how did it come to this? how did we get here?

I don't really know what's going on.

I understand that my heart beats because Stacey allowed it to.

I understand that since December 6th I have thought of nothing but meeting her face to face.

Since December 12th I have spent countless hours pouring over her letters and photographs. Studied my face in hers. Studied her handwriting. Her facial expressions.

I understand that my parents are severely threatened by this.

I had hoped with everything in me to take 3 days at the end of September - the end of my fall break - to visit her in Las Vegas. I hunted for the cheapest tickets. $285 was what I came up with. I figured my bank account could suffer the dent. These were extenuating circumstances. It's my mother. My flesh and blood for crying out loud. I called my mom to share with her the good news of such a cheap ticket, after she said she had already looked and saw that the lowest price was $600.

"Why? Why do you want to go to Las Vegas? What could you possibly have to do there? It's too expensive. You're doing too much. It's just too many things."

She's my BIRTH MOTHER.

"Your father won't go for this. This is not what he put that money in your account for."

Then let ME talk to HIM.

"NO. NO. Why do you want to go there anyway? How are you going to pay for it?"

She's my BIRTH MOTHER. I'll pay for it with the money in my account!

"I didn't put that money in your account so you could parade around Vegas for 3 days. That money is there for school. We just got you all that camera equipment. Do you think we're made of money? Do you have some sort of job your going to get this money from? Are you planning on coming home and working and scraping together $300 and then fly off to Vegas? You think we're going to let you do that? I don't understand why YOU'RE going THERE. Why doesn't SHE come HERE? What about her trip in July?"

It's August...

"Don't take that tone with me. I know it's August. Why didn't she show?"

I don't know, Dad, it's more complicated than you're giving it credit.

"There's nothing complicated about it. You need to focus on school, not prancing around Las Vegas with this woman. And I don't want you going alone."

I'd prefer to be alone.

"Well, I won't have it. Go do some homework."

An Adoptee's Advice to Prospective Adoptive Parents

Hi mom, Hi dad! That's right, there but for time and space you could be my parents -- adoptive parents -- or birthparents. Birthparents and adoptive parents. B-Parents and A-Parents. Before parents and after parents. Before has no meaning without after, after has no meaning without before. Time and space. You cannot exist without each other. I couldn't find the words as a child. Now I have the words to advise you, tell you what it's like, tell you why I need to search, to help us resolve these issues before they become problems.
So imagine, I arrived in your home helpless; in need of your nurturing. Lets get the tough stuff over with first: you are the parent. I am not here to heal the pain of your infertility. You must resolve the emotional baggage of infertility before you decide to parent. Unresolved infertility may be a problem when adoptees become fruitful at puberty. Unresolved infertility, leaves the whole family grieving for the unrealized biological child; leaving me to feel second best.
Unresolved infertility puts adoptees in the difficult situation of trying to be the "perfect" answer to your infertility, while dealing with the "imperfect" reality of being given away.Tell me I'm adopted, or you risk a terrible breach of trust. I've seen men in their fifties destroyed when, at a parent's funeral, some relative spilled the beans. Talking about adoption will defuse its effect. I will ask more than once, reflecting different needs at different ages. So get information, meet my birthparents. Be honest but not critical, remember, I will incorporate your interpretation of my birthparents into my interpretation of myself.People will say I'm lucky to have been adopted by such wonderful people; who knows what my fate may have been if you hadn't taken me into your home! Note how this sets me up to be eternally grateful to you. It's easy to fall into parental martyr syndrome but you are not just parents -- you are adoptive parents. There but for time and space who knows, maybe another family would have suited me better. Asking for my gratitude puts us in opposition. Remind those who would have our relationship based on guilt that you too, are lucky to have found me.
Adoptees constantly wonder what could have been. My life is the luck of the draw. I spent my childhood thinking: these people could have been -- or could be -- my parents; this could have been my home; those could have been my toys; I could have had to wear that outfit!? One thing is not arbitrary I was born to someone.Adoptees believe in things we've never seen: birthparents in the guise of guardian angels, fairy changelings, and storks who deliver babies - how else did we get here? We've never heard the story of our quickening, our labor, our birth.
Adoptive parents compare themselves to birthparents, but adoptees compare themselves to the unrealized biological child. My parents told me they lost a child. I thought they went out and actually lost the child somewhere. I felt guilty because I thought if they found him, they might take me back, I didn't want that -- they were my family.
We adoptees refer to ourselves as "adaptees." My natural laugh is a barking sound but I tried to imitate my adoptive father's dry hissing laugh my whole life. I was thirty-seven when I learned the origin of my barking laugh. I was at a birthfamily reunion. My birthmother had not arrived yet. I laughed, the barking laugh, and the relatives gathered. They thought I was her.
Adoptees procrastinate, are pack rats, and aren't good decision makers. We don't have the facts about our lives, we don't know the significance of anything, so we put off until we get the facts.
Excuse me if I'm a little paranoid and indignant about secrecy, I am the product of sealed records. A commodity passed from one party to another with no say in the contract. The physician, and his staff; the attorneys, and their staffs, the hospital staff, the agencies, the staff at the court house where my adoption was filed, and, of course, the staffs guarding my sealed original birth certificate and records all know more about me than I know about myself.
Excuse me for being angry. The non adopted can get their original birth certificates. Mine is sealed from me. I must be satisfied with the falsified document registering who I was after my adoption: but I existed before that. The system makes me angry, but you mom and dad will bear the brunt of my anger, because you are the closest authority figures. What makes me angry is being treated differently because I'm adopted and the lack of control over these circumstances.
I promise you, about the time I reach puberty, I will say the dreaded words,"You are not my real parents." This is not anger. It is insecurity. With puberty comes the challenge of individuation. I must start rehearsing my independence. I'll hurt and insult you to see how much I can count on you to be there when the going gets rough. Convoluted? This is normal for teenagers, but intensified by the adoption experience. Remember, the ultimate achievement of parenting is obsolescence. Do you want me living at home at thirty?
Moses, Oedipus, King Arthur, the Ugly Duckling, Superman and Luke Skywalker all have something in common: they were all adopted. They are also some of our culture's major self realization archetypes: without the search there would have been no story. Society sends adoptees the message to search. There is no society on earth without religion. All of mankind is searching for the creator, isn't it natural adoptees would too?
I always wondered. Search is the adoptee's active part in the process of adoption. Usually it's the child bearing years, late twenties early thirties, when adoptees actively search. I may have an intense desire to know just before puberty. College years, late teens and early twenties I didn't want to search I was too busy separating from my adoptive parents, but if contacted let me make the decision. Please don't search for my birthparents unless I ask you to, or unless there are real problems you feel may have stemmed from my genetic history or an experience I had before I joined our family.
The search isn't about you; the search is not a search for parents. It has as much to do with you as my choice of spouse or career. It is a search for my life -- for my self. I want to know my story, who I look like, ethnic background, and medical history. To meet the creator. and say, "Look at me, I'm ok, I turned out all right, you made the right decision. "
The adoptive parents role in an adoptee's reunion? It is not to voice your insecurities over your ability to parent, your job is to be there for me. To give me the gift of trust. At one of the most intense moments of my life, it is unfair and selfish to play the wronged parent. What does it say about our relationship if I search after you die? The most consistent outcome of adoption reunion is the strengthening of the search supportive adoptive family.
Why be an adoptive parent? Because it makes a difference.
Children need homes and parents need children to create a family. Mothers teach how to fold towels, grandma's recipes, to play fair, and introduce us to literary classics; Dads, teach how to drive, to handle conflict, favorite ball teams, and the best political party. I'll sleep in your arms, play peek-a-boo, bring "I love you"drawings to put on the refrigerator, alarm you with my adolescent fashion sense, and ask for the car keys. Families never stop growing and learning from each other.
Understanding teaches courage; courage teaches stability; stability teaches trust; trust teaches acceptance; acceptance teaches love; and love makes the human heart elastic enough to make adoption less of a commodity transaction and more of an extension of family, and that is an adoptee's advice about good adoptive parenting.

What doesn't kill us, Makes us stronger.
Adoption Forum, Inc., PO Box 12502, Philadelphia, PA 19151Tel: 215-238-1116
Credits: Abigail Lovett

fighting for nothing

I might go visit stacey this summer........I just don't know how I'm going to fit it in. I just really don't wanna let this slip away. I feel like if I let it go without seeing her this summer, then it will somehow be less real. I don't know if that really makes sense.....ugh. I just want more time. More time for everything.

braindead

so...it's been a while. I don't really wanna go back through the past 3 weeks...so...I'll sum it up.
Basically, it all boils down to one major disappointment, and one subtle, and most likely overlooked answer to a questionaire that has my my heart in a million little pieces.
The major disappointment being that Stacey isn't coming anymore. Enough said. I'm too brain dead/heart sick to divulge what's really going through my mind.
And the subtle, most likely overlooked answer to that questionaire--
Where it asks about your family life on the ever-so-popular myspace...Stacey responded "I don't want kids."
I know in my head it probably means nothing. But when I noticed it for the first time tonight, it felt like my heart fell right out of my chest.
where does that leave me?

on the first day of school

Stacey is sending my package soon. I think I'll find comfort in that. More pictures, more letters, more more more. If I ever unpack, I'll dig out the stationary I bought specifically to compliment the red sealing wax...and I'll write her back. I'm clinging to the fact that June and July hold the promise of a full week of uninterrupted vacation on my favorite beach in the world with my favorite person in the world, and then the day that I have dreamed about my entire childhood. A day that is going to hold more emotion that I realize. I can look into someone's eyes and see myself. See my history. See the woman who was my home for 9 months. I can see the marks I left on her, and the ones she left on me.

This year is huge.

brutal honesty

I talked to Stacey the other day. She told me she named me. I had a name. Before I was Joanna Claire, I was someone else. I was Jade Katharine. Jade. Jade Katharine. I wonder if I would have lived differently under that name. I wonder if one suits me better than the other. How much different would everything be? I had a name. The woman who caarried me in her womb for nine months gave me the name Jade Katharine. Shouldn't I respect that somehow? The woman who raised me for 20 years gave me the name Joanna Claire. Should I not respect that as well?
Why aren't there rules for this? Someone should get it together and write me out a manual as to how I'm supposed to wrap my mind around the fact that I am not who I thought I was. I am not who anyone thinks I am. I was someone else before I was Joanna Claire Fisher. Why is it impossible to acknowledge that? Who wants to start a book on chapter two? My parents' lives may have started when I was adopted, but my life started before that. There is this whole other world that I came from that no one will talk about. Not unless it's behind closed doors.
I feel like I'm living two separate lives. The one where I live like nothing is different. I am of this family that I was raised in, everything is normal. Ha! What a facade! Then my other life. The one that I'm only allowed to delve into when no one is looking. When I'm all alone in my room and I pull out the box of letters from Stacey, and I pour over faded pictures of a life of "could-have-been's", and "what if's". Now, what happens when those worlds collide? What happens on that day in July? The day that I have been waiting for my entire life...will my family even acknowledge it? Will my friends? Will I be at that airport, experiencing something so spectaular all alone? Will I be allowed to talk about it when it's over? Will I be allowed to cry with someone? Mourn the loss of my mother -- the woman who gave me life -- the loss that no one will recognize as an acutall LOSS. Don't you think I deserve the time to mourn that? Or will I be asked, without words, to not tap into that?
What if Stacey gets here, and doesn't like what she sees? What if she doesn't like my family, my friends? What if she feels completely excluded? What if she sees me and hops right back on that plane?

keep love at arm's length and save yourself the pain when they leave

in an attempt to continue smoothing things over with my mom in regards to stacey, she shook her head, turned her eyes to the floor and said, "this is just too weird for me."
my heart broke. i felt like a freak show. what does "too weird" mean? at that moment, i wished more than any other time in my life that i could be someone else. be somewhere else. i wish none of this had ever happened. why did it have to happen? why me? i wonder if this will ever be "ok" with my parents. and how will that affect my relationship with them? my aunts have been the only ones so far to show their excitement for me. to actually show some interest in this new part of my life.
i know this will take time. i expect nothing less. but i don't think my heart can take this on alone. i feel like i have to tip toe around them. even speaking stacey's name makes my mom's lip quiver. i can see how much this is hurting her. and it breaks my heart. i hate that i am the cause of so much pain to her. i hate that i feel guilty for this...i need this. i deserve this. i owe my existence to this woman...and i'm not even allowed to speak her name. i hate this secrecy. i hate that i have to wait until the house is empty to call stacey. i hate that there are thousands of miles between us. I hate the thousands of miles between the people I live with.
I can't get over it. "too weird"...I know it's "too weird". but i can't help it...it's not like i chose this.  
i just don't want to be all alone in this. i can't be all alone in this.