bloghop2 Quotation

We thought it might be fun to also get to know one another in a more lighthearted way through a good old-fashioned blog hop! You don’t need to be listed on the OAB blogroll to participate–everyone is welcome.
We had a great time with our first blog hop in January. Our second blog hop will be tomorrow (Wednesday). How do you play along?
Do you have a favorite quotation?

OH yes I do. It's from the last Mother Teresa

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

I love it because it means that even if I can't do impressive stuff, that doesn't mean I'm powerless.

What goes around comes around

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don’t need to be listed at Open Adoption Bloggers to participate or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you’re thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points–please feel free to adapt or expand on them.

How did you talk to your extended family about open adoption prior to adopting/placing? How did they respond? For those with non-receptive family members, were you able to have more successful discussions with them post-adoption?




When I decided to make an adoption plan for my unborn son I had the privilege of having known a birthmom with a very open adoption. It was really her example(unintentional by her admission) that showed me that what open adoption could be like with visits and being a part of each others lives like extended family. So... with this in mind I looked through and found what I believed was the pre-adoptive couple that had the most positive attitude towards openness in their profile(believe it or not some couples actually state that they are uncomfortable with contact after placement, but it's good to be honest) and had to talk everyone into my idea of open adoption, even my son's birth dad, Jacob(especially so)

To this day my family is unwilling to participate activity in the open adoption I experience.
They could have come with me to visit him with me, I asked and Parker's adoptive parents were fine with the idea of my family coming to see them all, but they claim so many weak excuses that I've given up asking if they want to come with me to a visit.

I do appreciate that they listen when I talk about him, but often they have little patience for anything I talk about, not just my son, but my personal interests and experiences all seem to be of little or no interest to them. My sister and mom put out pictures of him together with all the others of my nieces and nephews(and my sisters nephews and niece so he is a part of the family 'landscape' so to speak.

But often, when I talk about him, excited about something I just learned, he lost a tooth, he has joined a karate club or even that he got sick or was bullied at school or even when I show them pictures at first the expressions on their faces are blank confusion and my mom will often ask "Who is that boy?"
Maybe she thinks I'm talking about a child I cared for at church or a child of a friend or something like that, and then when I explain they suddenly roll their eyes and get that bored look on their faces as if they want to say "This again!! Aren't you done with all this stuff?" Not that they would ever say that, it's just their attitude.

Anything that is not a tactile part of their lives seem completely irrelevant to my family for the most part.
I understand, I often live this way too, finding it hard to care about things that don't directly effect me, but I realize that is a bad attitude and I'm working on changing that about myself.
It's obviously too much work to actually involve themselves in my life or anything my life is about, they are far too wrapped up in their own troubles to pay attention to me, for the most part.

My sister who is a mother(I have 2, one just lives with a guy, but one is married with 3 kids) seems to have slightly more patience for listening to me talk about Parker, but that was mostly in the beginning. Now there are issues in her life that seem to prevent her from remembering to care about anyone else but herself, and sometimes her kids. Such is life, it's hard for me to get people to care about what I care about.
It has always been that way for me, and even though it will always bother me, it's nothing new.

I have to say, even though the question was about family, the response from coworkers was even worse than plain disinterest. Many of the older people I worked with were actually opposed to the idea of open adoption and thought it damaging to both me and my sons adoptive family. They were quite narrow minded in that respect. So I guess I should be grateful that my family isn't opposed to open adoption, they don't care what I do, as long as they don't have to do anything but maybe put out a few pictures and listen to me for a while. They may think it's pointless to continue visiting my son when I can't be his mom, but they think much of what I do is pointless(even stupid ... ie: my christian faith) and I think much of what they do is also pointless and stupid(ie: buying expensive things they can't afford, investing in get-rich-quick schemes, etc)
So.. it goes both ways I suppose and is much the way my family might always be.

The things that shock me

Roundtable #42: Sickness, Injury & Open Adoption

Think about a time when your child has been injured or sick (or for adoptees, when you have been injured or sick). Did adoption change or complicate that experience at all? Did you share it with others in your adoption constellation?  You might write about an actual experience you have had or think about what you ideally would want to have happen.


I don't know if this counts as an 'illness' but recently I found out(by my sons adoptive moms own status post) that he's being bullied. For some reason that didn't bother me, but then a friend of hers commented 'Is this since he got glasses' and this is what shocked me.
Both myself and Jacob(birthdad) have glasses, but neither of us got them until after puberty and oddly enough our vision impairment is about equal, just enough to need glasses.
I hoped that my son would not have to have glasses, and I of course I didn't expect that he would be needing them so soon(he is only 6!).

Of course there were a few times in the last 6 years where I learned of illness through his adoptive mom and she always seemed to point it out like it was a joke or something really annoying as in 'Oh geez.... he's sick again, this is cramping my style!'
While I do like her quirky sense of straightforwardness in things, sometimes I am not sure how to take it and feel immediately offended by her brief vague and almost insulting comments whenever her/my son is sick.(which is not often and not serious)
I know she has never meant to offend, and I don't think she realizes that she has offended me because I know that sharing that she offended me would only make me seem petty and oblivious as well as judgmental towards her parenting style. Being as I have no parenting experience myself, to say something about her vague comments about my son's illnesses. Which have usually been mentioned long after the illness is gone or when it is almost done. He hasn't had anything serious that I know of, and that's the key phrase 'that I know of' because I rarely get to know everything that has really happened. Oh I get the important stuff. She did seriously talk to us(Jacob and me) about my/her sons ADD behavior and a couple other minor development issues.

I mean, I know that she takes excellent care of him and knowing what I know about my son, I now know that he seems to get over illness with minimal effort.  I just wish she was more broken hearted when things go wrong for him. She seems more broken hearted when her daughter(who was born to her) has something go wrong than she does for her/my son. She is a good mom, I know this and I won't let a few quirky comments continue to offend me when I realize now that she didn't mean them as seriously as I view them.
The fact is that I'm more shocked now by a random vague comment like "oh ... he was so cuddly when he was sick with fever. He never cuddles me otherwise" Than by a serious talk about ADD or bullying.
I'm a strange quirky one too, I just wish that my son's adoptive mom would see how similar in personality we are and be a close friend to me so that I can hear more than just vague random comments that I take out of context in my imagination and get offended by.
If we were close friends I think that I would know more about the details of worry and see my son's adoptive moms mother-heart-of-love and then I wouldn't be so shocked to learn he needs glasses at 6 years old. Right now I see a energetic great mom, but I know it's not the whole story.

my pet peeves as a retail worker

There are many things that customers do in stores that are totally unacceptable from my POV as a worker in said retail store.
For example, when people are shopping and they select a number of items, and then when they are a distance away from where they gathered those items, suddenly decide that they don't want to buy them but they also don't want to bring them back to where they belong.
This is frustrating because if one person did it, no big deal, but it's the norm rather than the exception.
It's as if one stupid person decides that it's just too much work to put that container of yogurt back in the cooler and leaves it in the book section of the store. Not just on a shelf, but shoved behind some expensive large reading material so that the yogurt and the expensive book are both destroyed and unsaleable. Anyways, someone sees this person do this and justifies their own actions of leaving those shoes they tried in the middle of the floor(all ten pairs) or worse yet, opening a box of cookies and eating one or two, and leaving the rest of the box in a place where someone else steps on it and now it's a big mess.

People seem to have little respect for discount retail stores in particular, as if giving you a great deal gives permission to destroy the merchandise. Maybe they would understand better if I told them a story.

Say I came to your house, because you invited me, and I didn't like the food you gave me, but instead of putting it in your trash bin, I stuffed it in your couch cushions. Or say I decided to help myself to whatever I wanted from your cupboards without asking and often leaving a mess behind. You would think me a bratty child that has no manners at all. This is what you are being when you treat a private retail store with disrespect. It reflects badly on you.

Don't think that the workers don't know who did what, when people do things often, it is actually really obvious who the culprits are in most of the horrible actions of willful destruction and thoughtless acts.

I just wonder sometimes, it is too much to ask that people respect things that do not belong to them and could belong to others? 

What's my favorite place?

I like a whole bunch of places in my mom's house, where I live(we live like roommates and pay equally for bills most of the time).
I like the kitchen when the sunlight is filling it and the table is the perfect height for writing/reading/eating/etc, but the chairs are not too comfortable..
I like my bedroom because it contains all the resources my mind craves, books, my laptop, my clothes, etc, but it's cold in here(due to malfunctioning furnace)
I like the laz-i-boy chair in the living room and seeing all the pictures there makes me feel comforted, but it doesn't have all that either the kitchen or my bedroom has..

... so I like almost every room, but not any is really my 'favorite'

Open Adoption Blog Hop #1

Winding down...

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don’t need to be listed at Open Adoption Bloggers to participate or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you’re thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points–please feel free to adapt or expand on them. 
Write a response at your blog–linking back here so your readers can browse other participating blogs–and share your post in the comments here. Using a previously published post is fine; I’d appreciate it if you’d add a link back to the roundtable. If you don’t blog, you can always leave your thoughts directly in the comments.
Are you approaching openness differently in 2013? What experiences from in the past year influenced you most?


Am I approaching openness differently?? Maybe, different as in not at all. Well not as aggressively as I could be. I could be messaging my son's adoptive mom every week, asking for a visit. I could be worrying more about it. The fact it that I've become somewhat ambivalent about my whole situation. I'm not sure if I want to push for visits because well, shes(adoptive mom) has been pretty good with the posting of pictures on face book and such. I mean, I know things like he lost two bottom front teeth and that he threw up at school and several of his antics at home and elsewhere through the glory of social network that I previously mentioned.

Honestly, I want to stay as harmless looking as possible. As well, as I have started to pursue things in life, fitness being a big one(got a YMCA membership and boy, do I use it!). I've also tried to focus inwardly, on my own emotional and spiritual health and in doing so, I kind of sometimes 'forget' that I want to know my one and only son because I just trust that if his adoptive parents see it fit not to involve me as much as they have before, then I should respect and honor that decision.

Also, the past about 3-4 visits have become a bit awkward as my son seems to have little interest in connecting with myself or even his half-brothers and Jacob.
I read a blog a while back that seemed to call me out on certain specific things I have written about before, in years past. When comments that specific are made, even if they don't directly mention me, I kind of know that that one half of the sentence, that was about how I'm a horrible person for wanting to visit my son because it means I'm abandoning him again and again and have done so far too many times. The fact that I probably stated somewhere that it's OK with me if my son is upset with me for choosing an adoption plan for him(in the future), that made me out as a sadist that thinks it's OK if children are hurt by the actions of an adult.

So, in light of that idea, at this point, I'm hoping that my son decides to ask to see me, because he is a very intelligent boy now. Says far more large words than other kids his age, even though his lack of co-ordination and the fact that he has a short attention span that seems to point to ADD(which I and Jacob have, really wish that wasn't so heritable!).  Two years ago, his adoptive mom told me that he pointed me out on the Christmas postcard picture I sent them, and the fact that he could point to a picture and say "That's Cindy, she's my birthmom" that was the first nail in the coffin for my desire for visits. Because my goal in visiting was to make myself known. I often told myself, if my son knows who I am, then the reason for visiting is void.
Unless of course, he actually asks to see me. I feel terrible about the idea that I could have been 'forcing' him to see me all these years, and that's one of the biggest changes. I'm not going to force anything anymore.

Openness used to mean that I "get to see him". At least, that's how many of the people who know about the fact that I have a son seem to address openness in relationships(be it adoption or separated parents or extended family/friends that live far away). They are of the more old-fashioned crowd, but even younger folks tend to think that if you don't see a person IRL then you are not really a part of their life.
I get to be a part of gift giving and even though my gifts are rarely the ones he favors, I still know that he knows that they are from me because in past visits, when I enter their home, one of the first things that my son sometimes tries to do is round up all the things I have previously given him. If that doesn't show he knows they are from me, I don't know what would.

I think of openness in a more varied sense. For me it has become knowing about the facts of his daily life.
Like knowing the costumes he wore for Halloween, or seeing the ginger bread house he made(with help from adoptive dad, uncle, and cousin) or knowing that he is still taller then everyone his age, in his class, and in his family. Knowing the little facts that come about on social media give me peace that his life is far far far better than I could have even imagined for him. Just knowing about his life is openness now when previously, I felt as though visiting was paying so sort of social debt I had toward my relationship with my son.

I don't know exactly what made me change my attitudes so much. Part of it is that I just have lost my courage and confidence in seeing myself as an important part of my son's life.
The opinions of adopted persons, who seem very very very opposed to openness also make me feel too guilty to assert that I know there are benefits and the benefits often out weigh most of the cons that they propose. The fact is that many things I have read discourage me from trying harder. I feel that in just a few years, if face book died(or when face book dies) the last link of openness that I enjoy will be gone too, and I will probably be OK with that happening because I've known so much over the last 6 years. Maybe I have been too greedy and ending this unsatisfying relationship would be a relief and I can go on improving myself at the gym and my soul and mind in other ways, without being so obsessed about my sons life.

Honestly I will always think about him everyday, I have his pictures on my desk and in my purse.
All I want to do is for him to want to know me so that the weird dream I sometimes have of him randomly showing up at my front door can somehow come true and that's when I will feed him, take care of him for a day, and send him back home like I always imagine. But that's just a strange dream that will likely never happen.

What I have to accept is that I am not important to my son at this point. The time for teaching him who I am is likely almost done and unless I'm wrong about that, I have to work on moving on and living to the best of my ability with the peace that comes from trusting that my son is doing well, he doesn't need me at all because I've given him the best family possible(they are actually better than I could have ever known)






 

Cravings..

There are many stories I read about people 'missing' each other because of the events of life separating them and such. As is the case with Parker and myself. Honestly though, it's not that I think he is 'missing' from my life as much as sometimes... I just want him to be there, in my life that is.

I crave him. I want a chance to touch his head, his shoulder, to hear his voice, to know he is real, that I didn't imagine his existence. As well, I want to feel, for a few moments, that I don't have to pretend he doesn't matter to me, because I have to do that all the time.

You might not think I do, but I do. Often though, I have had times where I have forgotten him, as I have forgotten people in my everyday life, like my mom, or even my close friend Kyla.
When I remember, I feel guilty that I forgot, even though that is normal to be thinking only of the tasks at hand to forget, it's natural, it happens. It's why I put reminders of important people around me.
Pictures, things that they gave me. I think most people do this, they don't want to forget the important people.
I mean, I know I could never truly forget, because I see Parker as a part of my soul, living in a separate body that is part of my body, again, living separated from me, as is natural.

I think I'm like an amputee, without the obvious physical differences
And for the most part, I manage great without I have adapted well.
But there are times when I feel just a little less somehow, like there is something very specific that I need.

It happens all the time with food, the body tells the brain what it would like to function better.
Sometimes the brain doesn't get it right and seems to tell us we want unhealthy things.
Usually though, it's about a balance of energy and strength.

I believe my soul needs much of the same kind of balance, and there are times, when I suddenly notice that I feel out of balance, and what I need to fix the imbalance is an interpersonal interaction.
When I tell people I care about them, and I mean it, it strengthens me too.
When I don't get the chance to do that, I start to feel weaker.
I start to feel like I'm a bad person, and all the weird scary insults that I can only tell myself start flooding my mind, because I lack the strength to stop them, because I've lost my sense of balance, because I didn't get the chance to connect with the people most important to me, the people that are a part of me, and are me.

I'm often scared to tell people that I feel weak, and that is why I need them. I want them to need me so that I will be stronger for the chance to care about them in real, lasting ways.

Yes, my need to see Parker is a soul hunger pain, a weird, and involuntary reaction to feeling less than myself.
So, I want him, but it is very selfish, and I don't want it to be, I want him to need me and that I why I wait and don't ask to see him. Even though I could, and it would probably result in a visit sooner than if I wait.

My mind keeps reminding me that, to be brutally honest, I didn't want to have a son when I had Parker.
I mean, as a teenager, all I wanted was to have a son, but I didn't want Parker because I wasn't loved by Jacob enough to be a good mom. This is what I wrote in my journal while I was pregnant, and looking back at it, I cringe each time I think about those words, because now, I can't stop myself from wanting Parker, and I never expected to feel that way.
It's not that I didn't love him while I gestated him, I loved him without trying to, without knowing that I did, it was a work of God in my, not my own will. Other wise I don't know how I remembered to take all the vitamins, to drink all the milk, to eat well and stay away from smokers.
I am very matter of fact about this, I can love Parker, but not want him, but also have the need to forge a real life connection with him, but want him to be the one to choose it.
I'm going round in circles with my thoughts, this is the end of it, but not really..I'm sorry