You Are Not My REAL Mother

Today on her Instagram feed, the therapist Amanda Vaughn (Amanda_Vaughn_Therapy) quoted a parent saying, “My worst fear as a non-biological parent is the day my child says, ‘You’re not my REAL mother.’”

I have a very clear memory of saying something close to this to my mom. “When my REAL mother comes to get me, she’s going to be very angry at you.” (For making me, a princess, sweep the floor.) I was a little kid, and so this was a long time ago, and I’m not sure I really thought I was a princess when my mom asked me to sweep the floor, but the memory feels true to me, so I’m guessing I was exposing my REAL beliefs to my mom: that truly I was a princess and that truly there was going to be trouble when the queen came to get me. This isn’t just a kid being snotty and haughty, I don’t think. I think it’s a kid grappling with the fear that, holy shit, this mom that I live with and do feel is my REAL mom is going to be royally fucked when the other somehow REALER mom shows up and not only takes me away but scolds my mom (whom I hated at the moment for making me sweep but in general I wanted to die if I were away from her for more than about a day).

What if, instead of running out of the room in tears when I said that to her, what if my mom had, “Oh! I bet she would be mad.” What if she had gone for some paper and crayons and said, “Let’s draw what real looks like. You draw your real mom and I’ll draw my real daughter.”

What if my mom had sat down and drew me.

I have the feeling that if my mom had said this, and if I’d sat at the table with her, I might have started to sob, overwhelmed by the fact that my mom whom I loved was waiting for me to show her my REAL mom. Or, what if I was still royally pissed and did actually draw the queen who, in my mind, was the White Witch from Narnia. Do you see how if we let ourselves tell or draw our stories we can see so much. I mean, my mom was the one who had read the Narnia books to me, so she’d KNOW the White Witch was a fucking awful person. The White Witch PRETENDS to be the ruler of Narnia, but that title belongs to the magnificent Aslan.

If my mother had had the guts to sit at the table and listen to me, she might have gotten the clue that she was Aslan and my REAL mother was a problematic fantasy.

Sidenote: I have heard of adoptive moms who bad mouth their children’s so-called REAL mother, and I think that is belligerent, cruel, uninformed, and dumb. There’s no reason to do that other than you are trying to take someone down at the knees because you are afraid of them. If you do that stuff, knock it off. Seriously. It’s not the place of an adoptive parent to say one negative thing about a child’s biological parents. That doesn’t mean you can’t say the truth—it means don’t be a judgy asshole. If you badmouth your child’s roots, you are badmouthing your child.

What if my mother had drawn me as her REAL child and told me why she had done that. Yes, she had not “created” me, she might have said, but her body and my father’s body could not make children, so I was the REALEST child for her. There was no “what if my mother and father could have had a child of their own” because they couldn’t. This is the kind of place where words come in handy to show a reality based in logic. I am a REAL human, and my parents are REAL humans, so that means I am their REAL child and they are my REAL parents. I am not their BIOLOGICAL child and they are not my BIOLOGICAL parents, and that is the kind of crack where grief and confusion and sadness can creep in. My mother could have talked about how it made her sad I was not her BIOLOGICAL child, but that it was not my fault.

Actually, this is the part of the conversation where a therapist like Amanda could come in handy. Suddenly I’m over my head. I’m not sure it would be good for my mom to have said that my not being her biological daughter made her sad. Maybe I would have felt responsible and at fault for her sadness (which I did anyway). Maybe that conversation about sadness would have been one for my mother to have had with Amanda so my mother would then have known what would best keep my nervous system calm and myself feeling seen and understood.

Well, that wraps that up. Sometimes things come all wrapped in a bow, and sometimes they don’t.

Like life.