National Adoption Month: Day 1

While I am keenly aware of November being National Adoption Month, as it is, in fact, the month that I was adopted, a brilliant blog, The Lost Daughters, has posted daily prompts for those *actually* affected by adoption.  Members of the adoption triad (adoptees, birth parent(s) and adoptive parent(s) ) and specifically adoptees and birth mothers have a much different view of the otherwise fluffy narratives of adoption.  We're in the trenches.  And the trenches are life-long struggles.  It seems only fitting, then, that NAM should be a time to raise awareness to this fact.  Let's hear the real life stories. Let's hear the truth.  The WHOLE truth.  Let's hear what a lifetime of celebrating "Gotchya Day" is like for the adult adoptee.

My birthday was three weeks ago.  I won't be celebrating "Gotchya Day" for another two weeks.  Existing in the gap between my birthday and adoption day is difficult every year.  I wonder what I must have been thinking.  Baby Jade left the comfort of her mother's familiarity and went...where, exactly?  I know that I was in foster care for the month between birth and adoption.  I know that they  struggled to calm me - "she's a crier!" they announced jovially as they passed me into my new family's arms.  But I wonder what on earth that baby thought was going on.  I wonder if she knew.

As an adult, my birthday is difficult to celebrate.  I always hated my birthday, even as a child.  Despite presents and seeing family, I was often a wreck, and threw wild tantrums over nothing at all.  I'm unattached to the day now, and prefer to do nothing rather than celebrate.  Sometimes I think of my birthmother, and wonder if she's thinking of me.  But more often than not, I try to forget.

Then comes the long four week stretch, where life goes on, but I feel dead inside.  Even this morning, I woke up, lay in bed playing on my phone for a while, then rolled over and realized that I haven't been adopted yet.  It's agonizing, and every year I try to forget.  I try to fill my schedule so I don't have to dwell on any one thing for too long.

For me, Adoption isn't a warm, sunshiny commercial with a happy family frolicking at the beach.  Adoption is the worst best thing that ever happened to me.  National Adoption Month should be used to shed some light on that reality - the reality of so many adoptees.