In reference to yesterday's post, I promised to bring you some snip-its of how others were affected by the subject and the wording of the quote itself. I made a post on my personal adoption blog that included the quote and prompted readers, no matter their triad title, to tell me how it made them feel and if they had been faced with a conversation of similar substance. People got talking. And I got to listening.

It didn't surprise me that birth parents had something to say about the quote. However, as all of our experiences differ, how we reacted and how we explained that reaction varied from comment to comment and blog to blog. Different in how we may word things or prepare for such conversations, something seemed to echo on quite a few different blogs: allowing the adoptee to feel whatever way they feel and express it in whatever way they feel necessary. In fact, Nicole of Paragraphein said it well:

Once upon a time, only two short years ago, I sat in a therapist’s armchair and reached for kleenex after kleenex as I sobbed to him that I should have been smarter… that I had been so stupid… that I should have loved my daughter more than my husband… that I could not forgive myself for being so dumb, so naive, so selfish, so mixed up, so stupid.

Yes, I smiled wryly. What else is there to do? There is truth in that statement. I too wish I had been smart enough or loving enough (or rather, unselfish enough). I cannot judge any adoptee for thinking the very things I’ve thought myself.

Other birth mothers chimed in with sometimes brief but always moving commentary about how they are handling and preparing for this topic of discussion. Barb of Coffee and Cigarettes wrote a post with a title that summed up her feelings quite well: This Stubs my Soul. Christine left a comment that also had me nodding my head:

My response that I posted is really what I think I would say. “Me, too.” Commiserate about the loss a little bit then try to stear it toward.. “but what we have now is still great and maybe the other way would have been notsogreat…we just dont know… and Im sorry that I didnt know how it would be for you — making you feel this way was NEVER my intention… and Im sorry…. Do you want to yell at me?? Because I will let you do that… if you need to. ”

Some adoptive parents wrote about the topic as well, with Dawn of This Woman's Work actually writing twice! She recognized the complexity in hearing an adoptee voice the questions of "why" in any tone, negative or positive, and addressed them in a pretty simple manner.

I know that fueling these questions will be a primal (that word again!) need for answers but that adoption can’t be addressed in a simple mathematical formula like “Jessica had X and there was Y and so Z — you’re adopted!” I think when a child who is adopted says, “How could you give me up???” there is no answer that will make that pain go away. So I think part of the job is to just hear, “I am angry and hurt and grieving!!!”

She went on to compare the question and relationship with a relationship of her own and came up with what I call a good answer that hits on the "sometimes" of life. In fact, quite a few adoptive parents chimed in on the post itself, leaving comments that continued to challenge me to consider their plight in sometimes being the first (or only) to receive this question. It's never easy for any of us, is it?

The best responses to me, as I continue to wonder what our own conversation(s) will be like, were from adoptees. (No offense to my fellow birth parents or insightful adoptive parents!) The wording itself got to Amy of AmyAdoptee and her words bring further light into a subject I don't yet have a vision of with my own daughter.

I don’t like looking at the give up part. Its a deep wound that I can’t find the words for. Joy is pretty good at saying them but I am not. To know what hell she went through makes the wound hurt more. I know that I don’t want my children to go through that so I fight the laws that allow those circumstances to proliferate.

To be honest, the wording hits at my core, too. It's deep and it hurts. Knowing that, for at least this adoptee, the pain her biological mother went through makes everything hurt more reminds me that I need to be constantly evaluating how my own daughter processes emotions. If she is one to take the pains of others upon herself, I need to choose my wording with care. If she is a logical, less emotional thinker, perhaps the facts as to how much pain I've endured won't bother her but only drive her to change something or do something or simply accept something. It was something I needed to hear: sometimes our experiences hurt our children. It's something to keep in mind as you prepare for a conversation of such magnitude.

Unrelated to the post I made but 100% on topic with what we were discussing, I ran across an adoptee's heartfelt post of questions for his birth mother. (Read it.) The questions he asked left me in tears. I don't have all of these answers for my own daughter and though she might word them differently or not at all, I feel compelled to search within myself to figure out the answers to things that could be proposed to me. The one that got me the deepest?

If you knew me would you do it all over again?

I then questioned, to myself, the proper protocol if faced with such a question, especially in light of Amy's mention of how knowing the pain can be hurtful. Again, while I still have time to figure things out before I may or may not have to answer a question like this, I am insanely grateful to adoptees who write things like this and offer advice like Amy so that I can be better prepared when and if such a conversation takes place in my living room, in her living room or anywhere else on this planet.

I learned a lot about myself and the issues at hand simply by sharing a quote from a book that stunned me to silence. Knowing that I can learn so much from sharing one little sentence gives me hope that we, as an adoption triad, can continue to learn from one another as more and more sentences are written about things like grief and loss. If it strikes you, it might strike someone else. Share it. And then learn from the answers, even if they are hard to swallow.

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For more, read:

1. The Secret Fears of Birth Parents.

2. Ethical Issues for Adoptees.

3. Adoptee Wisdom.

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