"Your mother/family loved you so much, she/they wanted to give you a better life."
It's a phrase I hear used to explain adoption to children quite frequently. I know it comes with the best intentions of trying to create a postive image of a child's first mother/family.
I don't like it. Not one bit.
First, I tell my kids I love them every day. If their mothers/families placed them for adoption because of love, what does my love mean? That at some point, I'm going to relinquish them too? Obviously, this is not such an issues for Violet. She remembers her relinquishment and understands it as much as any 10 year old can. This is huge for Blueberry. She worries a lot about being left. I don't want to add to her fear by equating love with leaving.
Instead, I tell her that we think her mother loved her very much (we have good reason to believe this) but didn't have the resources to care for her. I also love her very much and I do have the resources. I've also told her that here, if I didn't have money, there are places I can go for help but those places don't exist in Guatemala. I also tell her that her foster family loved her very much but they didn't have the choice to keep her. It's not that they didn't want to take care of Blueberry any more. It's that they were only allowed to take care of her until the adoption was completed. Then, they had to give her to me. Again, it has nothing to do with love.
Second, Violet will be the first to tell you her life is not better here. Okay, wait...there is one thing she's always said was better. Going to the bathroom without fear of hyenas. Understandable. Otherwise, she will tell you life is most definitely not better. It is different and it is good...just not better. Obviously, she has more material things, increased access to education and healthcare, and an easier lifestyle (in terms of physical work). For that, she's traded the chance to live with and be raised by her family, a family that she loves and misses tremendously. That's not to say she doesn't love Blueberry and me. I know that she does. Still, if given the choice, she would never have left her family and Ethiopia. Because, really, who would choose stuff over love?
Nope...my children will never be told that their mothers/families loved them so much they wanted a better life for them. The sad and tragic reality is that the lack of social resources available in their first countries left their families feeling that they had no other choice. And that just sucks!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
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9 comments:
Thank you for this post. I struggle with the phrase too and wondered what to say when my boys were older.
Amen! Mari was 3 at the time of her adoption. She had been with the same foster family for 18mos and they clearly doted on her. From day one I've said, "Momma and Poppa would have loved to keep you forever but the lawyers told them no!" As for her birth family I would say "Your Mommy desperately loved you but since no one would help her get food and medicine she decided she couldn't bear to watch you starve to death. She sent you to America hoping that you would get good food and medicine and grow up healthy." When we found her birth family they sent a note that said almost the exact words!!! Mari has been able to resolve a great deal of her emotional conflict since reconnecting with the birth family. Ironically, after looking over the pictures S sent, my lady has voiced a desire to meet the birth parents ONLY if it can be done at a hotel or "someplace clean where I won't have to be paranoid about the bugs"....sigh. Too much pampering between the foster family and us I guess. Meanwhile we slowly work towards empathy and social justice development using her birth family as the concrete example of why we need to help where we can. She used her birthday money last year to buy her first family a stove so they wouldn't have to spend so much time hunting for wood to burn. She would have rathered a Taylor Swift concert ticket or UGG boots but after seeing her mother's 'kitchen' she decided she had enough stuff.
Suz
This is a concept that took forever for me to understand.
I told my husband very early on in our relationship that not being left is more important to me than being loved.
I had no idea where that came from at the time. And it seems totally nuts. But being left just does not feel good.
And when you're told someone surrenders you BECAUSE they love you, to me, that's been confusing. A First Mother might say "I love you, therefore, I'm surrendering you to a better life." But there's never a chance for the child to say "I love you, therefore, I don't want to be surrendered to a better life." "Better life," as you said, is in the eye of the beholder.
I believe surrendering mothers love their children. I believe it is because they love their children that they try to do whatever they think is in their child's best interest.
But people still need to understand that equating love with being surrendered means to a child. Because when people say "I love you" it doesn't mean "I won't leave you."
Yeah. You rock. You nailed it completely.
Yep. Exactly.
Amen.
I agree with you 100%. Good job writing it out--it's much better than I could ever convey!
Such wisdom! I get why people do it but...
My son understands he didn't get enough to eat, and only had one shirt and no shoes, and his family wanted him to have enough food and enough clothes and shoes to wear. What he doesn't understand, and I can't explain, is why his siblings didn't need to get sent away too. You're absolutely right. It sucks.
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