Response to Comments From Found

Last Sunday I posted about Found by Jennifer Lauck.  Amazing book!  Recommend it to everyone!  I really enjoyed the book tour (my first one) and I learned a lot reading all the posts and comments.  I've been avoiding a lot of adoption stuff this week but I'm starting to feel better about things after getting my email so I'm trying to go back through all the blogs on the tour (there were thirty) and comments (I missed a bunch the first time around).

It took me three browsers (thanks Mozilla for finally working!) before I could respond to each comment (thanks Blogger for making that change) but there were a few comments that I thought deserved their own blog post.

For starters, Melynda from Letters to Ms Feverfew (awesome first mom!) sent this over:

"Just making the rounds to all of the participants in the book tour so please forgive the copy and paste job. :)
As I have read every single book tour participant's blog posts (haven't commented on all of them, but I have read them all!), I have been longing for a way that we could standardize our impressions, etc. Would you be willing to rate this book on a scale from one to five, one being the lowest and five being the highest. Also, would you recommend this book to others? Who? Can you sum up your feelings about the book in two or three sentences?
I can't help myself...I'm a mixed methods researchers and love to have numbers to go along with people's experiences!
Thanks so much for humoring me on this one.

Melynda"

 You're always forgiven Melynda!  If I had to rate this book, I'd give it a five.  My reasoning is this: it's not supposed to make you feel comfortable with adoption.  It's supposed to challenge the idea that adoption is always a wonderful thing.  It's the story of Jennifer's life.  You can't rewrite history.  It happened.  This book is Jennifer's truth.  So even though it might make some feel uncomfortable or make them question their views, it's Jennifer's truth and thus should be read as such.  How can you not read a book about someone's truth?  Highest recommendation from me to everyone (as I mentioned in my post).

Finally, I got this comment from Esperanza, and I really wanted to give it a good answer because it's such a good comment.

"Dear Jenn,
Thank you so much for your thoughts and experiences on this. I found them incredibly insightful and well spoken. It is so important for everyone who is touched by adoption (which is everyone really, as we all know someone who has been adopted) to hear the words of adult (and child) adoptees. Thank you for your brave words.
I must admit, I found this section to be very thought provoking and I've been thinking about it a lot since I read it:
'My mother could have kept me. It would have been hard. It would have been challenging. But she could have made it work. She chose not to. It was about her. Just like my adoptive parents adopted me for them. It wasn’t about giving a baby a home; it was about finding a baby for their home. My adoption wasn’t about me. It was about everyone else.'
Ever since I read this part my head has been full of questions: Are there any situations in which an adoption is about the adoptee or is it inherently about all the other people involved? How is having a biological child about the child and not about having a child for a couple's home? Can a birth mother really never give up her child as an act of love or is it always selfish? I'm not trying to challenge your feelings on this I'm just curious what someone who has personal experience with the situation thinks about all of this. I have so many questions.
Thank you again for your brave words. They have touched me in ways I can't articulate."

OK, so lots to think about here, and I'm going to do my best to answer thoughtfully.  I do think that there are situations where adoption can be about the adoptee.  It happens.  I think it happens a lot in family adoptions.  Say I have kids.  And then the father and I tragically die.  And my sister adopts my kids so that they can stay in our family and not go to the foster system.  That's one example of when adoption is about the kids.  Unless my sister is the one who killed me so that she could adopt them.  I don't think she'd do that... Hehe!  Lots of examples here, but that's just one of them.  I just think that the majority of adoptions today are not about the adoptee.

Fantastic point about having a biological child!  You're 100% right that having a biological child isn't about the child, it's about the parents wanting a child, which is very similar to adoptive parents wanting a child and adopting for them rather than the child.  Great question to think about.  I offer this though... Have you ever heard a parent raising their biological child state that they had the child for that child's benefit?  I haven't.  It sounds very odd to me and ridiculous.  I have however heard adoptive parents say that they adopted to "save" the adoptee and that they sacrificed a lot for the adoptee.  I've also heard adoptive parents raise themselves up akin to sainthood for adopting.  Not all adoptive parents are like this (THANK GOODNESS!) and I have to say that I've met some amazing adoptive parents who aren't like this and I love them so much for it.  But there's a special bunch out there (who I highly doubt are reading this).  So I think that's the major difference to me.  As an adoptee, I'm supposed to be grateful for things that other people aren't.  I'm supposed to be grateful for having good parents.  I've never heard that statement made to someone who wasn't adopted.

I do think there are first mothers out there who give up their child and it comes from a loving place.  Or that at least they think it's coming from a loving place at the time.  I've heard stories of mothers who had health reasons and felt they couldn't give their child a mother for a long time.  It happens.  That's just one example.  I do however think that a lot of mothers assume that their children are better off without them.  I think this is a bad assumption.  And on the other hand, there are plenty of mother's out there who are selfish.

My mother didn't give me away as an act of love.  She didn't want to parent me.  She never seriously considered parenting me.  I don't assume this.  She told me.  I have proof (just not going to post her words here because I don't want to invade her privacy).  She told me that she didn't want to hold me even though the nurses encouraged her to.  She told me that she never saw me because she didn't want to.  She told me that she wasn't my mother.  She gave birth to me, yes, but no, she wasn't my "mother".  In the two years I've "known" her, she has never once said that she loves me.  The closest she ever got was telling me that she hopes all my dreams come true.  And that she prays for me.  She refused to talk to me on the phone.  She won't meet me.  Having me was the biggest mistake of her life, and giving me away was the best thing she could have done for both her and me.  Yes, she said all of this more than once.  Yes, my first father confirmed later that that's how she really feels, she wasn't just saying those things.  We don't want to think about "those" mothers, but they are out there.  Mine's one of them.  Does that make her a bad person?  Not at all.  In fact, I think she's a fantastic person when it comes to anything other than me.  Add me to the mix, and she turns into someone else.  C'est la vie.

So those are my thoughts in an extremely long blog post.  But I felt like an amazing comment deserved at least a full answer because those questions really got me thinking and I wanted to respond.  Thank you for your thoughts and for asking questions!  I appreciate it so much that you took the time to ask.  Not everyone would have.