Introverted Adoptee Parent

I was sitting on the couch talking with Boof about my being an introvert, and how it effects me as a mother. And he said, “I can see it. I can see when he’s sleeping so close to you, touching you all the time, how it effects you, how it drains you.” We had been talking about our space bubbles, and how children don’t seem to have a space bubble, which he so beautifully described as:

This kid was just inside you a few years ago. He doesn’t have a concept of your own space, that you have your own space. He’s starting to have a concept that he has HIS own space, meaning there are times when he doesn’t want us in his space bubble, but it’s not going to be until he’s like…a pre-tween…when will realize that you or I have our own space, too. That we need to have our own space. For now, our space is his space, but his space isn’t always our space.

I loved that description, though it doesn’t make the physical nervous system overload that I experience as an introvert any easier. But there’s been something more than being an introverted biologically, and I was talking with Boof about how, now, as a mother, I am never alone. I know that this phenomenon isn’t uncommon to motherhood, this feeling like once you’ve born a child you are connected to them. The worry, and love, and thinking about their every little move. And I guess it bothers some women, and others not so much. Maybe it’s a neutral energy. But I was explaining to Boof that it feels like my soul, or psyche, is introverted, and that there is the lingering energy of Potamus that is within my psyche. I can’t escape this energy. And therefore, my soul is never alone. My soul is never alone, and that sometimes makes me feel agitated on an energetic level. I can’t escape. I feel agitated on the soul level, because my soul is not alone. 

My girlfriend Anne hypothesized that perhaps this feeling comes from being adopted. That since my connection to my biological mother happened so early on that my soul has felt alone since. That this connection to Potamus is one that is foreign to me, and it’s good, and beautiful, but unexpected and could feel agitating because I lived for 29 years without that feeling. Because I had talked to Boof about how my fear of adding another child into the family someday is not only due to the logistics of having another kid around, as an introverted parent might be afraid of that, but that my soul would then energetically be agitated by two soulish energies existing within my psyche. 

I was telling Anne that I feel this need to expand. I used this motion of pushing out a bubble from myself, that I wonder if I am able to expand my soul energy, to not be so close to my body (at least that’s the image in my mind), that I could maybe feel less agitation, that I would somehow be able to expand and find that I was big enough to hold not just one soul energy, but another as well. That the connection is okay, and good, albeit uncomfortable sometimes, and that I am big enough to handle it. 

Fall=Fair Tradition with Bio family!!

**I was going to write a lovely post about how much I freaking love the Fall, and that while I’m somewhat sad that I’m not going to be a stay-at-home mom anymore (okay, who am I kidding, I’m thrilled I get to use my adult brain again), but I read Karen’s post on the subject (see link earlier in post) and resonated so much with it that I thought writing my own would be redundant. So go read her post, imagine it’s me, and then come back and read this post about how Fall brings about a fair tradition! 🙂

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Mama and Potamus

Five years ago I went to the Puyallup Fair for the first time with my biological dad and little sisters. It was a tradition in their family and I was so excited to get to be a part of it. My little sisters were 4 and 9 at the time, and like my bio dad says “she’ll never know a time without you,” as we pulled the littlest in the wagon behind us. It was there, at the Puyallup Fair, that I taught my little sister to tie her shoes. And she fell asleep in the wagon after a long, hard, day of riding rides and seeing animals, and miles of walking. Miles. Seriously. My legs hurt so bad the next morning that I had to crawl to the bathroom.

So, this year, with Potamus approaching 2 and our schedules magically coinciding, we headed on down to the Washington State Fair (previously named the Puyallup Fair, don’t get me started on the politics of this name change. SO ANNOYING!) and Potamus was ushered into the fair family tradition. It’s things like this that make me step back and see how adoption has really colored my life…I am forming family traditions for my son, with a family I didn’t know until I was 25. My heart feels both bursting with love at the traditions and memories to come and sad about the time we missed. And yet, I also temper that with the strange soul knowledge that the time we missed would have been different, possibly harder?, or just different had he been taking me to the fair since I was a child.

Potamus loved it. Rather than bore you with the details, here are a few pictures to highlight the revelry:

petting zoo fun

MOM LOOK AT THAT GOAT!

milk cows

I learned that my bio-grandad, at age 13, drove a team of horses like this to dig the basement of a fish hatchery in Eastern Washington!!!

mama’s little rebel

grandpa telling Potamus about the horses

Grandpa. Grandson. Love.

My son will always know my bio-dad as grandpa. This makes me happy.

What Fall traditions does your family have? Do you enjoy going county or state fairs?

Why I need to stop looking at #birthmom on Instagram

The only picture I have of my birth mom and I before I was an adult. I got this when I was 26.

I don’t like to admit it, but I am a pretty emotional person. While I don’t cry all that often, I feel things deeply…both my own shit and the shit of others. This skill is helpful in working as a therapist, especially since I’ve learned how to have boundaries professionally, but when it comes to the blurred lines in my personal life…I’m less than able to do so.

Most of the time I’m just tra la laing through the interwebz, and then BAM I come across something, that, for whatever reason, slams headlong into my gut (which, I feel, is where most of my emotions lie, anyway). Sometimes it happens in real life, but mostly, due to an online presence, I find myself sucked into a vortex of feeling and can’t quite get myself out of it.

Like, for example, yesterday, when I was trolling around on my adoptive sister’s Instagram page and saw a picture of her with her birthmom. With the hashtag birthmom, I thought to myself “hmm, I wonder who’s posting under that hashtag.” And there I see them…bellies upon bellies. These young women are posting to something called ‘birthmom,” when they haven’t given birth, haven’t relinquished their children yet, and are documenting their whole ordeal for the world to see and I felt this WAVE of sadness.

These girls aren’t birthmoms. They are moms. Their children are their children, nobody else’s. They don’t have to relinquish. They won’t know what they’re going to feel until after the birth…or months…or years later.

And so, unlike other times where I’ve taken a deep breath and walked away, I posted to one woman’s page, something about making sure she was 100% sure, because the adoptive parent’s had already named HER daughter something else, without consulting her. Those are red flags in my opinion. But she got mad at me, and I felt sad…for her…for her baby…for a country that is focused on the million dollar industry of separating children from their parents because of conventional rules on things like age or education level of a parent (I’m not talking about kids taken because of abuse or neglact, ya know).

I know that I should just walk away from situations like that, but there’s the piece inside of me that thinks, “maybe nobody’s told her she could be a mom,” or “maybe nobody’s told her that it’s her child still, that she can make the choices,” or that I can somehow save just one. It’s like that cliche idea from The Catcher in the Rye, where he wants to stand at the edge of the cliff to catch the children from falling over and losing their innocence. And I’m seeing it happening, the falling, and can do nothing about it. And I feel so sad for those little babies, those little mes, who will grow up in adoption-land without needing to.

Rain splattered epiphanies

The soggy morning commute was good for reflection. There was this niggling conversation happening in the back of my brain, since last night’s bedtime meltdown (for Potamus, I kept my cool), which ended in one tired kiddo finally falling asleep after fighting it for almost an hour. This conversation is a mulling over of how my instincts knew what to do to help him calm down, which might seem obvious to other moms, but I am sometimes still surprised by the instinctual nature and intuitive way I have with my son (when I’m not letting myself freak out).

I don’t know where I got this idea, but two or so weeks ago, when Potamus was sitting up and bouncing on his butt waving his hands in the air, crying (which seems outwardly like a mini tantrum), I laid him on his side and played a little game. I grabbed his foot firmly and said, “Is your foot tired?” And then I grabbed his ankle and said, “is your ankle tired?” I moved on up his leg, with firm pressure saying “Is your calf tired? Is your knee tired? Is your thigh tired?” when I got to his waist I moved on to his arms (because he giggled when I asked if his ribs were tired, cause it seemed ticklish). Firm pressure on his wrist, then arm, then elbow and up to his shoulder. And then I did the other side.

Last night, after two repetitions, he was asleep. And, we put the rice pack, that we used to use instead of a swaddle in our bed, on his belly, and he stayed there sleeping peacefully. A far cry from the crazy energy from 10 minutes earlier.

“Good job mama bear,” Boof said as the ordeal was over. Exhausted, I slinked off to bed while he went to get himself some dinner. 9:00 pm.

I found it hard to fall asleep, though.

I kept wondering and brooding about about how I knew that that’s what he needed. How did I, two weeks ago, come up with that ‘game’ to play to get him to fall asleep?

Part of my brain said, “well, maybe he’s growing. And your legs used to hurt when you were growing. And your adoptive dad used to rub your legs to help you fall asleep after growing pains or nightmares.”

Yes….but…

That answer just didn’t resonate with me. The motion that I used, the pressure going up one side and down the other, seemed…intuitive almost. As if it was something that MY body was craving.

I think the hardest part about being an adoptee, is the second-guessing of myself and all of the relationships around me. I walk through life often feeling misunderstood, first by my adoptive family, but often by others, as well. My facial expressions and posture when I’m tired or thinking were often criticized and pestered with “are you upset? are you angry? what’s wrong?” by my adoptive parents. But for all of this feeling misunderstood, that my moods and way of being in the world is abnormal, I have adapted by watching and experiencing how others are in the world. I can anticipate my adoptive mother’s moods like a pro navigator. I sense and feel and craft my words carefully to have the maximum impact on the family around me. I have adapted.

But, I look at Potamus, and am surprised at how I navigate the process of figuring out his needs. While I write a lot, here, about our interactions, a lot of it is simply happening in my head and body. When I say he whines and I don’t pick him up, I really mean that he whines and I pick him up but inside I wrestle with that decision and think about what it’d be like to not pick him up. But this distance and brain calucalations is exhausting and not very mindful. Because when I turn of the analysis part, which is what I’ve used to survive in an unfamiliar world to me, I just know what he needs. There’s this body or soul sense inside me that tells me what to do. It’s only when my mind is screaming “stop whining!” or “I can’t do this!” that I start to freak out.

When I was examining that thought process, this morning, it crossed my mind that I think that way in an attempt to distance myself from Potamus. I don’t want to pick him up because I think “he needs to get used to doing things without me. I’m not always going to be around.” Talk about adoption issues coming to play in my interactions with him. This idea that I’m not going to be in his life, someday, sometime, I’m trying to protect him by stepping back (even just internally), but how much is that for his protection…or my own?

I’m often overwhelmed by the intensity of the bond and love I feel for him, that I almost wonder if I pull back to save…myself? That if I phrase it “someday I won’t be here for you,” to mean, “someday you will no longer be my baby,” and I’m not yet prepared for that reality to happen. Though, my rational mind knows that I will always be his mama, he will always be my son.

So this intuition, this deep knowing of what he needed in that moment last night, to help him fall asleep. Because it’s what I would have wanted. Or, rather, it’s what I would have needed or do need. Why I enjoy a massage touch with a specific pressure and why progression muscle relaxation and body scanning helps me calm my senses at the end of the day. I don’t always know, but when I do, it’s like this deep internal knowing that can’t be explained by words. It’s beyond thinking, if that makes any sense at all? He couldn’t calm the energy inside him, it was escaping and zinging all over and causing distress. When he was brought back into his body, feeling grounded, he was asleep within minutes.

 

 

How to communicate with family…

Verbal communication is hard. I’m much better in the written form, which is why I blog instead of submitting videos to Youtbue, I suppose. But I have found that communication with family is especially hard, and only lately have I been struggling to manage it all (probably due to lack of sleep and a helping dose of ‘not-giving-a-damn-the-older-I-get’). Like, my parents have been over eager and insecure in their dealings with Potamus. They make strange statements like, “oh, I’m so glad he remembers us,” (he’s 15 months, who cares if he doesn’t remember you), and the over-repetitive phrase of “such a handsome doood (how my dad pronounces dude).” It’s annoying.

But then so are my in-laws.

Like the constant saying of “no,” by my sister-in-law to Potamus who is in an exploratory phase (see 15 month old comment above). It’s one thing to say “no” and re-direct when he’s trying to grab the butane torch for the fireplace. Telling him “no” repeatedly that he shouldn’t bang his plastic maraca on the table is a bit overdramatic and overbearing to be perfectly honest. But I don’t know what to do. It’s not MY sister, it’s Boof’s. And he doesn’t seem to be as perturbed by it as me.

I just don’t want to have him hear NO all the time. While no is going to be used, I want it to be reserved for dangerous things, and not just used mindlessly. A re-direction is more appropriate. Or an explanation. And saying things like “gentle,” with no context for him to understand what it means. But I’m too deep in the emotion grating across my skull that I can’t rationally say anything because if I open my mouth it is going to be a SCREAM at them. So I bottle it in and don’t say anything and that just makes it worse.

Ugh.

Then, on Friday I was hanging out with Uncle Silly (my adoptive brother) and we got to talking about our sister, and communication within our family and some hurt feelings over her boyfriend not visiting with us, but having the time/energy to drive 3 hours to visit her birth family in Oregon. And I talked about how I try to navigate reunion with our parents and he talked about how he tries to navigate it with them, too. And then, I learn, that my parents were hurt that I invited my birthfamily to my Master’s celebration. I’m glad to know, but also glad that they didn’t tell me themselves at the time because I would have been pissed. The jealousy and insecurity named above is the bedrock of my adoptive family’s communication style and it’s just annoying that I have to deal with it in so many arenas.

If they weren’t helpful to me, I would just take a break from all sorts of things family related and do my own thing. Friendships are much easier to navigate, because I can just tell my friends what I feel without worry. Not sure why I can’t do the same for my families.

Suggestions? How do you deal with overbearing or overanxious or jealous family members? How do you communicate about your parenting styles when it comes to things like discipline.