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.

6

Cure All for Frustration

Some mornings. It pays to get up.

I went to bed quite frustrated. Angry that my experience is dismissed or, even worse, deemed as inappropriate and then dismissed. I’m just tired of being told how to feel, what I should do with those feelings (keep them silent!) and the reasons why they’re inappropriate, inferior or otherwise unwelcome emotions concerning others experiences. If I had a record of acting inappropriately with or toward my daughter in anything I discussed with her, I might understand such ignorant and judgmental statements. But instead I was just frustrated.

This morning? I was still peeved. Not good for my blood pressure!

I sat down to check e-mail, do some morning writing and other morning internet type processes. I opened this blog to write a scathing diatribe about what sent me to bed with my grumpy pants still on.

Well, it didn’t turn out that way. My son wandered into the office and asked me to put on his new shoes. (The light up fire truck sneakers have been replaced with light up bulldozers.) Then he followed me back into the office, talking about “songs.” I knew he wanted to dance. So I put on his favorite dance song. And we’ve been dancing to it for a good half hour. Nothing lifts my spirits like completely silly time with my children.

And so, I’m going to keep dancing it up. Dance the anger right out.  That said? Don’t ever tell me what I can and cannot feel. And I won’t tell you what to dance to on your gloomy days!

10

“The Rest Is Still Unwritten”

I break tradition; sometimes my tries, are outside the lines.
We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can’t live that way.
-Natasha Bedingfield, “Unwritten”

Did you ever have a therapy appointment that just hit you where you needed to be hit? Made you open your eyes a little more to see past what you were stuck on and gaze upon something in a way that was necessary? Welcome to my morning. I’ve been struggling, as I’ve written about, with things that are still somewhat unknown. I’ve been worried about Munchkin’s future questions, how they will be worded and how to word my own response in age-appropriate but honest fashions. I’ve been stressing about various things from pregnancy discussions to pregnancy itself to my mother’s health… and so on. Needless to say, my anxiety has been somewhat elevated in the past month. I told my therapist this fact, admitting that it’s not out of control but hindering certain activities which only, of course, adds more anxiety into the mix.

And so we got to talking, as you do when you’re visiting your therapist, about some underlying issues. We got to talking about Munchkin and the pregnancy and openness and… everyone else’s opinion. “Who is everyone else,” she asked. I stumbled around my words, explaining that certain people touched by adoption (and untouched, but I was trying to elaborate on those within the triad) think that open adoption is confusing for the child.

She looked at me, having been my therapist for over a year and a half now and said, “I may be forgetting something, but has Munchkin ever been confused about who you are or who her everyday Mommy is?” I launched into the pregnancy discussion story on how the Munchkin had us stop the conversation and she said, “Do you realize that it is age appropriate for a child her age to not want to have come out of ANYONE’S belly?” We began discussing our family unit, blended families, non-co-parenting issues and why other people simply don’t matter.

And then she hit me with it.

Different doesn’t mean bad. Different doesn’t even mean abnormal. Just because our family is unconventional doesn’t mean we’re wrong.  

And I sat there, unable to speak as it began to sink in. (Yes, unable to speak.) Dumbfounded at my own inability to really put it all together prior to this moment in my therapist’s office. As I continued to sit and process, she went on, giving me more ammunition for personal change in outlook.

“Honestly, you’re going to make mistakes as you go along, just the same as you make mistakes in parenting BigBrother and like you will with LittleBrother. There is no “one book” that teaches you everything you need to know about parenting. They all disagree with one another. Just because there are little to no resources for parents in open adoption doesn’t mean you have to listen to every random person’s opinion either. Yes, you’re flubbing through this, just like every other planet on the face of the Earth.” (Paraphrased as I was still somewhat dumbfounded.)

No, there aren’t many books on the ins, outs, dos and don’ts of open adoption. “Experts” in the field still disagree on how much openness is acceptable, normal or excessive. Every person touched by adoption has an opinion on the matter. Every random Joe Schmoe has one as well. And it doesn’t matter.

We (which includes me, TheHusbandMan, D, J and the kids) are doing what is best for our family. We may make some mistakes along the way. (Uh, hi, I can vouch for that myself.) We may have our own questions from time to time. And this doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from others’ experiences, good or bad. In fact, I never want to stop learning about how to better our family! But in the end, we’re writing our own life story here. You may not like how our family is made up but, well, you don’t have to come to any family reunions either.

And then my anxiety level started to drop. And then BigBrother started to scream about leaving (“READY! READY!”) and it went back up but, hey, one thing at a time.