This is a recent conversation I had with my
six-year-old adopted daughter. It’s important to note that this whole
conversation was said with sadness, not attitude. She wasn’t having an “I hate
you because you wouldn’t let me do something” moment. She was just being honest
and hurting inside.
“I
wish I had never met you”
Me:
“I know.”
“I
miss my real mommy.”
Me:
“I’m sorry,” and I hugged her while she cried.
My daughter was taken from her biological mother at
birth (taken, not relinquished). I have been her mother since she was four
months old and loved her and cared for her in every way. We are bonded, but
that bond will never be as strong as the one she has with the woman who carried
her for nine months. Being separated from her causes my daughter so much pain that
it impacts almost every area of her life.
I was incredibly ignorant about the pain of adoption,
especially for a baby, before being thrust into the situation. I had two
biological children who were ten and eight at the time. While not a perfect
parent, I was fairly certain I could take care of a baby. Like many, even most,
people, I thought that if a baby had a chance to bond with a primary caretaker
while young enough, he or she would be fine.
While the Department of Children
and Families was very thorough about our home study and our fitness to be
parents, they never discussed what we might be getting into. It wouldn’t have
changed our mind, but understanding one’s child is a huge component of
parenting. The majority of therapists don’t even understand the special issues
that adoptive families and children often deal with.
Instead, adoptive parents seek out others in similar
situations hoping to find an empathetic ear. We are often judged harshly by
others for our supposed lack of parenting skills and our children’s
inappropriate behaviors. I get it. People don’t understand until they have
walked in these shoes. I certainly didn’t. So, adoptive parents speak in quiet
whispers to each other or in secret Facebook groups seeking support and advice.
People, especially pro-life people, want adoption to
be good, but the reality is that being adopted is always the child’s loss. Even
the best adoptive parents can never replace the ones that the child has lost
either through being given up, taken, or through death. Open adoptions can
allow a child to have contact with their biological family, but these
relationships are often fraught with challenges. My daughter misses her
biological mother so much, yet whenever she sees her, the emotional fall-out is
huge. Her barely scabbed over wound is ripped open. She doesn’t understand why
she can’t be with her biological mom. There is no easy solution.
I just finished reading The Primal Wound: Understanding the
Adopted Child by Nancy Newton Verrier. Every foster and adoptive parent
as well as anyone who loves or works with an adopted child should read this
book. It is based upon the author’s psychological work with adoptees as well as
her own experience as both a biological and adoptive mother. Verrier shares:
What
I discovered is what I call the primal wound, a wound which is physical,
emotional, psychological, and spiritual, a wound which causes pain so profound
as to have been described as cellular by those adoptees who allowed themselves
to go that deeply into their pain. I began to understand thus wound as having been
caused by the separation of the child from his biological mother, the
connection to whom seems mystical, mysterious, spiritual and everlasting.
Even when children cannot consciously remember being
taken from their mother, their hearts remember that profound loss the rest of
their lives. The book goes on to detail the way that grieving that loss is expressed
in an adoptee’s behavior. While not advocating that a child remain in a
dangerous situation, Verrier raises an important question, “What if the most
abusive thing which can happen to a child is that he is taken from his mother?”
What does this mean for us who are pro-life and who
encourage adoption rather than abortion? First of all, we need to recognize
that adoption is not an easy answer. No one escapes unscathed from that
separation – not the birth mother who has made a selfless decision, nor the
child who is given up. We need to work as hard as we can to help mothers keep
their children and to offer them whatever support they need to do that. In
terms of taking children from their mothers due to unsafe situations, we need
to truly have that be a rare situation. Once again, support, not separation,
should be the goal.
My daughter wishes she had never met me, and in a perfect world, she would not have. I pray every day for Jesus to heal her heart and to help me be the mother she needs. I know I can’t heal her wounds. Only God can do that, but I so wish that she never had been wounded in the first place.
