Adoption Serious

Recently, a women named Rebecca commented on my blog. I was pretty touched by her comment, because something so rare seems to be happening with her. She is thinking seriously about adoption BEFORE she adopts. That’s kind of amazing these days. Not many people do that. It seems to me that many, many adoptive parents go into adoption to fulfill a need. I don’t think, by any means, that this is a “wrong” reason to adopt, but so many seem to dive in head-first without even taking a deep inhale. I wish more people would inhale first — they could really use that oxygen after their are over their heads in water – once the “baby” is “home.”

There is a potentially good example of above mentioned adoption strategy in the news recently ( http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2883720 ) with a diplomat from the Netherlands who has recently “disrupted” his adoption of a Korean “baby” he adopted at age 3 months (she is now 7 or 8 years old). I don’t pretend to know what the circumstances are involving this “disruption.” The articles (and diplomat himself) are only stating that the “adoption went wrong.” The articles also mention that this couple was infertile at time of the adoption and have since birthed two children that they are not placing for adoption. Readers of such articles are lead to make some assumptions of this couple and it has thus enraged the Korean adoptee community. I can’t blame them. These kinds of stories burn adoptees who often struggle with issues relating to “blood connections” and how essential this is to a true and pure parent/child connection. The feeling of original rejection sits somewhere within our being. In some it sits at the front row and for some, it’s somewhere in the nose-bleed section. For me, it’s jumped around … from middle center to jumping right up on the stage. Some nerve! A secondary rejection seems unbearable to most adoptees. To me, I know that it is bearable, survivable, and in some cases, essential.

Although the article hurts me and I feel for that little girl, there is a different, very unreasonable response that I had. I feel also for the adoptive parents – the rejectees, if you will. I don’t think it is so hard to guess that they probably got special treatment when they adopted. My parents did. My parents had the funds (and then some) and they have the social connections (and then some) and they were able to move through the process in a matter of just a couple of months at the most. They got a young baby girl (exactly what they ordered) faster than what most mail orders took during that period (this was before you could “shop” for babies online!). They were beneficiaries of a wronged system. They were ignorant. Not to parenting or what a baby would involve (they had a biological daughter already and knew that parenting is no cake walk), but to how adoption would feel…. for me and for them. They were sucked into the agency infomercials and convinced that this would be the solution to their secondary infertility. Like the newest Benzoyl Peroxide cream shows promise to the 13 year old with acne, adding me to their mostly happy family seemed like a logical and reasonable solution – heck, at the very least, it was worth a try.

My parents were good at the motions of parenthood. They provided for me in a generous fashion. They showered me with gifts, hugs, and kisses. They educated me and always made sure that my belly was full. I never missed an essential doctor or dentist appointment. I was enrolled in enriching activities and summer camps. Yet, when my father told me last year, “It’s not that you are a bad daughter, Julia. You are a very good daughter. You just never were my daughter.” I was not surprised. I always knew he felt this way, although he tried to never show it. And although I am and always will be my mother’s solution to her painful infertility ordeal, I know that she also feels this way. I am what they needed – child number two – but I am not what they wanted. After years of denial and societal pressure to remain committed to me, the truth comes out. Only, the truth doesn’t hurt nearly as one would expect, because, well… I always knew where I stood in their lives.

I don’t know what the solution is for this 7 year old girl. I don’t know how important it was for me to remain in a stable home – moving through the motions that every nice and good family models. Or if it would have been a good idea to endure a second rejection in the hope to find a true and honest familia connection. I just know that her story is not rare. She’s not alone. And that is the truly sad part of this ordeal. That is the true heartbreak and the real tragedy of the adoption system.