How to be insensitive…ha ha ha

It has been forever…

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I posted anything here. I still read a lot regarding adoption and from first moms, but I’m just not in a place where I’m wanting to “talk” about it a lot. I don’t know if it is because I’m coming to terms with things somewhat or if I just have to not let myself “dwell” on the emotions that it stirs up. Whatever it is, I read a great post today titled A Letter I Wish I’d Gotten on Grown in my Heart and had to share it. Letters to Mrs. Feverfew linked to it. It is a letter that I could have written almost word for word, although maybe not quite so eloquently.

Nature vs. Nurture

I’m struggling a bit right now with my son’s parents…in particular his mom. She is making it pretty clear that she wants nothing to do with me and that hurts. I don’t want to erase her from his life or take her place, but I do want to forge a relationship with my son and she appears to be trying to sabotage my efforts rather than embracing that I was ever a part of his life. It hurts!

I read this post over at Production not Reproduction and I love her attitude. It shouldn’t have to be an us against them thing and I wish more adoptive parents would realize that!

I’m Legit

I\'m Legit

I watched this on another blog and I’m still processing it so I don’t really even have a comment right now, but I wanted to share.

Pedigree

I was just in the process of filling out a pedigree chart for my daughter. They are discussing genealogy at Achievement Days (a bi-monthly church activity for 8-11 year old girls) tomorrow night and the girls are supposed to bring dates and stories of family members. So as I was transferring information from an old pedigree chart of mine to make it applicable to her I started to type in the information of one of my great grandfathers when I got to his date of birth, June 26. That is my son’s birthday! This may seem like an insignificant detail, but I love the little connections in family. My youngest daughter’s was born on my maternal grandfather’s birthday and it is just another reason to remember and celebrate family. It was then that I got to my maternal grandmother’s date of death and it hit me like a ton of bricks, July 3, 1990. It was exactly one week after my son was born, the day I went to the courthouse to sign away all parental rights to my child. Notice I didn’t say all rights, just parental rights. No matter what I signed or who raised him, they couldn’t take away my right to love him, care about him, worry about him or even mourn the loss of him. July 3, 1990 was an emotionally crushing day for me and still to this day I feel as though I didn’t mourn for my grandmother the way I should have, the way I would have wanted to, because the grief I felt over the loss of my son was so all encompassing.

Sometimes I hate how all encompassing adoption can be. I hate how some of the most unassuming activities, like filling in a pedigree chart for my daughter, can be an overwhelming reminder to me of the loss of my son. He may never care to know of the insignificant connection he has to my great grandfather because he may never consider my ancestry as his own. And I will always be reminded of not only the loss of a grandmother, but also the very powerful and painful loss of a son every time July 3 makes itself known. Don’t get me wrong, I love reminders of my son. I love that they keep him an ever constant thought in my mind, but I hate how emotionally draining those reminders can to be. Oh how I wish the constant reminders were reminders of happy times and events, but regrettably I never had the opportunity to make many of those. I truly hope that someday I’ll be given the opportunity to have a relationship with him and to create happy memories with him. I want to look at that pedigree chart and not be reminded through seemingly inconsequential dates of a loss too painful to bear, but of my son as an addition, not a loss on my family tree.