The Wounds of Adoption (Part Three) The Acknowledgement

      Adoption. When I adopted my daughter I desperately wanted to sort of 'forget' that she was adopted. In that I mean I wanted her to feel completely my own one hundred percent. It felt safer that way. What do I mean by that? Safer? I think maybe I meant easier, not so many unknown variables, less emotional scars; the list goes on. She was my first and so I had nothing else to go on attachment wise. For a while I did try to feel  like she felt all my own...but there were moments ~ like her birth mother bringing my daughter a birthday cake for her fifth birthday unannounced, so I tucked the other birthday cake I had made away, or the many other things that reminded  me so vividly that she was not one hundred percent my own ~ that were pretty relentless.
   I have had conversations with other adoptive parents. Our hearts are vulnerable and we want to feel like our family is normal and well blended and that our adopted child is thought of just the same as our biological children if we have any. However it is just not the same. This child grew in someone elses womb!! That counts for SO MUCH. They have pieces of themselves missing. Some parts of them are out there in the world and they might not know where those pieces are or what those pieces look like. It is a deep wound and it is a dark wound. The more we try to tell ourselves that our adopted child is not different and that we feel the exact same about them as our biological children I think we do ourselves and our child a disservice. Even if we do not have any biological children it is important to recognize that there is a difference in the natural order of attachment. These children have history elsewhere, they have a different biological chemistry and although they are ours and they are accepted, they are cherished, they are loved, they need to be special in an adopted special way.
  A friend of mine from highschool was adopted and I remember after adopting our daughter I was talking to her mom. I mentioned my child's birth mother and she was shocked that I felt okay calling her a 'birth' mother. She felt I should never acknowledge 'that woman' as a mother. I could hear the wound and its depth. I have a distant family member who is adopted and there was such a push to raise her exactly how all the other children had been raised in the family. Her damage is so deep because she needed so much more than she was allowed to have! It caused a lot of actual physical brain damage. There has been a dramatic shift over time in some senses about adoption and including birth families and openness and such. However I feel like there is still such a skewed  or maybe its a desperate perspective  based on feeling threatened or insecure on the adoptive parents part on so many levels.
   In each and every situation of adoption careful attention must be made in regards to each child's heart. Careful attention and honoring acknowledgement must be made to each level of attachment that child has had over time. It all starts with their birth mother though and that needs to be acknowledged every single time. She mattered much. She was precious and special and she caused a deep wound. Her act cannot be presented as an act of love. It was an act of rejection even though it was probably made out of care and love. To our children it is rejection and we need to be able to give them room to feel that and work through that. However deep honor must also be given to their birth mothers too. It is a hard balance.
  After that taking note of time spent in foster homes, orphanages, each place where there may have been a connection of sorts, or total lack of connection, and each time there might have been a wounding. I know for my girly her brother (my bio son) came just six months after she moved in. It was not enough time for her to bond or feel safe in our home, and how could she NOT feel replaced. It is life and it is what it is, but children coming into your home that are not from your body need so much special, extra, different care! Any child coming from any hard place does, and each one needs something totally different. Also no matter at what age your child has come to you there are things they just instinctively know. We have more than just our physical bodies we are spiritual beings. We have memory that goes so deep. There are feelings for reasons. It takes so much effort, so much work, to figure out what those needs are. Some children are just not capable of what we are asking of them and need lower expectations but we so badly want them to 'not be different' that we don't give them that opportunity. Some need counseling for Post Traumatic Stress, some need baskets in their rooms full of tools to help them with their stress levels, some need to be home schooled because they just cannot handle the demands of a class room, some need the chance to act like a baby again to revisit that place and be loved and nurtured because they didn't get that chance when they were babies, some need to co sleep for a while ~ I mean it goes on and on...but every child needs positive smiling eyes looking into theirs whenever possible, they need words for their emotions, they need a safe place to be whatever their little hearts need to be ~ whether it be angry or scared or sad or whatever that emotion may be. So often I feel like I just don't provide that for my girl because it is just too much or I have so many other things going on. Like her being adopted has to not be such a big factor in our family. Who am I kidding though; it has to be acknowledged! So often this is uncomfortable and so hard for us as adoptive parents. We do not want to face this or have to deal with it as often as we do. Maybe we don't feel equipped? The journey has already been so hard and we have given so much.
  The easy road is not one that we have the option of taking here is it? As parents we have hopefully chosen a road full of self sacrifice and love that can bear all thing. We need to talk to others, gather strength from support, and give our children the empathy, space, love and care that they require. I am preaching to myself here. It will powerfully equip our children to seek out their healing and their peace. I feel like it will make all the difference. I know it will.