Post last appointment with our social worker in regards to the adoption process; I have been doing a lot of processing. I guess every step brings us one step closer to an ending. I feel as though my head is in adoption-overload right now and I can't seem to switch it off. It no doubt hasn't helped that I have been into the Adoption forum in Dailystrength. I joined some time ago but don't go in there much as the vibe is often a bit fraught with hurt from all sides of the adoption triad. But I've been in the last two days and all it's done is increase my anxieties around open adoption.
My husband and I have pretty much worked out our "contact plan" - which is something that is worked out by prospective adoptive parents and is added to individual profiles so birth families can get a sense of how an open adoption might look with any given family. I thought ours was quite generous, yet our social worker hinted that we should be a bit more flexible within our profile, just so birth families know there is room to move if that is desired or appropriate further down the line.
It is taking me a long time to get my head around open adoption. I will admit that. To find out that if we get picked, it will most likely be by a birth family in the same town was a bit of a shock this week. We live in a town of 40,000. Surely we are going to end up bumping into the birth family. I know we are going for an open adoption but it just feels a bit uncomfortable at the moment - having to envisage a birth family in our lives - and being in contact when arranged but perhaps sometimes when not arranged if we are living in the same town. We are quite a private, quiet family in lots of ways with family living out of town. It is hard to image a birth family living in the same town being in frequent contact.
I suppose looking within that Adoption forum this weekend I read a few comments from adult adopted children. I cannot help but think that our potential child might be registered on such a site twenty years from now, even with an open adoption! It seems there will always be issues with adoption - no matter how open the adoption or how loving the adoptive parents are. It is just the way it is.
And I accept the differences for the most part between adoption and having a biological child. Yet every time I make a shift in my thinking and accept something else about the adoption process; I am having to say goodbye to an aspect of having a biological child. I know that these issues will probably continue to crop up, even if we get picked by a birth family. How can I not compare going to a foster home or birth family to take away someone else's baby to being in hospital with my newborn daughter surrounded by loving gifts and flowers from friends and family?
AF tried to arrive this week. By tried, I mean I got some spotting and that was it. Some months I get spotting, some months I get nothing. It has been over six months since AF came for a visit and it is just adds salt to the SIF wound sometimes; that my periods have stopped. Although some of my menopausal symptoms have settled down; I do feel odd to not be menstruating at 42. Really my periods started disappearing over three years ago. But it has taken me a while to adjust to being in early menopause.
I've had a couple of people of late make that if you relax and/or let go it will happen comment - as in pregnancy. I've had to blantantly tell them that I am biologically unable to conceive as POF or early menopause is irreversible.
Guess I'm feeling so many feelings right now: some lingering anger at my reproductive situation, confusion around open adoption and just plain emotional exhausation from all the processing. I don't like being in a bad place - especially when I've had weeks of feeling ok. But I should expect that turbulent feelings will continue to appear every now and then. I want to be healed and done and dusted with all of this but I guess I've still got some things to get my head around.
I have been thinking too of late how now I am 42, I am in a new 7 year cycle. Some claim that life can be broken into seven year cycles. I don't constantly think about it, but often when I'm on the brink of leaving a cycle, I can feel change in the air. So I do feel it - new things ahead within this new cycle. The last one 35 - 42 was for me all about settling down/getting married/starting a family/buying a house - all that stuff. No wonder I was peeved within that cycle that I never got to finish our family! But I will get to finish our family in the next cycle - either as a family of three as we exist today - or perhaps as a family of four. I just want life to be about other things now - and more than that - I just want to enjoy what I have rather than being focused on what I don't have. God help me to let this all go. I'm having a hard time doing so today.
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