Noted.

A while back I copied a post about “What Adoptive Parents Wish You Knew” from Forever Parents.

Today I got a new comment left on that post from “bestfriendsgirl” in response to one of the points made by one of the parents on that Forever Parents post.

The comment says:

Oh, but you are wrong, Violet. Adoption is very much a state of being, very much who one is. It is the filter through which all my life experiences pass. It has been with me from the moment I was taken away from my birthmother and will be until the moment I cease to be alive. No matter how much one loves one’s adoptive parents, no matter how good one had it growing up, the void is still there … the longing for the bond that was broken, for what was taken away. One may have been too young to vocalize, but not too young to realize what has happened . One carries it forever. You may believe you are your son’s mother in every way that matters. But we adoptees have a history, a heritage and a story that has nothing to do with our adoptive parents. And it matters, too.

Obviously this comment pertains to something that I didn’t say – just copied – and I don’t agree with all of the statements. But I believe adoption is different for each person, each family, and each child. It’s important that all of those viewpoints be considered and noted and recognized as valid.

While I did reply to the comment on that particular post, I want to reiterate my feelings here.

The “catch” with adoptive parenting, and in our case the adoptive parenting of ‘older’ kids, is that you know there will always be someone else standing in the shadows. In our case, there’s a mother who did not choose to “give” her kids to us and who, I like to imagine, misses them very much and wishes the outcome had been different.

That shadow person is one of the major reasons why a lot of people don’t consider adopting older kids. The knowledge that the child may never view you as their “mother” or “father” and will always see you as “that person who adopted me” can be hard to swallow for someone who wants a “traditional” family.

In our case, we’ve got the best and worst of both worlds – at least, as far as an adoptive parent could imagine things.

We have our ten year old son who very much misses his biological mother, remembers many good things about her and is always happy to talk about her and the experiences they had together as a family. I believe, though I could be wrong, that he will never come to consider me as his “mother” in the ultimate sense of the word. He will always have some level of internal conflict about loyalties and love and all those other points. This is something he will likely struggle with for a long time.

If he ever stops calling me “Violet” and calls me “Mom” on occasions other than when he ‘slips’, I’ll be stunned.

Having said that, we didn’t become adoptive parents in the hopes of erasing some kid(s) memory of the past. We did not adopt kids so we could pretend they were ours from birth or biologically related to us. His struggles are painful, of course, but we do our best to help him understand the why and how of being in our family.

Does it break my heart that he had to go through some shit earlier in life? Of course. I don’t think any child should ever feel conflicted about love for any reason.

But I love him very, very much – as much as I could imagine ever loving a biological child – but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever forget that he was adopted. That he has a past. That the love he feels for me is not the same as what I feel for him in the purest sense of the word “love”. To me, he is the only oldest child I have ever had, ever will have, ever will know. I am not his only mother.

We have our (almost eight year old) son who has mostly negative memories of his biological mother. His stories are a mix of questions, fabrication and goodness. He is giddy to have a mother in his life, full-time, who is dedicated to him. He struggles with the extremely positive memories that his older brother has and he struggles with loyalty and he struggles with what to even CALL his biological mother. He seeks my reassurance on this – is it okay to talk about her? is it okay if he calls her “mom”? – and I reassure him to the best of my ability.

And I love him very, very much. And I encourage his older brother to tell him stories, to show him photos, to give him good things to remember and hold on to. But, even then, I can’t change his memories or make them different because.. I wasn’t a part of them. They belong to him and only him. Not even to his brothers.

Then we have our youngest – four years old – who has no memory of his biological parents whatsoever. He has no curiosity about them, or about adoption, or about anything relating to his past. He remember his foster mother and misses her instead. In theory, he’s an ideal adoptive kid in that he will likely grow up to truly consider me his mom.

Still, I talk about his biological mother and about how she loved him and he sees pictures and hears his brothers talk about the past. And I will never try to deny his adoption, his previous life, his previous family. Again, despite his lack of memory, it is HIS past.

Is it hard to know that I am being compared to another mother? Of course. How could it not be?

Is it hard to maintain a postive perspective on that other mother when you have a sheet of “wrongs” that’s been handed to you by an agency? Yes and no. Yes, in that I wish our kids had some sort of story-book upbringing. No, in that it only takes a few moments of conversation with Older One for me to know how important it is that I never, ever EVER negate his positive experience with ugliness.

And that’s hard, too. All three kids need to know the truth – because it is their past – but it needs to be presented in an age-appropriate, healthy way. It can never sound like I’m trying to make them turn against their mother, or that I’m trying to “one-up” her, or that I’m trying to make myself seem “all that and a bag of chips” in comparison.

I’ve done some horrible things in my life, made some major mistakes, but in my case it all worked out. A lot of that was luck, good support systems, and making the right crucial decisions. The kids need to know that, too.

At some point we’ll sit them down and talk to them about how they came into care, what went wrong, and the string of events that led to parental rights being terminated. The kids will then need to draw their own conclusions. And we, as adoptive parents, will need to be very careful not to let our own feelings come into the picture lest we taint their perceptions even the slightest.

But Coffee and I will never – ever, never, EVER – deny their past. We will never deny the impact all of those events and situations and circumstances has or may have on our kids. And we will never try to claim any part of that past because, quite simply, we were not and are not a part of it.

Perhaps I’m feeling sensitive about this tonight because Oldest One and I had a big ol’ blow out fight this evening about something ridiculous (to be written about in another post, tomorrow) and, as we made up, we sat and looked through a photo album featuring photos of a freshly born Little One and images of Oldest One at around 5 years old.

We paged through shot after shot of a happy, healthy, gorgeous (and pregnant at times) biological mother. And Oldest One remarked, “I miss her.”

And part of me thought, “Oh god, he misses her because I’m a terrible mother who just yelled at him for X and Y.” and part of me thought, “Of COURSE he misses her.” and part of me remembered that I will never be his “real” mother and another part of me thought, “Yeah, go ahead, remember only the GOOD stuff about her while I’m stuck dealing with your shit!” and another part thought.. well, you see?

It is not linear.

What I said was, “I bet you DO miss her. And I bet she misses you, too.”

And he said, “At least she’s still alive, right?”

Then he snuggled up to me, flipped some more pages of the album, laughed at some of his brothers’ photos and I thanked him for sharing all of it with me. He hugged me.

So yes, I am aware that I am not The Boys mother and that a void exists and always will. That I cannot fill that void.

But I’m still going to do the very best I can for them – forever. Because they happen to be MY KIDS. My only kids.