The other day I was disciplining my daughter in the playground after school and let's just say things weren't going smoothly. The aforementioned BM was seated next to me and I found it all to be a bit uncomfortable, as if her knowing that I am a hopeful adoptive parent somehow leads the impression that I think I am or could be a better parent than what any given BM could be. But I don't think that's what it's all about at all - who is the better parent when it comes to adoption. It is about timing and circumstances and the kind of space a BM Mum is in.
The thing is, as a Mum of a six year old daughter with autism, I am challenged. I am no super-Mum. I am out of my depth frequently. There are days in which I feel trapped. Days I want to escape. I'm not sure these traits - although human ones - aspire me to the super status of being an adoptive Mum because I don't feel I can necessarily do a better job than a BM. Now that I know a BM who is already a parent - I can see she is a Mum who probably has similar struggles to me. I guess God wanted me to meet a BM I knew vaguely through my daughter - but the whole exchange has been a little unsettling.
My daughter has been talking every day for at least a month about a sibling. I just don't think it is good for us all as a family to be in limbo land for so long. I carry guilt around not being able to provide my daughter a sibling and guilt around that I couldn't just let it go - that I had to put us all through the adoption process and now endure this tiresome waiting.
At the gym I go to there are two men who have recently had some serious health issues - one man has a muscular deterioration of some kind and the other has had a major stroke. I used to play sport (dragon-boating) many years ago with the guy who has had the stroke. He used to be fit, an astute businessman, enjoyed travelling and having adventures and liked a good laugh. So when I saw him in the gym the first time after his stroke I was surprised. But it wasn't until we actually had a conversation the other week and I found I could barely comprehend what he was saying due to the physical changes in his face which has made his speech very hard to understand - that I felt truly shocked and saddened for him. When he described a little of what he went through, my eyes started to well up.
The other man has travelled to the USA to have treatment for his muscular condition. However he looks like he's come out on the other side of it all as he was wheelchair bound at one point and now strolls around, almost back to his old self. But appearances don't fool me; this man has been changed forever. He went from a fit forty-something year old to a man who could barely move. He's not going to forget his experiences in a hurry and even though he looks good right now; I'm he lives with his health issues every single day.
I don't find it hard to identify with these men at all after my own experiences of SIF. I guess life doesn't go as planned for most of us in some form. We all have our stories to tell, even if one person's story is seemingly more dramatic than the next. I don't believe in downplaying a persons pain. When people say "There is always someone worse off than you." I don't think that's a fair comment. True, there will always be someone worse off - but we each hold our own pain and deserve to be heard and acknowledged whatever our story may be.
I sometimes feel as if life throws a series of events at us that causes us to feel unhinged. Sometimes there are gaps between these triggers, which allows us time to settle into life and to find our way again. But before we know it, something else comes up and we are once again left to desperately find our place in the world again. Perhaps we are all born a little bit broken and things happen to us in life that cause that brokenness to be exposed - to bring out that raw human vulnerability that lives in the centre of all of us.
I know for myself I still hold a lot of pain around my family of origin and my parents divorce fifteen plus years ago which resulted in our family - my parents, my sister and I, scattering ourselves all over the world. I still have a lot of healing to do around that and get that part of my desire to have a second child was a bit of a feeble attempt at creating the family I always wanted ie: a happy one. Ironically the family I have now - although beautiful - is very different to the one I had hoped for. Instead of two kids playing happily in our home, I have a daughter with autism who is lost a lot of the time in the world. My grief on the family front is doubled - for my daughter and the challenges she and we face with her autism - and for the sibling/the family of four we aren't.
There was a time when I thought I would come out on the other side of SIF. That I would one day be able to forget it ever happened. That I would feel like "me" again. But almost five years into this and I know that I have changed forever - that I will probably feel broken for the rest of my life. And just like the men I mentioned in the gym - life will never be the same again.
I still feel stuck in my life and unable to move forward very much which is the other part of waiting (in the prospective adoptive parents pool) that frustrates me. It's almost as though once I know for sure what is going to happen, I will be set free.
My job could fizzle out at the end of the year which means it isn't the most rewarding job to be in. It doesn't feel like it has a lot of meaning when it may not last much longer. I guess I have been feeling a little lost in my own life of late - if I'm not meant to be a Mum again (perhaps) and my job isn't stable then what am I meant to be doing? I am going to do another round of the (12) steps with a friend which will help things - guess I just need some spiritual direction and meaning in my life again.
My daughter and I are heading to the North Island in three weeks time for four nights - the main event is my Great Aunt's 90th. We are staying with a good friend of mine for two nights and then are spending two days catching up with extended family. It's quite a big step for me to stay with my friend as she has two children and we've had some hard times during our friendship when she went through her second pregnancy and went on to have her second child. Sometimes I cannot read posts or view photos of her second child or her two children together, so it will be interesting to see how I go staying with her. I stayed with her two years ago and woke up in the night crying after seeing her then three year old with her baby sister.
On my husbands side of the family, I will be seeing eight of my daughter's cousins and one of her Aunts has her third child on the way. Two years ago one of her other Aunts had had her second child. Most of the cousins have siblings. It was hard last visit but I expect and know I will probably get triggered - it's just the way it goes. But it feels right to go up and see everyone - I cannot hide from the people I love and care about forever - even if they have the babies/families I had hoped for.
1 comment:
What you say about grieving for the family and the future you had always envisioned for yourself is exactly how I feel. There are other times in life where we have to do this, like following the loss of a loved one or the ending of a relationship, but somehow the inability to complete a family in the way you crave in your soul is such a private and personal pain that it is almost incomprehensible to others in a way that the other two losses are not. It is a more isolated pain. And though you rejoice when those you love have babies or announce pregnancies, it doesn't stop a little part of you inside from dying each time.
My daughter is now 4 1/2 and asks for a baby brother or sister almost every day. She sees her friends and cousins with their siblings and wants to know why she can't have one too.
Post a Comment