Have you experienced challenges in reunion? Is the Pope Catholic? Of course you've dealt with your share of reunion doo-doo, if you have been in reunion more than about 30 seconds. I'm delighted to be joining forces today with my gal pal, Laura Dennis, the adoption fog buster, to discuss this issue! Yeah, she's totally amazzzzzzzzzzing.
We began this conversation on Laura's blog yesterday with Part One. If you didn't read yesterday you might want to hop over there first to check out the beginning. But please, make sure you hop right back here when you're done!
With that said, here we go with the second half of our conversation about difficulties in reunion.
Laura – I
love this notion of “active relationship,” because it can help non-adoptees see
that just because you’re not in an active relationship with someone, it doesn’t
mean you’re not affected by that person. Take the situation in which Dad has
disappeared, leaving Mom to raise the baby...would we say that Dad doesn’t
have an effect on the child’s life? No, we would say the effect is huge exactly
because he isn’t there.
This notion that you mention of being required to fit in, to
adjust to the adoptive family reminds me of Daniel Ibn Zayd’s article, Reactive
Attachment Disorder (RAD): the alienation and resistance of the adoptee. In
the post, Daniel argues that the adoptee’s feeling of not fitting in is
actually normal. He says:
From this I would be willing to state that race-similar children, not having the obvious physical “difference” to rely on—i.e., a kind of “safety valve” of obvious difference—might likewise go further in their “resistance” to the adoption, and against those they are compelled to “be like”. In such a light, RAD [Reactive Attachment Disorder] might better be stated as an acronym that stands for “Resistance Against Domination”, and should be categorized with similar resistances, and supported as such.
Daniel’s post also relates to your article, 3
Things SOME Adoptive Parents Do That Drive Me Crazy in that APs enter
adoption with the expectation that the adoptee will join the family on their terms. And therefore, when an
adoptee decides to reunite, they perceive it as a slap in the face. I’m sure if
the Reactive Attachment Disorder had been around when I was reuniting, people
might have accused me of that ... as an adult “rejecting” her adoptive family
by seeking out her first family.
The same can happen with reluctant adoptive families who on
the surface may even support their adoptee’s reunion. But soon enough they
bristle when the adoptee continues to pursue a relationship with her
first family, or gasp! invites everyone to a family gathering. What?
Just meeting your first mom one time after eighteen years wasn’t enough for you?
You want to integrate this side of your family into ours?
It feels to me like the moment the adoptee refuses to adhere
to the previously accepted terms of engagement, that’s when we start to see
true colors. It happens on the biological and adopted sides.
It sounds like such an ungrateful thing to say, or even type–but
when an adoptee asks for something that’s not okay, or “not what we do in our
family,” or considered controversial, we get put in our place.
We go right back to the outsider status that everyone
assured us didn’t exist.
Deanna – That’s
exactly right. Boundaries are a very interesting thing. They let us know where
the edges are. Tell us where not to cross. Inform us of the limits. People
don’t mind you letting you know they have boundaries, but are not always
equally receptive that you have them too.
I recently experienced this in my own
life. A family member said to me, “I hope you can accept my
boundaries that I have put in place at this time.” I said, “Absolutely! I would
hope we can both accept each other’s boundaries.”
Silence.
Followed by silent treatment.
What the hot place??
Okaaaayyyyyy, so it’s okay for you to have boundaries, but
me…not so much?
Here we go, back to the outsider status, that is a figment of
our imagination.
People ask me all the time: “How do you have a successful
reunion?”
I struggle with what the definition of successful is when it
comes to reunion. I’ve never heard of one that doesn’t have its challenging
dynamics. How the hot place do you reconcile that you are coming back into
active relationship with a family you have been out of contact with for at
least eighteen years and trying to fit in? Of course there are issues. The
question is…how severe will they be?
“So don’t open that can of worms…” non-adoptees say. Aside from
the fact that I’m sick of my FAMILY being compared to a can of
worms…challenges are not a reason to refuse to pursue something. Who doesn’t have
challenges in their family? I’ve got the most amazing family ever with my
husband and kids but we definitely have our ups and downs. It’s part of it.
Successful is a relative word, pardon the pun!
And normal is just a setting on your dryer.
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| Photo Credit: Seishen17, Flickr |
Laura – Amen,
Sista! You’re right; apparently the rules are different for adoptees who
struggle to fit in, for adoptees who want to reunite, for adoptees who set
boundaries with either family.
So what
now?
I always try to be proactive in these situations and ask, Is
there anything we can do that would change things for the better?
It reminds me of something I’ve learned as an American
living in Serbia (No! They’re not all war criminals!). Serbs are resilient,
strong-willed people (there’s even a word for it, inat), and they value that in others. The moment you stand up
for yourself, you get more respect.
Here’s the kicker: even if others don’t respect what we’re about, we don’t need anyone’s approval to stand
in our own truth.
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| Photo Credit: Striatic, Flickr |
Deanna: - Exactly. We don’t need their approval. At the same time from
what I’ve observed, it takes an adoptee to come to a new level of self
awareness and strength to stand in their own truth without approval.
I know so many adoptees who are dying inside, because of
approval addiction.
Forget about searching – they don’t even ask basic questions
because they know it’s going to hurt others (because of their unrealistic
expectations and unhealed self) and they fear their reaction. So they suffer in silence and say that someday they may
pursue something (like when whoever’s disapproval they fear dies…)
Adoptees getting to the point where we don’t care about
approval, is HUGE because many are so afraid of rejection. I believe most people in life care about the approval of
significant people in their lives, but with adoptees it’s magnified
tremendously.
As far as being pro-active and addressing what we could do
to make things better, I believe helping adoptees to become self aware and
confident at a younger age would help.
At some point, the true colors
post-reunion honeymoon will emerge. When they are not pretty, it is important
that the adoptee be prepared – strong and standing in their truth, able to handle disapproval if it comes. Sad
to say, it means being willing to lose everything again, if we have to. I’ve been through this more than once and
each time I’ve reminded myself, “I’ve lost it all before and survived…if I lose
it all again, I will be okay. I will survive. I am strong.”
