4

The If-Only Game

I’m currently on a huge reading spree inspired by lack of technology last week while camping. I read four books last week and, while unable to keep quite the same pace here, I’m still reading, reading, reading. I’m currently five chapters into The Shack. A sentence near the end of the fourth chapter reached out and choked me.

It is so easy to get sucked into the if-only game, and playing it is a short and slippery slide into despair.

I nodded. Been there, done that. No desire to go back.

I struggle with my current place in my healing journey. Why? I am neither overly joyous nor deeply depressed about the things that have happened with regard to the Munchkin’s birth, placement and the continuous contact we have had over the years. Again, as I have talked about quite frequently as of late, I am in a place of peace.

Don’t misunderstand peace for joy or an overabundance of positive feelings. Peace is trickier than that, I believe. I cannot change what has happend; I accept that. I have little control over the future; I accept that. Right now, things are good; I accept that. Things in the past, in various situations, were not always good; I accept that. Things in the future may be good or they may be bad; I accept that. For me, peace is that acceptance, that acknowledgment that what will be, will be.

I don’t often play the what-if or the if-only game anymore. I don’t have time, quite frankly, to dwell on the past. I barely have time to live in the here and now, drowning as I am in ten days worth of camp laundry, the laundry that formed at home while I was gone and, you know, the making of meals and the bathing of children. And cake baking for no particular reason other than I like to do things with my kids. But there are other reasons that I don’t jump into questions like, “What if I had parented,” or, “What if I hadn’t gotten caught up with an unethical agency?”

It does no good.

True, if I had parented, my life would be vastly different. But I don’t like to entertain that train of thought. It does no good to begin to doubt that decision which, in essence, brings up a string of doubt regarding each and every subsequent decision I have made since the time I placed her in another family’s arms and walked out of the hospital. I try to be a confident (but humble) wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. I can’t be confident if I am constantly thinking, “Well, if I would have done this or if I wouldn’t have done this, then this, that and the other thing may or may not be in my life.” The constant doubt brought about by the what-if game is a blow to my confidence and my ability to be the best that I can be in my various roles.

Furthermore, and more importantly, I just can’t change anything. My decisions are my decisions, whether they were pushed by other people or not. I signed papers. I walked out doors. I continued to keep my promise that I would always be available. I have parented other children. I have continued to live a life, however broken some pieces of that life remain.

I don’t have time and energy for the anger that others seem to want me to have anymore. I held onto that anger, clutching it as tightly as I could, far so very long. The only inkling of anger that remains is toward the unethical agency as they are still doing to other mothers what was done to me. And, still, even that anger is only fanned on occasion. I don’t think of them unless they show up in discussion or I’m writing a post of this nature. I can’t change it.

I won’t apologize for the way I feel about everything that has happened. I will continue to support adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents interested in reform. I will continue to support adoptees in their fight for their original birth certificates. I will continue to offer help when asked, though I’ll admit that I don’t always have the answers. But I refuse to be poked and prodded for not feeling the same way as Birth Mom A or Adoptee B or Adoptive Parent C. I refuse to even acknowledge “what-if” questions anymore as I don’t feel that they are a healthy way to explore this journey that I have been making over the past six years. I refuse to be made to feel less because I have found a place of peace. I refuse to be told that, because of that peace, it means that I’m not a truly loving birth mother.

I refuse to let others ruin this place where I currently reside. Peace suits me well.

9

Included

I feel included today. It was probably an accident but I’ll take it.

I was indulging my boys in some extra TV time this morning as we just spent eight days without it (camping). As per usual, we were watching Nogging. Along comes a Laurie Berkner song, one I (shockingly) hadn’t heard before. I can’t quote it word for word as it made me cry, immediately, and I lost some of the words through my sniffling. But the song, entitled “My Family,” is my new favorite song.

The gist is this:

If you’re in my heart, you’re in my family.

Apparently it was made especially for Noggin and is not on any CD nor is it available for download on iTunes. It’s not even on Noggin’s site. I get really aggravated when technology fails me. I’d love to have this song in my home as it is what we are all about as an open adoption family.

Society doesn’t want to talk about my family, the unique span of now three households (four if Lincoln would ever step up to the plate). More if you count grandparents but let’s just leave it at three for the time being. We’ve got a birth mother, an adoptive mother, a stepfather (to-be, shortly!), an adoptive father, a bonus dad, (half)-brothers, brothers… I’m kind of lost right now but you get the point. Society wants to place us all in our separate houses in which we live and those individual breakdowns are what family is supposed to be.

But it’s not.

We break down the walls of houses and laugh at distance. We are a family across the miles. We may not talk every single day. (I don’t even talk to my own mother every single day. That might drive me insane as much as I love her.) I don’t turn to D to ask permission for things I do in this household just as she is not expected to do likewise with her household. But we’re connected. We’re family. We’re just the way that we are.

And so, a big, squishy hug to Noggin for making me feel included, even if it was an accident, for the first time in the history of discussions, songs and what not on the topic of family. But, really, someone needs to get a copy of this song to my house. Yesterday.

5

An Apology

Dear Munchkin,

I am so sorry.

I hate when I deny your existence, even by a lie of omission. It’s not who I am, who I aspire to be or who I want you to think of me as in your life. I want you to know that I am proud of you, that I am proud of your existence and your presence in my life. I don’t want you to ever doubt that pride.

But I didn’t tell someone about you this week. And I feel horrible.

A friend from camp who hadn’t made it in ten years walked through the door of my cottage. She hadn’t aged in that time and I knew her immediately. Both boys were sitting at the table, eating their lunch, and she asked their names. I told her. We discussed our husbands, her current (first) pregnancy, jobs. I never found a way to tell her, even though I know her to be a loving and kind person, about you and the joy you are in my life. It was hard enough to talk, between convincing my oldest son that he needed to eat his cottage cheese and my younger son to stay seated.

But there’s no excuse.

It’s true, of course. That I have two sons, a wonderful husband and a job that I love. It’s true that I still sing and am still a big book nerd. It’s true that I’m busy and happy and that life is good. But there’s another truth: I gave birth to an amazing, smart, beautiful daughter. I believed that I wasn’t who I needed to be at the time and I placed her in the loving arms of another mother. She has grown up in love and continues to wow the world. She may not be an everyday presence in our home but she is a presence in our family.

I’m sorry I didn’t just say it, that I didn’t break the flow of conversation and just lay it out on the table. I can tell you things like, “If she would have been there for more than a day,” or, “If the boys had taken a nap.” But it still sounds cheap.

I’m not a perfect mother. And, so it seems, I am not a perfect birth mother. I will let you down from time to time, just as I sometimes let these brothers of yours down. I don’t do it intentionally. I am proud of all of you.

And… I hope… someday… you might be proud of me as well.

Please accept my apologies and my love.
Forever and always.