I worked through a lot of stuff last year with regard to adoption, loss, grief, anger, anxiety, guilt, sadness and, for an added fun, a little postpartum depression thrown on top! I stood in front of a smorgasboard of difficult emotions on a daily basis and tried to work my way down the line. What would I choose to deal with today? Some anger with a heaping pile of guilt topped with some steaming anxiety? Or just some grief with a side of PPD? No two days were ever the same.
Whenever I thought I had mastered one emotional issue, another would need to be figured out and/or something new would come up forcing me back to the beginning of the line. It got frustrating. Tedious. In fact, it even got boring. Doing the same healing work over and over again. And over again. But I kept at it. And I’m glad.
I came across this quote which seems to fit the situation well.
Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
-Newt Gingrich
I’m not quoting him because of who he is, trust me. I’m using the quote because I have found it to be true. At any point last year, I could have given up. I could have thrown my hands in the air and declared the work impossible. I was absolutely tired of getting to a point where I thought I had found some inner peace and just being thrust into another issue that was so out of my realm of experience that I had no clue with how to proceed. Last year was big and scary in so many ways, only further clouded by PPD.
And yet, I kept putting in the work. I went to therapy. I did my therapy homework. I journaled. I wrote. I went for walks. I yelled at God. I cried with God. I talked to my Husband and not just at my Husband. (What? You’ve never talked at your Husband? Surely you jest.) I worked on counting to ten when I received news that threw me for a loop. I learned not to just look at the shoes someone else was wearing but to really try them on for size. I started really working on thinking before I spoke and really asking myself how my words would affect me if they were being spoken at/to me.
And I ended 2008 on a positive note.
That felt good. I felt pretty darn proud of myself. I am not saying that I am completely free of adoption grief and loss issues. I don’t believe I’ll ever reach that point. I will always miss my daughter. But I’m in a good place. Right?
Then I realized that all the work I did last year was absolutely pointless if I don’t keep up the work this year. I got discouraged for a few hours. It is tiring to always be working toward a good place, a healthy place, a place of peace. It’s especially tiring when you realize that even when and if you find that peace, you’re still going to be without something special to you. In this case, of course, it is the Munchkin. I got kind of down for a little while.
And then I remembered that the negative outlook never achieved anything worth keeping. And I lifted my chin and went back to work.
I’m not saying I won’t occasionally be angry this year. I’m sure that I will. And I’ll be sad on some days. And overwhelmed. And grief-stricken. And caught off guard. But I’ll do so with the realization that I’m doing these things not just for me but for my children, all of them. To be the best birth mother and mother possible, I have to keep working on myself. Ignoring the issues didn’t solve them. Being negative about the issues didn’t solve them. Being positive, even, doesn’t solve them. But the attitude makes all the difference.
That’s how I’m continuing to work through all of this. And it feels good to say so.
