If I were a better blogger I would link everyone who is mentioned below. But I’m going to go with the fact that good karma is on my side right now and know, nay believe, that they will all magically come back to see their questions answered. (Good karma DID come to me yesterday when I mentioned to someone on their blog how talented they were at knitting a pair of fingerless gloves and then she just up and offered them to me! I hope good karma comes back to her and she gets a sparkly pink tiara. I’m pretty sure she wants one of those.) As much as I wanted to answer them all in one fell swoop, it was a daunting task so I will break this up into a few posts.

Miss Britt
Are your kids upset that you hadn’t told them about this before now?

And…

are you OK?

Based on their ages and maturity level some of them already knew and the youngest doesn’t appear to be upset that I had never told him. Mostly, there is regret that we never talked about it at length and that I’d kept silent about it’s affect on me.

In many ways, I’m not ok yet. I’m not ok with the strange phases that seem to come when I’m not ready. Most days it’s one minute at a time because taking an entire day prevents me from an even balance.

Dawn
what did it mean to you to have the adoption option? What was the most important factor in your decision to place her for adoption? What do you have to say to other adoptive children about finding/searching for their birthmother/parents?

How are you coping?

At the time it appeared to be the only option available because I refused to tell anyone that I was pregnant until the 6 month mark. That seemed to solidify it for me as far as a choice goes. What I was like at 16 and what I’m like now are light years away and I could only hope that searching for a birthparent allows for that growth, but I know it doesn’t always turn out that way. Adoptive children who are adults should really do whatever is required within their own souls to find peace. Not all of them will want to and that was an option I had to consider Maddie could have chosen.

Coping? I wouldn’t say this was always a conscious choice, but my friends seem to know what I need when I need it. A road trip, a phone call, a coffee date, a funny movie, and a lot of classical music seem to be getting me through. When I stop long enough to listen my coping mechanisms are Move Slowly, Think Clearly, Be Kind, and Choose Joy. Great book title, no?

Raquita
Has your adopted daughter voiced any feeling of resentment that she wasn’t “chosen” by you? Although for all intents and purposes she was chosen by you - I’m not so sure my question is coming out right..

Yeah, I’m pretty sure Maddie answered that in her comment from the previous post, and I wish I could express my gratitude to her for saying it for the world to see. Here it is in it’s entirety:

My birth mother, Kelly, placed me for adoption when I was born. I am the second oldest of her four children and was the only one given up. This causes much confusion for people when I tell them this story. “Why are you the only one she gave up?” and “Aren’t you upset that she didn’t keep you?”
Truth be told, it’s a bit annoying when people ask me this. Kelly did want to keep me. She loved me then as much as she loves me now. I know this, not just in my heart, but from her as well. She was sixteen years old when I was born, a sixteen year old mother to a one year old child. She could not possibly have handled the task of graduating high school and raising two small children. I’m twenty-one years old right now and can’t for the life of me keep my houseplants alive; Lord only knows what I would do with a baby.
Kelly did what was best for everyone. I should probably thank her every day for giving me the life I have now. I don’t thank her often enough.
I never blamed her for giving me up. I never questioned her. I never had to and I never will.

Thank you

I love you,

Maddie

Sandy
Do you have any unresolved guilt or anxiety about having placed your daughter up for adoption? Does she look at your wonderful family (and I assume they are wonderful just based on the stuff you write in your blog) and feel cheated?

There is no unresolved guilt, though I know some people keep suggesting to me that I have some. The anxiety is in the unknown and she shares more with me about how she grew up each time we speak. In the best possible way she said, “If I’d grown up in this family I would be exponentially weirder than I am now.” If I had to guess what she likes most is our ability to laugh and have fun. Whether she feels cheated or not is a question for her. Her wonderfulness fits in well with the wonderfulness of her siblings and that makes me feel wonderful.

Avitable
I think I already asked about a threesome before, and you never answered me then.

I think part of my own wonderfulness lies in keeping people like you around whom I can roll my eyes at and have a good laugh. I’ll bet you get that a lot, Avitable, you freak of nature you.

Veep Veep
How has your daughter responded to you being back in her life? Sounds like she’s happy. Are your other children taking time to get to know her?

She “responds” by being herself, sharing herself, and having lots of communication with all of us including my sisters and their children, my parents, and I finally have something nice to say about Facebook.

Betsy
How is Maddie doing? Keeping Mallory, giving her up….I would think that would be a lot to deal with. I know Mallory was super young, but were there any photos of you pregnant the second time that you had to explain away? Did your husband know?

Maddie is pretty darn amazing and sweet natured. Her curiosity is refreshing and we find that we’re telling stories over and over. They become her stories and she gets to share them as her own. There were photos up to a certain point, but not when I was Super Extra Large pregnant. Some of them I have to point out when I show Maddie. “See right there? I was cooking you then.” and “You came to one of my proms with me. See that bump? That was you.” After Maddie was born her birth father and I stayed together for a few more years and I vowed that whatever guy I was going to meet would have to know right away so I wouldn’t have to explain exactly what’s going on right now as a, “Oh, by the way…” Keeping that from my partner was never an option I afforded myself.

Sally T

Where do you want to be in 5 years with your relationships with your kids? (yeah, I know, if you knew that answer, you wouldn’t be pulling out your lovely hair.) How are you coping & if you had an extra hour in the day, how would you spend it? If you were watching somebody go through what you’re going through, what would you say to her? What do you want to hear from the people who love you, & the people (like most of us) who just kinda know you but believe in you? What DON’T you wanta hear?

I think it’s safe to say that I just want to be in loving, healthy relationships with them 5 years from now. Sadly, any extra hours I get in a day are spent sleeping, but that’s part of my own Healthy Plan. Sleep is like sweet sweet music to me and I value it. If I ever met another person going through this I would first have to get over the shock of it which is to say that I feel, most days, like I’m the Only Person In The World dealing with this. That’s my own teenage angst coming back to haunt me.

What I Want To Hear: You’re doing great; That’s very wise of you; How can you learn from this?; You already know the right answers; Everything will work out and you are blessed to have grown your family; You are growing a lot from this experience; Hi, I’m a producer from a (insert big, reputable news media) and we’d like to feature you on a story of adoption reunions; Tell me what you’re learning from all this; You have a lot of love to give.

What I Don’t Want To Hear: You’re doing something very wrong here; Don’t you feel guilty?

It’s unclear to me what happens when I try to explain this dance I’m doing in reuniting with the daughter I placed for adoption 21 years ago. The most common joke I make about it (thus, deflecting any real and true feelings) is that there is no book written about it, so how can I navigate these waters without the collective wisdom of writers who’ve done this before me? The most common response to that joke is, “When are you going to write it?”

I have more questions than answers. How do I talk about this with people or even broach the subject? It has occurred to me that I might want to let my children’s teachers know and then I wonder if the best statement begins with, “So, we have some really strange stuff going on in our family…” except I have the same educational background as they do and there’s simply no preparation for it. How could they be? I wasn’t trained for this. No amount of education can prepare you for it.

The weirdest interaction I have with acquaintances occurs when I begin to tell them about it and they tell me they’ve “already heard something about it” or read about it here on my blog. Yet, they haven’t reached out in other ways and perhaps it’s due to wondering what the hell to say about it. Not that I would take every one up on the offer anyway. You see, being vulnerable passes through a range of emotions. Some days I want to be left alone about it because language can’t possibly describe it and other days I wonder why it’s taboo and unfit for conversation. It’s best to describe most days like this: It’s like every cliche of a small town ever uttered: Everyone talks about your business to everyone else but you.

The waves, they come and go. No bracing for it. It just heads your way and pummels you. Other times it cascades over your body like a warm blanket. There’s really no advice I can even offer the readers who are coming here from adoptive websites (y’all blew up my site a few weeks ago, but welcome!) or the constant communication I’m in with those with questions. My children continue to have the questions as they, too, navigate this. They know, especially Mallory, that I need to write about it. “Please write” she’s told me more than once. Still, the writing I want to do is stuck somewhere in limbo not wanting to come out and driving me a tad bit crazy. Crazy enough to put the milk in the cabinet and not the fridge kind of way.

So help me put the milk where it belongs, won’t you?

Ask the questions you have been wanting to ask and I will try to answer them. If I can’t then I’ll just say that! But maybe the regular writing will come back and maybe the curious will be able to actually offer me an answer in the asking of the question and maybe I will fix a cheese plate to go with my wine and just call it a night.

What do you want to know?

Last month at work I had to do some investigating about a scuffle that happened after school, fill out some paperwork, and suspend a student. Sometime after that she left this handwritten (unedited) note in my mailbox:

To whom it may concern,

I just wanted to say I am sorry for what happened. I regret only one thing and that’s missing out of school for three days. I don’t regret hitting her. I regret being out of school. I’m sorry for saying tho but she got what she had comeing. I’m going to stay out of trouble for the rest of my time at high school. She knew that I have anger issues and she just continued to push my buttons and I couldn’t hold it in anymore I exploded. People didn’t know this about me but I have anger problems to where at any moment I can explode and sometimes I may not be able to stop myself. That time, I didn’t stop myself, someone else stopped me. She helped me from getting in major trouble and possibly getting arrested. But I just wanted to say I’m sorry and I hope it won’t happen again. Well, I will let you go. Have a nice day! I’m glad to be back!!

Sincerely,

(name redacted)

Freshman

p.s. I’m going to straighten my life up. I’m a good kid. Just bad behavior. I’m going to straighten my life up and that’s a promise.

Looky here. I’ve just had the most overwhelming couple of months lately, haven’t I? So when I sit down and try to re-acquaint myself with this here writing project I started years ago one would suppose it’s easy and comes naturally. But it’s not, so bear with me as I dust the cobwebs out of the corner and take some cleaning products out to disinfect that stench. I think it may be an old cup of coffee that has fuzz growing on it.

Bullet points may be easy to read for some people, but since I’m out of practice of writing I think we’ll just go with some broad topics and a few linky links. How does that sound? Because some of you are following me on other social networking sites, you have SOME clue as to the mundane parts of my life and others of you are just going for broke and simply calling me. Oh, Oprah? Seriously, hon. You can just leave a message and I’ll get back to you.

Interviewing And Being Interviewed

A mere week before the presidential election I got the greatest opportunity to speak with vice-president elect’s wife Dr. Jill Biden on the phone. I KNOW, RIGHT? That was surreal for me to tell her my name and ask my education-related question and we actually interacted a bit. Here’s how that went down: I got a nudge from a friend who asked that I participate in a conference call and the next minute I was searching for the Obama-Biden Education plan which can be found here. While I worked on my interview questions I wondered which one would make the best impression (because I was a tad nervous about this) and I came up with three good questions that I hoped she would be able to answer. After calling in with my code and waiting for the other people to ask questions I realized THEY WERE TAKING ALL OF MY GOOD QUESTIONS. Which meant trying to use my scrambled brain to ask something that was relevant to me.

I finally went with: “As a high school assistant principal one of the things we struggle with is that schools are responsible for attendance. No matter what we do to try to get them to come to school and stay in school it is a struggle. Is there another way we can get there? I feel like No Child Left Behind says “here’s the target” but gives us no support on how to get there.”

After a little banter (and here I must stop to say thus: I HAD BANTER WITH THE WIFE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES) she explained that she did her doctoral thesis on student retention and spent 13 years at the high school level (at which point I did a fist pump and mouthed a silent YES because I asked a relevant question). She mentioned the Success in the Middle Act which is designed more local non-profit organizations with aiding schools in getting students into the building. She also advocated a focus on parents to get them more actively involved. For instance, creating online report cards, contracts with parents and students, and doing all that we are able to with the parental responsibility. Some states do this better than others and, ultimately, this is a funding issue.

I think my favorite part of the interview was when Dr. Biden was mentioning that we needed to “fund” and “fix” NCLB and had a slip up that we should fuck nclb. I hope that if she reads this very post she gets as much of a giggle out of that as I did and still do. It’s laugh or cry, folks. Laugh or cry. Think of the search engine results I could get out of that!

You can find a more comprehensive interview with all the questions here thanks to the MOMocrats.

Writing Elsewhere

I have this Beauty Hacks post up at BlogHer.

Amalah asked that I help out with Advice Smackdown at AlphaMom while she squeezed a baby from her vaginal regions. When you ask me that sweetly, I always shout YES.

A writer from the St. Louis Beacon interviewed me for this piece on mom bloggers and I talked about what I will and won’t write about online.

So, BlogHer will be in Chicago again next year. I know I’m late even mentioning this news, but I’m THRILLED to say that Miss Britt has promised to either hump my leg or follow me back to my hotel room until she gets a peek at what’s going on in there. Either way, WIN-WIN.

Why I Can’t Write About Everything Yet

That might be self-explanatory considering how much my thoughts and feelings are all over the place. But just know that I think I’ve spotted the very deus ex machina I’ve been waiting for and if that’s not irritating the crap out of you, I don’t know what will. You want to slap me for that. I know this. Let’s just look on the bright side and see that, for the time being, me and my capital letters are here for a while.