill in the days. I'm not always feeling chatty when I answer questions, so I may expand my answers here on my blog as I feel it's appropriate. Today, for instance. I've added a bit and explained a bit more. Well, okay, a LOT more.

Here's the question for today:

Do Roo's parents do anything as parents that you don't agree with or that you wouldn't do as a parent?

Not that I'm aware of. But it's not as though I've got nanny-cams on them and see their every move. It's certainly possible. When I was meeting couples, and when I met with P and M, I asked questions about the aspects of parenting that were most important to me. For instance, I feel very strongly that spanking is wrong. So I asked about it. P and M are smart people. They've read and studied about child discipline and what children respond best to, which is NOT spanking.

But back to the question - do they do anything I disagree with as far as parenting? If they did, I'd live with it. Parenting is their job and their call, not mine. One of the classes I attended at the national FSA conference in July was about communicating with adoptive couples. Someone asked a question about what to do if you disagree with their parenting styles or philosophies, and the instructor addressed it. I thought her answer was sort of nice, but at the same time I think she failed to mention something important - once you place your child for adoption, you don't get to decide how they're raised. I think that some misinformed birth moms mistake openness for co-parenting. That is absolutely, 100% not the way things go. There's a difference between contact and custody. I gave up the right to a say in how Roo is raised when I signed my rights away. If I wasn't okay with that, I wouldn't have signed.

I wouldn't tell my brothers or sister how to raise their children, and these are people that I routinely talk smack about and tease. I'm certainly not about to tell P and M - my little Roo's parents! - how to raise their children. That would be quite an insult to their intelligence to assume that I know more about parenting - that I know what's best. What is best is for them to decide! I daresay that at this point in time, they know much better than I do how to be good parents. I trusted them enough to place my baby with them, so obviously I trust their judgment and I honestly think they are the best parents in the world to Roo and her sister.

The instructor of the aforementioned class gave examples of polite ways of suggesting certain parenting ideas, but I think that even that is a bit much. It is simply not my place. I don't have that kind of nerve, and I don't want it.

So, you might ask, is a birth mom out of luck? Well, yes. That's why it's so important for her to make sure she chooses the family with whom she feels the most comfortable. For example, if an expectant mother meets with a couple she loves but they vote Green Party and she knows it's going to bug her for the next twenty years, she might consider meeting with other couples. She needs to know what things are the most important to her in potential parents for her child - what things are deal-breakers, and what things she can live with.

I think I've used about four times as many words as I needed to answer that question. I think I'm done now.

How Will She Feel?

2010-11-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

I have about forty drafts of blog posts waiting to be finished, edited, polished, and published. At least five of them are different versions of the same post, which I scrapped months ago but have yet to delete. I know all this because I just went through my drafts to see what I might be able to use for this month of blogging.

I have to say, I'm not very excited with what I've got. Today is only November 2nd, so I've got a bit of time to figure something out. In the meantime, I thought I'd answer a few of the questions I've been asked. Maybe by the time I've gone through the list I'll have thought of ideas for the rest of the month!

As usual, I've paraphrased:

I'm sure you've come across the same blogs I have written by adult adoptees who feel cheated or harmed by "the system" in their adoptions. Do you ever read these and worry about what your daughter will think when she's older?

Honestly? Every so often I do. There are no guarantees in life. I can't say definitively that Roo won't ever have negative feelings towards me as she gets older. I don't think it's likely at all, but you can't always predict these things.

And sometimes, if I'm having a more emotional day, I'll think about it more. I should mention, I don't actually read those blogs, for the same reason that I don't ever watch those videos that PETA produces about how animals on farms are mistreated: I don't enjoy seeing - or reading about - the pain and suffering of a living creature. Nothing in the world that I can do will take away the pain of these people, and reading about their pain just makes me feel miserable.

Anyway.

My mother has been a great comfort to me when I've been a worrying worried worrywart. She was adopted as a baby, and she reassures me that she has nothing but love and respect for her birth mother, that being adopted was the best thing in the world for her - even though her birth mother could have raised her and been an excellent mother, that she has never suffered or felt damaged by being adopted.

I know and know of other adult adoptees as well, and not one of the ones I know personally are of the angry, wounded ilk. I think what it comes down to is the parents, and how the issue of adoption is handled. Roo has phenomenal parents. I quite honestly wish they could have adopted me, too. And she will always know that she was adopted, and why, and who I am. It will never be a secret, or something to be ashamed of. Any questions she has about where she came from will be answered. And like I said, she's got great parents, who have read more books about adoption than I even know exist. They will be able to explain things to her in an appropriate way as she grows.

Honestly, as much help as my mother is, P and M are the reason I worry as little as I do. I could not possibly have found better parents than they. There are, as I said, no guarantees in life, and only time will tell what sort of person Roo becomes. But I placed Roo with her parents because they were the only people I met that I trusted implicitly to raise my baby to be a strong, smart, well-adjusted, content and happy woman. I feel confident that as Roo grows up, she will understand her adoption, and that it will be a non-issue.