Heather over at
Production Not Reproduction is the mastermind behind the
Adoption Interview Project. I'm so happy to be a part of this blogging community, although my part in it is infinitely small and lame-o. And let's face it, it's pretty much flat lined at the moment. I'm blaming it on my two little maniacs who leave me unable to form complete thoughts most days. Every time I break out the laptop with a blazing thought in my head, two little bodies amble over to me like attention zombies and drain me of inspiration, motivation and lap space. Personal time and space is a thing of the past. I got a really long hug on the toilet this morning. Yeah. I'm not one to ever turn a hug away, but come on...
Stay on topic, Lindsay...
The interview, yes. I was lucky enough to be paired up with Shannon of
Peter's Cross Station. Her blog is passionate and informative. She's a smart cookie with a beautiful family created through open, domestic adoption. Shannon has written for multiple online sources about adoption including Babble and BlogHer.. You'd be wise to runnotwalk to her
blog and pick her brain. She's a valuable resource to the adoption community.
Here's my interview with her:
Did you and your partner arrive at open adoption easily? Did you consider any other avenues?
We arrived at adoption easily. My partner threw out a short list of
fantasy sperm donors among our male friends (the top of the list and his
partner became our girls' godfathers), but I was literally laughing as
she did. It was a five-minute part of the conversation. Then I said,
"okay, I'll research adoption agencies tomorrow."
If we had gone the pregnancy route, one of us (for a number of reasons,
my partner) would have had to do a second-parent adoption anyway. So I
just figured we would do best to keep it adoption from the get-go and
focus on that.
Once we started researching adoption agencies in our state that had a
good track record of working with same-sex couples, we found these were
agencies that primarily placed African American babies. So then we knew
our adoption would be transracial. When I dug just the tiniest bit
further it was soon quite apparent to me that open adoption would be
best for a child, her first parent(s) and at the very least by
association, for us.
So all of these things just fell into place. We never considered
international adoption because we knew we would have to closet ourselves
to do that, whereas we could be open about our family in a domestic
adoption (in our state, at that time--this is not, by any means,
universally true for same-sex couples adopting domestically).
When it was decided that you'd proceed with an open adoption, what
issues were important to you? Have those issues changed with time?
My dream was to adopt the baby of a woman I could be "best friends"
with. I was jealous of families in which both mothers were really
involved with the child/ren and the moms were close and talked all the
time. But the further along in adoption I get, the more I realize that a
woman I am likely to identify with at that level is probably not a
woman who needs to place her baby for adoption. A woman "like me" enough
to talk on the phone every week and plan all the birthday parties
together is more likely to have been coerced into placement--because she
could have done it herself.
(I am not saying this is true in every case, and I firmly believe that
even a mother who "could" do it, has the right to choose not to--to do
something else, whether abortion or placing a child for adoption. But I
do think that most of the mothers I am friends with who placed their
children would not do it again and many say they were coerced in one or
several ways.)
The longer I live adoption the more I see that coercion of mothers to
place their babies for adoption is widespread, if sometimes subtle, and
is perhaps the number one poison to healthy adoption practices, both
institutional and individual.
I do wish very much I had better relationships with my children's
mothers but the reasons I don't are the same reasons they truly needed
us to adopt their babies. It is sad all around, but at least I know this
really was the best thing for my daughters and their mothers--however
tragic.
Meanwhile, our door is always open to our girls' mothers. We send lots
of letters, pictures and texts. We leave phone messages for birthdays
and Mother's Day if we can't get through. When we do have fleeting
contact it is always a banner day.
Your family is multi racial. Did you encounter any hesitance within your
families or your birth parents' families prior to placement? If so,
how were the issues resolved, post placement?
We didn't really have any race-related problems from our families (on
either the birth or adoptive side). If there were issues, people kept
them to themselves (which we appreciate!). For many years (until this
past June, when my sister-in-law had a baby girl) our children were the
only grandchildren or nieces in either of our families. They have been
duly spoiled. (Now we enjoy spoiling our baby niece/cousin too!)
Our older daughter's mother did say she chose our profile because it was
the only one she was shown with "any color in it" because pictures of
our friends included African American people. Given few choices, she was
resigned that her daughter would be adopted by white people. We talked
openly about this with her. It was a positive conversation overall-as
positive as such a sad occasion can be, at least.
Your blog is very passionate. you seem like a great ambassador for open
adoption. how do you keep your passion for the subject alive?
My kids, my kids, my kids.
The older they get the more they need their [first-birth-natural-original-
biological-just, plain] mothers. And loving them means wanting to give them everything they need.
I can't deliver their moms under our complicated circumstances, but I
can do everything I can to make it clear that those bonds belong to them
and always will, no matter what. I can make it clear to them that they
get to feel about adoption whatever they feel. I can make it clear that
it is not their responsibility to make me feel okay if they are hurting
or angry. I can make it clear that they can count on my partner's and my
unconditional love--and we trust that they love us, even if adoption
and its causes feel sad and unfair to them at the same time. I can make
it clear that we are with them and have their backs no matter how they
are feeling.
The more I learn about open adoption the better mother I can be to my
girls. The more I advocate for open adoption, the better off adopted
people will be. I consider everyone involved in adoption to be my
extended family. I advocate for moms' rights on behalf of my daughters'
mothers; for adopted people's rights on behalf of my kids. Open adoption
is one element of ethical adoption and making adoption ethical is one
of my priorities in life. I took that on when I chose to adopt.
What are some of the lesser known challenges you've encountered in your multi racial family?
The hardest thing about being an interracial family is finding real, living, breathing interracial places to be in U.S. society.
We live in a very segregated country. Take that as value-neutral if you
want to, but interracial spaces--truly integrated spaces--are few and
far between. A lot of times, white people will see a brown face in a
crowd and feel warm and fuzzy and think they are in integrated space. I
find myself counting all the time--I count the number of total people on
the playground, then the number of non-white people, then figure the
percentage. If it's less than 20% non-white, I feel like I've failed my
kids. (No, really. It might sound silly, but it's true.)
Based on my reading and talking to adult transracially adopted people, I
think the most important thing a white parent can do for a child of
color is provide real peers and adults of the child's race for deep and
long-term relationships. Living in a well-integrated neighborhood is a
bonus, practicing new food ways or culture consumption is great.
Learning to braid hair is a basic life skill, but real people to whom
your children can relate are the number one priority.
We are lucky to have had a chance to move to one of the most racially
diverse neighborhoods in the United States (statistically) and to have
found a nearby dance studio full of African American instructors and
students for the girls to attend. We also go to an unusually integrated
Episcopal church every Sunday where the girls just blossom and glow
under the admiring beams of surrogate aunts, uncles, grandparents and
cousins who look like them.
But moving into integrated spaces can be uncomfortable for white
people--even supposedly anti-racist white people. It's taking a risk
that someone won't like you, will judge you in some frightening way;
will just be too different to understand. I always say, put yourself in
your kids' shoes. If you are always asking them to be the token person
of color it's not fair. It doesn't matter if every is "nice" or if your
child is "welcome." Asking them to always be the different one is too
much for a child. As the adult, as the parent, put yourself on that line
whenever you can instead of your kids.
The godfather I mentioned above--top of the fantasy sperm-donor list--is
Afro-Caribbean. So even if I had given birth, our family would have
been interracial, and seeing as he is a surrogate brother to me, it
already was. For us, thinking about living integrated lives far predated
learning that our kids would be Black. Both of us were (are) scholars
of American culture with an emphasis on race and therefor had (have)
colleagues and friends of all races.
But even so, actually being an interracial family requires an almost
mundane level of constant awareness of race and how it affects
day-to-day life. The older the girls get, the more issues come up. I can
now be at some distance from them in public places and watching them
negotiate the world as little Black girls (often, when people don't
realize their mother is watching) is an eye-opener.
A few weeks ago, a white woman tried to kick them off a swing so her
daughter could use it. She had no idea their mom was observing the whole
exchange. My older girl was about to give way, but her little sister
shook her head defiantly. I was proud of her and let her handle it for a
few minutes more before letting the other mom realize who I was. I hope
she was darned embarrassed. And I don't really mean darned.
As a blogger, how did you learn to draw the line regarding the girls'
adoption story or their birth parents or even just daily life?
I haven't learned where that line is, so I tend to err on the
conservative side. I try not to tell someone else's story if she doesn't
have equal access to tell it from her own perspective, so I say very
little about the kids' moms. I feel kind of the same way about the kids.
Up to a point, talking about kids is the same for everyone--teething,
crawling, walking, potty-training, cute little kidisms...but my kids
have reached an age now when they are much more individual and their
stories are more about them and who they are than just about me having
cute kids. Yet they are too young to tell their own stories from their
own perspective. So I have cut back on blogging generally and blogging
about the kids and OUR adoptions specifically.
That said, there are many stories I do tell in more private venues. I am
open with anyone who emails from the blog to ask a specific question
because they are doing their own adoption research of one kind or
another or because they identify with us and want to share or ask
advice, or whatever. I also tell more in detail at adoption conferences
and other places where the information is targeted in a particular way
to improve adoption overall or someone's family specifically.
I'm a new adoptive mom and our new addition looks a whole lot like my
husband and I. So when it comes up that he was adopted, I get weird
responses from people. I find that I'm still tripping over my words a
lot when asked the usual, nosey questions about adoption. How did you
find your voice regarding inquisitive strangers and acquaintances?
I'm an over-sharer. I am also a teacher. So I usually assume people mean
well (you can tell when they don't) and talk frankly about the truth of
our situation. If my kids are around, I will still talk about it, but I
will include the kid/s in the conversation so they don't feel talked
about. If the kids are at all uncomfortable we keep it simple and change
the subject.
The biggest problem I have is the "oh what a saint you are" response
people sometimes (often) have to recognizing us as an adoptive family.
It really makes me angry, because well-intentioned or not, the person is
implying that it is especially difficult to love my children. It is
not. It is wildly easy. Ask anybody who's been on the receiving end of
one of their smiles.
I am also really angry when people automatically assume it's okay to say
negative things about their mothers. I bite my tongue and pretend I
don't understand, then start speaking admirably of the girls' moms. "Oh
her mom is such a genius!" "Oh she has her mom's eyes, that's why she's
such a beauty!" "Her mom works so hard..." etc.
To say rude things about my kids' flesh and blood is to ay rude things about my kids.
Do you remember one stand out moment where you felt the connection
between you and your new child? Was the bonding experience relatively
similar for you each time, or did you have different experiences with
each child?
This is not the case for everyone--whether a parent by birth or
adoption--but I really did feel an instant connection with each of my
girls the second I laid eyes on them and held them.
In the case of my younger daughter, I was waiting for the social worker
to bring the baby from the hospital in the lobby of the agency (a
building that held many other offices too), in front of a huge
plate-glass door. People were getting off the El across the street and
walking home from work. (It was rush-hour, and in fact, the social
worker was stuck in traffic.) When she walked through that glass door,
she put the baby right in my arms and said "congratulations, you're a
mom again!" and I was thinking "wow, those people walking by outside
might see this and have no idea what a profound moment it is in my
daughter's and my life." It was a little bit surreal and really happy.
I had to go to a courthouse recently to get some document for something
or other (I forget) and was flooded with a happy feeling. It occurred to
me that the last two times I had been in a courthouse were to petition
to adopt my daughters. So I have this bizarre happy association with
annoying bureaucratic spaces now!
Thank you, Shannon for allowing me to drop these questions on you at the last minute. And thanks for some fresh inspiration to keep chugging along with this little blog.
Now, behind the jump is my attempt to sound like an intelligent adult with more than one synapse firing as I answer Shannon's questions...
