​My cinnamon cardamom tea is hot and soothing as I try to put these words out into the universe. Welcome, and thank you for always coming back to Blogville to see what I’m rambling about! 

This particular blog is about the impact adoption had, and still has on me. It also deals with my thoughts for adoptive and kinship parents that I share in the hope that it might help them manage the loss(es) their children might be feeling.

I found love with my adoptive parents. They both loved me, and I loved them until their last breaths. I am content knowing that my birth parents were able to move on and find love with their respective partners, and that their legitimate children loved them until my birth parents took their last breaths. 

After a few false starts, including having been neglected in foster homes, I found love in the last foster family I was placed with before I was adopted. They loved me for seven months and then had to ‘pass the baton’ to my mom and dad. We never saw each other again. Well, not until I found my foster mom when I was in my 60s and she in her 80s. Sadly my foster dad had already taken his last breath. Those foster parents were the first people to love me.

But before I knew love, I experienced multiple abandonments and losses. Relinquishment abandonment by birth parents has an impact (conscious or subconscious) on an abandoned baby, child, or youth. That trauma remains throughout their lives. Their feelings of abandonment and loss impacts their future relationships in a big way. 

For me, I feel that there is a ‘grown up me’ reaction and a ‘child me’ reaction to what I perceive as rejection. There are days when I decide to call a friend and when they don’t answer I immediately wonder if they are screening their calls to avoid me. There are times when I suggest a plan and if my friends are ‘not available’ (that is legitimately how I feel- ‘not available’ in air quotes) I wonder what is more important than me and usually decide, ‘anything’.

Sadly, I sometimes feel this way with my adult children too. I’ve learned a trick with my kids though; I just offer to watch my grandchildren or my grand-dog for them! They feel obligated to visit a little when they pick up! I’m just kidding, I love spending time with my grandkids and enjoy the calming feeling of my grand-dog sleeping by my legs on the recliner. My hubby and I also host Sunday dinner weekly, mostly so I can see the ones who live nearby face to face. Face time has been an amazing way to watch my far away grandson grow and develop. 

I find that I often internalize it when a plan changes or my phone call goes unanswered. Immediately I feel that whomever I was reaching out to  probably didn’t really want to go with me or hear from me in the first place. After all, my first parents didn’t want me, so why should my friends? There is a scar of insecurity on my heart that will never go away. When I hear from a friend or one of my adult kids that they did something I liked without me, or went somewhere I wanted to go without me, I am not surprised that I was left out, abandonment is familiar to me, but I still find it emotionally painful. 

So, literally as I was writing this blog, one of my birth half-sisters posted some old (birth) family photos on Facebook. There are no words to describe how abandoned I felt, but at the same time how curious I was as I searched those faces for familiarity. If I find it, when I see that I look a little like that person, or that I’m built a bit like that person, I feel both grateful and lost at the same time. I also feel disloyal to my parents.

I share all of this as my way of trying to help other adopted folks and their families navigate and maybe even mitigate the relinquishment trauma. At the same time I try to help families formed through adoption. Your children love you, but they are also curious about their birth families in an effort to understand, and to mitigate their trauma. 

If you have pictures of your child’s birth family, share them from the beginning, there is no magic age for your child to see who they might look like. If you have stories or information about your child’s birth family, share it when it is developmentally  appropriate; check with a therapist or professional if you are not sure how or what to share. Your children are curious and need to know that you are okay with their questions.

Children deserve to know that their need for an adoption plan was about adult choices, not about anything that they did or didn’t do. They need to know that sometimes children are simply left out of their birth parents’ life plans and it isn’t anything they did or didn’t do. Children need life’s rejections to be normalized so they do not personalize them. 

Please know that when your adopted child asks questions, the questions are about them, not about their relationship with you. Their questions are about where they came from and not related to their life with you, or their love for you.

Your children are trying to understand who they are and why they are different from other kids. If your child used a walker, or had an artificial limb, or was the only one in your family who could  sing, or wore glasses, you would expect questions right? They are not questioning your love for them, they are just trying to understand how they became part of your family, and sometimes why they needed a new family. Who better to explain all of this to them than their REAL parents? Who better to help prepare them for society’s questions about their birth parents than their REAL parents? 

When I was young my parents might have been better off worrying about what I was thinking, and feeling, about having been adopted, rather than worrying about having the ‘right’ answers. I simply wanted my REAL parents to share what they knew about my birth parents, and where I had come from; to share my truth with me. 

Thanks for visiting today. As always you are welcome to share your comments with me here or by sending me an email at [email protected]
See you next time!

Hi everyone, welcome back to Blogville. Today I am sipping on a green passionfruit tea as I write to you a about an amazing experience I had a while back. Thanks to receiving my Social and Medical History I was finally able to know who my foster parents had been. I learned who the foster parents were that I had before moving to live with my adoptive parents, and I learned that there had been a couple of other families before them. It took a little while but I did some research and finally found my foster mother, but sadly my foster father had passed. This blog is about my meeting with her and how that went.

My former foster mother, whom I will call L, lives about a six hour drive from me. When I said I would like to visit she was very excited to see me again and meet my husband so we set up a meeting. We arrived safely in her town, and I messaged her daughter (whom I will refer to as M) to let her know that we had arrived. I asked if she and her mom had discussed any details about meeting the next day. M indicated that they had not discussed any specific plans but provided her phone number and invited me to call her. When I called, I asked M if she wished to be with her mom when we met but she indicated that we could go ahead and meet anytime as she is fine with that. She was also interested in meeting afterwards. M then provided her mother’s address to me. I indicated that I would be calling her mom in the morning to arrange a meeting and gave M my cell phone number.

I called L to arrange our visit and she told me to come over whenever I could. I said my husband and I would have something to eat before making our way over to see her. I asked her if she is comfortable with us visiting with her at her home or if she would prefer to meet elsewhere. She said, “I’m comfortable with you coming over but my kids aren’t. You come here. I want my hug! Besides there is a lovely gazebo outside if we want to use it.” Given that she lived close to our hotel (that we unknowingly booked) we decided to walk over after we had something to eat. On the walk over I worried about whether she would like me, if she would feel comfortable visiting with us, and so many other thoughts and fears. It was about a 20 minute walk and when we got to her corner I called and told her we had decided to walk over and that we were almost there. She said she would be waiting for us. The complex was a little confusing but with some help from a group of helpful PSWs (despite being on their break) we found the correct building. There was a woman sitting outside but it was not L so I called her phone number and there was no answer. We entered the lobby of the building and called/buzzed her unit number. Also no answer. I started to worry if she was ok and my husband said, “just wait 5 minutes and then call again.” Longest 5 minutes, but she did answer and buzzed for us to enter the building. We got off the elevator and her apartment was right across the hall. I knocked quietly and heard, “Come in”.

When that door opened I was met by this tiny (4’8” compared to my 5’9”) woman who immediately said, “Come here and give me a hug.” Some tears were shed as we hugged and my husband stood awkwardly in the hallway behind me. Finally she let go and said, “Come in.” As I entered the apartment she took a good look at me and said, “I see you finally put on some weight.” That was awkward, until she said, “Everyone always told me you were too skinny, so I was worried that the workers thought I wasn’t feeding you enough.” I told her that my mother had the same worry once I was placed with her. My mother said that though I ate like a horse I never seemed to put on weight. It worried the doctor and my mother was worried the worker might not let them keep me. I jokingly assured L that my magical ability to over eat and not gain weight eventually caught up with me!

We sat together on her couch and she asked about my life, my children and grandchildren. She asked if I had been happy and raised in a good family. I assured her that I had been well cared for and loved very much. She was so relieved, she said, “I always worried if they found you a good family even though the worker told me that they had.” I told her a little about my parents and my brother. She said how grateful she was for the worker who told her that I had made it through my umbilical hernia surgery very well, even though she wasn’t supposed to tell her anything. The worker had then asked her not to call her again as she was no longer allowed to give her information about me. I told L about how that has changed for the most part now, and how foster parents can usually meet the adoptive parents and sometimes they even keep in touch. We talked about life books that children are now given that often include pictures of the foster family, and even sometimes pictures of the birth family members taken during access visits they had had together. She thought that was a great for the children.

At the mention of pictures L suddenly got up and left the room. She came back with a handful of photos and proceeded to tell me exactly what was going on in each one. There were pictures of me younger than I had ever seen of myself before. That was incredible to me. L talked about one of her sons who was in the pictures, and how much he loved to make me laugh. She showed me a picture of her and I with some of her children (she ended up having 8 children) and she identified who everyone was. She talked about how she used to put me down on the bed and how her children loved to play peek-a-boo to make me laugh. I was her “baby Marie”. As we were looking at the photos and she was sharing information, she quietly leaned in and put her head on my shoulder. She seemed so content with meeting with me and I felt the same, like a circle had closed.

I shared a little about raising her eight children, and seemed to feel that she had a wonderful life with a loving husband and children. My heart swelled when L said she had never forgotten me and that she thought of me often. She asked how long exactly I had been in her home and, thanks to having my vetted file, I was able to let her know it was for 7 months. I explained that I had been left behind in the home for unwed mothers for almost a month until a worker could come and get me. Once I arrived in my home community I was placed in an ‘emergency’ foster home. According to my records, I had been in a few foster homes and that one of my foster mothers indicated that I was such a quiet baby. At almost 2 months old I was moved to L’s foster home. As I said this, L put her hand to the back of my head and I asked if she was remembering the sores that had been there and she said that she was. I had read about them in my file. Changing the subject, she then asked me if I knew how, when making pies, you cannot seem to wash the lard completely off of your hands? Confused, I said I did. L then said that is what made her try lard on my awful diaper rash that had been caused by my allergy to baby oil. She was so proud to say how that cleared up my rash right away. I felt that I must have meant something to her for her to have remembered that detail. 

We then discussed some of the details of my time with her family and how loved I was among them. She would have loved to keep me but that was just not done back then and that the worker had told her all along that they were looking for an adoptive family that could take me. The worker had explained to L that the delay in placing me on adoption was caused by the birth mother not cooperating with the Children’s Aid Society to sign her consent to adoption. Once that consent was signed, my parents were matched with me and I was moved. At this point, L and her family moved to the community where I was now visiting with her. For me, I had always wondered who had taken care of me before my mom and dad. Now I knew. L and I keep in touch to this day, and I think of her often and continue to be grateful she had come into my life, however briefly. 

Foster parents make a difference every day. Consider looking into becoming a foster family today.

Thank you for visiting with me today. I always appreciate knowing that you are reading. If you have any comments that you would like to share more privately than here, please feel free to email me at [email protected]

‘See’ you next time!