Both Sides Now

I have been involved in the adoption world for more than thirty years, having completed my first adoption in early 1987. All three of my adopted children came to me through the foster care system. Each state's system is different, as is the child welfare system here on the reservation. But I think my experiences would translate for most adoptions in most places.

There are two "kinds" of adoption: open and closed. And of course, there is a continuum between those two choices. One of my older children has had no information about and no contact with their birth family. That child is now an adult and knows almost nothing: no medical history, no information about the situation of their birth, nothing.

 My other older child came to me with little information, but it was enough to locate their birth mother when the child was eight years old. The child and I each wrote a letter to the birth mother, and she wrote back, sending precious newborn photos and copies of pages from a journal she kept while pregnant. She wasn't interested in meeting at that time, but we exchanged letters and photos from then on. When our child was about 14, the birth mother wanted to meet, but at that point the child wasn't interested so we continued to communicate via the mail.

At 19, our child and their birth mother were both ready. We met at a neutral place, with the birth mother's husband and two young children. Immediately, we were family. My child had little siblings, a stepdad, and most-importantly, another mother. At one point, we two moms turned to each other and said in unison, "She's so much like you!"

My now-grown child still has a wonderful relationship with both of these families: birth and adoptive. This grown child can turn to both families for support and advice. We do not compete or get jealous; we're just all family.

Our younger child came to us as our granddaughter. I have the blessing of having a picture of her in my arms the day she was born. We knew her before she came to us as a kinship foster child, and we knew her birth family, at least somewhat. Her birth family has become family to us. Think of it like a marriage: When we marry, we gain our spouse's family-of-origin as our family. The same happened when we adopted our granddaughter: We gained her family-of-origin as family! It's nine years later, and we all identify as family, as far as I can tell.

And oh, the joy of this completeness for our daughter! She knows who her nose comes from. She knows her siblings on both her birth mom's and her birth dad's sides. She knows her birth parents love her, and our daughter loves her birth parents. She sees her birth parents, siblings, grandparents, etc. as often as we return to the Midwest. It's just as important to all of us for her to see her birth family as it is for me to see my family or my husband to see his!

I heartily support open adoption like this, unless there is a grave safety concern for the child. I'm sure there are activities that our daughter's birth parents participate in that I would rather not have as influences for her, but they want the best for her, too, so they don't bring those influences into their visits with her. No one is perfect, and we all want what's best for this child.

There are certainly particular situations where contact with birth family is unsafe for a child, but in most situations I've seen/heard about/been involved with, healthy boundaries can be established and contact can be maintained at some level.

I have experienced adoption from the adoptive family side for over 30 years, and I have experienced much joy in this. In the past year, though, I have begun to experience adoption from the birth family perspective. The joy is much less here, and the conflict much greater. I've known this, theoretically, but lately I experienced it more personally. Two sets of our daughter's siblings, one on her birth mom's side and one on her birth dad's side, have entered the foster care system in the past year. In one case, we requested to have the children placed here with their sister and were denied; the children were placed in a non-family foster home. In the other case, a nearby family member took the children into their home.

In both of these cases, the system gave the birth parents a case plan and asked them to comply with certain expectations. In one case, the court has already found that the birth parents did not comply with the case plan and the parental rights were terminated. In the other case, the birth parents still have a certain amount of time to show significant compliance or the parental rights will be terminated.

From the perspective of the birth family, this time... We have watched as beloved siblings were taken away from known loved-ones and given to strangers. We have nervously asked if we could possibly maintain a relationship with our daughter's siblings/our grandchildren, aware that the adoptive family had the power to completely sever that relationship. We have anxiously awaited a court's determination of who these much-loved children would call family. We have visited our daughter's siblings in a new home, where they call a different woman "mother" and have tried to explain to our 10-year-old why they couldn't live with their previous mother, whom she loves. We have watched as our daughter processed the possibility that her siblings' names would change and how confusing that is for her.

And in the midst of all this, we were asked to take in our foster boys. To love them with the uncertainty of how long they will stay. To support their parents in their journey to reunite with their children. For our daughter to adjust to having siblings in the house, knowing that she will grieve their leaving, when that day comes.

Through all of this, I have come to believe deeply that children belong to themselves. When we act like only a portion of their story (that we like or that we are a part of) matters, we rob them of part of themselves. As either party in an adoption, we need to treasure the whole child, all of their story, even the parts that do not include us.

The joy of becoming a parent through adoption is accompanied by the grief of losing a child for the birth family, of losing a family for the child. Even in open adoption, that loss is genuine. Surely we want the child to share the joy, but it's also essential for the adoptive family to validate the loss for the birth family and for the child him/herself.

As we Christians move toward foster care and adoption as a way to care for "the least of these," (Matthew 25:40), we must be deliberate in our acceptance of the child's whole story. We must include as many of the players in our children's previous lives as is safe. We must not act like these children belong to us. They are God's, and He has orchestrated each day of their lives, including those days which do not include us. Their birth story is just as much theirs as their adoption story is.