adoption
I am a horse trainer’s daughter so the majority of my life has been lived in the country. When I was little, we lived on a ranch with a horse pasture just outside our front door. I had tons of adventures, and several injuries, in that pasture. My brothers and I built an obstacle course for our bicycles there and…
I am currently trapped on the couch under a snoring 5 year old. He is stuck on The A Team right now and he really needed to watch just one more episode. I love that his current obsession was one of my favorite TV shows as a kid. I also treasure these nights when he asks me to stop working…
Earlier this week, Al Trautwig made headlines with a tweet insisting that Simone Biles’ adoptive parents are not her parents. Just in case you haven’t been obsessively following this amazing young gymnast as she dominates the Olympics, you should know that she was in and out of foster care until she was adopted at six years old by her biological…
It is always complicated for my kids when they see their biological family but we thought they could handle an extended visit with one of their siblings because of some extenuating circumstances. Instead we spent about two weeks in absolute crisis mode as attachment issues reared their ugly heads. I kept my smile on though, at least in public.
Tonight I sat on the couch with my broken little girl and held her while she cried. Tonight we watched a movie and held a puppy while we waited for the grief to subside. Tonight, once again, I told her that it’s OK to hurt.
I stood in the aisle holding those little shoes and flashed back to the exploited little girl who came home to me four years ago. I tried them on Alyssa then took them off, disappointed that they fit. When my husband returned from his wandering, I showed the shoes him, expecting an equally distraught reaction. I hoped that he would at least think that she was far too young to be prancing through the church in half inch heels. Instead he questioned whether she would fall wearing them. I explained what the shoes represented but they didn’t mean that to him.
I relate to the other parents of children with special needs on many levels but I don’t bear the guilt of having been the one to pass on Alyssa’s genetic disorder or the constant questions of if it was something I did caused her problems. I relate to adoptive parents too but our story isn’t just about adoption anymore. I switch back and forth between groups depending on the support I need at the moment.
The problem with rehoming, as it currently exists, is that it fails both the children and the adoptive parents. Every time a child is placed with a new family, they suffer a new loss and it becomes harder for them to trust that they will ever be truly loved by anyone. In addition, many of the kids who find themselves in new homes are later abused or abandoned again. With no government or agency oversight to make sure that the new homes are safe for these children, the outcomes can be devastating.
Someone asked me recently if I thought that everyone who wants children should consider adoption. I am absolutely an advocate for adoption but I found myself pausing before I answered. The problem is that sometimes when we promote adoption and highlight the happy families it can create, we gloss over the darker side. The truth is that every tearjerker story about a family being brought together starts with another story of absolute devastation. Our children are not simply gifted to us, they are taken or abandoned or orphaned first. Sometimes the love of a new family helps to heal the wounds of that loss; sometimes it isn’t enough.
