All right, I guess it's my turn to invoke the wrath of assorted commentors...it's going around blogland right now. For refs, see recent chatter at The Naked Ovary and at The Thin Pink Line and Wet Feet.
Anyway, let me start off by saying I'm ecstatic for Karen and for all adoptive parents who finally get a referral. Ec-fucking-static. And I long for the day when that will be me. We're nearly done with our paperchase, and after that we're staring down the barrell of a wait that's getting longer daily. I haven't ridden the infertility-go-round as long or as hard as a lot of other barren chicks, but TTC took such a toll on me & our relationship that we had to move out of our damn bedroom and into the former guest room because I just feel too unhappy in my old room. And I loved, loved, loved that room five years ago when I painted it and got started trying to fill our new house with babies. So I have had my share of pain in this, and there's more coming.
But I also feel a ton of empathy for women and men who dont' get to raise their children. I can't imagine how painful that must be, but I REALLY REALLY TRY TO IMAGINE IT. I believe this is my DUTY as a future mother, because my child will need to know everything she can about her first parents. So I ask questions, and I read blogs, and I sit and think about it. I'm not a saint; not by a long shot. I don't want to share my child with another woman, no matter what. But I HAVE TO! I asked my body for a baby, and it told me to FUCK OFF. So I'm asking the universe to bring me a child by another route, and that means I have to sacrifice something--a lot of somethings.
The main thing I have to give up - that I think all adoptive parents have to sacrifice - is the standard concept of family. Adoption is not exactly the same as biological parenthood...it's just fricken not! It's not WORSE, but it's not identical. You're re-making your idea of family and of parenting when you adopt, and unless you're willing to do that, you'll always feel weird and uncomfortable about your child's origins and the underlying truth of the relationship. I think loving a child means loving the parents who bore her, no matter how uncomfortable that is; no matter how unlikely it is that you'd have a relationship with them any other way. The adoptions that I've seen that work the best are the ones that accept and adapt to the new reality of what family will be, rather than saying it's just another variant on the biological family. I will never tell my daughter that I "carried her in my heart" or any of that, because I don't know her! Another woman is carrying her, maybe right now, and that's the truth of the matter.
You know, I read the saddest story. It's being presented as a happy story - twins adopted separately from China, reunited because their adoptive parents found each other. Which is great for the twins, sort of, but here's the thing--they were abandoned separately. The first one was a day old, and perfectly healthy; the second one was left in the same spot a week later, and had a heart defect, so was adopted as a "waiting child" a year after her healthy sister was adopted. And here's what kills me about the story--if they were abandoned like that, it must be that the parents chose one child, because that's all they could manage, and gave up the other child. And then a week later they found out that the chosen child was sick, and so they couldn't manage to keep her either. How horrible to have to make that choice twice, and to know that you had given away the healthy child (who you could maybe afford to keep) and couldn't help the sick child. AUGH!!! What horrible, horrible circumstances that these people are in, and what horrible choices they have to make.
The comfort in all of this is that I feel like I'm in a partnership now, a partnership with a woman I may never meet. She's going to have to make an excruciating choice, and leave her child in the hands of fate. And I'm going to be there to catch her, to catch her child, to make it so that, whether she knows it or not, her child will survive and be safe, and be loved, and learn to love her. So I'm not alone in this process that basically flays everyone who goes through it. And neither is she. I hung Buddhist prayer flags for the baby's mother and father in the room that will eventually belong to the baby, because those prayers are carried on the wind--I don't need to know who to pray for; the wind will take them where they need to go.
So, the key to empathy? Don't confuse it with guilt. You see, I'm confident that I'm doing the right thing. I'm helping out a child who needs help, and hopefully easing a spiritual wound for a woman whose burdens are heavier than mine. I feel happy that I'm eventually going to be a mom, and sad that she's going to lose her child, all at the same time. It's not difficult to feel this, although it makes me ache. I'd love to feel pure happiness, but that went out the window along with my fertility, and so this more complex, layered feeling is the one I'm going to have for the rest of my life. And that's how it should be.
