She called...

Yes, my daughter's birth mom phoned this morning! They had a great conversation and I got to speak with her too. I'm really looking forward to the day when we can take her back to meet her birth mom. And I must get back in the habit of sending her birth mom updated photos.

But as the kids are heading out the door for school, my son says "I wish I knew what my birth mom looks like." I so wish the MCFD workers had taken at least one photo of her. It's so hard when kids have different levels of openness. And birthdays are always reminders of what they've lost. As parents we expect our kids to be happy on their birthdays, but our adopted kids don't always feel so happy.

So many times we hear and read about helping our kids "get over it", when instead we should help them learn to "live with it". Haven't we been told that "time heals all wounds"? But does it really? I don't think so. Time certainly never erases what happened, perhaps just dulls the pain for awhile until some trigger reminds us. And those triggers can wreak havoc in our families can't they?

When we know of potential triggers such as holidays, birthdays, anniversary dates, etc. we can prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Instead of subtly or not-so-sublty encouraging our kids to "get over" or "stifle" their grief, we can validate their feelings, encourage them to talk about their emotions and using empathy to let our kids know it's ok to grieve.


Following is an excerpt from an article on the NACAC website on "Going and Growing through Grief and Loss: Parenting Traumatized Adopted Children by Dee Paddock"

"As parents, we must teach our children to say therapeutic "good-byes." In this culture, we don't always teach our kids to learn how to deal with losses that are final — like adoption. Traumatized children have a lot of mourning to do so they can do some living. And the more mourning they do, the more room they have in those broken hearts for love. As an example, in our family we have a ritualized "good-bye" to the teachers at the end of every school year.

Because many of our children will never have contact with their birth families, we must teach them to live with the loss and ambivalence that are normal in adoption. These are tough feelings to tolerate; they make traumatized children feel helpless and powerless. To stop such feelings, traumatized adopted children split the world into good and bad — they can't deal with the idea that the woman who gave birth to them has hurt them or abandoned them, or placed them for adoption. They split off their rage at being abandoned, hurt, or neglected, and put it somewhere else, usually on an adoptive parent!"

Good point!