An Adoptee's Reflection on a Successful Adoption

When I read my parents my last blog post, we all got verklempt.  And like all good re-tellings of family history, I learned something about my adoption that I didn’t know before.  My dad told me that, in the fateful first visit between my parents and my baby-self at the foster home, a birth mother accompanied them there.  She had given up her baby for adoption and, as part of her healing process, wanted to see the interaction between an adoptive family and a foster baby.  Seeing me smile in the arms of my soon-to-be adoptive father made her feel better about her decision.  And that story warmed my heart.  

As Ian and I have been inching closer and closer to joining the Parenting Club ourselves, over the past few years I’ve been pondering what has made my adoption successful.  I really have no idea - I’d most like to give credit to the Big Guy upstairs.  What I do know is that there are some behaviors that, as an adoptee, I have always appreciated, and some that I have not.  

So here’s a little list of things to consider that I’ve valued throughout my life as an adoptee.  And I’m not even going to include the really obvious no-no’s like asking how much a child cost or asking prospective adopters if they’ve “picked one out yet” (true story from my parents).   Most all, embrace the mantra of Normal.  Treat adoptees normally by being normal parents, normal aunts/uncles, cousins, friends, etc.  Whatever normal means.  

Parents

Never keep adoption secret.  One of the most common questions people ask me when they find out I’m adopted is “When did you find out?”  Never.  I’ve always known that I was adopted because my parents made my adoption part of my life story. From sharing pictures of my dad holding me for the first time to showing me the fluffy pink dress I wore home from the foster home, we celebrated my adoption through the telling of our family’s history.  I even remember my parents once pointing out their adoption lawyer’s office when we drove by.  Similarly...

Reinforce adoption as a blessing, not an alternative.  I know I was Plan B, both for my birth mom and my parents.  But my parents always made me feel like their Plan B was really Plan A in disguise:  

• Once in college, I called my mom in tears after learning about a drug that may have caused her infertility.  She never really talked with me about her struggles getting pregnant, after all.  Though my sobs on the phone, she said “Annie, I realize that people think of it as a bad thing, but I learned a long time ago that my infertility was a blessing.”  
• On a car ride to visit my dad’s family out east when I was still in elementary school, my dad and I started talking about the idea of guardian angels.  His throat tightening with emotion, he told me that he thought this his mom, who passed away when he was very young, was his guardian angel because she had led him to me.
• Once in high school, I had a tragic realization: “I am the product of someone’s mistake.”  When I told my dad this, he immediately corrected me saying, “No, Annie, you were the product of someone’s moment of passion!”

Let the child bring up adoption questions:  Beyond discussing my life story, I cannot remember a time that my parents ever brought up my status as an adopted child - with me or with anyone.  Unless I pointedly asked them, I do not remember my parents ever discussing their previous struggles with infertility, the legal process of adopting, and they never ever ever pointed out any observable genetic or ethnic differences between me and them.  Adoption just faded into the background of our family history rather than being a defining characteristic of it, and we just went on living our lives.

Make sure the rest of the family doesn’t talk about it either.  Never have my aunts, uncles, grandparents or cousins singled me out because I’m adopted. Not even casually. Never.  

Love, love, and love some more.  I’m lucky because I think my parents are awesome.  My dad played Barbies with me in kindergarten and set my hair in hot rollers in junior high.  My mom taped every episode of Full House for me and saved my voicemail messages on their answering machine during college so that they could get a dose of Annie “sunshine” (their words, not mine) when I was at school.  My parents are the best kind of weird, and they still spoil me rotten.  I’ve read that overall happiness declines once a couple has children.  My parents both deny this, and their behavior certainly matches their belief.  Maybe when you wait so long for your children to come into your life, happiness takes a fresh perspective.  

Everyone

Defend Nurture over Nature.  Whenever someone says “It all comes down to genes,” I feel a little pang of insult because, as an adoptee, that means you think that my parents had 0% of a role in who I am today.  I respectfully disagree. I grew up calling oranges “oye-inges” because - and only because - my mom is from New Joisy.  On the contrary, I love it when people...

Point out would-be genetic similarities.  When I was getting ready for my cousin’s bridal shower, I realized that my skirt was a wee bit short and the back of my legs a wee bit dimpled.  Lamenting the cellulite on my upper thighs, my aunt looked at me and said “You must have gotten your legs from your mother!”  I’m sure that didn’t make my mom feel good, but it made me smile. I love it when people say I look like my parents, and I never correct them by saying I’m adopted.  I like to entertain the possibility that our environments influence our looks in the same way they influence our mannerisms.  

Be careful with the words “real parents.”  “Real parents” should only refer to the adoptive parents.  The other terms you’re looking for are “biological parents” or “birth mother/birth father.”

Celebrate Adoption!  For every emotional birthparent search that you see you on TV and every time you hear someone joke about a black sheep of the family being adopted, remember that there are many, many happy families created by adoption.  It is not a source of embarrassment or shame for my family, but a source of pride.  While I don’t want people to see me only through the lens of adoption I love it when people ask me about it.  I enjoy having the opportunity to discuss it with people and to help others realize what a blessing adoption can be.


For an adoptive parent’s perspective on the do’s and do-not’s of adoption, check out Single Dad Laughing’s article.

My Beautiful Adoption

Guilty pleasures confession: I like the MTV Reality Show Teen Mom.  I like it so much that last night, when perusing the Huffington Post, I clicked to read an opinion piece about it.  And then I scrolled down to read the comments section, and here’s what one commenter had to say about a teen couple that gave their baby up for adoption:

Caitlyn and Tyler do wrong by encouragin­g other parents to give up their children. As I and many birth mothers will attest, losing a child to adoption is painful no matter how open the adoption is and the pain can last a lifetime. Experts … all agree that the best option for children is to be raised in their biological family if at all possible. For many children, being adopted by an older, more affluent couple is no compensati­on for losing their natural family.

I realize that adoption is an emotional and contentious subject matter, and that adoption experiences are as intensely personal as birthing experiences.  Yet, as an adopted child, I can’t help but feel offended by the above comment.  I pray that my own birth mother does not share such a perspective, and that she knows in her heart that I got the happy ending she always wanted for me - and that she got hers, too.  So I started writing...

I could write a book on my beautiful and blessed experience as an adopted child, but I’m not going to. Nope.  I’m only going to write a few posts about it this week - and that's it - because adoption is not who I am.  You see, “adopted child” isn’t one of my primary identities, just like “biological child” isn’t one of yours.  I am simply my parents' daughter.

I’m also not going to write much about it because I don’t want you to see me only through the lens of adoption.  Even though I know better, I realize that some people see it as a painful hiccup in one’s life story - like adoptees are orphans-lite.  Excluding Daddy Warbucks and Annie, adoption seems to get a bum deal in most of its popular representations, focusing on identity crises and emotional searches for birth parents.  Even Moses abandoned his adoptive Egyptian family in the Old Testament - and then brought pestilence and plague upon their kingdom!  Certainly, many adoptees and birth parents rightfully struggle with issues of identity, loss and abandonment, but some of us do not.  I am so lucky to have gotten the happy family that my birth mother wanted for me and to be able to fade into the public background while the rest of the world watches Find My Family on TV.

So let these musings serve as a voice for the comfortably adopted.  Maybe, in their own little way, they will help correct some common misconceptions about adoption.  Maybe by telling my side of the story, I can dissipate some of the fear surrounding adoption and encourage more people to consider it.  Because I know the beautiful truth about adoption, and I celebrate it in my heart every day.

First, my story:

My parents grew up on the East Coast, met at college in the Midwest, and moved to Indiana where my grandfather lived and had connections to help my dad find a job.  In following with their young and liberal ways, my parents decided to abstain from parenthood to curb overpopulation.  ‘Twas the 1970s after all.  But then something happened: one of their close friends had a baby, and they realized that being parents might be fun.  Thus began Operation: Get Pregnant.  

It failed.  Badly, actually.  Following a slew of hormone injections and fertility treatments, an ectopic pregnancy landed my mom in the hospital and ended their pregnancy hopes.

Enter my sister and me. My parents adopted my sister when she was four years-old.  A few years later, when they were ready to expand their family again, a social worker that lived in their neighborhood matched them with a baby girl being fostered in the Indianapolis area.

That was me.

When my parents came to meet me for the first time at the foster home - so the story (and the photo) goes - I smiled when my dad first held me.  I came home with my parents a few weeks later, just two months after being born.  Our adoption was a traditional closed adoption, so I have never known my birth parents.

27 years later, I have framed in my living room that photo of my father holding me for the first time.  It sits in tribute to my adoption, which catalyzed my life and started the blessed chain of happy things that have come from it.  

I have always been - and still am - fiercely proud of being adopted.  But my understanding of adoption - specifically how people view me as an adoptee - changed in my early twenties following a conversation with a good friend in college.  During a casual discussion about my adoption story, she asked me if I felt distant from my parents because they weren’t my “real parents.”  That was the first moment I realized that not everyone views adoption as a blessing.  That people may perceive my relationship with my parents as less-fulfilling because we are not biologically related.  

On the contrary, my parents and I feel that our relationship is uniquely special, and that adoption is a tear-jerking, heartstring-tugging, thanks giving blessing from God.  And I’m not even religious!  Yet, if ever something strengthened my belief in a higher power and in destiny, it’s my own adoption story.  For most people, they wouldn’t have their families if their parents hadn't met and, well... you know.  For me, it’s much more complicated. If my birth mother hadn’t had a romantic interlude with my biological father, then I would have never been conceived; and if she’d chosen to abort me instead of making the courageous and unimaginably difficult decision to place me up for adoption, then I would have never found my way into foster care in Indianapolis; and if my social worker didn’t live in the same neighborhood as my parents, then my parents may not have heard about me; and if my Grandpa had never moved to Indiana, then my parents wouldn't have moved here either; and if my mother’s uterus had formed correctly instead of developing a flap inside of it, then our family would have never come into being.  It all could have turned out so differently.

Through luck or grace, I found my family and they found me.  We may not share the same genetic makeup, but we share everything else (including the same rare blood type).  While a loving young woman courageously suffered through emotional and physical pain to bring me into this world over a quarter-century ago, my parents gave birth to me in the most sacred of places: their hearts.  And that’s the beautiful truth.