Are We Really Saints?

I am no saint, and while I am lucky to have my folks it is because they are great parents, not because they saved me from some horrible life. Living in two parts of the triad teaches a person a lot of things. One of those things is that the adults in the equation aren't saints and the kid that gets placed is lucky, to have alot of people that love them. (I am speaking of voluntary infant placement here, not other situations, so please don't explain how my thoughts are wrong. Yes, I know, women that place voluntarily can still have messed up lives, don't educate me there either, but they love their kid enough to see that, which is what I am referring to.) Kiddo's parents aren't perfect, but they love him and that is the most important thing to me. He is a great kid and they are helping with that. I really could have cared less about making another woman a mother. I was worried about Kiddo and getting myself healthy because I had problems of my own. If I'm a saint then saints really need to be looked at hard and if Kiddo's mom is a saint, then ditto.

In my experience being a birth/first mother and working with hundreds of them, you are an angel/saint until you want something the adoptive parents aren't willing to give or are "uncomfortable with. Then you are someone to be feared, or a slut, or a dysfunctional mess.

Yes...and for me, it's been the opposite. I'm looked up on kindly until I can't give into every demand, then I'm a plain old b**** and am breaking our word or going back in our OA. My kids' birthmom comes back to our country twice and doesn't come see/call AJ, but that's "ok" in her eyes because she's busy or it's hard for her to see him...but because we don't have the $6,000 for airfare to go see her, I'm wicked and her mom wages a FB campaign against me because I'm not doing what's "expected" of me. I guess I lost my sainthood. Sometimes we all can't win for losing, you know?

I cannot stand either the saint or the sinner stereotype. I'm not a saint for "choosing life" (in fact, I'm vehemently pro-choice), for "giving a couple who couldn't have children a baby of their own" (I'm not a surrogate) or for relinquishing my child so he could have a better life (I'm not a martyr, either). OTOH, I'm not a sinner because I "abandoned" my baby, "rejected" him, or "didn't want him." None of these things are true, either. I find most people want to throw me in one of the two camps and no one ever really gets to the complexity or the reality of the situation. They especially don't get the loss part of it, and would rather put me on a pedestal or knock me off one than say "I am sorry for your loss" or "that must have been very hard to do, how are you managing?" I'd much rather hear the latter than "oh you were so BRAVE! You did such a WONDERFUL THING!" or "but he had a good life!" (as if that makes the loss any easier) or worse "How could you DO THAT??!!?" I hate being put in a simplistic box. I don't know why it is so hard to comprehend that I was in a crisis situation, did not have the support I felt I needed to adequately parent my child, and made a decision to give him what I felt would be a better life. In turn, I knew that I would benefit as well (how SELFISH of me! - I've gotten that one, too), because life in my situation was already a struggle that I had a very hard time crawling out from under and still struggle with the after effects from it. I don't know if I could have done it with a baby, and I'd have had to drag him through all of that constant struggle and dysfunction with me. That's all there really is to it. I wasn't sitting there thinking "oh, there's many poor, infertile couples out there who would LOVE a baby, let me give them MINE!" Nor was I thinking "I can't stand this baby and want nothing to do with him, ICK, get him away from me and give him to people who want a kid!" I was in a difficult situation, decided to have my baby, made my choices and live with them the best I can. I think they were good choices, but despite that, the price I've had to pay for them, has been, IMO, way too high. So comments such as "see, you did a great thing, he's had a better life, it's what you wanted for him, no?" really tend to irk me. They come off as condescending and very simplistic, even though I know the person saying it means well. I also find that so many people don't know the specifics of a situation and don't want to know, but will prefer to make sweeping generalizations or outright misinformed statements. For instance when adoptees hear comments, too, from other people like "your mother didn't WANT you, why do you want to know her?" or "how can you not be upset about being adopted, you were rejected by your own mother" (rarely if ever "father," of course). When people hold these attitudes toward birth mothers without even knowing them or their situations, they are being judged so harshly before they even walk into the room.

and this is me. Cannot agree more with this.

Peachy: I completely agree with your post, I am really over the whole "You were so brave....so wonderful." rhetoric. I wasn't either of those things, I was a teenager in a crisis situation, scared out of my mind. I made decisions and acted on them. But I actually don't mind that as much as the "oh how are you managing?" comments. The truth is I adapted my life around my loss. I'm fine, I'm functioning, I'm happy. It drives me insane how people IRL won't let me talk about my DD because they think its too hard on me and I should think of it as a painful part of my past. It is painful, but it's part of my past.I can't change what I did. My present is a place where my DD and I are having fun getting to know eachother. Let me celebrate that. I think what sets me off at times is seeing how other people put DD's parents on a pedistal because they are adoptive parents. Every single time she posts something about her kids, whether it's a picture or a comment, someone has to remind her how lucky her kids are to have them in their lives, or how awesome it is that don't have a traditional family but they've learned to function as one. Maybe it's me, but I can't imagine how anyone could think of the family as anything other than traditional, they just built it a different way. And they are lucky to have them their lives, but I hate the way it implies that if they didn't have them, they would be living in poverty and dysfunction or worse. It makes me wonder what they would think if they knew that the person who likely commented above them who looks pretty normal and oddly familiar is really the birthparent of one of the kids? It also makes me wonder what DD's a-mom thinks of the comments too. I know everyone "means well", but it's not like she's looking for a medal because she adopted, KWIM? It's the first time I really thought about it from the AP POV.

Hope you don't mind an adoptee point of view :) As an adoptee, I don't really talk much in IRL about adopton to be honest, though this year with meeting my bfamily, I have had to. I have to say that I get sick of people saying "aren't your parents wonderful for adopting you" as well (especially when they don't even know my aparents) (some of you might remember I started a thread saying how patronising that phrase was to ALL people in the adoption world). They wanted a family which is why they adopted us all (4 of us in our famiily, older brother&sister (twins), me and younger brother, all different bparents). When I mention about my birthmother, they are usually initially interested in hearing about her (especially seeing photos) but seem to assume that as she has passed away, she should be of no further interest to me, and when they find out that her family never knew about me (as she was quite young when she died), I get "well, at least your mum and dad love you now". Just Peachy, That really annoys me on all your behalves when I see that as well. I saw something along those lines on another thread just the other day (a few of us told the poster we disagreed).

Ooh, thanks for bringing this up. This is another thing I just don't get! Still to this day if I try to talk about my son with most people, I get uncomfortable silence or a quick change of subject or an outright dismissive statement. We just can't talk about THAT, don'tcha know? What on earth is it that makes so many people uncomfortable?? Even with my best friend since grade school, when I would talk about my son over the years, she would clam up. I was perfectly comfortable talking about him and yet she couldn't? I finally had to come out and tell her that it helps me to talk about him, espeically with understanding friends. Now that my son and I have reconnected and are talking on the phone, she's more comfortable but it took a LONG TIME for her to be able to have discussions with me about my son or adoption in general. So often she would just say "I could never do that" which is one of my biggest pet peeves! She is a good friend, and a lifelong friend, so I let it pass with her. I also find family members are really uncomfortable and other friends sometimes even act like they are mad if I talk about my son. Like I don't have a right to! I actually had a friend years ago who told me I shouldn't get to see photos of my son because I severed all legal rights to him and was not entitled to have any contact whatsoever. Nevermind that my son's parents were obviously OK with it and it was what my son and I wanted too. She was very upset about this, that I had this connection to my son. I often wondered if she felt I should be punished because she was a very young mother who kept her baby and really struggled with young single motherhood. I'm not sure, though, why people think we will fall apart if we talk openly about our experience. Maybe they think they are opening a wound or something? I mean, it's one thing if we DON'T want to talk and don't bring it up, but if we are the ones bringing it up in the first place, what's the problem?

I honestly think it's that people just don't know what to say...That, and they don't want to talk about what is out of their comfort zone. My cousin was born with biliary atresia (a liver disease) so for the first two years of her life it was touch and go. She was in the hospital for months at a time, jaundiced, on dozens of meds each day, etc. So my aunt and uncle had this sick baby, plus a toddler (a three year old). My aunt said she remembered going to her sister's bridal shower (my cousin was about a year at the time) and not one person...NOT ONE asked her about my cousin...Not how she was doing, not what milestones she was hitting, nothing. They even went so far as to ask about my OLDER cousin (my aunt's older son) but not Christine. My aunt said she was about to explode! Another thing that kind of struck me when I read this thread was that I think alot of the phrases that people say to all three sides of the triad are things they feel "compelled" to say because it's the stereotypical, societal catch phrases. "You're so lucky"..."She's so lucky to have you"..."At least you get to see her"...etc. etc. It's kind of like at a funeral when people say "They're in a better place...It was God's plan...At least he's not suffering". It's what they say when they don't have anything else to say. (And I'm editing to add that this isn't something I agree with, nor is my first sentence. Just observation.). I do have to say, Brown, that it surprises me that people are still saying that stuff to your daughter's mom without provocation (meaning on an open FB page when there's no talk of adoption or family building at all). I still hear it, but it's generally when I'm talking about the kids from an adoption standpoint, which is pretty rare. I would actually be really cheesed if someone brought up how my family was built on my FB wall. Now if someone were to say "You guys are so lucky to have each other - you're such a great family", then I wouldn't see it as an adoption statement...but if someone said "Your kids are so lucky that you adopted them, etc. etc." then I'd be really put off.

There is SO much in this thread I agree with! But this: You know, a couple of years ago, I was trying to talk to my mom, it's after being in reunion, after telling my parents about finding my son, and I was telling my mom that one of the things that KILLED ME over the years was NOT being allowed to talk about it (the dr. said it was best for me to forget you see) and my mom said "I was afraid it would be like ripping off a scab if we talked about it" and I said "Because we never spoke about it I NEVER HAD A CHANCE OF HEALING". It's been weird. I definately experienced the saint syndrome, while I was pregnant, and the afterwards I was SO confused that no one would talk about it, and that I was given dirty looks and mean comments... Then again, after finding my son, I had a relative say 'oh we're SO PROUD of you for CHOOSING LIFE'. Ugh, I still feel ill when thinking about this. It does totally discount my pain. And on the other hand a 'friend' saying "I could never have other people raising MY child, I'd rather have an abortion". Ugh. The thing is, while I'm sure a lot of aparents HATE the saint thing as well! I get the feeling that my son's amom kind of likes that. That's probably why she hates the idea of me around, all of a sudden her fabulousness for 'rescuing' this child from his horrific birth family is confronted by the fact that I'm not a horrific person, I was just a kid in a difficult situation, trying to make a difficult decision. *sigh*

Browneyes, I completely, wholeheartedly agree. Brave is not a word I even remotely relate to my pregnancy and subsequent relinquishment. I was alone and terrified the entire time. If the adults in my life had been brave and actually talked to me about what was going on things might have been easier. Water under the bridge now. I find it odd however, that even though throughout the last 31 years the word "brave" has come up often, now that I've found contact info for my son and have written "the" letter, I'm suddenly someone who is way too emotionally involved and confused to make a rational decision over reunion. If one more person asks me if I've "really thought this through" I think I'm going to scream really, really, really loudly. [url]http://forums.adoption.com/images/smilies/wallmad.gif[/url] Maybe the reason that these saints/sinners catch phrases bother is us is that all we're really looking for is emotional support without judgment. When I was 16 I wanted someone to say to me, "this is a bad situation you've gotten yourself into, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person." What I want for my friends to say to me now is, "this may not turn out the way you want, but I'm here for you no matter what." Support without opinions attached.

Do you ladies find that single mothers can be the most judgmental towards your decision? I just ask because earlier last year, I went to lunch with some friends and one of the other ladies was telling everyone about how I was going on a trip to meet all my brelatives. So of course I had to tell everyone my story. They all were happy for me, however one lady said something along the lines of "if she wanted you, she would have kept you, she might not be happy about you disturbing her family", her reasoning being that she parented her own daughter on her own and that if she could do it, anyone else could do it. I did try to explain about support etc (I believe she had family support) but I think it fell on deaf ears. As for the "disturbing the family" (extended bfamily only in my case), it was for precisely that reason it took me 2 or so years to contact my bmother's relatives because i knew they wouldn't know of my existence, I really thought long and hard about whether it was the right thing to do. I have been very very respectful of my bfamilies feelings.

This has been my experience. And I thought it was just me or not sure if my instincts were on target with what I was hearing. If not outright comments like my one friend made about the pictures, I'd often pick up on a sense of jealousy. Like they were "stuck" and I had my "freedom." And also the attitude of "well I did it, you should have done it too." Nevermind the way they were "doing it" (at least the people I knew - this is in no way a slam against all single mothers) was, in my mind, everything I DIDN'T want for my son. It just wasn't my choice, and while I didn't find their choices appropriate for me or my son, I would never have voiced that to them. This is the problem I have. Everyone seems to think they can offer up their opinion when it comes to adoption. And it's almost always negative, but when it's not, it's the hero thing.

I do have to be fair and say that the single mothers I know (mostly people I work or have worked with) are great mums, including this friend. I doubt that this lady was "jealous" of my bmother but she obviously felt that my bmother relinquished me "because she wasn't prepared to put in the effort that my friend did" and not realising the many factors that made adoption the "only available option" my birthmother probably felt she had at the time (of course, I can only assume how my bmother felt at the time based on circumstantial evidence and how other bmothers felt at the time - this disclaimer is for anyone who thinks I am being presumptuous stating something that isn't a known fact).

Actually the ones I find most judgemental are my friends who married semi young (early to mid 20's) who started their families in their late 20's. I think part of it is that they've been moms now for 10-ish years and they just can't fathom how their lives would be had they placed their child, and part of it is that they see themselves as settling down and having kids young, so why didn't I choose to settle down and raise my DD, with or without her birthfather. I also think they didn't really "live" (ie: travel, date around etc) so they have a narrowminded view of the world in general.