Expectant Mother – Adoption Journey Series…

Once all of the references came back, the police check was cleared, and the forms I’d submitted were processed, it was time for the “next step”…

The Questionnaire.

This is a questionnaire about my background, my family, my upbringing, my relationship with my parents, my parents relationship with each other, and about how I was raised.

Theresa emailed me and said:

Wow Ali, your information  has come in fast and furious…
I have all references, criminal record check  (clear) and physicians report
So, step 2  –  Questionnaire #1:
You need to read, complete and submit back to me the Questionnaire 1 form.  Would you like to grab it at the office or i can email it to you…please let me know.  It shouldn’t take you too long to complete…
Once it is completed and I take a look at it, we can set up our first home visit…

Part of my insides were screaming, “whoa, this is too fast, too soon, we need the whole year to relax into this and be completely ready before we surge forward.” The other part of me that loves to compete with myself said, “woo-hoo, we’re already at step 2 and she said we’re fast!”.

Sometimes, our whole inner-dialogue (or in the words of Dr Wayne Dyer, “the Ego” self) is hilarious and clueless.

I emailed her right back letting her know I would finish work soon (in 5 minutes) and could pick it up that day. When I arrived at her workplace 15 minutes later to pick up the form, the words out of her mouth were, “you are funny.”

Well, yes I am funny, but I knew she was commenting about my rushing down there and my eagerness to be on with the next step.

The truth was I so deeply wanted this to work out.

The words, “you can’t fail this”, were words I repeated over and over, as a reminder that if I really want to create a family I was on the path to doing just that.

The thought of creating a family for myself, and for children who also wanted a family more than anything else, felt like the most beautiful, important, valuable, incredible thing I could do – or ever want to do. And I didn’t want to “miss the boat” by being too slow. I wanted to make it happen, and I wanted Theresa to see how much I wanted this, not only by my words but my actions too.

However, when I started this process, even when I was only toying with the idea of it after the First Whisper I knew, in my heart, that I wanted to first “clean” myself internally so I was ready to be a solid platform for my children. I was very clear with myself that I wanted to take the year (or two) that I’d been told the process takes, to write out all the crazy stories from my upbringing, to release any residual feelings I had toward Mother, My and to be strong and sure, steady and ready. I didn’t want to open my heart to children, especially children who had ‘been through the ringer’ already if I wasn’t completely stable internally, if I didn’t know for certain that I could be there for them without being triggered about my own past.

I wanted to be in a position to openly love them – not relive my childhood through them.

This required going slow. My “non-ego” self knew this and was feeling a bit rushed. However, eager “ego” me was excited to be at step two already after only one month!

So I took home the Questionnaire and looked it over. Even with the desire to demonstrate my eagerness, I still wanted to feel every answer I chose to be sure I was being as honest with myself and as accurate as possible.

Once it was complete, I left it at her office, and then sent a follow up email to say I had dropped it off. Theresa replied the same day and told me she had read it already and we started discussing the next step – the home study. (But that is another post altogether.)

In my email, I expressed that I “could only imagine the picture it paints from the outside looking in.” She replied to let me know that there was “nothing shocking” in my answers and everyone feels a little vulnerable at this point of the process. That was good to know and I appreciated her comments.

What I didn’t expect to feel about this Questionnaire was the (and I just paused to find the perfect word but came up short) “feeling bad” (guilt/unease perhaps) at the check boxes I’d used to describe Mother, My.

I even had a few uncomfortable dreams about it, where she asked me “what about this, Ali, didn’t I give you this?”

You see the whole Questionnaire was check boxes of personality traits of my parents, “was this person in your life: positive, uplifting, optimistic, hard, angry, abusive, compassionate, happy, depressed, etc…” you get the picture. And almost all of the questions had these check boxes.

I felt a little bad about the check boxes I ticked for Mother, My, not many positive ones and a whole lotta negative ones, as far as personality and motherhood goes.

But when I sat and really tried to think, “Was she supportive?” I didn’t really come up with anything… “Was she loving?” ummm…drawing a blank. And when I asked myself, “Was she encouraging, uplifting, inspiring, etc…?” sadly that was not my recollection. Still, I wanted to be sure I was clear in my recall. I tried to coach myself into finding something, “Come on Ali, surely we can think of a time where…?” Nope, we can’t.

Well, that’s not entirely true, I can remember two times where she was there for me for one whole day, supportive, caring, and maybe even loving – I say “maybe” because I was at rock bottom both times. And for those times I can think of thousands of times that she wasn’t there for me.

Interestingly, both times I was living away from home, as an adult, there were no instances in my childhood that stood out. Sure she was always there, and for some years she was even a stay at home mom; she cooked and cleaned and baked cookies, helped out at school functions and became part of school committees – the epitome of “motherhood” from the outside looking in, but she wasn’t really connected to us kids emotionally.

But, when I found out that one of my first loves had died and I needed to go back to Melbourne for his funeral she came through. I called her up after months without contact and asked for her help to get there. She bought me a return ticket and also gave me some spending money. She saw me off at the bus station and I remember crying and hugging her and she hugged me back and even soothed me, which was nice. Unusual, but nice.

The other time was when I finally ended things with my ex-husband. She was there for me for that morning when I was feeling relieved and overjoyed to be free, and also completely dazed about what to do next. I had been in a state of shock and ended up at her house.

She made me a cup of tea and asked me what happened. While I talked, telling her only the bare essentials because I didn’t really feel safe enough to be emotionally vulnerable with her, she listened for a little while and then said “well, you can always stay with me and sleep on the couch until you know what to do next.”

It was in that tone of voice, the gruff, “geeze, well, I guess I’m supposed to love you, so this is what we’ll do…” kind of voice, devoid of real compassion, more a mechanical “let’s just deal with things,” tone.

That tone snapped me out of the stupor. She was not, and never would be, the emotionally supportive “movie mommy” it just wasn’t her. In that realisation, my earlier feeling of freedom from the shackles of an unhappy marriage returned and I recognised that my sitting on her couch when I should be dancing on the beach was actually quite hilarious.

I stood, thanked her and told her that I knew what to do – then I drove to the beach and spun in the ocean breeze (literally) while I smiled for the sheer joy of the freedom I felt. I remember seeing dolphins that morning “dancing” with me and I knew everything would be okay. And it was.

So really, she was exactly what I needed at the time. She inadvertently reminded me that I would be okay, that I had been looking after myself for a long, long time and that the peace I was seeking was inside of me all along. Amen.

Mother, My did help with the practical stuff of leaving my husband – after all she had left three of them so she kind of knew the drill – and I did appreciate her advice in that sense.

The emotional support though came from my chosen family of friends.

So for all of the crazy experiences that I had growing up, for all of the incidents, and situations, at the end of the day Mother, My gave me so much.

My independence, my strength, my ability to always land on my feet, my ability to look for and find the most positive spin on every situation, my incredibly active imagination, my sense of adventure, my ability to find people that I connected with so deeply as to become family for life.

That’s where my “not good” (guilt/unease) came from in submitting the answers I submitted. Because, yes, as a child sometimes life was filled with emotional terror and uncertainty, sometimes – especially with my step-family – it was very joyful and beautiful, but for all the things it was or was not, I am so, so, so thankful that I am who I am today. I love who I am today. And I can’t help but think, “would I be who I am, if she was not who she was?”

Maybe with a different upbringing I wouldn’t have as vivid an imagination, maybe I wouldn’t have developed the ability to seek and find the ray of sunshine in every situation, maybe I wouldn’t have learned to “flip the pancake” and see the other side of every interaction, maybe I wouldn’t have developed the kind of compassion that I have for others and their struggles (my ability to see the person through the “stuff”).

With that knowledge, perhaps Mother, My was exactly what I needed in life to set me on this path that I love so much? Perhaps.

However, the Questionnaire didn’t ask for my philosophies on my life and my upbringing and whether I felt it had made me into an incredible person today – it asked me to check boxes to specific questions and that is what I did.

The truth is she hasn’t left me with many close, loving, compassionate, supportive memories, so I couldn’t select happy fluffy descriptions. However, not all of her personal traits were negative. There were some qualities and strengths that I admire about her as a person, the kind of traits that would stand out to me if we had met as adults, if we were not related. Mother, My was generous when it suited her – and I put that down as one of her more positive traits.

As her child I felt like that was her way of compensating for the other stuff. The touchy feely stuff – in that area she had little skills. She couldn’t hug me and tell me she loved me, not genuinely without a gruff or resentful tone, but she could get me into a theatre group by pulling some strings to bypass the wait list. She couldn’t encourage me or support me to follow my heart and my dreams, but she could give me $500 dollars to help pay the rent. She couldn’t keep me living in her home past the age of 16, but she could buy me an old car and pay for driving lessons so I could get around.

She just didn’t have the skills or the experience to be loving and touchy feely, and perhaps her own family upbringing wasn’t like that, perhaps she never learned how to be humble and loving toward others.

Love; recognition; acceptance; approval; compassion; adoration; faith; support; security; encouragement. Those were things that were lacking, and those were things I needed most, the things every child needs most. The money, the “things” – none of that really mattered. Though, not going to lie, sometimes it was nice too.

Perhaps she had those and not the monetary things when she was growing up, she had – from the outside looking in anyway – a happy family with two stable parents, and three siblings. However, she grew up in the “depression” and she often talked about how there was no money for university for her – which was what she really wanted growing up.

She harbored that resentment for as long as I knew her. And it is one of the reasons I am very clear that I want to come to my children as a “clean slate”; I will not punish them for the shortcomings of my own upbringing.

Who is to say what would have become of me with a different family, I had the one I had and it was a lifetime ago. All that is important is who I am now, and how I feel now. I am more than capable of making choices for myself (and have done so for many, many years), so I can absolutely choose to release the past and find the positives in it.

During this year ahead (my “pregnancy phase”), I want to really feel that I have found the ‘flip-side’ to any of those experiences that occasionally replay in my mind, so I don’t just “turn a blind eye” but truly find the things in them for which to be grateful, for there are so many things from my past that deserve my gratitude.

Not the least of which is that I feel very grateful to be who I am today – with all that I know and all that I’ve lived as my vehicle to this point in time.

A few days after submission, I was able to release the feelings of unease with the check boxes selected for Mother, My – without who she was, I may not be who I am. And I do understand that she gave all she was capable of giving, and she gave generously in those areas. That is all a parent – any parent – can do.

This adoption process is changing me, is helping me see even more clearly how grateful I am that I get to live my life, and this Questionnaire gave me the opportunity to question where I am today and how I feel about my past, and most importantly, how I feel about where I am now and the person I’m becoming – the mother I’m becoming.

In that sense, I am again thankful that I am walking the path to motherhood through adoption as I truly want to be ready – really ready – to be the parent that is “new” from this point in time, not reliving a past. The Adoption Process and all of the questions, poking, prodding, reading, courses, and interviews are forcing internal dialogue about things I may not have looked at quite as deeply as I am doing now.

A gentle reminder from the Universe that Adoption is the right path for me.