Open Adoption Roundtable #37

This Roundtable topic is: How do you feel after a visit?

I'm such a mixed mess of emotions after every visit. Usually it's a blend of happiness, sadness, anxiety, and gratitude.

I'm always happy to see my children's birth family. I love watching them interact with the kids. And I love noticing things like similar facial expressions that they share or similar mannerisms that they have in common. And few things make me happier than showing off my children and all their wonderful qualities (especially when I have an audience who adores them as much as I do).

But then there is a little bit of sadness. Sadness because there is still loss. There is still grief associated with this relationship. They had to experience loss in order to us to experience our family. And because I want to fix any problems that the birth parents have, and I can't. I want to help create jobs for them - perfect jobs that would make them happy and fulfilled. I want to waive a magic wand and make everything perfect in their lives. Because they deserve to be unbelievably, ridiculously happy. They made our family complete and I want to make their world perfect in exchange. Unfortunately, I have no magical powers.

And then there is anxiety. No matter how long we've been in these open adoptions, I still worry about how they think we are doing as parents. Do they think we're doing ok? Do they have regrets? While I probably worry about this less and less, it's still there in the back of my mind. I think I'll always be worried about this one - no matter how much reassurance I get. I think that's just part of the adoption relationship. And then there's anxiety as I worry about the birth families. How did they feel during the visit? What is this like for them?

And lastly, there is gratitude. After every visit I feel unbelievable grateful to the birth families for giving us our daughters. My husband and I talk after every visit about how thankful we are that they gave us our girls and how horribly different our lives would be without them (albeit more rested!).

I'm a whole mess of emotions after every visit. But I wouldn't change it for the world. I love seeing them and I love having them as a part of my children's lives. And I always look forward to the next visit.

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Open Adoption Roundtable #36

Wow am I behind on these... Well, not time to catch up like the present! In this Open Adoption Roundtable, we've been asked to respond to the following: Write about open adoption agreements. Is there one in your open adoption? What effect does it have on your relationships? If you could go back in time, would you approach the agreement differently?

What a topic! And one that so many people are always interested in. I think this is the question about our open adoptions that we get the most questions around... so here goes!

Our family is the happy product of two open adoptions - both with open adoption agreements. The first agreement (with our oldest daughter's birth mother) was created out of a whole lot of uncertainty. We weren't really sure what a "typical" agreement was supposed to look like. We were on the fence about how much contact we wanted. And really, we had just met days before and that fueled a lot of anxiety. What if we agree to a lot of contact and we don't like her? What if she we liked her a lot and wanted to see her more but we didn't agree to that? What if she didn't like us? What if our child didn't want to see her when she got older? We had no idea what we were doing. Our attorney guided most of the process and helped us to decide what was "reasonable" and common. We ended up with an open agreement that was quite a bit more open that the typical case in that agency, but one that everyone felt comfortable with in our arrangement. We would have monthly visits in person and contact via email. And initially this was incredibly helpful. It helped us to determine our roles in this unfamiliar process.

Three years later that agreement has certainly evolved. While we never changed anything on paper, we visit whenever we feel like it. Maybe that's once a month. Maybe more. Maybe less. We frequently share pictures and stories via Facebook. We text occasionally. Once in a great while we might talk on the phone. We attend their family get-togethers. We are no longer strangers trying to figure out how to navigate this relationship. But if I had to do this over, would I change anything? Probably. I probably would have just given them my phone number right off the bat. I wouldn't have worried about meetings being in public locations. But I think those boundaries probably helped us to gradually build our relationship. And it's hard to say since we were still navigating based on fear back then. Fear we wouldn't get to keep our baby. Fear that we wouldn't be liked. Fear that we were going to mess up. If we only knew then what we know now, right?

Our second adoption agreement was also a bit odd. This was not an agreement with strangers but with neighbors. We wanted an agreement that was the same as our first child's for no reason other than ensuring that the girls were treated equally. While we knew that in practice things weren't likely to be the same with our second daughter's birth mother living two doors down, we wanted it to be the same on paper. In the end, we agreed to visits every 2 weeks for the first two years and once a month after that. Just like in our first arrangement, it tends to be much more flexible than that. Sometimes we see them more often, sometimes less. We share photos and stories on Facebook almost daily. And things changed a bit when we moved 40 minutes away making visits a little more difficult.

In both relationships, I'm not really sure that the agreements were necessary. They did provide us with some initial structure and that was probably necessary as we figured out how these relationships were going to work. But we consider both birth families part of our regular family. We don't have agreements on when my grandparents come visit. They just do when it works for all of us. And that's pretty much how the relationships with the birth families are. They come visit when it works for all of us. They come to birthday parties. We plan holiday celebrations. It's really no different than it is for our other family members.

How would you respond to the topic?

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MAPP Gathering #5 - Dr. Sara Gottfried

This post is the fifth in a series of posts about the MAPP Gathering, a web-based interview series on Motherhood, Ambition, Passion and Purpose. 


Today I finally had the time to tune into the fifth interview in the MAPP gathering interview series. This one with with Dr. Sara Gottfried, an integrative medical doctor who specializes in women's health. As Dr. Gottfried began sharing her journey to motherhood I instantly felt a connection with her... we both were experiencing extreme professional burnout before becoming a mother and both feel that this was what catapulted us into the journey of finding balance or harmony in our lives.

Finding that balance has been a voyage. A long one for me. And it sounded like it wasn't the fastest journey for Dr. Gottfried either. She talked about how motherhood requires an "endless supply of energy" and how we need to figure out a way to balance our desire to give to others with our need to manage our energy. In fact, she made a really great comparison between the book, The Giving Tree, and being a mother. The tree wasn't happy until it had given and given... until it was just a stump for the boy to sit on. And often times in motherhood - that's when we feel as though we've given enough - when what is left of us is a stump.

But today, I don't want to focus on that part. Perhaps another day I'll write about giving overload. Today I want to talk about a different piece of this interview. As Dr. Gottfried was talking about this journey of finding balance (a constant effort for me) she talked about what a mess it can be to be on this journey. And that rather than thinking of this mess as a bad thing, an embarrassing path on the way to something good - we should think of the mess as our message. It's not the idea that we've reached balance and we're zen and perfect. Our journey to that point is what makes us who we are and what defines us. And really, is that journey ever complete?

Boy, is that a hard concept for a perfectionist to accept. I always find my journey from point A to B to be an embarrassment. I know I mess up along the way. Often a lot. And if I have the ability to just pretend that didn't happen - I'll take it. Fortunately, those journeys don't just disappear because I want them to. Despite my best efforts to pretend that the end point I've arrived at is where I've always been, the memory of the journey is always there. And I'm coming to realize that's awesome. Just like Dr. Gottfried said, "Your mess is your message."

My mess is who I am. It's how I got to this place in my life. If I hadn't struggled along on the journey - I wouldn't be here. If I hadn't made mistakes, screwed up, and fallen down - I wouldn't be in the same place I am today. And that makes me thankful for the mess. What would have happened if I had left my Ph.D. program a few years later? Or earlier? What if I had gone to another University? What if I hadn't gone to college at all? What if I had stayed in my home town? There'd be no Jon. No Lorelai. No Logan. Those key people in my life who provide me with countless hours of joy (like the joy I'm experiencing while Lorelai wallows all over me as I type this).

I'm in the midst of many messy journeys... learning to be a great mom, attempting to be a better spouse, developing a fulfilling career, balancing it all in harmony, becoming the kind of person I want my children to become. It's a lot of mess.

But it's the mess that makes us who we are. It makes us appreciate the end result. It gives us the satisfaction when we reach our goals. And the mess is ok. I think the key is to try to enjoy the mess because we're in it for so much longer than we are in the success part. So I'm going to start my day now... and enjoy my mess.

You can find more information on Dr. Gottfried at www.saragottfried.md.com and listen to her full interview here.

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