My childhood adoption narrative wasn't so much false as it
was incomplete. My adoptive mother told me that my original parents had been
young and unable to care for me. She emphasized how much she and my adoptive
father had wanted to become parents and told me that I should always understand
how much I was wanted by them.
As an adult in reunion, I have a fuller understanding. I
know about the shame and secrecy surrounding my birth to unwed teenage parents. I
understand how difficult it would have been for my original parents to envisage
a way to parent me in a context marked by a complete lack of support for the
parenting option from family and society. I understand that my mother was
required to sign papers saying that she hadn't been coerced to relinquish me,
but that signing those papers seemed false to her; it was true that no one was
holding a gun to her head, but it still felt like coercion. I understand that
my adoptive parents weren't the only ones who wanted me.
My adoptive parents were (and are) well-meaning,
conscientious people. They constructed my adoption narrative as directed by the
materials they had received from the adoption agency. They believed, because
they were told it was so, that if they simply said the right things, repeating
the words from the books and pamphlets of the day, that my adoptedness would be
a nonissue for me, that I would grow up feeling "as if born to" my
adoptive family.
Unfortunately, this assumption was false. There wasn't
really anything that my parents could have said or done to prevent feelings of
grief and loss from eventually rising up in me. No magic words exist that could
have forestalled my struggle to integrate the fragmented parts of my identity. It would
have been nice if they could have given me some words of wisdom to prepare me
for the journey of my adult adoptee self, but they couldn't give me what they
didn't themselves possess. My true adoption narrative was one I needed to write
myself. I am still working on it.
"My true adoption narrative was one I needed to write
ReplyDeletemyself. I am still working on it. " this is a very powerful thought, and so very, very true.
Thank you so much for your kind comment. "I try to remember to ask them as many questions as they ask me" -- I love this!!! I think you have hit on something that is absolutely key. There may not be a magical thing that we can say, but there is something that we can do as parents of adoptees ... and this is it.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
ReplyDelete