National Adoption Awareness Month- 2020 Style

November is National Adoption Awareness Month and I've been carefully thinking about how and where I show up to the conversation. It was in the daily challenges the world is facing in a pandemic and a friends Facebook post that got my mind spinning and I was like... YES, that's how it is. Kind of.
My friend's mother had been placed in a memory care unit earlier this year as her Alzheimer's had progressed.  What was a difficult decision then, became even heavier with grief as Covid struck. They were told they could no longer visit their mother. They could talk to her over the phone but that was it. They've seen holidays and birthdays pass where they cannot physically be with their loved one. My friend had shared on her mothers birthday, that this was the first birthday they had not been able to spend together.

I've read about grandparents who desperately want to see their grandbabies during this horrible lockdown. They've had to be creative with Zoom calls, visits between a glass window and I've even seen them go as far as to hang plastic sheeting with arm cutouts so they can wrap their arms around those babies. It breaks your heart!

As Thanksgiving and Christmas approaches, we are collectively feeling the ache thinking about who will NOT be at the dining room table. We're desperate for connection and to look at the calendar and see important dates is depressing knowing they won't be the same without our people. Without our mothers, fathers, friends, our children.

2020 is HARD!

But now I want you to imagine that its not months or even a year you've been separated. Maybe you wonder if it's for forever and you have no control over the situation.
​No amount of washing your hands, wearing a mask, keeping 6 feet apart or staying home will bring you closer to being together. Imagine the years going by, birthdays, holidays and milestones and all you want to do is wrap your arms around those babies. You'll even hang up protective, plastic sheeting. Except in adoption terms it means you're willing to jump through the hoops and follow every single rule the adoptive family puts into place. You'll except any visit they may allow. Ok, only letters and photos. I understand. They want to decrease the amount of interaction because it's getting too hard. Or maybe you've been cutoff completely and you're clinging to hope they will find you one day. Sure, sure, sure. I'll hug through the plastic sheeting if I must.

When your only choice is to close your eyes and let someone else take the wheel to the most important parts of your heart you go to desperate dark feelings. As an adoptee it had me making up stories in my mind of being unloved, unwanted and unworthy. It made me in a constant state of SEARCHING. Searching for self worth. Searching for love. Searching for identity and searching for anyone and everyone to say I won't leave you.

As a birthmother I can only imagine what desperate places her mind went, and I think of how we are feeling right now through this awful pandemic. Hopeless, scared, anxious for the future and desperate to find our way back to one another.

Adoptive parents, I understand that not all go into these adoption agreements and then suddenly go back on their word to stay connected. In fact I know some of you are desperately trying to keep that connection and the failure isn't because of anything you've done or not done to keep it going. I just also know the other side all too well and have heard it way too many times to not talk about it.

Some would argue that while they understand why these pandemic precautions have been put into practice, they also wonder if the heartache isn't just as dangerous. Hear me when I say this. I am in no way saying to not take the pandemic precautions seriously. Wear the masks for crying out loud. Social distance and be compassionate to others by doing your part. 

But also pay attention to the ache of being separated from our loved ones and consider what might be temporary for some, is actually a life sentence for others. Pain is pain. No one upping here. Just an invitation to be keenly aware to the many ways the world can wound and heal us. Let us be human together and go into Adoption Awareness Month with a willingness to explore new ideas, hear from a point of view we haven't lived, and do at least as much listening as we do speaking. There will be triggers this month to work through, but I'm prepared to show up, lean in, speak when I must, and take a quiet spot in the audience when needed. The art of paying attention is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves and one another.