Instead for the child whose mother gives her up for adoption, the child suffers the psychological death of her mother. But she is told that she is special and chosen and lucky. She is supposed to forget that there was another mother. Make believe this is your only family, make believe that all is well. As IF it is your own. The message is that it is a good thing your mother is not there for you, is dead for you. You are not allowed to be sad about it, acknowledge the pain, anger or sadness, perhaps even to yourself. You are not allowed to mourn the loss of your own mother. The grief gets stuck in your body and keeping in pain is destructive. (So is keeping in anger and sadness) The child has to go into a kind of shock and to numb. You can’t really live that way, but you can pretend. And we adoptees are great pretenders. This child gets no respect.
Summer, 1972
Maudie, at four years old, felt very small and the 1950's kitchen very metallic. She loved the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy yoke dress with angel sleeves and rickrack that Mother made her. She loved her Disney record, her Fisher Price Little People bus and school. Immediately after lunch - peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread with a glass of milk -- she would quietly tiptoe to her Little People and hope that Mother didn't notice that it was naptime, trundle her off to bed, and close the door of the bedroom she shared with her little brother. Naptime was a must with Mother, Maudie would lie in her bed, pillow over her head, listening to what sounded like "The edge of MIPE!," the hourglass and tinkling of the theme song on the large television in the living room. Carefully, silently, she focused on the little dog, the girl with red hair, the yellow bus. She would become one of the Little People, the girl with the blonde hair and blue dress.
A knock on the door rudely interrupted Mother's routine. It was Aunt Carol, from next door. Maudie adored Aunt Carol, her gentleness, how she looked with Maudie with kindness and adoration in her eyes. The only one who did, thought Maudie.
Eagerly, Aunt Carol came through the door and spoke in hushed tones to Mother. The Little Person with blonde hair and the blue dress spoke to the Little Dog. "That's wonderful!" She heard Mother exclaim.
"Well, I have to go share the news with Grandmother, it looks like she is back from her errand," Aunt Carol said as the screen door hissed and closed with a bang on her way out.
What would happen if one of your mother’s (sic) died today and you were told you couldn’t cry, you couldn’t go to the funeral and to make believe she never existed. What would happen to you.
Mother cast a sideways glance at Maudie. "Maudie, you know what it is time for." Maudie carelessly tossed each Little Person -- the gray haired lady, the mean looking boy, the boys, the girls, and the dog into their yellow, two-story house prior to closing the house with a satisfying clatch.
"What did Aunt Carol say?"
"Oh, Aunt Carol's sister has a baby growing in her tummy and she is going to become a mother, and the whole family is so happy. Now, time for nap," Mother resolved.
Maudie persisted. "So babies come from mothers' tummies. I came from your tummy?" Something, somewhere deep inside Maudie knew the truth.
"Oh, no. You were special. We went to the adoption agency and chose you" Doris beamed, but it was a fake smile and Maudie knew it. "There was another woman, called your biological mother, and you grew in her tummy. She was young and poor and couldn't keep you. She loved you so much that she gave you to the adoption agency and asked the adoption agency to find you a Mommy and a Daddy." There. Doris said it. The speech that she had rehearsed in her head a hundred times and had used those words... special. Chosen... it was finished. If she was to admit the truth, Doris never wanted a baby who was special and chosen; in her heart of hearts, she wanted her baby, but she played the hand she was dealt. It was a speech she wished she never had to give, but she was progressive and progressive parents told their children that they were adopted. That's what the agency in Virginia said, anyway. Anyway, she was a saint for giving the poor child a home, right?
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who wrote Women Who Run with the Wolves, has said that those who have been “abandoned” and face it and work it through can become the strongest people on the face of the earth. Don’t doubt it for a second, Only the Brave do this work...
Something about being loved "so much" that she was given away felt unsettling to Maudie. She put the thought out of her mind, and settled for her nap, but that day she couldn't sleep and was cranky at suppertime.
-
words in italics from
The Respect We Never Got
by Joe Soll, CSW
Adoption Connection Annual Conference,
September 18, 1999, Andover, MA
(Chapter 26 of "Adoption Healing ... A Path to Recovery)
In Asperger's Disorder, affected individuals are characterized by social isolation and eccentric behavior... There are impairments in two-sided social interaction and non-verbal communication. Though grammatical, their speech may sound peculiar due to abnormalities of inflection and a repetitive pattern. Clumsiness may be prominent both in their articulation and gross motor behavior. They usually have a circumscribed area of interest which usually leaves no space for more age appropriate, common interests.
1969, January
Doris Maud. Doris Maud. Doris couldn't stop saying her name over and over in her head. Her baby. Doris was Mother. In all her life, she couldn't think of anything she had wanted more.
Order. Maudie sat in her baby seat as Doris arranged her spices in the spice rack. If she kept them alphabetically, it made cooking so much easier. Everything had its place, the cardamom to the left of the cumin, not the other way around. Doris had to have order in her world.
Maudie had been exactly the baby Doris had envisioned. Her baby. Maudie never cried, not ever. She would take her bottle and her food at the chiming of the grandfather clock in the hallway; Doris carefully mashing her peas and squash. From the first night, Maudie slept all night, and went to bed without a peep. Doris could take her to they orchestra shows over at VPI and no matter the sidewards glances that were thrown her direction, she knew Maud would behave. Doris never noticed that Maudie wouldn't return her gaze the way her neighbor Barbra's baby Jennifer did. It wasn't important, anyway. Doris had the order that she had to have.
1969, January
Doris Maud. Doris Maud. Doris couldn't stop saying her name over and over in her head. Her baby. Doris was Mother. In all her life, she couldn't think of anything she had wanted more.
Order. Maudie sat in her baby seat as Doris arranged her spices in the spice rack. If she kept them alphabetically, it made cooking so much easier. Everything had its place, the cardamom to the left of the cumin, not the other way around. Doris had to have order in her world.
Maudie had been exactly the baby Doris had envisioned. Her baby. Maudie never cried, not ever. She would take her bottle and her food at the chiming of the grandfather clock in the hallway; Doris carefully mashing her peas and squash. From the first night, Maudie slept all night, and went to bed without a peep. Doris could take her to they orchestra shows over at VPI and no matter the sidewards glances that were thrown her direction, she knew Maud would behave. Doris never noticed that Maudie wouldn't return her gaze the way her neighbor Barbra's baby Jennifer did. It wasn't important, anyway. Doris had the order that she had to have.
Cacophony
One thing that is very important is the degree of trauma that a child suffers. This can alter their ability to relate to anyone, but especially parent figures. It’s like trying to tame a feral cat. If the child has never learned to trust adults or has been abused by them, how can we expect them to trust anyone? If they have been kept in tentative care situations where they cannot form emotional bonds in the first three years of life, or if they have bonded and then been removed from those they are bonded to, they still suffer serious trauma. This alters the development of their emotions. They are anxious, expect rejection, fear abandonment, and live in a survival mode. This delays their other areas of development so that they are often behind others their age socially or in academics. (Click here for the post and comments.)
Cautiously, Doris shivered in the frigid Virginia November as she plodded down the brick sidewalk from her fastidious home to her stately, elevated mailbox. Maybe there will be news today, she wondered. Holding her breath for a moment at every jangle of the black rotary telephone in the hall, she also waited with cautious optimism for the mailman.
She longed to hold her baby, a girl, whom she wanted, really really wanted to have her husband, Leonard's, dark hair and both of their translucent, cerulean eyes. In her mind's eye, she saw herself wheeling her baby girl in her pram down Willard Drive, stopping at the corner of Hemlock and Willard for her first encounter of the Highty Tighties' in the parade at VPI homecoming. Doris loved the Highty Tighties, and the scoreboard behind her home that let out its cackle when the Fighting Gobblers scored a touchdown. She didn't care for games themselves, though. The cacophony of touchdowns, whistles and the crowd irritated her ears. Leonard's job involved coordinating student activities and booking bands for Squires Student Center at VPI, a job that suited him well.
Her reverie was shattered by Sharon, her next-door neighbor, also checking her mail. "News?" smiled Sharon cordially. Her brother sister-in-law had adopted last year and she knew how eager Doris was to fill the empty nursery that stared mockingly at Doris every time she passed it.
"I don't know why it is taking so long," complained Doris to Sharon. "Everywhere we're been they tell us there's babies. When Virginia (meaning Montgomery County, Virginia Department of Social Services) got our home-study from Alabama, they said it was the most thorough home-study they'd ever seen." To Sharon, Doris' thorough sounded like thurl, but then, Doris over-enunciated her words anyway. Doris and her husband both, albeit nice enough, were a little on the strange side, for reasons Sharon couldn't quite put her finger on. Sharon knew that Leonard and Doris had been trying to adopt, and their efforts had followed them to at least a couple of places. "I don't know what the hold-up is."
Cautiously, Doris shivered in the frigid Virginia November as she plodded down the brick sidewalk from her fastidious home to her stately, elevated mailbox. Maybe there will be news today, she wondered. Holding her breath for a moment at every jangle of the black rotary telephone in the hall, she also waited with cautious optimism for the mailman.
She longed to hold her baby, a girl, whom she wanted, really really wanted to have her husband, Leonard's, dark hair and both of their translucent, cerulean eyes. In her mind's eye, she saw herself wheeling her baby girl in her pram down Willard Drive, stopping at the corner of Hemlock and Willard for her first encounter of the Highty Tighties' in the parade at VPI homecoming. Doris loved the Highty Tighties, and the scoreboard behind her home that let out its cackle when the Fighting Gobblers scored a touchdown. She didn't care for games themselves, though. The cacophony of touchdowns, whistles and the crowd irritated her ears. Leonard's job involved coordinating student activities and booking bands for Squires Student Center at VPI, a job that suited him well.
Her reverie was shattered by Sharon, her next-door neighbor, also checking her mail. "News?" smiled Sharon cordially. Her brother sister-in-law had adopted last year and she knew how eager Doris was to fill the empty nursery that stared mockingly at Doris every time she passed it.
"I don't know why it is taking so long," complained Doris to Sharon. "Everywhere we're been they tell us there's babies. When Virginia (meaning Montgomery County, Virginia Department of Social Services) got our home-study from Alabama, they said it was the most thorough home-study they'd ever seen." To Sharon, Doris' thorough sounded like thurl, but then, Doris over-enunciated her words anyway. Doris and her husband both, albeit nice enough, were a little on the strange side, for reasons Sharon couldn't quite put her finger on. Sharon knew that Leonard and Doris had been trying to adopt, and their efforts had followed them to at least a couple of places. "I don't know what the hold-up is."
Giving Up the Ghost
(The mother's) provision of total care, her entire absorption into her baby's needs and gestures, is crucial to both his physical and psychic well being. The baby does not only require feeding but also the bonding and attachment that feeding allows. The mother must emotionally bond with her child during the feeding; otherwise the whole process is deadened, apathetic, and cold.
The blue and green floral wallpaper in the kitchen was beginning to peel in its corner. The humming icebox door made its usual clunkety-clunk as its contents were retrieved. In 1968, and that white icebox with the rounded doors had been in use constantly since the 1940s. One day, it would probably give up the ghost.
Mr. Blue shook the bottle of Pet Milk and Karo syrup. He took care of three, his wife took care of three. This baby girl had finally gotten the hang of her schedule after seven long weeks. For hours on end, she would scream, then eat, then scream some more until she collapsed, exhausted, into the blackened comfort that sleep offered her. He didn't have the inclination nor the energy to hold her, rock her, or offer her any of the niceties that most people offered babies.
This one, like the other five that might be in his house at any given time, were wards of the state of Virginia, usually infants of teenage girls who would soon find their futures with mothers and fathers who would adopt them. Mr. Blue attributed this one's, and most of their, really, endless caterwaul to "bad blood," bastards that they were, offspring of wayward girls.
Setting the baby in the baby seat, he glanced sidewards at the patina it had developed from years of use. Propping it slightly supine, he rolled a kitchen towel and propped the glass bottle, the first of five the baby would get that day. Each day for Mr. and Mrs. Blue was the same, feed the babies, put them down, feed them, give the bigger ones playpen time, feed them, take them out in the yard in the buggy if he felt like it. Feed them. Put them down. Get them on a schedule. It was a check from the state.
...an addict in pursuit of a drug is in a state of desperate need. He looks like a craving, dependent child in pursuit of the rejecting mother. Simultaneously, he is the "I don't need anyone" individual who ignores his wife's pleas, spends his children's inheritance, and completely avoids all intimate contact. In sum, the addict may operate on both sides of the attachment continuum, all in pursuit of the security he never had.
She was a frail, tiny thing, prone to illness. Hong Kong flu. Croup. Diarrhea. Neither the decrepit doctor nor Nancy, the young caseworker, freshly graduated from the local college, knew why the baby, whom Nancy named Nancy Carol, after herself, stubbornly defied all their efforts to force her to gain weight. At her two month checkup, the doctor told the Blues added cereal to her bottle. Over the next few weeks, the baby moved to full meals of strained peas, squashed pears, and the plethora of sustenance proffered by Gerber.
At six months old, she weighed ten pounds. Refusing to return the gaze of the doctor, and of Nancy, the baby had been declined by several families looking to adopt baby girls. She was sickly. She wouldn't smile. She wouldn't interact. They had to do something.
The blue and green floral wallpaper in the kitchen was beginning to peel in its corner. The humming icebox door made its usual clunkety-clunk as its contents were retrieved. In 1968, and that white icebox with the rounded doors had been in use constantly since the 1940s. One day, it would probably give up the ghost.
Mr. Blue shook the bottle of Pet Milk and Karo syrup. He took care of three, his wife took care of three. This baby girl had finally gotten the hang of her schedule after seven long weeks. For hours on end, she would scream, then eat, then scream some more until she collapsed, exhausted, into the blackened comfort that sleep offered her. He didn't have the inclination nor the energy to hold her, rock her, or offer her any of the niceties that most people offered babies.
This one, like the other five that might be in his house at any given time, were wards of the state of Virginia, usually infants of teenage girls who would soon find their futures with mothers and fathers who would adopt them. Mr. Blue attributed this one's, and most of their, really, endless caterwaul to "bad blood," bastards that they were, offspring of wayward girls.
Setting the baby in the baby seat, he glanced sidewards at the patina it had developed from years of use. Propping it slightly supine, he rolled a kitchen towel and propped the glass bottle, the first of five the baby would get that day. Each day for Mr. and Mrs. Blue was the same, feed the babies, put them down, feed them, give the bigger ones playpen time, feed them, take them out in the yard in the buggy if he felt like it. Feed them. Put them down. Get them on a schedule. It was a check from the state.
...an addict in pursuit of a drug is in a state of desperate need. He looks like a craving, dependent child in pursuit of the rejecting mother. Simultaneously, he is the "I don't need anyone" individual who ignores his wife's pleas, spends his children's inheritance, and completely avoids all intimate contact. In sum, the addict may operate on both sides of the attachment continuum, all in pursuit of the security he never had.
She was a frail, tiny thing, prone to illness. Hong Kong flu. Croup. Diarrhea. Neither the decrepit doctor nor Nancy, the young caseworker, freshly graduated from the local college, knew why the baby, whom Nancy named Nancy Carol, after herself, stubbornly defied all their efforts to force her to gain weight. At her two month checkup, the doctor told the Blues added cereal to her bottle. Over the next few weeks, the baby moved to full meals of strained peas, squashed pears, and the plethora of sustenance proffered by Gerber.
At six months old, she weighed ten pounds. Refusing to return the gaze of the doctor, and of Nancy, the baby had been declined by several families looking to adopt baby girls. She was sickly. She wouldn't smile. She wouldn't interact. They had to do something.
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