A parent (client) told me recently, “Motherhood is an endless series of opportunities to feel bad about yourself.” She said it flippantly and we laughed. Today I thought, “Adoption is an endless series of opportunities to feel like you are having a psychotic break.”
Like early adolescence when your emotions and hormones change second-to-second, I do not know how I’m going to feel hour to hour. It’s been almost a year since we started this process.
Last week, a birth mother “picked” us. In the insanity of this roulette wheel, I did not make time to post about our enthusiasm, trepidation, and guarded optimism when we thought we might be parents in April (!!!). So many things happened between then and now, it hardly seems worth mentioning.
Today, our agency called us to tell us that the expectant mother had been working with multiple agencies and multiple families simultaneously.
We had talked to her daily, for at least an hour a day, for the past week. I am not here to wax poetic about grief; we hardly have any. It has been such a short time. And I am more than fully aware that a birth/expectant/first (or whatever your term of choice) mother’s journey is not easy. We do not believe that we had any “rights” to her child. And whoever she is, whatever she is going through, I can honestly say that I do wish her the best.
Nonetheless, what we have come to learn about this woman leaves us guarded, confused, frustrated, tired, and (at times) paranoid. I am not sure why she picked us. I am not sure why she lied to us about working with at least one other family at the same time. I am not sure why she lied to her partner (supposedly) about having picked us. Yet, all of this seems defensible to me– it is a scenario I cannot imagine. But then, at the end of the day, I cannot come up with any reason why, after our agency contacted her and said they would no longer work with her, that she would continue to communicate with us as if nothing had happened. I am not sure she was even pregnant.
There is no tidy conclusion to this; just the ongoing insanity of it all. The frustration, sadness, and humiliation of having to go back and “untell” everyone that we told, “unmake” the arrangements.
We go back to waiting.
Some Supervision Required. 