continued from previous post...

When I was pregnant, the only “real” birthmom I talked to was one of these agency mouthpieces. The agency gave me her name and number, and I called her up. It was a totally weird conversation: she spoke in a monotone, with no expression, uttering platitudes about how good it felt to make someone else’s dream come true. She didn’t sound like someone who felt good – she sounded highly depressed. But I took her words at face value.

I know better now. I know that as a new mother without her baby, she was most likely still numb, stunned, and in a certain amount of denial. I should have found someone farther away from the point of surrender; a birthmom with much more experience under her belt.

I think ideally, women need to have at least five or ten years’ distance from the adoption experience before they begin systematically advising other women on what to do. The longer, the better. This is not to say that new birthmoms shouldn’t talk about their own experiences (when we’re asked, we have the obligation to do so) but that we shouldn’t position ourselves as experts until we’ve lived through the ups and downs for a while. We can say what's happened to us so far, but we can't speak with a lot of authority about the Big Picture unless we've done our research and issue plenty of disclaimers about our limitations.

I’ll leave you with some wise words from Kateri about the dangers of hearing solely from birthmothers who are still in that rose-colored glasses stage:

The happy birthmother fantasy is like an anesthetic. Adoption's epidural. When it wears off, everyone has accepted your happy ending and moved on. Here you are, this hole getting bigger every year, having told everyone repeatedly that everything was great and you are happy and relieved and feeling very wise. So you don't bother telling people things have changed, because the specter of the loose cannon bitter birthmother that no one trusts is right there. And no one wants to be her.

I believed it: I treated birthmother grief as a puzzle I could outsmart. Relinquishment without the consequences of loss. Because of openness, because I bonded so well with her aparents, because I wasn't going to actually lose her, I wouldn't be ensnared by grief.

The mythical happy birthmother is a tantalizing fantasy in open adoption. It makes adoption look like a true win-win-win situation. Nobody loses! The couple gets their family, the adoptee gets to know where they came from, and the birthmother can move on with her life! No one wants to be the one to spoil such a pretty picture.

To sum up: there is absolutely nothing wrong in being satisfied with your adoption decision and feeling you did the right thing. Pregnant women need to hear from birthmothers who are at peace with their choice just as much as they need to hear from those who would never make the same decision again. But there is something very wrong with birthmothers who deny the grief part of the equation...and then counsel others in the midst of their denial.