a particular type of pain
The thing about adoption, whether it's open or closed, is that there is a lot of pain involved. You know what I'm talking about, the pain of being unable to raise your child, the pain of being unable to produce biological offspring, to name a few. But you can choose to expose the pain, share it, bring it out in the open and let it hurt. It hurts bad. But it can heal. Its true, others feel the hurt, may even be hurt by it. But when we share it into a supportive community like a wound that is cleaned and given oxygen it does begin to heal. I think that is one of the main reasons I am 100% committed to full openness in adoptions. By its very nature openness deals honestly with the past, present and future of the families involved. How can you work through your grief, your pain, unless you acknowledge it? How can you heal unless you grieve whatever loss you're working through and come to that place of acceptance. It strikes me that the adoption process involves all the adults working through this pain, grieving, coming to a place of self acceptance, and the ability to accept each other, so that someday our children will be able to fully accept who they are and be healthy in their personal identity. They will know if fact that they do belong. Man, I so want Puppy and Firefly to have a strong sense of belonging.
Before Hero (that's what I'll be calling Heather my wife) and I got married, we discussed the fact that both of us were interested in adopting children in the future. But as we began the process, and then adopted Puppy, and then proceeded in Firefly's adoption, it became apparent that I might never have biological children. I guess deep down I had always assumed adoption would be an "and 1." I thought mixed for us would mean both biological and adopted children filling our house with laughter and zrbts.
At the first adoption orientation meeting when we began to prepare for Firefly's arrival, the social worker started the session with the reality that adoption originates in pain. Whether it is in the inability to parent ones own child, or the inability to produce biological children, people enter with scars that are deep. She made a comment about how she has found many men struggle with the pain that comes from having to let go of the dream of raising biological children that share similar traits that only genetics can pass on. The thought of raising them, seeing your self in them, seeing how you function from a similar operating system, or look at life with the same playbook, is very difficult to let go. No one had ever summed up what had been growing in my soul for the last couple of years, and as I tried to share in the group share time I just couldn't without breaking down. I felt it, I heard it, and it hurt.
I had so wanted to see a little-T, doing his thing, seeing if he shared a love for music or football and had a natural uber-enthusiasm. Hero is a frickin' genius, I have never met a woman who thinks like she does, sees the world so analytically as she does, and feels things to the depth of her soul like she does, and so I was deep down always anticipating what our offspring would be like. They would dominate the world. :-) I told myself. The thought of this never happening created a sense of desperate loss, a realization of grief, and unresolved gash in my soul that I had not been able to be communicate or feel, but when released felt like someone had shoved Mentos down my belly full of diet coke. There was no holding back the emotions.
At the time Puppy was almost 2. I loved him so much. He had become so much of my world. His laughter, dimples, big ol' ears and beautiful heart (you should see him try to comfort his 5 mos old sister, a joy to behold) how could I be having these thoughts? Wasn't his place in our family enough? Was I ungrateful for continuing to feel this pain?
As I reflected and let the pain be, I wondered what some of the roots of it might be. I realized that there was a part of me that was deathly afraid of losing Hero. If something happened to her, what would I have of her, what would carry on that would be a part of here? I think I thought that a biological child would have her DNA, her genetic thumb-print, and if she was gone I could find her in our child. She wouldn't have altogether disappeared. As I started understanding this part of the pain, I also realized that Puppy was becoming old enough to reflect the personalities of his parents. He would mimic our expressions, mannerisms, and actions. I started watching closely and began to see more and more of Hero in him. Over the last year I've seen even more. It began to dawn on me that in the story of nature vs. nurture, Puppy and Firefly would never have our DNA thumb-print in their lives, but who they are is so shaped by how we communicate, discipline, celebrate, and invest in their little lives.
Hero, I admit, does a lot more reading about child rearing than I do, and has added a large amount to our styles, strategies, and methods of managing our children's sleep, discipline, nutrition, and activities. There are who they are now because of her, and would be way different without her. As this dawned on me, it didn't erase the pain I felt about the loss of biological children, but it was amazing at how much it took the edge off. With this realization I actually told myself, you know what T, if biological children are in our future that is going to be great, but if not, you are going to be OK. You'll have Hero in both of your children forever anyways.
Puppy can count to 13, say his ABC's, sing the "North America, South America, Europe Asia Africa" song, and he can find Oregon and California on the map. All things which make me proud. He also can be genuinely apologetic and empathetic. "Its OK Firefly" he says often when his sister is crying. I know some of this comes naturally, but I know a good amount of it comes from how we are raising him. Seeing him embody the things that we are trying to pass on has helped me move beyond most of the pain and spend most of my energy just being excited to watch these kids grow up.
This process began a little more than a year ago for me, and I'm still working through the question of biological children, whether it will happen for us or not, but I've come to terms with it and found a peace. A peace that I think will allow me to fully enjoy my life with Puppy, Firefly, and Hero, whether we continue to add children to our family or not.
Heres hoping you can find peace amidst your pain as well.
