In 1968, when I was adopted, my parents had their pick of babies. Literally, they were told to come on down to the Women’s Pavilion in Winnipeg, where I was born, and pick out which newborn they wanted to take home. It was like a baby farm, in those days. Rows of babies, born to unwed mothers in an age where unwed mothers were not accepted, to say the least; rows of babies, available for pick-up if not delivery.
This rubbed my dad the wrong way.
“We’re not buying a cow here!” he told the social worker on the phone. “You pick out our baby and that will be God’s choice for us.”
Fast forward 37 years, to 2005. My husband and I were in sweltering, torpid Korea, meeting with our baby daughter’s social worker, Sunny.
“How do you make a match between parents and babies?” I asked her. Sunny’s English was excellent, having come to Grand Rapids, where we lived, for a six-month internship with our agency, Bethany Christian Services.
“I go to the chapel and I pray and pray until I have my answer,” she said. “And God told me to give Peeby to you.”
“Peeby,” or “Phoebe,” our baby girl, was six-and-a-half months when we brought her back to our hotel room in Seoul. She was stoic at first, unsure of what was happening, but probably hoping these strangers who looked and smelled and felt weird would return her to her doting foster parents.
We did not return her, and she screamed. She screamed all night, and when she finally fell asleep, she resumed screaming when she woke up. She screamed much of the way home on a Korean airline, with Koreans trying to help us and making things worse. I would go to the airplane bathroom and cry my own eyes out. It was not the way I wanted to start out life with my daughter, for whom I would’ve taken a bullet before I even met her.
Phoebe saying goodbye to her beloved foster dad in Korea. Oh, my heart.
Nine years later, I look back and hear those screams. They were the cries of grief, at being ripped from everything she knew: her Appa and Eoma (mommy and daddy), foster siblings, her home, heritage, and beginnings. Her heart had broken like a bone.
Even so, we bonded quickly. Her brothers at home, then seven and four, played peek-a-boo and cuddled her. She took to them before us, but soon we were a family, a loving, happy family with its own unique set of joys and concerns, strengths and scars.
Two of us, me and Phoebs, bear an extra wound, an old fracture that sometimes will kick up and give us a little trouble. Like my tailbone and pelvis fractures from a car accident in 1997, these cracks will start to hurt when we least expect it.
But that’s okay. It really is.
What I want adoptive parents to know is this:
1. Acknowledge the crack. Even if your child was adopted out of hopelessness and despair, as most adopted children are, and into your loving, accepting arms, the crack is there. It just is.
I am 47, and I was (and am) loved deeply by my parents. We love our girl with a depth that startles me sometimes. But…
2. Your great love can’t fix it. My great love can’t fix it.
No human parent can “love away” such a fracture, caused by the confusing loss of one’s original family. This doesn’t mean adoptive children won’t have wonderful lives. I did and do! I’m so grateful my parents adopted me, for the gift of their unconditional love. They are my realest of real parents, not my birth mother and birth father (that’s another blog, or book, as it were). I could shout from the rooftops how thrilled I am to have to parents and brother I have, the loving grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. And Phoebe has a pretty fabulous family, too, if I do say so.
Opa, the angel on Phoebe’s shoulder.
The Craker Clamjamfry (an LMM word!)
Grandpa Craker and P
3.
But that original loss must be reckoned with, no matter how little of a loss it may seem to be.
How?
4. Be brave, mom and dad. Have the courage to answer hard questions and help your child connect those dots. You are the grown up. You are the one they trust to help them navigate the scary waters of life.
5. Be First in Line
And if someday your child grows up and wants to find out more about their cracked beginnings, to search out a birth mother or father or native country or orphanage, be the first in line to help them do so. (PS: This can be terrifying.)
6. Your child will be all right.
My parents supported me in my life, and in my search, and in the end, my love and loyalty for them knew no bounds.
I understood as I never could have otherwise that I was their girl, and nothing could change that.
Ask God for a waterfall of wisdom and mercy. Ask him again, daily, hourly, whenever you think of it.
7. Lean into the Power of YOUR Adopting Father, and His, and Hers.
He is Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals hearts that have broken like a bone.
An adopting, redeeming Father, Jesus is author of adoption. He wants to adopt you, if he hasn’t already. He sets the lonely the in families, healing, bringing wisdom, clarity and boundless joy.
He alone is enough for you, and for the child He picked for you before time began. He is enough.
Lorilee
What do you guys think? I read this over again and realized I needed to READ it, never mind write it! 🙂 Would love to hear your thoughts as fellow mamas in the trenches.
More on Adoption:
13 Thoughts on the Movie “Annie” for Adoptive Parents
5 Ways to be a Cultural Envoy for Your Child’s Birth Country
Thank you, Lorilee. This is all such beautiful truth. I will pass this on. Much love to you!
Angela, much love to you, too. I pray for you every time I pray for the Guild. XOXO
Lori, what a beautiful piece! I love the picture of your dad with Phoebe. Although we have not raised a child by adoption, we have raised a child with a disability, which presents many parenting challenges, some of which are similar. I think both of these types of parenting requires strength, fortitude and a willingness to go deeper with our Heavenly Father. I would also add that parenting of this depth might reveal a parent’s own cracks. Be willing to acknowledge your cracks, seek help if needed and as you say, lean into the perfect Father.
Heather, thank you so much for your wise words here: “I would also add that parenting of this depth might reveal a parent’s own cracks. Be willing to acknowledge your cracks, seek help if needed and as you say, lean into the perfect Father.”
I think you are correct. Our two children came to us by adoption at ages 7 weeks and 4 months. Our daughter, the oldest, will be 40 in September and is developmentally disabled. She lives at home and attends classes at a developmental disabilities center and works in their vocational program. I think God knew I needed to be needed for a very long time–my daughter didn’t leave home at 18. We also feel that these children were meant for us. Heather, you are certainly right about the cracks! (Most of our friends and relatives think we are saints–ah, if they only knew!). Recently we had to write a description of our relationship and my husband wrote this: Colleen will tell you she loves you 100 times a day, and mean it every single time.
Lorilee,
I am the mother of an adopted child. I adopted her as an infant in 2005 in Muskegon. (I also graduated with Doyle) My daughter is the youngest of 11 children. 7 of which have the same set of parents. All have been adopted by 4 different families. It has been an adventure….not always great….. but I feel blessed, and know that it was only by Gods Grace that my daughter is with me. That is why I named her Grace.
Thank you for sharing your story.
Hi Lynette, I remember your name! Thanks for sharing your story. “It has been an adventure….not always great….. but I feel blessed.” That’s about it!
beautiful.
Thank you so much for this. And for the comment above – we’re all a little cracked. Praise God for redemption and healing.
Thank you for this reminder, perfectly timed, that they continue to heal. Some need more healing than others. It’s not perfect, but it’s lovely.
As always, His perfect Love carries me.
Thank you for the writing the words He knew I needed.
We adopted our daughter from China when she was “only” 9 months old. People cannot wrap their heads around the fact that this does not make her immune to all the feelings that come with that. They figure she could not possibly have known her parents well enough to care?? (Here is where I am trying to put into words something that I don’t really understand.) When I hear people say this, I am completely dumbfounded. I suppose it is to be expected from people who wouldn’t know any better, but hearing this from other adoptive parents makes me squirm. What is happening in the preparation process that so many parents who end up adopting do not think this is something to be taken seriously?
Lori,
(Good name, by the way!). Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That is all. 🙂 Oh, and thanks for articulating this weirdness. See also my “5 Ways to be a Cultural Envoy for your child’s birth country.” You will flip out at the comment I heard!
Wow, that is so honest. We adopted a little girl in 2007 and were at the hospital when she was born. We keep in contact with her ‘Tummy Angel’, and our now 8 year old has always known she was adopted. Although I try to prepare myself, I know that there are many challenges ahead. At such a young age she’s already gone through many emotions, but does feel very secure with who she is and with us. She’s very much a mama’s girl! <3 God had a plan for our family and I'm very grateful. Thanks for sharing!
We have shared information about her birth mother with our daughter pretty much from day 1 (she is now almost 10). She has a scrapbook her birth mother gave us with family history and pictures and she loves looking at it!
Such amazing words. My sister took on the daunting job of raising our nieces daughter as her own when that girl was 4 years old. She is now 18 and the cracks have required tending and mending so many times. It is a great gift to give a child security- a place to find her voice and her place in the world. I have a lot of admiration for my sister and her family and the journey they have been on. Not easy, and often confusing to onlookers and yet so so necessary.
I was adopted back in 1970 very similarly to how you were, and we adopted our 5 year old from Ethiopia three years ago. I know that I will be able to relate to some of her feelings….but others (like being a transracial adoptee) I will have no clue. But we hired a searcher asap so that she has a slew of photos of her Ethiopian family.
I know plenty of adoptees that truly have no curiosity about their biological origins, my brother among them. Others feel no wound. And that’s okay too, and it doesn’t mean that they are hiding from their true feelings at all. Everyone is different. Our daughter may be one of those people – but if and when she does ask, I want to be able to answer her questions with as much information as possible!
I was born, and adopted, in the early 1960s. Your adoption story is very similar to mine (I’m from the UK). I am nodding my head vigorously at EVERYTHING you say in this post! 😀
I read this quote once from another adoptee: “I celebrate my adoption. I mourn my relinquishment.”
Exactly. I celebrate being adopted, very much so (c’mon, it’s kind of ROMANTIC) but I also acknowledge the wound.
Like you, I was adopted into a wonderful Christian family, who are my life. But despite much inner healing, there remains ambivalence and a certain level of separation anxiety. This is just reality (while acknowledging there’s always more healing that can be done!)
Have you read Nancy Verrier Smith’s ‘The Primal Wound’? She’s an adoptive mum and a psychotherapist. That book was tremendously helpful to me when I was searching for my birth mother (we had a successful reunion). I recognised my behaviour as an adopted child on practically every page. It helped solve the ‘mystery’ in my psyche.
Your own book is fabulous: so truthful, honest and compassionate. I will be recommending it to every fellow adoptee I come across. 🙂