and in the news.....

Energetic Liam, 6 1/2, gets tickled by his parents Andrea (Andy)
Drouin and Hilary Bolton in their Halifax home. The same-sex couple and their
son are one of three Nova Scotia families featured in a new book Labours of
Love: Canadians Talk About Adoption.(ERIC WYNNE / Staff)

is an article about us! You may remember that we were interviewed as part of a book, Labours of Love last year. Our local feature reporter was doing a piece on the book and wanted to interview a local couple so the author asked if we would do it. I said "Sure! Why not!"

And here is the result:

http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1104030.html

Published: 2009-01-31
Love stories

Book examines complexities of adoptions in Canada but ultimately celebrates children, family connections

By LOIS LEGGE Features Writer

ANDREA Drouin knows what it’s like to be a "big secret."

So as the adoptive mother of six-year-old Liam, she tries to be as open as possible about her life as an adoptee and an adopter.

So much so that she’s among three Nova Scotia families featured in Ontario author Deborah Brennan’s recently released book Labours of Love: Canadians Talk About Adoption.

Brennan, who adopted her now-nine-year-old daughter Diana when the child was an infant, also hopes the book dispels misconceptions about a subject rife with stereotypes.

So-called open adoptions like Brennan’s and Drouin’s, which involve the birth parents having a role in the child’s life or the child at least knowing key information about the biological parents, are becoming more common.

But Brennan says openness is still lacking when it comes to adoptions, often because of fear and shame that lasts for decades.

Despite placing numerous ads and notices to gather stories for her book, Brennan still had a difficult time finding people willing to discuss their lives publicly.

She received lots of responses but many people backed away when they realized their real names and photographs would be used. Some felt they should wait until their adopted children were old enough to decide for themselves.

"To me that’s still saying there’s something wrong with it, something shameful," and that’s an attitude children often pick up on, Brennan says.

Some birth parents, many of whom chose adoption years ago with promises their identities would never be revealed, still feel the stigma today.

"My thing in writing this book is first and foremost the person that we need to think about in this equation is the adoptee. Let’s all get over our grief and let’s just try to get to the place where we acknowledge that there’s this child that needs to be taken care of."

Brennan believes being honest is the best way to take care of adoptees.

But some biological parents have resisted such moves, wanting what happened in the past to stay there.

Drouin encountered that situation with her own biological mother, a career woman who never married and gave birth to her when she was 40 and was already the mother of a seven-year-old child. Her adoptive parents told her everything they knew, but when she finally contacted her birth mother, old embarrassments and fears resurfaced.

"She had lived with the stigma in her mind of being a first parent and had never told anyone about me, not even her daughter who still lives at home, so I’m sort of that big secret so our contact is very limited," she says. "I can’t call there or email or sort of show up at the house because . . . she doesn’t want her to know about me.

"I understand her reasons for doing it; I mean, it’s a secret that she lived with for 30 years and was told at the time, you know, ‘Move on and forget, she’ll never find you and you don’t need to relive any of this.’ So to have 30 years later that myth shattered for her — that I would never find her — would be quite difficult.

"We’ve met a couple of times," adds the Halifax woman, who adopted her son with her same-sex partner Hilary Bolton. "She still lives in Ontario, where I grew up, so distance is also part of the issue. It’s almost like a clandestine affair, sometimes. I have to call when I know my sister’s not going to be home and arrange to meet when she’s going to be at work and meet in public places."

Drouin never wanted that kind of secrecy in her own parenting. So her son has met his birth mother, who has been in his life off and on. Drouin is open about her own sexual orientation and says she and her partner haven’t faced any prejudice as same-sex adoptive parents.

Brennan believes most adopted children want to know about their biological parents. But many provinces, including Nova Scotia, still refuse to give them unfettered access to records without the biological mother’s permission.

All the secrecy can be painful for the children, she says, and only adds to public misconceptions about adoption.

"Quite a few (people) are very misinformed about adoption and when they think of the word ‘adoption’ it becomes a negative connotation immediately. Well, something went wrong; a teenager had the baby; she had sex when she was too young; she was irresponsible. . . . There’s all these really big red flags that go up."

Adults often pass that along to their children, as Brennan found out one day when her daughter came home crying from school.

"Kids have said, ‘Your mother didn’t want you’ and things like that, but you see those things are far more common than people like to realize because people in the adoption community sort of keep it to themselves more. I look at adoption as kind of a layer of society that’s kind of hidden.

"The adoption records are opening up in June in Ontario and that’s going to create a lot of discussion because many birth mothers don’t want anything to do with their offspring. They have hidden this part of their lives for years and they don’t wish it to be revealed, and to me that’s simply wrong and all the secrecy around adoption has created this attitude, and it comes up at a very young age and kids get those messages from their parents. So I guess the parents need to be educated and then the kids will have a different perspective on what adoption means."

But adoption doesn’t mean things will be the same as having a biological child, says Brennan. She’s had both — 15-year-old biological son Daniel and adopted daughter Diana — and says adoptive parents face unique challenges even though "the love you feel for the child is the same."

Becoming an adoptive parent was the first obstacle for Brennan, who eventually found her child’s birth mother by placing ads in a college newspaper. But when she started trying to adopt domestically, being over 40 was a barrier and few resources existed to help her navigate the complicated and frustrating process. She hopes her book, which also includes information from professionals in the field, will serve as a guide to prospective parents while highlighting the rewards of adopting.

"They get to be parents, when they’ve wanted that for so long," says Brennan, whose book features a range of families: gay, straight; those who’ve adopted domestically and those who’ve adopted internationally.

"When people parent through adoption they feel doubly blessed."

( llegge@herald.ca)
© 2008 The Halifax Herald Limited

Day 4 and.....

NO RAYNAUD'S!

I started on a prescription for Norvasc on Monday. After suffering from primary Raynaud's for more then 7 years, I finally decided to ask my doctor for medical intervention. No amount of layering my clothes, wearing gloves and mitts or using hand warmers were working any more. I was suffering 4-5 episodes a day.

So I started on the lowest dose of Norvasc, a calcium channel blocker that is supposed to help with Raynaud's.

And boy howdy has it helped!

Even though we've had -20C temperatures the last few days that I have had to be out walking in, I haven't had a single episode. I am hopefully optimistic that this will work as a long-term solution for me, knowing that I have lots of room to increase the dosage should I start having episodes again.

Adoption talk

As a parent it is my job to teach Liam about all sorts of things. And most of this teaching is done through repetition ~ Look both ways before you cross the street, don't pick your nose, remember to say please and thank you. Other topics get repeated, just not daily ~ babies grow in their mummy's uterus, everyone dies eventually, light sabers aren't actually real.

For most topics I don't think twice about how often I repeat them. We are a car-less family who walks everywhere, so rules on how to cross the street safely may get repeated 20 times a day. When we are in a big Star Wars kick, the topic of light sabers comes up a lot. Seeing friends who are pregnant offers to the opportunity for a chat on the birds and the bees.

The struggle I have is when to bring up the topic of adoption, or more specifically, Liam's adoption. I don't want to push the topic on him if he doesn't want or need to talk about it, but I also want him to know that it's an okay topic to talk about. I will casually mention adoption in general whenever an opportunity comes up, usually using my own adoption as a conversation opener. I let Liam know that I think about my first mother, wonder how she's doing, or that I'm planning to call her because I miss her.

The opportunity to bring up his own adoption doesn't present itself very often. Our friend Sandy is pregnant and due in February, so that offers a vaulting point into conversations about how Liam grew in "K"s belly.

So last night I decided that I would bring up the topic of his adoption specifically. And tub time seemed like a good time to do it. The 2 of us alone with minimal distractions. I asked him if he thought about being adopted, or if kids at school ever asked him questions about it. He didn't have much to say about it, but did say that no one at school has ever asked him about it. The conversation morphed into having 2 Mums and not having a Dad, but how he still has a father who helped make him with "K". We've never really covered the topic of a father before, so I wanted to ensure that he didn't think he was miraculously conceived! We don't have much info on his father, but he didn't seem that interested in finding out anything at this time anyway.

He asked about his birth which led to me correcting his understanding of the process as a whole! His idea? "How do they crack the women open to get the baby out?" I cleared that one up, but did tell him that he was born by c-section. He was worried that it had hurt "K" and was relieved to hear that it didn't because she had medicine, just like he did when he had his tonsils out (I figure this was close enough, I didn't feel like explaining epidurals on top of every thing else!) During all of this I mentioned, as I've mentioned countless times before, the "K" loved him very much.

This time he asked the BIG question. If she loved him why did she give him away? (of note, we have NEVER used "give away" when we talk about adoption, so he's come to that conclusion on his own) I explained what I knew - it was not the right time for her to be a Mummy to 2 little boys (she was already raising her son "C"), she couldn't look after Liam the way she wanted to so she made an adoption plan and asked us to be his parents. After a moment of silence he declared "I don't want to talk about this anymore it's making me too sad." I acknowledge that it can be sad to think about and we moved on.

I still don't know the magic formula of how often we should talk about adoption. Do I wait for him to bring it up next? What if he doesn't? I think I will continue my approach of mentioning it casually whenever I can (but not excessively) and hope that he knows that it's an okay subject to bring up wheneve he wants.

Being Serenaded

Liam serenaded Hilary and I with this origianl tune last night:

Mummy and Mama
Sitting in a tree
I SS N I S N
Who do we appreciate?
Go Mummy!

Liam's Snow photos

Liam and I went on a walk today just so he could take pictures. It's fascinating to see what catches his eye: the trees, the power lines, the texture of the snow. He still needs to learn to stand still while he takes a picture, but he has fun!

www.flickr.com

Love Thursday

I grew up in a family that never says "I love you". I've blogged before about how I can't bring myself to say it to my Mom even now, 38 years later.

Hilary and I say it to each other all the time. We end each phone call with "I love you" and we start and stop each day with it. It even gets thrown in during the day. And it's not just saying it for the sake of saying it. It's said with feeling and truth and honesty.

So it's no wonder that Liam is growing up to include "I love you" as a big part of his day. (and as a side note: he says it to my Mom all the time and she responds with "I love you", so she is capable.)

Lately our "I love you's" with Liam have morphed into a new game. It actually started a long time ago while reading Guess How Much I Love You? For the longest time he would make up things that were as far away as he could imagine: "I love you all the way to Pluto and back and then around the world three times and over the moon." Now it's become a competition that goes like this:

Me: Good Night Liam, I love you.

Liam: Good Night Mama, I love you more.

Me: No Way! I love you the mostest.

Liam: I love you more then you love me.

This can actually go on for several minutes before I have to concede that he does indeed love me more.

It warms my heart every time.

Reopening a closed adoption

If you've spent any amount of time reading adoption boards, you have probably run into the topic of open adoptions becoming closed. Most often we are hearing about it from a first mom's point of view. How she was promised an open adoption - regular visits, updates, pictures - and how once the adoption was legally finalized, POOF, the openness is gone. No more updates, visits not being scheduled, and in some extreme cases the adoptive family has even moved, never to be found again. The first moms' are posting looking for support, ideas on how to approach the adoptive family and just a place to vent.

Occasionally you hear the adoptive parent's side of things - it's too confusing for the child, it's interrupting our life, we all need to move on. They are also posting looking for support, and depending on the type of board it is, they may very well get it. (I've personally stopped frequenting those types of boards any more because they make my blood boil.) Usually they are looking for others to help justify their actions. To me, if you need some internet stranger to help you decide if what you are doing is right, chances are, that deep down, you know it isn't. But that's just me.

As always, the one side that is not being heard from is the adoptees themselves. Now it could be that most of them are still too young to be dealing with the emotional issues of an open adoption becoming closed, since open adoptions are pretty new. Or, if their adoption was one that was closed very quickly, maybe they never knew that they were supposed to have contact with their first families and believe that theirs has always been a closed adoption. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years as these kids grow up discover the truth. What will they have to say about it?

There is another scenario that can occur, one that you do hear about, but not as often. And it is this scenario that we fall into with Liam's adoption. We, (Hilary and I, the adoptive parents) want a fully open adoption. We want visits, letters and pictures exchanged, chit-chatty phone calls or emails. This was the "plan" before Liam was born and we were working out the details with his mom. (yes we had a pre-birth match, something that if I knew what I knew today, I would never have considered)

Right after Liam was born we lost contact with her for about 4 years, re-established contact for about 1.5 years and have not heard from her in the past year. (I think I know some of the reasons for why she has stopped contact - mostly it being too hard emotionally for her.)

The struggle now is how to reach out again? We promised, as part of the adoption agreement, to send letters and pictures at a minimum of twice a year. We continue to do that and will continue to do it because that is what we agreed to. But is it fair for us to keep pushing for more contact, or to hear back from her? Are we doing it for us or for Liam? I think that right now it is for me more then anyone. Being an adoptee who has gone through reunion and all the secrets and emotional roller coasters that reunion entails, I want to protect Liam from that. Liam is mostly oblivious to adoption right now. He hasn’t brought it up on his own since last summer when he declared that he missed “K”. I wonder if he doesn’t bring it up because he is okay with it right now, or because “K” is no longer someone we communicate regularly with and he notices the absence. How much is me pushing my emotions and baggage from my adoption into his?

Are there any other adoptive parents out there in this type of situation? What have you done to overcome it? First moms – what would you suggest? How much pushing is too much?

To me, this is the grey area that would make legalizing open adoptions sticky. I wouldn’t want to be in a position of FORCING “K’ into having contact. Because really? What good would that do anyone?