Adoption: Love is all you Need

I remember so vividly the scene in 16 & Pregnant when Tyler and Caitlin told their parents they were giving their baby up for adoption.  When they listed all that they couldn't provide for their child.  And Tyler's father's response was "Love is all you need."  And I was dumbfounded when this 17 year old boy responded, "No, you need more than love.  You need diapers, you need food, you need a job!"  How telling that this kid realized that you need more than feelings (or Beatles' lyrics) to raise a child.

Some children are adopted because they come from poverty or young parents, like Tyler and Caitlin.  And some kids are adopted because someone intervened to protect them from abuse or neglect.  Either way, children who leave their birth parents experience a huge loss.  As I have traveled on this road of adoption as a foster mother and adoptive mother, I have learned more and more about the deep wound of separation and loss.

Hearing adopted people talk about their grief makes my heart constrict.  Partly it hurts me to watch people experience this level of trauma.  After all, it was the deep love and compassion in me that led me to fill out all the papers and make a place for this child in my home and in my family.  I don't want him to hurt, to grieve.  My greatest desire for all my children is wholeness.  But part of me is selfish.  Part of the pain I feel centers on my wish to be enough.  I want to be the only mom some days.  I want to fill all the empty places in my child's heart.  The reality is that I can't.  I can't be the cure.  I can't erase the past.  I can only love enough to fill one piece of my son's heart; that love can't fix everything.

As adoptive parents, we have two choices.  We can stick our fingers in our ears and hum "La La La" as loudly as necessary to drown out the voices telling us that adoption is painful, or we can surrender our pride and accept that our children need more than our love to come into adulthood with healthy, intact hearts.

Brother and Sister 2014

For me, this means doing all I can to maintain relationships with members of my son's first family.  We are not necessarily close or in daily contact, but we are able to get together once or twice a year and celebrate this boy that we all love.  It means letting another woman share the title of "Mom", of stepping aside so she can bond with our son.  It means sharing my weaknesses and frustrations and selfishness with my husband behind closed doors, and not making a child responsible for my happiness.  It means learning and researching adoption issues and preparing myself for future conversations.  It means pointing out people who have already walked this road, whether they are friends and neighbors or Buddy the Elf.  It means parenting without a map.  It means delving into the Beatles' catalog and choosing to quote from the song "Help!" when discussing parenting and adoption.  It means I need more than love; I need openness, grace, and support to keep going.

Two mommies

Love or Fear

This past year has brought a new relationship into my life.  It's exciting, like most new relationships.  It's challenging, like most new relationships.  And it's tender, which makes me take a protective stance over it, which makes me hesitant to write about it.  But this is what I do, how I process, so here goes:

  My youngest son is adopted.  We took a leap of faith and became foster parents and he came to live with us and joined our family.  That is the happy story that we like to focus on.  That is the truth, but only part of it.  Because every adoption has another side to the story, one that is not so happy.  Every adopted child came from somewhere, someone, and this child is no different.  He was born to a man and a woman who lost custody of him, who seemed to disappear for a few years.  But this past year they resurfaced.  In February, I was invited to meet with his birth mom.  She was in recovery, she was doing well, she wanted to see us.  Me and him.  So we went.  We bundled up and braved the roads on an extremely snowy day, and we waited for her.  As if that isn't weird enough, I was excited.  I kept thinking I should feel nervous or afraid, but I was only looking forward to it.  She came through the door and we hugged and she smiled and I felt a surge of connection with this woman who shares my son's eyes and smile.  We shared a meal, and then she asked to contact me again.  I nodded in agreement and passed our son to her arms so she could walk around with him a bit.  Until that day, the woman we called Mama Jenny had just been a face in a photo, an idea that we talked about from time to time, but now she was flesh and blood and snuggles and laughter.

Two Mamas, February 2014

  A few weeks later, she called us.  Once again we met for a meal and once again she snuggled our son.  And then I invited her to come to church with us the next day.  And she did!  We met again and walked through the park, with all of my kids in tow this time.  We talked more and hugged and took pictures.  My husband and I talked things over and decided we were ready to invite her to our house.  On Memorial Day, we grilled food and my parents joined us and there was Mama Jenny, sitting on the lawn and chasing Michael and talking to my folks.  Every week or so, we would meet up, spend time with the kids, and return to our homes.  We text.  We post photos of each other on Facebook.  We share meals.  We go to the park.  We have picnics.  It feels a little like I got to adopt a sister along with a son.  Because we have more in common than just him.  We played the same instrument in our high school matching bands.  We love animals.  We like coffee and donuts.  We think Michael should eat more vegetables.

  Right about now you're thinking there should be a "but".  People love to interject their concern.  But doesn't Michael get confused?  But you are his "real" mother, right?  But what if someday he chooses her over you?  But what if she takes advantage of you?  But what if she tries to take him?

  Sometimes I'm tempted to let fear creep in to this thing we are doing.  There is no road map, there are no self-help books to guide us, there is only the love I have for our son, which spills over to the woman who gave him life.  Because this is the very bottom line:  I love her.  I love her the way you love your family.  And the Bible says that perfect love casts out fear.  When I'm tempted to draw a line between us, to see her as "them" and the people in my house as "us", I dig into that love.  I choose love, because love is the most powerful force on earth.  I choose inclusion because it just makes sense.  I refuse to give in to hypothetical scenarios that are decades away, when each of us will be different versions of ourselves because we all will have grown and learned more and participated in life together.  As for right now, no, Michael doesn't get confused.  He has always been able to understand this idea of two moms and two dads and brothers that live in the same house and sisters who live somewhere else.  We get confused because our minds are stuck in this mentality that only one woman can be Mom and if he is calling her Mom then I have somehow lost that position.  It's ridiculous.  And this thing about "real" mom vs. (I don't know) fake mom?  It's not a competition.  It's not about labels.  Because I would lose.  I mean, sure I've kissed booboos and changed diapers in the middle of the night and read stories, but she has the trump card.  Without her, he wouldn't be here.  So I don't keep a tally of who is doing more or who is more important.  We are both the Mamas, and I'm fine with it.

Fourth of July 2014

  As far as custody or kidnapping, I can't say for sure, but I'm thinking that our current arrangement is working well for everyone.  I have a beautiful son whom I love.  He has two women who are over the moon in love with him.  She gets to have a relationship with a child she lost once before.  Why would any of us jeopardize that?  Love comes swiftly and without much effort for us, but trust is something we develop over time.  I see the way she cares for him, I see how much she loves him.  I am trusting her more each day, as she continues to show up and be his mom.  I'm learning the beauty of sharing, which didn't seem to make sense all those years ago when I fought with my sister over Barbie dolls and clothes.  It reminds me of the women who came to Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of one child.  The wise king proposed that they cut the child in half, and each woman get part of him to take home. The woman who agreed to this horrifying "solution" was deemed the liar, because a REAL mother would rather see her son raised by another than hurt him.  And so it is with us.  We are both willing to sacrifice a sense of ownership over this boy in order to keep him in one piece.  And love wins.

Child Abuse: Why?

I have little kids who are still learning how to communicate.  It's exciting to hear them finally express themselves verbally, to hear what they are noticing and thinking and what is important to them.  It's also really cool when they finally answer my questions.  Who hit you?  (Winston) Where did you get that?  (from your closet) What's in your mouth?  (that candy you were trying to hide) But then I ask WHY? and they are still not sure how to answer that.  (Winston, WHY did you hit her? To make the little girl cry.  Really? Because that's kind of psycho.  We need to work on that, buddy.)  And it is a daily frustration to get some of the information, but still have this nagging WHY that goes unanswered.

Child abuse is like that.  We can say What happened.  We can prosecute Who did it.  We can avoid returning to Where it happened.  But many of us are left with this question: Why?  My very young brain tried so hard to answer this question in the silence.  If I had reported it, maybe some adult would have helped me figure it out, but I didn't speak of it, and so I tried to make sense of it on my own.  Was there something wrong with me?  Something that made him target me?  Was it luck, or, more accurately, a lack thereof?  As I got older, the world unknowingly provided other possible answers.  Was I asking for it?  Was I doing something unconsciously that drew his attention?  Maybe if I had fought or yelled, would he have left me alone?

Here's what I've come to realize in the past few years, although maybe the Why can never be completely put to rest...it happened because I was little and he was big.  It happened because we were alone, probably by design.  It happened because he was pretty sure I wouldn't tell.  Maybe he tested me in other ways beforehand, pushing the limits, seeing if bit him and ran off screaming or became still and quiet.  It happened because this world that we live in feasts on the souls of children, and there aren't enough good people to stand up and defend them.  It happened because there is darkness all around.

This can't be how it goes.  Do you know how to get rid of darkness?  SHINE A LIGHT.  That's something else I've learned recently.  So here's a new question, a much more relevant one than Why?  We need to ask How?  How do I shine my light?  How do I stand between a child and someone who means them harm?  Start by being the safe person.  Don't hurt kids.  Remember when you speak to them and look at them and care for them that they are PRECIOUS.  Ask yourself if you would be doing this if someone else were with you.  I started with the two children I gave birth to.  I vowed to be their safe place.  That expanded to another son who joined our family through adoption, and a girl who lives with us through foster care.  Then we added some kids in our neighborhood.  Now it pretty much includes every kid whose name I know, whose path crosses mine.

Our little girl told me last week about a fight she witnessed, about a man hurting a woman, even though the woman yelled stop.  She said, "He has strong arms, so he punched her."  But that's not okay, I told her.  Just because he could doesn't mean he should.  Do you understand? (please tell me you understand, please tell me that you won't let someone treat you that way someday, please let this one thing be what you remember from your time with our family)  And she said, "My daddy  (Chris) has strong arms, but he swings me around.  I like that."  Yes!  Not all men hit.  Strength shouldn't be used to oppress, it should be used to protect.  I'm so glad that she made that connection.  I'm so glad my husband can show her what a good man looks like.  And I hope she can realize Why.  Why he chooses to use his arms to hug and hold and embrace and defend.  Because Jesus did it first.

Becoming a Family

I've written before about the process of becoming a foster parent.  There were so many thoughts, so many fears, just the months leading up to receiving our license provided enough material to keep this blog going.  So here's another from back then: I worried that becoming foster parents would ruin our family.  I would lay in bed at night and think about this beautiful, amazing, increasingly rare thing we had.  Chris and I did it all in the "traditional" order: we got married, we had a baby a few weeks after our second anniversary, we waited 18 months and then we made another one.  I gave birth to two healthy, beautiful boys, and the four of us were a family.  Chris earned the money, I stayed home with the kids, we all had the same last name and the same skin color and the same love of buttered popcorn and movies on the couch.  When the time to enroll the boys in school came around, we just showed up with a birth certificate and immunization record, filled out some papers, and it was done.  We got to skip over the lengthy sections detailing custody agreements.  We got to travel when we wanted, to make all the decisions affecting our kids.  We made a family from our own DNA, and I thought being in that exclusive club held us together.

We got the call, we brought home a baby, and it was different.  When I held him, when I gave him his bottle (no breastfeeding, which was a bummer), I didn't search his features to find the ones that matched mine.  Between the pediatrician and the caseworker, we made arrangements and implemented their decisions.  We tried to be considerate of the strangers who visited with him each week, the people who bore the titles of Mom and Dad.  We had to get a court order to take him out of state to visit my sister.  And then, one day, he began talking.  His first word was "Dada", and he said it while he was in my husband's arms.  A month later, he called me "Mama".  And I was confused at first, because he called the other woman Mama too.  I thought there could be only one, but he showed me how silly and narrow that was.  At church, we began meeting with other families, and we talked about being a family to others.  The doors of my heart opened to the people coming through the doors of my house.  Michael was just the beginning, as we reached out to his sisters and the relatives taking care of them, the other Second Moms.  And, despite not having a title, a roll-off-the-tongue name to describe how we fit together, I knew we were becoming a family.  My preteen neighbor started coming over, and bringing her friends, and we would stop by her house and spend time with her parents, and another branch was added to our tree.  We got another call, a little girl this time, and she quickly joined the other kids in calling me Mom, and she loves to tell people that she has two Moms, two Dads, two Grandmas and one Nana, and a Grandpa.  And she began to use a word we hadn't taught her to describe our boys; she called them her brothers.

All these people, they taught me that family isn't about looking alike and living in one house together.  Family describes the people we love, the ones who live in our homes and the ones who find a place in our hearts.  Family is who we show up for, it's who we take care of, it pulls us together.  When Michael's First Mom contacted us, when she came back to the land of the living, it was the easiest thing to share a meal with her, to talk to her, to let him sit on her lap.  Of course we want to see her, to help her, to clear off a chair for her to join us.  Because she's family.

It's OK to miss your mama

As a foster parent, I've spent quite a bit of time in class over the past three years.  We took 36 hours (12-3 hour classes) just to get licensed, and we take 20 hours each subsequent year.  Sometimes the classes are really helpful, the teacher is passionate and I'm in the right mood to learn.  Other times, the teacher has trouble with the Power Point (or DVD player, or projector, really these teachers need to take a class on using technology before being released to instruct others), or I'm tired and have trouble concentrating, or another parent hijacks the class to air their grievances or get help specific to their situation.  Usually in the course of 3 hours, I can get at least one thing to take home and apply.  Especially in the beginning, I had to save these lessons for future use.  Now that we are in the thick of it, I find that I remember the words of my teachers more and more.  One thing that stood out to me, in a class about maintaining information about birth families, was the instructor's explanation that just because your kid isn't talking about something, doesn't mean he isn't thinking about it.  If a child is separated from siblings, or parents, or another close relative, odds are their thoughts are never far from that person.  She said foster parents have to open the dialogue, and let the kids know that it's OKAY to talk, it's okay to say you wish you were back home, that you miss your family, even that parent that beat you black and blue.  That really resonated with me; after all, I kept in almost everything that I thought about as a child.  I've been thinking lately that I really should have spoken up to my parents about many things that I kept secret, because they probably could have made things better, helped me.

So when a child comes to my home to live, under confusing and possibly scary circumstances, I have no doubt that they are thinking way more than they are saying.  Foster kids learn to say whatever they think the other person wants to hear; they don't know when they will see their biological family again, what the new rules are, where they fit in this new family.  While fostering is definitely similar to more traditional parenting, with the preparation of meals and the wiping of noses, the bedtime stories and trips to the park, there is an added component of nurture that these classes are meant to teach.  The most important part of foster care is the healing, taking in a broken child with no foundation, no structure, no good examples, and transforming them into a whole person, someone who knows his worth, who knows there is another way to live than what he's seen first-hand.  Sometimes these conversations are difficult to start, but if I don't help my kids heal, then what am I doing?

Our current placement is a young girl.  She came to us on a Friday afternoon.  We didn't know much about her, except that she is an only child.  She really enjoyed the experience of having other kids to play with, and jumped right in with our boys, rolling in the leaves and driving trucks across the living room.  But at night, she would cry.  She would ask me to take her home, to her mom.  And I would feel so helpless when I told her no, that she would stay with us until her worker said different.  It's a complicated situation to explain, and I've tried many different ways of phrasing.  We talk about this several times a week.  We've also gone to the library and perused books about parents and children who are separated.  I found one picture book called "I Miss You Everyday", which I believe was written for children whose parents divorce and one lives far away.  In it, the narrator mails herself across the country to see her dad.  Another one, "Llama Llama Misses Mama", is about a little Llama who starts school and has trouble when his mom leaves for the day.  This has actually become a favorite of all our kids, since three of them are in school and have experienced this kind of separation.  But our foster daughter loves it most, and these days, she asks to read it at bedtime instead of crying for her mom.  In the middle of the story, it all becomes too much for the Llama, and he cries out, "Llama Llama misses Mama!"  His teacher rushes over to comfort him, and our Girl burrows deeper into my side.  "Don't cry little Llama, it's okay to miss your mama!" I read.  Then the Llama warms up to school and actually starts to have fun, just as the words "Mama Llama, you came back!" appear with a picture of the Mama coming to pick up her son.  Although our girl can't read, she excitedly says the words at just the right time, and her face lights up in a smile.  I smile too, picturing with her the day when her mama comes to get her.  When she no longer has to miss her mama.

The Things that Were Taken

It was bedtime, and our Girl wouldn't put down her toys.  She wouldn't put them away, so they were taken away, downstairs with the other toys for the night.  I rubbed the cocoa butter lotion on her skin and helped her dress in the pink and white pajamas and wrapped her hair in her purple scarf and covered her with her blankets.  But she wasn't happy about it.  "Mommy," she said, "I want the things back that were taken from me."  I know she meant the Monster toys that were downstairs, so I said, "In the morning, you can play with them again.  Now its time to sleep."  But as I walked across the hall to my own quiet room, her words echoed with me, and I heard a new meaning.  I thought about all the things that were taken from her, and I knew that the rising sun wouldn't begin to help restore those Things.

We are born into families, homes, cities that are varied and much of our early years is determined by the things we are given by our parents, what is culturally acceptable, what choices the big people around us make.  When I had my first baby, I had a job, a college degree, a loving husband, a home in a two-bedroom duplex on a quiet street in the suburbs.  I had a car and parents nearby who were excited to be grandparents for the first time.  I had a room full of gifts from friends and family, a brand-new crib, a dresser full of clothes, gender-neutral blankets, diapers and wipes that would last for five months.  All of this affected how James was raised, how he was loved and cared for and what he learned about family and his place in this world.  Even when, a few years later, we learned that he was different, that he would face challenges we had never known, it didn't change the fact that he was precious to us, that he was safe and loved. (Really it helped, because it gave us a better idea of how to love him, how to structure things to make life easier for him.)  But this Girl?  Even though she was born in the same city, she didn't have much of that.  For her, and too many other children in our country, in our world, she didn't learn from day one that she was precious.  She didn't see healthy, appropriate adult relationships.  Her development and interests were not the number one priority of her primary caregivers.  And when it was determined that she was a little different, that she would face challenges her mother had never known, it only made things harder.  She wasn't given the care she needed to thrive, and ultimately the state had to get involved.

What happened next...another Thing.  She was taken.  Sitting in a police car watching her mom yell and protest, and then someone brought her to our house.  New people, new rules, different food, different schedule.  Those first weeks with us, she asked so many questions.  She didn't understand how we related to each other.  One time, when she was in time-out for hitting one of the boys, she said, "My mom just whoops me."  Even the punishments are different here.  I don't know if she has figured it out yet, that even though she is one of four here, that her health and her safety are the number one priority.  That she is precious and loved, not because of what she does or how cute she is, but because she exists.  Because she is a child.  And I don't know how to explain that some things she will never get back.  She can never unsee those things.  She can never unfeel those hurts.  She can never get back these months that she has been apart from her Mama.  I know.  I've tried to pretend that I was someone else, someone who didn't lose her innocence too young.  But it happened, and I can't get it back.  How do I tell her that she has other things now, that life will replace those Things that were taken, that, although she is now marked by the system, that doesn't have to be a bad Thing?  That, hopefully, this experience has changed the home she came from into a safe place for her to live; that someday, when she's ready, she can talk about everything that has happened and find peace; that her heart has been shaped to break when she hears about other children just like her.  That she doesn't have to repeat the life of her mother or father, that she can find something new.

I wish I could wave my Foster Mom wand over her while she sleeps and make her understand these things when she wakes up.  But I don't have a wand, all I have is a warm bed for her tonight, hugs and kisses in the morning, and a mouth to pray for her future.  Won't you join me?