Surviving Adoption

For me, adoption has long meant shame and secrecy and pretend games I didn't fully understand, yet played along anyway under adoptive parental duress.

That I had suffered pain and loss as an adoptee never occurred to my adoptive parents. For whatever reason.

That an adoptive parent would acknowledge that her child had something of value to lose and not everything to gain is, well, hard to fathom. My adoptive mother couldn't even admit that I was adopted because she hated to, "think of me that way" and, "liked to pretend I was hers." This meant that any questions about my adoption and my first mother were about as welcome as a request for a giant dildo.

Yet, there are adoptive parents out there today who a) acknowledge their adopted children had a first mother; b) acknowledge their child's loss; c) encourage their children to talk about their feelings about adoption. Of course, this new breed of adoptive parents do many other things that my adoptive parents did not, could not, would not.

One adoptive mom's blog really got me. Okay, I blubbered. You can check her out for yourself at www.allmychildren-christine.blogspot.com.

Christine talks honestly about her worries as an adoptive mom. She's also a keen observer of her daughter's often painful struggle with being an international adoptee. When I read about what her little girl is going through - with the support of her adoptive mother - I can see it all there, the pain, the loneliness, the unanswered questions and the uncertainty of my own struggle. Yet, many of us from the Closed Era had to wander The Labyrinth completely alone.

And some idiots have the nerve to call us maladjusted. It's a wonder we all didn't end up institutionalized.

Being adopted isn't easy. It's damn hard. It takes an empathetic, emotionally honest adoptive parent who puts their child's needs first. Narcissists need not apply for the job. People who feel cosmically entitled to a child because they're infertile or because they've left things too long and they're past their sell-by date, they're not such a good idea either. Because an entitled prospective parent is going to have expectations that one little baby can't meet. That's where we end up with all these weird notions and justifications about "saving children" and gratitude and all that other adoption nonsense.

Besides, The Labyrinth is like a really bad amusement park ride that severed limbs and decapitated heads before finally getting shut down. Okay, it's still up and running except it's been tweaked and renamed The Open Adoption Not-So-Fun Slide and, in the case of international adoptees, The Chair-O-Plane swing ride. I think you get my point. When adoption is finally making some progress, why go backward?

(Not that I promote adoption. In fact, it's out of control. But in cases where it can't be avoided and where children need homes, at least let them be loving, caring and capable homes)