Question: Adoptee's Place In Both Families

I got a great comment from Trish, a new reader on my post I'm "That" Adoptee.  I felt it warranted it's own blog post!

I just found your blog and it was interesting that the first post I read was about something that has concerned me. My little girl is 2 years old now and we are in an open adoption situation where we have visited with the birthparents and have regular contact with them, and her birthmother's extended family as well. I really want my daughter to embrace both of her families and I think that she will have some opportunities to have that "oh you look like..." experience since we have pictures (she could be her birthmother's twin at the same age) and she will have regular contact with her biological family as she grows. Is there any advice you could give me that would help us balance her life so that she grows up feeling secure about her place in both families?

For starters, I think that you're on the right track by reading adult adoptee blogs and asking questions.  Growing up, I wish my adoptive parents had done more at times to try to understand what it meant for me to be adopted.  I love my adoptive parents and think they did a great job, except for that one thing.  So coming here and asking questions gets you a big thumbs up from me!

I wish I had an open adoption.  Mine was closed, so any advice comes from my perception of how open adoption works as an adoptee from a closed system.  However, I do think that all you can really do as an adoptive parent is to make sure that your daughter feels secure in your family.

You can't control her first family and how they treat her.  You can hope that they are going to help her feel secure in their relationship.  You can encourage the relationship and be supportive of that relationship.  You can maintain your own relationship with her first family as well, even though it might be really hard.  I used to look to my parents for cues as to how I should feel about my first family.  When I was younger, they said wonderful things about them and so therefore, I felt great about my first family.  Then as I got older, outside influences started to effect that view because I was told a different story.  When I asked my adoptive parents about my first parents when I started to question things, they didn't jump in with "Oh they were wonderful people" but rather "Well, they were young and you know they probably don't want to be found".  Even though my "relationship" with my first parents was in my head, that relationship still suffered when my adoptive parents weren't encouraging a positive thought process.  Maybe my adoptive parents wanted me to be realistic about my first parents.  Who knows?  Here's the thing.  Your daughter will have a relationship with her first family.  Fantastic!  But she's going to look to you for guidance now and then.  If you show her that you have a good relationship with them, she'll know that it's OK.  Sort of like, lead by example.

That's just my take on it.  Let her feel secure about her place in your family, which is the environment that you control.  As for her first family, if you maintain a positive relationship with them and encourage (not force) her relationship with them, then I think you're doing great.  Thanks for the great question!  You really made me think!

Any other adoptees have their own answers to give?

Found Book Tour Discussion

I participated in the Found Book Tour.  I read Found by Jennifer Lauck along with other adoption bloggers and submitted several discussion questions.  I was given a list of discussion questions of which I picked three to answer here.  Others have been posting their own answers to these and other questions.  I'd love to hear what you have to say down in the comments section!

As someone who does not have living children, I felt a little dissed by the author's assertions that being a mother brings clarity that is otherwise impossible to have. Did others read this the same way? Do you agree? Disagree?

I do not have children either; however, I did not feel dissed in the least by those assertions.  I’m an adoptee who was separated from her mother immediately after birth.  My mother did not hold me.  She did not even see me.  Despite the nurses encouraging her to hold me, she refused and asked that I be taken away for fear she would change her mind about giving me up.  I know these things from her.  As an adoptee who did not know where she came from until two years ago, I can attest to feeling lost and alone.  I had a feeling like I just emerged in this world.  I was not “born” in my eyes.  I used to call myself a stork baby, someone who was just dropped on my parents’ doorstep at two months old.  I have nothing, no pictures, no stories, nothing, from the time before my life with them.  It is from this perspective that I understood that as an adoptee without children, I know nothing of that bond.  I suspect that should I have children someday, I’ll have that clarity.  I’ll understand what it is that as a baby I lost.  Do I think that having a child will change the way that I see the world?  Most defiantly.  Do I think that I can’t be a person without one?  Not at all.  Only time will tell I suppose.

Who would you suggest should read this memoir, and why?

I think that anyone connected to adoption should read this memoir.  And I don’t mean connected as in just adoptive parents, prospective adoptive parents, first parents, and adoptees.  I’m talking people who have friends who are adopted.  I’m talking about people who have nieces, nephews, grandchildren, neighbors, husbands, wives, etc. who are adopted.  I think there are a lot of misconceptions about adopted people out there, and I think this memoir challenges a lot of those misconceptions.  I also think that the author speaks with a great voice, one that should be listened to.  As a society, we accept adoption as a wonderful thing.  As a society, we tend to not listen to adult adoptees.  Their voices (my own included) are often silenced because we don’t always speak what everyone wants to hear.  Things that other people take for granted we are denied and told we cannot speak about.  We are told by people who know their biology and history that biology and history don’t matter.  People will access to their original birth certificates tells us that we shouldn’t have access to ours.  I think that memoirs like this are the key to getting others to take a step back and start listening to the voices of those who are arguably the most affected by adoption.

On pp 17-18, Jennifer talks about a baby searching for her mother after being born. How did this sensory-rich passage strike you? What thoughts did it trigger about the role you play in adoption?

I’ll admit, I cried when I read these pages and had to put the book down.  I never had that with my mother.  I was completely overwhelmed reading this and had to walk away for days before I had the courage to pick up the book again.  I could see myself as a baby looking for my mother, someone I couldn’t find and was separated from.  It broke my heart that I went through that as a child.  It made me yearn for my mother all over again.  I have yet to meet her.  Reading this just makes me want to meet her even more.  As I read this, my role was more defined for me than ever.  I was the helpless baby looking for my mother.  I was the one without a choice.  As a baby, I would have chosen my mother.  Nothing else mattered to me.  I didn’t know anything else.  I just knew her.  I knew her voice, her smell, her being.  And she was gone.  I was born and that was it.  I didn’t have a say in it.  My wants weren’t taken into consideration.  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.  This passage made that pretty clear to me all over again.  It helped me to realize that I do need to spend more time thinking about this and working on these issues before I have my own children.

To continue to the next leg of this book tour, please visit the main list at The Open Adoption Examiner.

Blog Drama

Rainbow after a Storm

It's taken me a while to write this post.  I take time to process things and loads has been going on the past few weeks in my life which gives me less time to think things through.  Thank God I have this blog or I'd be nuts!  When things are going well and I have time, I tend to write out a bunch of easy blog posts that I keep on stand-bye for the crazy times.  It helped a lot when my mom got sick.  I don't write them out a month in advanced, but sometimes I'll write a post and hold onto it for a week or two until I need a break from blogging for a few days.  It helps to keep me sane but allows for me to still post everyday.  I ran out of those posts after the craziness that has hit my life over the past month or so.  So if I need a break now, I have to write fluff.  Which usually means I pull something out of my butt.

Last week, I was loosing my mind and I needed to write a post for the next day (I write better in the afternoon but like to put the post up in the morning.  I'm weird, I know).  So I noticed I had an Ancestry.com tab open on my browser and it was a stroke of inspiration.  I wrote about my adoptive family tree.  Easy post to write.  Didn't have a lot to do with adoption.  But I made a statement that I felt I didn't belong on it.  And I don't.  But whatever, no big deal.

So then another adoptee commented on how they felt comfortable on their adoptive parent's tree.  While we don't agree, the comment was respectful and showed that no two adoptees feel the same way.  I don't have any problem with comments like that.  In fact, I welcome them.  Bring it.  This adoptee was polite, non-inflammatory, and was simply stating their story as it related to mine.  In my mind, it was a great comment to leave on a blog.  Wonderful.

And then an Anonymous comment followed.  They clearly brought in drama from another blog.  So I started to internally debate what to do.  I could take down the offending comment, which had nothing to do with what I posted, just attacked the first commenter, or I could leave it up.  Then others started to respond to the Anonymous comment so I decided to leave it up.  Because it's proof that nastiness exists out there.  In the form of anonymous comments.  I don't particularly like them, but I get that some people would rather use them.  I've used them before on other blogs if I don't feel comfortable.  Sometimes I'll post on a first mother blog or an adoptive parent blog using just my name and not a URL because I know we don't agree 100% and I'm scared of the other commenters.  I've seen it happen to a lot of good bloggers.  So I've left it open on my blog.

I felt like there was a great discussion.  I wish I had been closer to a computer and had been able to comment more, but I was following along on my cell phone.  A few blog posts went up on other blogs that referenced mine and the discussion that followed.  Cool!  I love getting traffic from these awesome people!

And then Anonymous came back and started posting threats in regards to the other bloggers.  Anonymous posted stuff here that had NOTHING to do with the blog post.  It was in regards to something that another blogger said on a different blog.  Wrong place to complain.  So I deleted my first ever comment.  Because honestly, I don't like drama from other blogs coming over here.  If I blog about it, then fine.  But I hate it when the comments get nasty over other people's words, and not mine.  If I deserve it because of the original post, then fine.  But if I didn't post it, don't bring it here.

Every blog has it's own energy.  I love blogs with different energy than mine.  I read them and love them.  But I have my own energy here, and I don't like it when it's polluted by anonymous comments that bring other energies over here.

I've decided to keep the anonymous option open for now.  But I will shut it down if it gets to be a problem.  And by problem, I mean bringing nastiness here from other places that has NOTHING to do with the original post.

And thanks to my readers who don't post nasty comments about irrelevant stuff.  I really do appreciate you, even more now, and you help keep me going!

Training Exercise

When I was in college, I became a RA (resident assistant) in order to help offset some of the cost of my education.  The cost of attendance of my university was close to $50,000 my junior year and over $50,000 my senior year.  Oh the joys of a private education.  Side note: Colleges don't warn you that tuition goes up.  And your scholarships don't.  My loans went up every year as did the interest rates.  Welcome to my life as a recent college grad with upwards of $80,000 of debt.

Moving on.  I became a RA because I was going to help offset some of the cost.  And because I had it in my head that maybe I could help someone.  I had a great RA my sophomore year and I wanted to be that RA.  If I knew then what I know now...

When I look back on the experience, I get caught up on this one training exercise senior year.  Various RAs were asked to come up with training exercises.  I was in a bad mood during RA training.  I had been sick for a month.  Try being sick every single minute of a month and then try to put on a happy face and get everyone else motivated.  It was hell.  With me being sent to the ER in a grand finale on move in day.  I had also just seen my non-identifying information.  My identity was rocked to the core.  I didn't know who I was anymore because it was so different than I thought it would be.  I had to question everything my parents had ever told me.  It was a horrible time and I went through it alone.

So that was the frame of mind I was in during this training session.  I say this because what happened turned into a major teaching moment and I didn't take it.  Anyway, a group of RAs decided that it would be a great idea to show everyone that we had a lot of diversity in the room.  I went to a prominently white school.  Our RA staff was mostly white, but we did have a large number of minority students.  Looking around the auditorium with about 75 people in it (all the RAs and supporting staff), the vast majority were white.  And the minority students were all at the front doing a diversity presentation.

The intent was the show that even though most of us were of the same race, there were other things that made us diverse.  So ethnicity came up.  And guess who was the first student that had to stand up and declare their ethnicity to the entire room of 75 people because she foolishly chose a seat in the front of the room so she might learn something?

Faceplam moment.  Here I was, questioning everything, and I have to declare to a whole room that I didn't have a single clue about something that the majority of the room knew their whole life.  I didn't trust the paperwork.  I didn't trust my adoptive parents.  I honestly didn't know.  Everything was a guess on my part.  I failed in that moment.  I said I was white and sat back down.  I had no time to prepare.  I don't think well on my feet.  The exercise was re-clarified because they assumed I thought race and ethnicity was the same thing and it moved on.  How embarrassing.

As far as I know, out of the 75 of us, there were only two adoptees in the auditorium.  The other adoptee was in the back and had more time to think about it.  He stated passionately that he was American rather than list another ethnicity.  However, he was a political science major who is very into politics, so nobody thought any differently about it.

I've replayed that moment over and over in my head.  In my head, I stand up, take a breath, and state "Unknown due to adoption".  A few people would scratch their heads, but I can guarantee that everyone would have thought about it at some point or another.  And the organizers of the exercise would have taken a minute to realize that in their attempt to promote sensitivity for minorities, they were insensitive to another group.

I'm not saying that it was a flawed exercise.  And at some point, any activity is going to have an "ouch" moment for one group of people.  But it's something that will stick with me.  The assumptions that were made about my intelligence (because I didn't "know" the different between race and ethnicity), and the condescending attitudes I had to endure for the remainder of the week for "ruining" their exercise stuck with me.  The fact that nobody took the time at the beginning to give people an out in case they didn't know.  There are plenty of people who may not know their ethnicity.

It's now over two years later, and I'm still thinking about that exercise.  I learned a lot that day and the days that followed.  I'm not the same person anymore.  I would say "Unknown due to adoption" now.  Progress.  That's something right?

Interview Project 2011

When I signed up for this project, I was a little bit nervous.  OK, I was a lot nervous.  I wasn't sure who I'd be paired with, but I had a feeling chances were it was going to be an AP or first parent.  But I do feel strongly that these things need to include adoptee voices, so I was going to take one for the team.  Um, yeah, didn't happen that way. I was paired up with a kick ass adoptive mom over at Unofficial Mom.  I've had fun emailing back and forth with Sara the past week or so.  We discovered we had a ton in common, both being from the same area, working in a similar field, and other similarities.

Sara and her husband have an interesting adoption story.  They couldn't have babies the old fashioned way and adopted Pie (possibly one of the cutest kids ever) privately.  There story starts like this: "My husband went into a Chipotle for a burrito and came out with a baby."

So we had some fun interviewing each other.  Here's my interview with Sara.  Enjoy and check out her blog!

How'd you come up with the nickname Pie?

She ended up Pie completely by chance. When we were in the hospital with her, and my husband said, “She’s such a little love pie” and it stuck. So she’s Pie, Love Pie, PiePie and about a million others. We even had a special plaque made for her room and we talk about it each night before bed. She just started saying Love Pie herself and it’s maybe the cutest thing ever.

The whole school, work, mother thing sounds like it can be a bit demanding. What do you do for YOU to relax and recharge?
Relax? What’s that? In all seriousness I don’t get to do a ton of that right now. If I happen to have a few minutes while I’m out of the house I’ll run into Target usually and wander around a bit (read buy something for Pie). And if I’m at home, I try to catch up on the ridiculous play list on my DVR. I used to read. All the time. I really miss it, but now when I pick up a book I’m asleep within a page or two.

If you could wipe the slate blank and start over from scratch, what would your perfect open adoption look like?
In all honesty I wouldn’t really change anything about my adoption. Since her birth, I think we’ve all been really good about contact. I send pictures and updates, we have visits. They spend the day with us on Pie’s birthday. And now that she’s older, I’ve started randomly sending coloring pages and crafts she does to her first parents. And they randomly have things they pick up for her too. Open adoption is such a fluid thing, and you really have to stay flexible to move with it as it changes. Now, that being said, I would change things about the pregnancy. I would have preferred the prenatal care be better, and obviously, that there was no drug use.

You mentioned that you would like to adopt again. Should that happen, knowing what you know now, would you rather participate in an open or closed adoption the second time around?
Open all the way. I can’t imagine it being anything else. Granted we knew Pie’s first parents before the pregnancy, much less the adoption, so that one is always going to be a little different. But I truly can’t imagine a child not having access to his/her biological information. Before I learned about open adoption, I worried about it being confusing for the child to have two sets of parents present, or the first parents wanting to take over or any other number of crazy things. But I think if anything nutty happens, the things a child gets from an open adoption far outweigh any bumps in the road that the adults may encounter.

What's your favorite food in the whole world? If you could eat it everyday, would you?
Pizza. And I do eat it far more than I should. I’m a bit of a weirdo here though, because my favorite pizza is the frozen Tombstone kind. There are a handful of other, fancier pizzas I love, but I don’t have all that often. But throw a good old Tombstone in the oven and I’m a happy girl.

What motivated you to start blogging? What's kept you motivated to stick with it?
I started blogging as a way to process the adoption. I think it’s really hard to fully grieve infertility, and the loss of the family you thought you would have. I’m still not sure I really have. And I don’t know anyone who has been involved with an open adoption. There are other adoptions in my family, but they are international and totally closed because of it. I guess I thought I could put all my ramblings out into space and it would make me feel better. I never in a million years thought I would gain the information, support, and friends that I have through this process. I’m in awe everyday of the people who share their lives with me, and want to share mine. And that’s the reason I continue. I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning about adoption, and having such an amazing network of people to teach me is invaluable.

We have the same camera... What's your favorite picture that you've taken with it?
It’s a copout I know, but anything with Pie in it. If you were twisting my arm I’d have to say this one is near the top. It’s a perfect capture of a completely ordinary day. Pie is a water baby through and through, she would spend every waking moment in water if she could. So the summer is pool time, pool time and more pool time. This was just a quick shot after she had worn herself out in the pool…her chunky cheeks, the water droplets, her gorgeous eyes…it all just makes me smile.

If you could give your daughter only one piece of advice for the rest of her life, what would it be?
This one is so hard! But I think it would be something along the lines of the fact that she is amazing and special and anyone who doesn’t treat her accordingly isn’t worth her time.

What's the biggest thing you've learned from another blogger?

I think the best thing I’ve learned is that it’s okay to not always know what you’re doing in regards to adoption. You do your best and you ask for help or advice when you need it.

What's something that you've learned from this Interview Project?
Another good one. I think this Interview Project has reminded me how much I can gain from getting to know people in different adoption roles. Being able to have the insight into other perspectives is amazing. And I learned that you are one cool chick J

Conversations With Mom

I was thinking the other day about adult adoptees and adoptive parents.  Lots of drama has been happening lately, but what really got to me was the way that some adoptive parents reacted to adult adoptees.  These adoptees, who have been there for me when I was free falling after a stalled reunion a year ago, were dismissed, called names, and told they were unwanted.  By adoptive parents.  I was stunned.  I'd heard of this happening before, but had never witnessed it.  I never thought that adoptive parents would treat adoptees that way.  Adoption is supposed to be about adoptees, isn't it?  Adoptive parent should respect adoptees, adult or not, as someone who was adopted and therefore shares something with their children.  We may not all think alike, but we do deserve to be respected enough as people.

I was blown away.  Mostly because I know some amazing adoptive parents.  My own being some of them.  My mother NEVER would have spoken to these adoptees the way some of the APs were attacking Joy and Von.  She would have been horrified.  My mother is near sainthood in my book.  Not because of adopting me.  Side story time!

A healing statue was brought to a Church near where we live.  Naturally, we want to bring my mother there.  So off we go, even though it's not her best time of day.  We get to the Church, say a prayer, make a donation, have our rosary beads blessed, and sit for a few minutes in quiet reflection.  My mother starts to fade a bit, so it is time to leave while she still has the ability to walk by herself.  As we get ready to go, a family walks in the side door.  They have a little boy who very clearly was sick.  The family is there to pray and hope for a miracle.  My mother sees them walk in and refuses to leave.  She wants to make sure she can say a prayer for the little boy.  She is exhausted.  She hasn't left the house in days.  She feels horrible.  We are drenched from the rain.  But she stays on that uncomfortable Church bench because she wants to say a prayer for that little boy.  He is more important to her, someone she's never met, than the nice warm car.  She's amazing.

Moving on.  Back in July, my mom and I went on vacation.  More like she went on vacation and I continued my attempt at nursing duties.  It was right before the Adoptee Rights Protest, and I was sad to be missing it.  My mother was with it enough to notice I was sad.  She asked me about it, and we had the following conversation.

Mom: Jenn, what's up?  You don't seem yourself.

Jenn:  Oh, I'm fine Mom.  I'm just a little bummed.  My friends are going to a protest in San Antonio but I couldn't go.  I'm just sad to miss it.

Mom: A protest?  What for?

Jenn:  Well, it's to petition the government to unseal birth certificates for adult adoptees.  When you adopted me, my original birth certificate was sealed, and I can't get it without a court order because of the year I was born.  Had I been born before 1972 or after 2008, I would have been able to get that document at 18.  But myself and the majority of adult adoptees in the country cannot access our birth information.  We're the only group in the US who cannot access that information.  I know several people who can't even get passports or driver's licenses because they can't prove they were born in the US.  They need a document for the government that the government prohibits them from having.

Mom:  Well that's… that's just not right.  It's not, you know, fair! (for my mother who suffers from word aphasia, the fact she got these words right is amazing)

Jenn:  I know.  It's not fair.

Mom:  I'm glad your friends are protesting.

Jenn:  Me too Mom.

My mother believes that people should be on equal footing.  She raised me that way.  She believes in equality.  She was the first person to tell me I wasn't "less then" for being adopted.  She taught me to stand up for what I believe in.  She's my biggest fan, and my fiercest defender.  At least she was…  If she doesn't agree with someone, she at least respects the other person as a person, a human, and hears them out.  Without calling them names.  Or telling them they were unwanted. Or saying other nasty things.  I know she isn't the only adoptive parent out there who feels that way.  I've been lucky enough to meet some others floating around online in adoptoland.  And I'm really happy that they exist.  So if you are one of those adoptive parents, thank you for being out there.

I'm very lucky to have my adoptive mother as my mother.  I'm glad that my mother supports me.  She backs me up.  Even when she's sick, she puts others first.  Because that's who she is.  And she's on my side.  For that, I'll always be thankful.

Drama in Adoptoland

Great post by Von today, as well as several others. In case you missed it, there's been a lot of drama the last few days after an adoptive mother posted a picture of her Asian daughter pulling her eyes back.  Several adoptees, including Von and Mei-Ling, went over to try to respectfully point out how that might be raciest and offensive.  They were told to "take a chill pill" and that the gesture was "cute".  There are some great posts out there who say it better than I would, including:

Once Was Von: Twenty Fun Things To Do With Adoptees: pose your adoptee using a racist gesture which is against her race, make sure you photograph her and post on an open blog and collect commen...

Exile of Xingnan: Being Nice Just Doesn't Work: Suffice to say, I’m exhausted by this. Not just the racist post, but because of the comments going on over at Joy’s blog about the racist post. Someone wrote: If you would just be nice, people would listen to you.

Joy's Division: Adoptive Parents and Moral Imperative: I know you don’t want to hear this, but there is no getting around that I am simply right about this issue in re: the picture of the young girl posted on the internet by her adopter-woman....

iAdoptee: The Ugly American is alive and well: Much chatter has been sparked within the adoptee community this week over a photo that an adoptive mother posted to her blog. The photo features a very young Asian girl using her fingers to pull her eyes back making them appear slanted. The Caucasian adoptive mother captioned the photo with the words "She did this... and then asked 'Mommy, do I look Chinese?'"

Marginal Perspectives: Hubris: I feel as though I cannot escape the hubris of so many pathetic people at the moment. It is horrible and haunting. At the best of times, you...

If I forgot any, please leave them in the comments section!

Taking Back November

I will be joining in with some of my fellow bloggers in taking back the month of November!  November is National Adoption Month.  What started as a way to promote foster care adoption has now warped into something else.

For the record, while I don't consider myself to be "anti-adoption", I do consider myself to be pro-family preservation.  So while there are a lot of kids out there who do need loving homes, I think that as a society we need to work harder to keep families together.  A lot of times adoption is seen as a solution to temporary problems.  We grow older ever second so I don't think that age is a great reason to give up your kid.  Wealth is something that fluctuates over time.  I think as a society, we need to help these people out.  Marriage is another thing that seems to change over time (or it could).  Over half of marriages now are expected to fail.  Who's to say that adoptive parents won't end up single themselves?

At the same time, there are people out there who simply don't want to parent.  They have their reasons.  My first mother's situation was interesting.  She had a lot of societal pressure to give me up.  She was scared of what people would think.  But nobody coerced her.  She didn't wish to parent me.  She wanted to go back to her normal life.  That doesn't make her a bad person.  I write this because it's to illustrate the point that not all people want to parent, and not all people should parent either.  So we do need a system for those children.  Children who do need loving parents.  But I don't think it's our current system.  I don't think that sealing records is the way to go.  I don't think that falsifying documents so that my adoptive mother is listed as the woman who gave birth to me is the right way to handle children who do need parents.

I will be blogging this month about issues surrounding adoption from an adoptee point of view.  Hope you enjoy!

Adoption Connection Poll Results

I struggled with the decision to search.  A lot.  I found my non-identifying information in August and didn't sleep for months.  I ran a few late night Google searches and got nothing.  I didn't really pursue it though.  I didn't understand when it started to take over my life.  Going to the doctors and being told that I couldn't be diagnosed because of the lack of a family medical history and my trip to New Orleans finally sparked action.  I started to read blogs and I started to gather as much information as I could.  I'm all for education and I educated myself like you wouldn't believe.

Things didn't turn out so well the first time around.  Whatever.  They started to go better the second time around.  Yay!  And I started to think about writing a blog around the time my first father and I started talking on the phone.  Naturally, I started doing research about blogging.  All the sites I read suggested figuring out how often I wanted to post (I wanted to try to post everyday because I liked those blogs a lot and liked having something to read all the time, plus this was sort of going to be an online journal so it made sense to blog everyday) and to have about a months worth of blog entries stored up before you start publishing.  So I started working on writing down my story in the middle of finals.  It helped.  A lot.  And then I started posting.  I never dreamed that people would actually really want to read it.  I figured I'd see how things went.  And then I got a reader.  And then another.  And then another.  I'm not the most popular blog out there.  Nowhere close in fact.  But I have way more people following me than I ever dreamed possible (and only three of them know me in real life!).

So when I started blogging I figured that only adoptees would want to read my posts.  It was about my search and reunion, and how an adoptee felt about adoption.  Why would anyone else want to read that?  And then a few first mothers started commenting.  I guess I could sort of understand that.  So I started to read their blogs too.  And I started to really enjoy reading the other side of things.  And I started to "get it" more.  Cool.  And then I got a few comments from APs.  Weird.  A lot of them didn't leave links back to their blogs, but for the heck of it, I started to read a few AP blogs.  And weird, I actually liked a few of them.  There are some APs out there who really "get it".  Sweet.

Then I went semi-private.  And told readers to email me for a password.  The majority of people who emailed me?  APs and PAPs.  I don't have one iota of an issue giving them the password.  But it surprised me.  Were those most of my readers?  I've also noticed that sometimes I get a lot of comments and other times I can go a long time without any.  There's lots of reasons for this (mainly that my "good" posts are usually close together and my "bad" posts are grouped together too!) so I wasn't concerned, but that meant I couldn't figure out who was reading.  So maybe those were my main readers.  That's... different.  Not what I expected.  And while I'd like to think that wouldn't change the way I blog, I do take a certain approach when dealing with adoptees verses first parents verses adoptive parents.  Adoptees usually "get it" so I don't always explain things fully.  When dealing with APs, I tend to explain things more and put on more disclaimers to be clear.  Some posts I write with adoptees in mind, others I write with first parents in mind, and still others I write with adoptive parents in mind.  And most of my posts I write with nobody in mind.  But I still wonder about who's reading...

So I put up a poll.  What's your adoption connection?  And I'm sorry I forgot to let people choose more than one answer.  That was my bad (because I do have a few readers who identify with two or more groups).  And low and behold, the majority of readers are adoptees, followed closely by first parents, with a small number of APs and Friends/family (probably mine) and nobody who didn't have a connection (Quelle surprise!).  So that was interesting.  I feel like my world has been re-righted.  And I was also blown away that at least 25 people have visited this blog in the past few weeks and voted in the poll.  Wow.  Pretty amazed at that!

So thanks for reading!  And for taking my poll.  It's provided me with some food for thought and some new blog post ideas!  So thanks for that!  I might put up another poll at some point, who knows?  Thanks again!

Interview Project

I'm going to give this a go.  We'll see how it all works out.  I've seen a lot of these from adoptive parents, but I think that it might be nice to have some more adoptee voices.  The only way we're going to get adoptee voices out there is to participate.  I ran into this on Twitter and remembered reading some of the posts when I started following some new blogs and were checking out their archives.  This should get pretty interesting!  I think this might be a great way to learn something new and to maybe find a few new blogs to read.  Wish me luck!