Open adoption is much more than a contract or a philosophy or an ideal. It’s an act of bravery and courage by all who enter.
It take courage to:
- to place your child in the hands of relative strangers for life.
- to trust that parents have their child’s best interests at heart.
- to experience and express your grief.
- to share a life.
- to reopen lines of communications when frayed.
- to trust that you can have a foot in two families and be a whole, confident person.
- to reach out when your arms are tired.
- to say “This hurts.”
- to bear witness to grief and pain and know that it’s not yours to bear.
- to ask for what you want, accept the response, wait, and ask again.
- to say “I need a break.”
- to set boundaries when needed and relax them when they no longer serve a purpose.
- to nurture relationships that are difficult or challenging.
- to know you are loved, and accept that love.
- to change, adapt and shift your perspective over time.
- to put away your ego, set aside your feelings, and do what’s right for your children.
Thank you for so eloquently putting into words the rewarding but sometime challenging relationships involved with open adoption. It’s ever evolving nature is one of the realities that is hard to understand until you are in one. Take a bunch of people and their very important needs and emotions and be respectful but still keep your own needs in mind and most importantly always keeping the child’s needs foremost is a tough tightrope to walk sometimes. But it’s very rewarding and you find and give at times unexpected support. Our birth parents are wonderful but we are always getting to know each other better. The bravery and openess of heart of everyone involved reinforces me and encourages me to open my heart further.
Beautifully put.
Harriet Fancott harriet@karmavore.com
Great description. I’m just an outsider to open adoption, but you seem to hit the nail on the head.
AMEN to this!!!!
Thank you for this timely post.
We are in a time of great change in adoption–this idea/ideal of openness is evolving quickly. Consequently, birth and adoptive families may be on very, very different pages when it comes to defining what openness means in concrete terms. At one extreme, we had decades of secrecy about adoption even having taken place; sealed records ‘disappeared’ the story of a child’s birth mother and the reasons for the separation. At the other extreme, adoptive families are sometimes pressured to accept an entire birth family, uncritically and without reservation, as an extension of their own; again ‘disappearing’ the reasons for the original separation. Typically, birth and adoptive families are left to negotiate this odd relationship over time, and we have no history or institutional support to turn to for wisdom and support as we go. It’s a murky path with many pitfalls.
Adoption begins with a tragedy, and we must be ready to face that truth with courage. There was always a reason. Starting with this truth, we can assess each family’s readiness for an open relationship. Many birth families have members that can form healthy relationships with the child that support the adoptive family as a family. Some do not; some have never grieved the loss of the child, or given up on the belief that they are entitled, through genetic heritage, to ownership. Some will seek to compete with the child’s attachment to the adoptive parents; some will seek to disrupt adoption.
I have become, through experience and observation, a voice of skepticism when it comes to openness. We don’t need to return to sealed records, but we do need to work on helping families set the boundaries that they need in order to allow adoptions to succeed. This is not a one-size-fits-all project. We need to develop the tools to assess the needs and abilities of everybody in the “adoption triangle”–the child, the adoptive parents, and the birth family members. A child’s family circle should be built with a balance in mind, between casting a wide net of support with many sources of love, and protecting the most important relationships from interference and from split loyalties.
Families, even adoptive families, have human limits. As the poet Robert Frost said, sometimes “good fences make good neighbors.” As adoptive families, we have already shown great courage. Now, we need help and support to make openness work through limits and boundaries that fit our unique situations.
I would like to quote your opening line…..I think it amazing…..
Oh thank you!
hope you don’t mind I linked your entry from my blog…..
love this. so much truth here. from all sides. wonderful post!
Thanks for your thoughts. Would you mind if I re-post on my blog (with all credit, of course).
Sure thing!