I have been thinking about this post for quite some time. It is one of those posts that is difficult to write because there is so much to say and so many ways to go with it and because it is very emotional for me and because I am not sure if I am doing or saying the right things to my daughter. You see, even writing the first 2 sentences proved difficult!! Geesh! Can you imagine what the rest of the post will be like??? Hang in there with me because I would truly love some feedback on this. Anyway, when you first think about adoption you start looking at these pictures, these faces, many, many faces. Some are smiling and some are not, some are young and some not, some have special needs and some are perfectly healthy, but the one thing they have in common is that they do not have a family. You would think that after a while, you would become immune. That looking at all these beautiful faces day in and day out would eventually begin to lessen its effect on your heart. With me and I think most people who commit to adoption (because it is a commitment), quite the opposite happens. You begin to hope and pray for all of them and maybe a little more for certain ones of them, but your heart and your life begin to change. There have been so many times that I have just longed to be able to jump through this computer and wrap my arms around some of these children and hold them close and tell them that it would be ok, that I would make it ok!! Then you find your child and that longing becomes almost unbearable. The minute you see that face,
the face, you know that this is your child and that you must bring him/her home and that you must do it as quickly as humanly possible. I know I drove my wonderful hubby absolutely crazy during our incredibly maddening paper chase with my demands of, “it needs to be done RIGHT now, yesterday if possible!!!!” and “Our little girl NEEDS us!” “How can you not drop everything right this second to make these copies for me or get this notarized for me or get that physical done, man!!!!!” This is the key, I think, to this post. I couldn't wait to make it all better for my Lizzie. Even though I researched (again driving my poor hubby crazy) and researched and researched and should have known better, I still, however, dreamed of taking Lizzie into my loving Mommie arms and just simply make it all better. By loving her, I wanted to be able to make the trauma of the first 2 years of her life just vanish like it never happened. However, that would mean that the first 2 years of Lizzie’s life didn’t matter, didn’t count for anything and that is not possible or right. In my head, I knew this to be true because, again I was the researching, “knowledgeable,” prospective adoptive parent who was well versed in the worst case scenario, but in my heart, I couldn’t help that small part of me that just wanted to be able to wrap my loving Mommie arms around my sweet girl and simply make it better. Fast forward now to June 10th, 2008, the day we met our Lizzie for the first time! What an extraordinary day full of all kind of emotions. I remember the moment they put Lizzie in my arms and I heard the slightest little whimper and I braced myself for the tears and the screaming!!! But they never came. She was quiet and didn’t want to look at me at first but she never cried and I couldn’t help thinking and hoping that maybe my heart was right and I could make it all better. I would quickly come to the realization, however, that I couldn’t just put my arms around my daughter and “heal” her and that it would be a journey that would probably last a lifetime and that I was ready, readier than I thought I would be. So here we are now a year and 4 months out and our journey has been a sometimes incredibly difficult one and sometimes an incredibly beautiful one and yes, I am still researching and yes, still driving hubby crazy!! There are days that I think, “Wow, we had a great day and I feel good about how I handled things today.” There are also days that I don’t feel like I did or said the right things, at all and I worry and I second guess. This was all brought to the for front with a small photograph album that contains all of the pictures that we have of Lizzie in China (pre-us). We were very fortunate to gets lots of pictures and even some video of her life before we met and Lizzie seems to enjoy getting the pictures out and looking at them. Now that she is so much more verbal (thank you speech therapy), she has started telling me things, things about her life in China. I know that she was young, but Lizzie is very smart and very intuitive and very serious about what she has told me. One day when we were looking at her pictures together, she saw one of herself and in it she was crying (in many of Lizzie’s pictures she is crying). She turned to me and told me that she was crying because she missed me. I will never forget her words. She said, “In China, I cried for you Momma.” She then went on to say, “but you came for me and I happy now, we all together, whole family together, Mommie and Daddy and Emmie and Christian and Charlie and Caleb, all together forever and ever.” “Now family all around me and Mommie right here, Momma will never leave me – Momma here forever.” After picking myself up off the floor and fighting back the tears that threatened to flood the room, I just wrapped my arms around her and reassured her that we
were together now and would be forever and that I had cried for her too, when she was in China. I know that, at the time, the Mommie she was crying for was not me (although hubby reassures me otherwise) but to hear those words come out of my daughter’s mouth overwhelmed me. Another reminder of how much she has lost in her short little life and how remarkably strong she is and there I was trying to make it all better. I have heard from 20 something adoptees that it is better to just acknowledge their hurt and loss rather than to try and make it better but is that appropriate for a 3 year old? I want so desperately to be able to do and say exactly the right things for her especially when she is struggling with her memories and she seems to be remembering China a lot lately. She remembers and tells me things about her nannies or her ayis. She will point to one of them in her pictures and tell me that she was nice or point to another and say that she was not. She rediscovered the stuffed puppy with my voice recorded in it, that was in the very first care package we sent to her and began to tell me that they would let her and her friends play with the toys we sent “a little bit” and then they would put them up.
She clung to that puppy for a couple of weeks after that conversation. She also told me that she was in her crib most of the time and I talk to her about it. I talk to her about it, I think, because to me it is important to know what her life was like so that I can better understand her and help her and I talk to her about it because I want to try and know about the 2 years of her life that I will probably never fully know about but she is my daughter and I try. I try to get closer to her by “getting to know her” and it works. I try to find the right words for her and I second guess myself at every turn. Am I doing the right thing by continuing this conversation, the good and the bad? Should I be wrapping my arms around her and hoping to make it better? I don’t know. What I do know is that Lizzie is my wonderful, completely amazing, beautiful daughter and I love her. I have battled the “institutionalized behaviors” and I have battled the tantrums and I have battled the eating or lack of eating and I have battled her sensory issues and I will continue to fight the good fight because she is my daughter and I love her. I hope that as she matures and we continue our conversations that we will be able to help Lizzie embrace her “ghosts” instead of battling them. I will forever remember and talk to her of her birth family and country and will try my best to help her to understand all that has happened to her in so much as I understand it and I think that the day will come that all I have for her will be (in the words of Mei Ling, an adult adoptee over at www.sisterheping.wordpress.com ), “I am sorry.” “It just sucks.” But for now, I will continue to wrap my Mommie arms around my little Lizzie and tell her that her family is all around her and that we will never leave her and that we love her and will love her forever.
So help me here. Any advice would be greatly appreciated and will go into my file of “words of wisdom for Lizzie.” Thank you for making it all the way to the end of my rambling post. I also thought I would re post Lizzie’s One Year Home Video, so if you have about 10 more minutes and have not watched it, I would love for you to. It was such a labor of love for my precious daughter and a testament to our family’s amazing journey.
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