Open Adoption: Open Wound?

Although I don't always agree with this author, she hit the nail on the head with this one. Way to go Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy

"I got pictures at 6 months and one year through my agency. I was a neurotic wreck waiting for them 24 years ago. I was a complete wreck waiting for my update of Max at age 16. Like a daily mood swing that got hopeful and anxious before the mail delivery and completely foul and depressed after...every day...for three months. Those were just two small time periods in the time frame of this adoption. Yet they greatly altered my mental well being during those times. I cannot imagine living that way for 15, 18. or 20 years.

I see mothers living this now on birthmother support lists.The dance they sometimes must perform to be determined healthy enough to garnish an update, the debate on how to request an update, how to ask, the fear of being denied and the effects of being ignored. I would go so far to say that even when an adoptive family follows the set schedules and provides the consistent updates on the welfare of the child, the anxiety and fear is still constantly present.

Even though I lived it, even now I can't imagine how I had the physical ability to walk away from my newborn baby in the hospital. I don't know how I did it once. I cannot imagine having to repeat the same action over and over again. I cannot imagine having to do this every six months; ever year.

That big tough scab that covered the raw wound of my son's relinquishment would never have healed. Rather, I see that open adoption could be that action that causes this wound to be re-opened again and again.How do you walk away from this child that you love so incredibly much and still have the will to live. I know I would have done it but yes, sometimes I am glad that I did not have the opportunity. Plus, for so many years, my son was only an image that I could imagine. The three years I missed was a fantasy based on a handful of pictures. Not a real flesh and blood child whose arms I could feel around my neck. It was years later that I realized the true depth of everything that I lost. In an open adoption, the evidence of that lost baby turns into the truth of a missed childhood. A mother does not miss the ideal, but a real walking, talking child.

I do not believe that even the best open adoption mitigates the feeling of loss. I believe that it does tend to keep a mother in reality and make her face that loss, which can be healthier, but also, just so much harder. The adoption never has a chance to become something of the past but is a constant force in her life. I can't say which is better because I don't think that adoption ever leaves us. But if one is expecting that an open adoption should feel good, I can imagine that it can be rather surprising to find that it hurts over and over again with each after-visit; with each new goodbye. I can imagine that the reoccuring grief gets rather exhausting." 

Amen girl, you sure got this one right!!! Thanks for sharing. 
(This blog was originally posted on http://www.musingsofthelame.com)