All tagged Adoption
After years of meetings, calls, paperwork, home studies, filings, and court appearances, Strawbaby is officially, legally, and ceremoniously a part of our family in every way that she has been since the day we met. Because our court date had been postponed numerous times for a variety of reasons, it wasn’t until a couple of days before our ultimate date that the magnitude of what was about to happen fully hit me.
“At BEST, adoption is a tragedy and not something to be celebrated.”
This was my first experience with an anti-adoption advocate. My gut reaction was instantly defensive. This eventually led to a Reddit rabbit hole and TikTok time suck about the adoptee experience and the ethics of adoption. This was not my first foray into understanding the long-term effects of adoption. But this was the first time I’d heard of adoption being considered altogether unethical.
One year ago this week, we learned that a family was breaking apart and that a little girl was in need of a home. Since then, among many other things, I have been learning how to cohabitate in the world we were introduced to with Adelaide and the one we are living in now with Strawbaby. And, well, it’s complicated.
This week I visited a friend and her two daughters, one of whom was adopted just five months ago. When she set her phone down I couldn’t help but notice the lock screen on her phone was a picture of her children. Which seems pretty natural, right? I mean most parents have pictures of their kids on their lock screen - as do I - the difference is that mine is still of Jackson and Adelaide, not Jackson and Strawbaby. It didn’t really strike me as a big deal until recently when I’ve begun to acknowledge and accept that my family looks different now.
Strawbaby has been been testing boundaries like a velociraptor at Jurassic Park with zero concern for consequences. It’s been hard, really freaking hard but I’ve been having difficulty communicating that because shouldn’t my past perspectives leave me grateful for this healthy child? How dare I be stressed when this is what I’ve wanted. It’s just not that simple though, is it?
With Mother’s Day just nine days away I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how I view this holiday in light of our recent familial changes. I’ve decided that its all a little too fresh for me to process and is going to take many more meditation showers. Through it all though, regardless of any of my children’s individual circumstances, motherhood has consistently gifted me one of the things I’ve needed most to survive: community.
Two girls, one dress, eating lunch in their own way a lifetime apart. Our life has certainly been made a little more wild and a lot more exciting by Strawbaby’s addition. But that’s what three year olds are supposed to do. They are not supposed to spend a quarter of their life in the hospital. Since Strawbaby turned three I have had to make a concerted effort to not focus on all that she is capable of - or rather - all that Adelaide missed out on.
Identity is a concept I have struggled with for most of my adult life. Who am I? How do I describe myself? Is it what you put in bio? A list of accomplishments followed by “lives in Maplewood, NJ”? The mom aspect has, in particular stumped me. I love being a mom but have resented my identity being so closely tied to my relationships. Then along came fate and slapped me in the face with a Strawbaby.
It really has been remarkable how seamlessly Strawbaby has folded into our lives. She hasn’t even been in our home for five months and it’s beginning to feel like she’s just always been here.
She wasn’t though.
We all had prior lives that shaped us and that will continue to do so. Whenever I need a reminder of this, I need look no further than Jackson and Strawbaby’s relationship.
Both for my sanity and Strawbaby’s social development, it became evident that she needed to go to preschool. I anticipated that she was going to be a little wary of being left at preschool but couldn’t predict to what degree. After all, she had come with us, three strangers, without protest, just three months prior. What I hadn’t anticipated was my own emotional reckoning - and certainly not for the reasons.
It all happened so quickly. We got the call on Monday and by Friday we were driving away from a CPS office in Texas with a child we had never met before in the backseat of our rental car. The 24 hours prior had been a mad rush to make space in our home. And while there was plenty of space in our hearts, a little rearranging and negotiating was still in order.
“Is she having a seizure?” Miguel’s eyes were darting from the rear view mirror to the road in front of him.
I looked to the backseat. Her eyes were glazed over, she wasn’t responding to her name.
“Jackson, will you squeeze her hand?” I asked.
“She squeezed back!”
“Ok, so probably not a seizure, just, you know, life-shattering trauma.”
