If I Could Stand in Front of the Adoption Triad and Say Three Things

I have learned so much about being adopted first by being adopted and then by writing about it and then by meeting a whole bunch of people who were affected by it either because they were adopted, they had adopted, or they had lost a baby to adoption. I mean given up. I mean gifted.

I mean lost.

When my mother would take a shit, she would call it a b.m. Calling feces a bowel movement is so polite! It’s like a dance! Your bowels moved and tada! You have a package!

When a woman has a baby leave the reach of her arms, we say “relinquished”. Do you think the women who lost their children at the border of Mexico because our government decided we have the right to break the bond between a mother and a child are going to walk around the rest of their lives and talk about how they “relinquished” their children? Granted, we used “relinquished” to talk about the supposed voluntary action of a mother handing her baby to parents supposedly “better suited” to raise the child, and in this action there is the implied dance of agreement which is missing in the story of the children at the border, but the fundamental issue is the same. There is an inherent belief that it really doesn’t matter if a mother raises her own child—what matters is that whoever does the raising has money. If you can afford to buy a kid who was taken from her parents in Mexico, then, by golly!, that kid should be yours! You are so white! You have two cars! You can buy video games!! Why not three children?!

That’s the first thing I would say. If you have money, chances are good you can get a kid if you want one. But you know this already. So let’s move on to #2.

Honesty. What would the world look like if the members of the triad lived in full disclosure? I feel like the entire mountain of words could be reduced to two: Holy shit. As in: Holy shit, this is harder than I expected. Holy shit, I have so many feelings I can’t talk about because there isn’t language for this experience! Holy shit, I didn’t know you could love and hate so much at one time! Holy shit, I feel so lost! Holy shit, I’m not sure I did the right thing! Holy shit, this hurts! Holy shit, I feel so isolated! Holy shit, I need a drink! Holy shit, I need a break. Holy shit, I love you.

#3:

I think members of the triad should consider self-care a full-time job. Other people can carry on with lives that resemble lives their parents led, but your life is about not spilling a glass of water that is filled to the brim. You are that glass of water, and you are completely full because you have pushed your body and mind to the edges of what the human nervous system can handle. You are perilously close to losing it much of the time, and if you aren’t, chances are good you are in the fog. If you don’t know what “in the fog” means, that’s a sign you are in it.

I’m not saying that everyone is driven to the edge of what the are capable of when they are a triad member, but I am saying that most people, from what I have observed, are. I am also saying that if you are an adoptive parent and you think everything is fine, I would doubt your child (even if your child is now an adult) is being honest with you or themselves. I mean, I’m sure there has been at least one case of a person catching on fire and then going home afterwards and being just fine, but it’s something I haven’t seen yet.

Taking care of yourself as a full-time job means you have time to lounge around and recover from being in your body that is living out a, I would argue, failed social experiment. Adoption as it is—again, I would argue—a failed social experiment based on the high number of adoptee suicides. If it were working, more adoptees would want to stay alive, right?

Lounging around means you aren’t always rushed. It means you have permission and space to feel. It means you understand that things such as going to therapy and getting massage and meeting with other members of the triad for support are more important than driving a new car. It means you spend more time preparing healthy meals because you understand you are feeding a body that needs balance, safety, and support. It means you are careful about what you feed your brain, a place that already is negotiating a fairly high level of anxiety thanks to our ability to live in fight or flight that tells us we must stay vigilantly on guard because bad things are right around the corner. You chose what you watch on TV carefully. What you read. The people with whom you spend your time.

You treat yourself like the most precious vase, and you work at filling yourself with beauty.

Not a bad gig.

The end.