Confessions of an adoptive mother- all about fear.

Adoption is full of heartbreak. Yours, my darling child and mine. We come together not through pure joy (that fleets in and out of our lives) but through heartbreak.

We are all filled with fear.

Your fear is most likely about being abandoned, not fitting in, not belonging and not being able to even pinpoint what exactly you feel. You were far too young to make sense of it all (can you ever really make sense of what has happened to you?). I think you may feel you are not loved and never will be, I think that you show me this and will continue to share this fear, even if unspoken, in your behaviour for the rest of our lives together. I try to piece together your fear and not project it on to you but I read the thoughts of adoptees and birth parents and I try to arm myself to support you in future years.

I fear I cannot be good enough to help you with this fear. I fear that you will blame me for all the past trauma that I couldn’t stop or help. I fear that you will reject me as I am the face of this trauma by wanting to be your mummy. I fear that you will find it hard if/ when you want to make contact with any of your birth family, I fear you will feel let down, I fear you will still not get the answers you may be seeking.

I fear that you will reject me and I will suffer a similar pain to birth mothers whose children have been removed. Of course, it won’t be the same as I will have had most of your childhood here with me. I cannot understand how she feels and she cannot understand how I may feel, we can both only guess.

I fear that nothing I do will be enough because you cannot fill the hole that is missing in your life.

Adoption starts with trauma on both sides and I don’t think that trauma ever ends.

As you grow so quickly, I am delighted at the person you are becoming, how you are learning and developing, how you make me laugh. You are thriving. As you grow, however, I feel even more, the pain that you were not mine for the first few years of your life, I had already missed so much and it makes your growing up even more painful as you are moving too quickly for me. I want more time. You became mine through my own trauma, my own infertility and please know, I do not long for the baby in my womb that never was, I long for it to have been you that was there. You are the little person that completes me, not the anonymous baby. The hole I cannot fill is that you were not there, that is my own area of grief. As I hold you close and kiss your head, I grieve that I couldn’t be there to do that from day one as you belonged to someone else.

Adoption is loss. It is also, however, joy. That joy does come from someone else’s pain, the birth family. Whether the child is relinquished (very rare now in the UK- and this is a good thing that we have got rid of the outdated stigma of single mums and young mums) or removed there is pain. There are so many reasons for removal that it would be dangerous to generalise but there are very few occasions where the child was not loved, even if the idea of love is dangerously and neglectfully misunderstood. There are very few cases where birth families were so abhorrent that there wasn’t a form of love there. It is important to remember this.

You, my dear child, have lost a connection.

However, there is joy (frustration, pain, anger and hurt as well). There is so much joy. I see you smile and be happy and love life without a care in the world, I see you love us unquestionably and I have seen you grow and learn and love others. I see your humour, your unique talents and your personality grow. You experience so much joy. I am honoured to be your mummy and live through this with you. Even still, I know when you are constantly telling me that you love me, behind it there is your fear not to be rejected, not to lose me and to want to please me. I know that you do also love me but for you and for me those words mean something more that just the connection between the two of us.

I want to hold you close and keep you young, even though I know you must grow and we must face this together.

I fear that what this will bring but for now, you are my child and I will fight for you and all you need with every bone in my body. You are not of my blood, but you are in my heart, where ever this journey takes us, I will be there to hold your hand.