To my little buddy...

Dear Peanut,
Tonight we went to your house for your little sister's first birthday party. When I arrived, I saw you standing outside the front door, but I thought you were looking at another car that was arriving. I collected my things quickly so that I could catch you before you went back inside, and was delighted when I got out of the car to see you running down the pathway to see me. As you stepped off the curb you said, "Hi Jee-wee!" and I scooped you up to hug you. I carried you inside and your dad walked over to greet me. As he came, he imitated what you had been saying as I pulled up: "My Jee-wee here! My Jee-wee here!" and you, not understanding that he was repeating you and thinking he was calling me his Julie, gave him a worried look and said in a concerned voice, "No, MY Jee-wee." My heart just about melted.
Later, you unexpectedly came out of your bedroom sobbing. You'd been playing with your big sister and her friends and none of us knew why you were upset. Because my mommy instinct has never left, I immediately picked you up to comfort you. I asked you what was wrong and, through tears, you said it was the dark. The girls had been playing, turned off the lights, and you were afraid and convinced there were ghosts. You cuddled on my shoulder and calmed down, and together we went back into your room. You sat in my lap for five minutes while the girls continued to play. When the lights went out I would tickle you and remind you I was there, and soon you weren't afraid anymore. You told me I should leave, got up to play, and went back to having fun.
You probably won't fully understand this until you have your own children. I didn't until I had you. The honor of comforting your child is so great. It was an unspeakably sweet feeling to get to hold you and comfort you, to make you giggle and feel brave; to know that you were just as comfortable with me when you were scared and sad as you are with your own mom and dad. I feel a real sense of loss for the mommy experiences I know I have missed because of your adoption, but I can't tell you how grateful I am for moments like these. I will never forget them.
I am also so very grateful to your parents. They are unendingly and unfailingly kind, generous, and loving. They have made such a big point of welcoming me (along with the rest of my family) into your family's life. They have loved me, prayed for me, cared for me, and spoiled me. They have worked hard to instill in you the idea that I am someone important in your life, and this is far above and beyond their call as parents. They have made every effort to make sure that you know who I am, and I do not have the words to thank them for that. My goal in your adoption has been to make sure you don't remember a time when I wasn't in your life. For your mom and dad to support and encourage that has meant the world to me. Hearing you call me "My Jee-wee" is the sweetest thing my heart could hope for.
I miss you every day, but I have never doubted for a second that you are in the right place with your family. You are truly their son as much as you are mine, and I feel so very blessed to be witness to that. A friend of mine once said something that resonated with me. It was in a different context, but if I were to say about my life I would say it like this: "Adoption breaks my heart and fills it up all at the same time." Missing you breaks my heart, but knowing you and being known by you fill it up even more.
I love, love, love you, Peanut, and am so proud to be your mommy.
Love,
Your Jee-Wee

On Grace...

I have never been very private when it comes to talking about giving my son up for adoption. In the two years since he was born I've been blessed with the opportunity to share his story many times with prospective adoptive parents, future birthmothers, and even strangers. I have talked about the grace that led Peanut and I to his family, the love that sustained me through the most heartbreaking moment of my life, and the beauty of my son's life and how it has shaped my own. 


It is, in short, my favorite part of the story to tell.


The part of the story that is not my favorite to tell is the part where I wasn't Enough. The part of me that has to admit that the reason I gave up my son was because I didn't have enough education or money to be the single-parent I would want to be; the part that still feels like all of me fell far short of who I should have been for my son. This is the part that is still so full of shame that it's easier for me to look away than acknowledge it. This recent realization came from watching a video of a talk given by Dr. Brene Brown, a researcher who has spent the last decade and then some exploring the cultural and personal effects of shame.


"Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change."


She said this and it resonated. In fact, it was like someone crashed the cymbals right next to my ear. Without realizing it, shame has become the lens through which I see myself. I have sat with it, befriended it, and encouraged it to have an opinion. Worse, I've encouraged myself to listen to that opinion. That opinion says that no matter what I do with my life, no matter how educated I am, or how many times I tell my story, that at heart I will always be the woman who wasn't Enough when it counted. Whether or not that opinion is true (though Lord knows I hope it isn't) isn't as important as the fact that I've believed it. Wholeheartedly. And this belief has worn down all the parts of me that used to be able to confidently say, "What WAS is not what IS."


The (fortunate) thing about hearing those cymbals crashing is that when they do, one is startled into looking up and paying attention. Coming to all these realizations about how much shame I have as a mother would probably have been completely unbearable if it had not come with the grace that it did. The grace that says that maybe my definition of being Enough has been wrong; maybe being Enough meant doing exactly what I was enabled (by grace itself, no less) to do: my very best to give my son the best life I could, at as little cost to him as possible. This grace reminds me how it lit a very painful path, giving me enough light to know I was headed in the right direction. I can see now that it has been here all along; I'm the one who has kept it out of the places I didn't think were worthy of it. But this is the glory of the grace: it miraculously made me Enough when I was incapable on my own, and it will happily invade any place I give up ownership of, including my shame.


This lovely grace says that I am not finished yet; that as long as I struggle to grow, growth is possible. That as long as I seek to be made more, I will be made more. It has revealed the depth of my shame and enabled me to face it, and has given me hope that it can transform the shame into something beautiful, the way it has transformed the rest of my story. 


More than ever I know that the work of grace will never be done in my life (a good thing, as I have no shortage of need for it). This fact used to be downright depressing to me, but I'm coming to terms with it; after all, life is much richer with the grace : )

Dear Peanut...

Dear Peanut,

Today is Mother's Day. I have been having a very difficult time thinking about it because I've been missing you an awful lot. But this morning my mom gave me a Mother's Day card in which she said that she hoped I could spend the day cherishing being a mother. And that, my little love, has changed everything for me.

I have spent today being thankful. You made me a mother and I can say with all certainty that there is no one else's mother I would rather be. You changed my whole life the minute I found out about you, and you continue to. You are my sweetest joy, my finest moment, my ladder to the stars. In other words, I cherish you. I love you more than I can say, but I hope that I can find the words to tell you when you're big enough to understand.

I love love love you, and will always be so grateful that you are the one who made me a mommy - it has been my favorite thing in life to be.

Always,
Julie : )

Mother's Day... (Year 2)

My second Mother's Day is rapidly approaching. I'd been congratulating myself on how well I'd been handling it until I realized that, as usual, I was actually NOT handling it at all. I, like many, have a propensity to push away things that are difficult to deal with. I am an "out-of-sight-out-of-mind" person and while Peanut is never far from my mind and heart, the struggle and pain of my particular brand of motherhood often are. It is not uncommon for grief to cause feelings of surrealism, and I'm often surprised by what a foreign idea it seems that I am a mother. A mother. Of a child. Like trying to convince myself that I'm a wagon wheel; it simply can't be true. Realizing that I'm stuck in the surrealism often (read: always) precedes a time of grief in which my sadness seems overwhelming. However painful this grief is, it's also usually a little bit of a relief to feel it - I hate the numbness that comes with the surreal stage; the knowing that I'm not fully entering into my role as a mother. Of course, the grief often makes me long to feel "better," and the cycle usually begins again.

As I discussed in my last blog, I've been working on learning how to live between these tensions, in the paradox, as Parker Palmer would call it. What I have been learning is this: being Peanut's mother is a daily decision as much as a biological reality. Shortly after coming home from the hospital, I started to feel (natural) feelings of separation from Peanut. He wasn't there and the hormones that would have strengthened our bond had he been present started to fade. To put it succinctly: I freaked out. I felt like I was uncontrollably falling out of love with my son. And then I was reminded, by One greater than myself, that love is always a choice, never a "feeling." I was reminded that every day that I chose to love my son, I loved him. If it didn't "feel" like I thought it would, then it simply didn't; it had no bearing on the reality of my love. And so it is with motherhood.

Being Peanut's mother may not feel like I thought it would, but every day that I choose to be his mother, I am his mother. To know that this truth has no basis in my feelings is more reassuring than I can say. And this is what I'm learning I must choose to believe in both the joy of the surreal and the pain of grief: I am a mother. Plain and simple. And exceedingly complicated.

So Happy Mother's Day to all mother's, traditional and non-traditional, of children present and accounted for, and lost and grieved over, of children born and not-yet born; your daily choice to be a mother makes you more of a mother every day, whether it feels like you thought it would or not. It has given you the power to choose to nurture and celebrate the lives you've been entrusted with. It has given you the grace to laugh and love and the courage to open doors to possibilities that terrify you. You have had the faith to raise the impossibly beautiful and unique people that you made. You do all of this even when you've been too tired or frustrated to think you want to, because you bravely and irrevocably choose to. You are, in short, superheroes : )

And so, those these words are far too few...

Happy Mother's Day!

Going Camping...

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things 

which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." 

- Epictetus

This is one of my favorite quotes when I'm missing Peanut.


I can't speak for any other birthmothers or people who have experienced a traumatic loss, but I feel like I spend my life in one of two places: feeling the pain of my loss very acutely, or feeling almost numb to it because it's fullness is too great to bear. Neither of these places make me feel like I'm living fully in myself; one makes me so devastated it's hard to function, and the other leaves me feeling like I'm not fully appreciating and loving my son. 


My challenge lately has been to camp right in between these places: to truly acknowledge my loss, and simultaneously rejoice for what I have. To understand that my son is not my own, but also that he never has been. To know that in my unhappiness over losing him, there is great joy in having given him life. To remember, once again, that the deal I made with myself and with God was that I would handle the heartache if it meant Peanut wouldn't have to. 


I hate to challenge Epictetus (because, really, who am I??), but I think, at least when it comes to loss, grief has an important role to play. The grief is my evidence of the depth of my love for Peanut, the reminder of the sacrifice, and the outlet for my sadness. To live in grief forever would be counter-productive, but to never visit? That seems equally unhelpful. And the rejoicing...the happiness is my evidence of the depth of my love for Peanut, the fruit of the sacrifice, and the outlet for my gratitude. While living here forever has sounded nice, I have found that it acknowledges only half of my experience. To never visit grief is to deny part of the truth of what Peanut and I went through, and life cannot be really lived unless it is lived in truth. 


I guess what I'm saying is that I think Epictetus has it mostly right. When I'm stuck in grief, this quote helps remind me that I have a lot to rejoice about. But I think he would agree that grief has its place, too, when it acts as an outlet for true pain and sorrow.


So wish me luck, I'm going camping : )

Goals...

November is the month that Aims (Community College) told me that they would let me know if I made it into their radiology tech program. This is a big goal for me and I really want to get in, which is making November go by v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y. But, it has given me a lot of time to think about some of the other goals I have in my life.

To be clear, I am not a goal-oriented person. At least, I'd never thought of myself as one until I got pregnant. Making sure the Peanut was well-cared for and happy became my most important goal and I am so grateful that I was able to accomplish it. It also made me realize that I want to be the kind of person who my son can look at and, I dearly hope, be proud of. And THAT started to change the way I thought about my goals, or at least the big ones. So I went back to school this summer and took all the pre-requisite classes for the program I wanted, submitted my application the first day I was able to, and then sat back and have been waiting ever since. Accomplishing that goal didn't feel hard; I didn't love spending every waking moment working, being in class, or studying, but I was happy to do it for the bigger thing it was accomplishing. That goal? Not my hardest.

The goals that I really struggle with are the day-to-day goals. And, oddly enough, they are the ones that (with the exception of 'get married' and 'spontaneously acquire the ability to please all of the people, all of the time')are entirely dependent on my own behavior. For example: Exercise more. All I have to do to accomplish that goal is, well, exercise more. For some reason, though, this goal seems huge, daunting, and completely impossible. Mostly because I really dislike exercising. But huge, daunting, and completely impossible, nonetheless. Making sure Peanut was taken care of was a big goal, and a really important one. Getting myself back to school was a big goal, and a really important one. So why do I struggle with the smaller goals that are entirely within my power?

I don't actually know the answer to this, but what I do know is that I don't want to be the same person that I was before I got pregnant. I want to be a different person; a bigger person (and not just because of my apparent inability to exercise). I'm learning to see self-discipline, especially in the areas that make me want to cross my arms and pout, as a building block to becoming more than I currently am. To see that even if it feels like a small, frustrating goal the greater good that it is accomplishing is worth it. To see my goals as opportunities, period; not opportunities for failure. This change of attitude is, not surprisingly, slow going, but I'm finding hope in it. The big goals I have accomplished were inspired by Peanut and, in turn, the hope that I can be more than what I am. Seeing my little goals in that light make me want to do a good job, not bemoan the fact that I have to work at all. 

SO, to that end, I have made a (small) goal for next week:

In the interest of good nutrition and smart budgeting, I am going to bring my lunch to work with me every single day. And eat it.

And it will be awesome : )

Dear Peanut...

You are the mother,

The mother of your baby child,

The one to whom you gave life.

And you have your choices,

And these are what make man great,

His ladder to the stars.
-"Timshel," Mumford & Sons

Days Go By...

(I have been encouraged by my doctor to blog, as he thinks it is therapeutic for me. This summer has been busy, however, with school, moving back in with my parents, and work, and somehow blogging fell by the wayside. However, as it is 12:08 a.m. and I am desperately in need of a little therapy, here goes...)

My Peanut is now 14 months old and is doing all kinds of things that little boys do. He's walking, playing with trucks (and making the cutest little buzzing sound when he does!), and...talking. I am surprised at how hard this latest milestone has been for me to accept. Part of it (well, all of it) is because he's saying "Mommy." And every time I think of that, I hate myself a little bit because he's not saying it to ME, and I'm the reason he's not. Don't get me wrong, I know he's in a great place; I know he has everything he could ever need and more than he could ever want. The problem is that I don't get to have him. The problem is that sometimes I miss him so much I can't breathe. The problem is that now I can't sleep because I can't stop thinking about him.

The problem is that I did the right thing.

Mostly that's what it feels like. I know that I did the right thing, for the right reasons, for the right people, but sometimes it feels like the worst thing I could have ever done. Tonight is one of those times. I miss my little boy, and I want him here with me. And that is that plain, albeit selfish, truth. The guilt of feeling like this, by the way, just compounds the grief. I should be, and am in all reality, unspeakably grateful for my son's adoptive family and for his happiness, health, and safety. But tonight I just feel like it's not fair that he's all of those things in someone else's house. I want him to be happy, healthy, and safe, and sleeping in MY arms...

I don't feel like this all the time. In fact, most of time, I can "self-soothe" with the best of them. Instead of wishing that MY life looked different with Peanut in it, I am usually grateful that HIS life is so happy, even if that means I'm not with him. I am so blessed to be the mother of such a precious little guy... sometimes I just get jealous that so many other people get to be so special to him. 

But this was the deal I made with myself when I decided to give Peanut up for adoption: I would deal with whatever messiness came with the adoption in exchange for him not having to deal with any of the messiness that would have come from me keeping him. And since the messiest his life has been so far has been when he's dumped his toys all over the floor, I know I made the right choice. And so, even when it's that last thing I feel capable of doing, I will choose to be happy about that : )

Happy Birthday, Peanut!

"You are invited to the festival of this world,

and your life is blessed."

-Rabindranath Tagore

The Graduates...

I was driving home from Castle Rock today and thinking about a graduation party I would later be attending. It was fun to think about the graduate: excited that she's finally finished with high school, about to embark on a life that she is more able to call Her Own, ready to do Something... and I started wishing I could recapture those feelings I had when I graduated from high school. Those anticipations are exciting, but I think we've all found ourselves getting bogged down in the 'exciting life' we've created for ourselves post-graduation. This got me thinking: Why can't I feel like that more often? What's stopping me? If I've learned anything over this last year, and good Lord I hope that I have, it's that we 'graduate' from life's experiences all the time. We made it through a tough project at work...graduation. We resolve an argument with a loved one...graduation. We keep our cool when we really want to lose it...graduation. When I make it through something like this, I would like to feel grateful that I made it through, a little wiser for it, and more prepared for what comes next. In other words, I would like to feel like a graduate. I want to have a little party in my mind, say "Good job, Julie!" and eat a cupcake in honor of myself. But this is not my gut reaction. My gut reaction is to be frustrated at the situation, worried that I didn't do well enough, and anxious that it will happen again. This makes me think about what I've been learning lately about the power of Intentional Thinking; that is, realizing that our thoughts do not control us, we control them. It sounds so simple, but I think this is my biggest obstacle in this area. Intentional thinking can stop us from reverting to what feels instinctual and teach us to replace it with something else. It can teach us to say "Yay!" instead of "Ugh..." and to pat ourselves on the back instead of slapping ourselves on the wrist. It's not easy, of course, and it's not quick (if it were, believe me, I would be an expert - I am AWESOME at things that are easy and quick!), but it has the potential to save me from boatloads of anxiety (Yes. My anxiety is such that it is most accurately measure in boatloads). It has the potential to make me feel excited not only about what I have already accomplished, but about the new things I will now be able to accomplish as a result. Just the thought of feeling that I've surmounted something instead of it surmounting me is enough to motivate me. So this is my goal: to hear Pomp and Circumstance each time I walk away from a challenge!

Please excuse me while I go work on changing my perspective...and get myself a cupcake : )

Mother's Day...

I would like to wish a very happy (and early) Mother's Day to all my friends who are mothers! Each one of you has tackled motherhood and its various challenges with a love and commitment that I hope to emulate.

This past Sunday I got to see my Peanut. I have to say: I am in awe of him. I'm sure all mothers feel this way (at least, I hope they do!), but I think seeing him so infrequently gives me the advantage of not getting used to that feeling. Every time I see him I am amazed and grateful all over again. This visit, however, had a bittersweet quality to it. When I arrived he had just woken up from his nap and was getting his diaper changed. I walked into his room as his mom walked out to fix him a bottle. He looked past me, out the door and started crying for his mommy. My heart just about broke as I realized that the mommy my son was crying for wasn't me. And yet, this was exactly what I hoped for when I gave him. My goal, since before he was born, was that his birth father and I would be happy extra's in Peanut's life, never essentials. But seeing that... seeing that is a very different feeling. But the rest of what I got to see that afternoon and evening more than made up for my sadness. I got to see Peanut crawl around, stand up, eat Cheerios, take a bath, and play peek-a-boo! I also got to see how hard his mom works to provide a happy, stable and loving life for Peanut and his big sister.

His mom works part time, and spends the rest of her time with her kids. She's an amazing mother: she bakes with her three-year-old daughter, plays pretend, cooks, cleans, reads, watches more kids movies than any mother should ever have to, and loves loves loves on her kids. She changes diapers, cleans up 'accidents,' and has washed chocolate syrup, eye shadow, and countless other substances out of her carpets (and her daughter's bedroom!). She is patient, kind, and endlessly loving. She is as much in awe of Peanut as I am, and believe me, that's not an easy thing to be. She is a mother who deserves far more than one day of recognition!

My own mother is another one of those. The mother that raised me is very similar to the one who is raising Peanut. We played Ice Cream Shop on the basement stairs, Barbie's, Cooking Show, and Play-Doh. As I got older she gave me invaluable advice about dating, friends, school, work... everything. She has taught me so much about what faith is, and who God is. She's the first one I want to call when I've had a good day or a bad day. She, more than anyone in my life, has doubled my joys and halved my sorrows. I owe every good decision I've ever made to the guidance she and my father gave me growing up, and I owe every narrow miss of a mistake to her wise advice. I am very grateful for her.

So, to all mothers out there... thank you for what you do! I know mother's who are struggling with everything from their children's devastating health problems to the devastating choices their teenage and adult children have made, yet they have all decided that their love is greater than their fear or frustration. They have chosen to love even when they weren't sure what that would look like; they have chosen to believe that even the injustice's they have been dealt are a worthy price to pay for being a parent; they have been brave, understanding, exhausted, frustrated, and heroic. Mothers, you deserve far more than a day for the lifetime you have spent, or will spend, doing what you do. I hope I get the chance to be a mother again; thanks to you I have a lot of women in my life to learn from, and a very high standard to live up to!

Happy Mother's Day!

: )

What's In A Name...

Naming a blog is hard work.

First, you have to think of a phrase. I completely understand if you're thinking, "Seriously, Julie. How hard can it be?" because I thought that, too. And then I had to do it. Trying to come up with a phrase that I wanted to collectively represent my thoughts was not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. No one wants to have an unintentionally cutesy title, but if you try to be too serious it sounds pretentious. It should be meaningful, but not so personal that people worry it's going to be borderline-psychotic love letters to total strangers or celebrities. Coupled with the fact that blog names are first-come-first-serve meant that any idea that I did manage to come up with was already taken. My blog account sat opened and empty for a month and a half before I did anything with it.

My inspiration eventually came from an unlikely source. I had cut the phrase 'What Love Looks Like Now' out of a magazine a few years ago, and it has been especially meaningful to me this last year-and-a-half. Ten months ago, my son was born. My beautiful, precious son who means the world to me. To say that getting pregnant had been unplanned would be like saying that a tornado is unplanned. While technically true, the phrase addresses neither the actual experience or its aftereffects. My own personal tornado had hit, and I was caught in the whirlwind with no warning. The day I found out I was pregnant, a friend of mine asked if I thought I would keep the baby or put him or her up for adoption. "Oh no," I said. "I feel like this is my responsibility, I don't think I could give my baby up for adoption..."

Famous last words : )

Peanut and I had a wonderful, if nauseous, 9 months together. The rest of my life was chaotic; deciding on adoption was a heart-wrenching decision, but I am so grateful that being pregnant gave me time that he was undeniably mine. It took a lot of time and counseling to feel like giving my son to another family was not only an act of love, but of responsibility. I felt for a long time that adoption would be absolving myself of my child, that he would think I didn't want or love him. It came as something of a shock to realize that loving my son, to the best of my ability, would mean changing what I thought love looked like. Ultimately I realized that the life I could give Peanut through adoption was the greatest act of love I can ever commit. Because of his adoption, my son now has a mom and dad who love each other and who think he is one of the two most incredible little people ever to be born. He has a big sister whom he loves, and who has fallen in love with him. He has a swing set in his backyard and more toys than his 10-month-old brain knows what to do with. He has gone to Disney Land, Sea World, Lego Land, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and he watched the SuperBowl with his dad wearing his favorite team's jersey. Adoption has given him a huge and happy life.

I feel so privileged and humbled to be a part of Peanut's story. I get to see him regularly and am unspeakably proud of him. He is happy, safe and healthy. His little heart will never be hurt by the questions that a life with me would have inevitably raised. He will never see his mommy worry about if there's enough time or money, if child support was paid on time, if his dad will come to see him...And knowing that I was able to spare him that has forever transformed what love looks like to me.

My Peanut : )

Jumping On The Bandwagon...

I have a friend who, when you tell him something about you or your life, often says: "I know, I read your blog!" As most of our friends do not actually have blogs, I can only assume this is a commentary on the emergence of blogging as a way of communicating. Like AOL's Instant Messenger, blogging seems to have revolutionized the art of bringing people even more intimately into each other's lives. This phenomenon is odd to me because while I can follow the blogs of friends from high school, I do not have to actually speak to them. They don't have to know that I follow their lives in any way. This technological intimacy has brought me closer to their lives, but not necessarily closer to THEM. It's kind of like watching a reality TV show, except that it actually is reality.

All that said...

I have jumped on the bandwagon!

I am not for a minute assuming that people have been anxiously waiting to hear my thoughts on...well, anything, but I like the idea of community and of everyone being in the mix. And anyone who knows me knows that I like to be in the mix : ) So I'm jumping on!