Drama

We are not all drama queens. This only being able to edit for a minute is ridiculous.

We are not all drama queens. This only being able to edit for a minute is ridiculous.

You're right. Sometimes things change in both parties lives. I know my kids first parents had a lot of drama (for lack of a better word) in their lives during our son's pregnancy. That's making for a more awkward relationship right now. But I do think that there is the possibility for things to change in their life again and remove some of the chaos that's currently affecting them. I hope so at least.But I'm keenly aware that much of the chaos in their lives could be a response to their grief. And I know that ALL of us have had times we struggled. I think we run into problems when we expect certain behavior based on our perception of a person's role. Too often there's the perception that there must be something wrong with the person if she places a child, rather than something wrong with the circumstances in her life at that time. What do we keep saying "a permanent solution to a temporary problem?"

Exactly dmarie.Was my life chaotic when I placed Kiddo? Of course it was, would I have placed him if it was perfect? I mean get real. I tried to keep that chaos to myself.The other thing is that grief with adoption ebbs and flows. Sometimes I'm completely fine, sometimes I'm not. I sometimes feel like there is this expectation in from some people involved in open adoption that it is something that first parents just get over and move on from because they see their child and that fixes it. Not really. I've just gotten way better at coping with it and there are some things that aren't as hard as they used to me. Like it doesn't rip my heart out when Kiddo calls his mom, mom. I often read that as first parents we can't expect adoptive parents to ever completely heal from their infertility grief and that we don't understand. (Not a fair assumption, but it is out there). However, it sometimes feels like those same people think adoption is a one time thing and not a lifetime thing. Adoption may be a one time thing for some adoptive parents but for me as an adopted person and a first parent it has been a lifetime thing.

Exactly dmarie. Was my life chaotic when I placed Kiddo? Of course it was, would I have placed him if it was perfect? I mean get real. I tried to keep that chaos to myself. The other thing is that grief with adoption ebbs and flows. Sometimes I'm completely fine, sometimes I'm not. I sometimes feel like there is this expectation in from some people involved in open adoption that it is something that first parents just get over and move on from because they see their child and that fixes it. Not really. I've just gotten way better at coping with it and there are some things that aren't as hard as they used to me. Like it doesn't rip my heart out when Kiddo calls his mom, mom. I often read that as first parents we can't expect adoptive parents to ever completely heal from their infertility grief and that we don't understand. (Not a fair assumption, but it is out there). However, it sometimes feels like those same people think adoption is a one time thing and not a lifetime thing. Adoption may be a one time thing for some adoptive parents but for me as an adopted person and a first parent it has been a lifetime thing.

I guess some people don't ever heal from their infertility grief, I can see how that might be so. But I can't see how anyone can think that losing a child is a one and done type of thing. Even if you had no real choice, there was absolutely no way you could raise a child at the time and you felt it was truly the right decision to place, it would still be losing your child. Nothing changes that. It would be nice if we could all see the similarities between us instead of highlighting the differences. For example, there is grief associated with infertility, and there is grief associated with placing a child (even if that grief is denied). We all have things and times in our life that we have struggled. For some of us, maybe those struggles contributed to placing a child for adoption, some may have ended up doing something we're embarrassed to share, or maybe we managed to skate through those times unscathed. But the bottom line is everyone has struggled with something. It'd be nice if we could extend grace to each other instead of judging. It's easy to judge someone who has a different "failure" than we do and to not see our own failures as similar.