Being adopted sucks…my personal lament

Please allow me this lament. It’s very personal and raw and not at all thought out. It’s what’s in my heart this morning and I just want to show you what a lament can look like – a lament that things in the world are not as they should be, that innocent lives are messed up through no reason of their own and that is heart breaking. This is an outpouring of my person feelings and thoughts in this moment. Please take it as such. It is not intended to offend in any way.

Don’t ever tell my kids that they are lucky to be adopted. That isn’t what lucky look likes. Lucky kids are the ones who are born into loving stable families to parents who know how to care for them – they’re the lucky ones. The ones that take love and security and provision of basic needs for granted, because every child deserves that. Every child born into the world deserves the start that some children – most children – get.

Don’t ever tell my kids that they are lucky to have found parents like us. Because they are the real heroes, not us. They have to deal with far more each day than most of us can ever imagine. They’ve had to deal with stuff from the day they were born – stuff most of us cannot begin to conceive of. Don’t expect them to be grateful to us for giving of our time and money and love to give them a good upbringing – they should not be made to feel that they owe us anything for that, anything more than a birth child owes his parents for what they have done for him.

Don’t ever tell my kids they are lucky they’ve turned out the way they have. Don’t remind them that things could have been a lot worse. Because they have had to fight to get where they are today. They have had to be strong and courageous – not out of choice, but because there was no choice. They did not choose to be born to the parents they were born to. It is not their fault. They did not choose to be adopted.

My adopted kids are not the lucky ones. The lucky ones are the ‘normal’ ones, the ones who go through everyday with absolutely no understanding of what being adopted means.

Being adopted for my kids means that pretty much everyone has to know that you are different – doctors, teachers, dentists…When you’re asked for your medical history, you have to tell them that you don’t know. You don’t know this information that could be vitally important. You have no idea what the future holds for you medically because the medical past is a blank sheet of paper.

Being adopted for my kids means working out your identity every single day. Where do you fit? How do you belong? What do you have to do to be loved and stay loved? There’s that all-pervading sense of insecurity that most kids have no concept of – that sense of ‘I was taken from one family, I could be taken from another. Nothing is sure. Nothing is permanent.’

Being adopted for my kids means dealing with other people working out what adoption means. It means having people refer to your mum – the only person you have ever known as your mum – as your ‘fake mum’ or ‘not your real mum’ or ‘not your natural mum’. It means kids making statements like ‘I bet you were found in a dustbin because no one wanted you’ or ‘your parents couldn’t look after you because they were skanky and you’re still skanky’. It means having adults ask questions and make you feel awkward about something you have more questions to than answers yourself.

Being adopted for my kids means having another two individuals out there who call themselves your mum and dad. Who think of you as their daughter or son. People you know nothing about really. People who may turn up in your world some day and lay claim to you. People who may try to contact you or you may want to find out about. A whole new world of brothers and sisters and grandmas and grandads that you have no idea what to do with.

Being adopted for my kids means facing all sorts of emotional and learning and physical difficulties. Life is not a level playing field. My kids have struggles that many could not begin to understand – things that kids should not have to be dealing with. They try to act as normal as possible so that they will be treated as normal as possible, but they have hidden things – mostly hidden things – that work together to make life pretty impossible every single day.

Being adopted for my kids means facing all sorts of unknowns in their future, in today. Yes, everyone faces unknowns, I know that. No one knows what is around the next corner. But my kids have unknowns built into their very existence. They do not know what they were like as a baby. They do not know why they have such fine hair. They do not know how many brothers and sisters they have. They do not know why they have learning difficulties.

Being adopted for my kids means being judged for their behaviours and actions that they have no idea how to control, because no one ever takes the time to understand or listen. And even if anyone did listen, how would they find the words? how do you put this jumble of emotions into words? And so they are judged for being disruptive or needy or unsociable or not trying hard enough.

Being adopted for my kids means a string of appointments to deal with all the issues they were born with that are no fault of their own – weak legs, a dodgy rib, uneven teeth, inflexible hands and feet, dodgy eyes…and then there’s the unseen stuff…potential autism, potential OD or ADHD or Attachment Disorder or Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Where they’re examined and poked and prodded and asked difficult questions…over and over and over again.

Being adopted for my kids means dealing with each day as it comes, because the future is far too scary to think about. Dealing with the bullies and the kids that tease and the teachers that do not understand and anything that may come through the post and the assessments and the inner hurts and frustrations and rages that make up every single day.

I hold my child in my arms and my heart breaks for her. This is not how is should have been. This is not how it should be. This is not how it should ever be.

I sit at the opticians to be told that my son’s ‘unusual’ optic nerves could be a sign of pressure in the brain and I am terrified. I want to run around shouting and screaming in a full blown panic but because he is there, I have to stay in control and be calm for him because he doesn’t really understand what is going on.

I feel the hurts that feel like stabwounds to the heart when my children tell me in anger that I’m not their real mum anyway, that they wouldn’t be this way if I’d done a better job, when they don’t know how to handle mother’s day so do nothing at all…

I wrap my arms around my child and want to protect him against the world. I want to be there for him and make sure nothing bad is ever said to him, nothing ever hurts him.

My heart breaks every time I meet up with my older daughter and mourn the relationship that has been lost. That she is having to find a hostel place to live because we cannot find a way between us to live together. I mourn for how it once was. I ache for how misunderstood and judged and mistreated we have all been at times in this process on occasions – by each other, by our friends and families, by the professionals.

I want these children to be my own children. Just mine. I don’t want to share them with any other mother. I love these children with my whole heart. I hate that there are other people out there with some sort of claim to my children. With pictures of my children on their walls

I get so angry when people are insensitive, when people can’t understand, when people have no idea how lucky they are. When people say stupid things and ask stupid questions.

So yes, maybe I seem to over-react sometimes, to be over-sensitive and over-protective. My heart is fragile and the identities and self esteem and feelings of my kids are extremely fragile. I am fiercely protective of my own heart and of theirs.

I love each of my children with my whole heart. I don’t know how that is possible but that is how it is. Any parent would understand that. I love each of my children – each birth child, each adopted child – differently – not because they are birth children and adopted children but because each one of them is different and needs a different kind of love. My heart feels like it will actually break for every single one of them at different times.

This is my lament. My very personal lament for me, for my kids, for my husband. That is how it looks for me to voice my lament today. It’s an outpouring of loss, of pain, of confusion…that is what a lament is.