I am doing an abundance journal for 30 days. It was recommended by a therapist I know to help me flesh out my relationship (issues) with money. Today was day one and I already understand my relationship with money is directly related to childhood trauma in and with my adoptive family. There are no surprises there.
What I was surprised about is how easily I was able to pinpoint the moment in my life where I generated the belief that I didn't deserve money [abundance]. The belief that nice things were not for me. The belief that even if I had nice things, I would ruin them. Or, that if someone gave me nice things, I would do something stupid and ruin them. All of this from one spilled large soda.
The memory was of a trip to a tiny amusement park in the community I grew up in. My adoptive mother and her new boyfriend, a married man from our community who she would remain with until he died 28 years later, took us on this "first outing with my kids’ trip". I remember feeling sheer joy and excitement. I loved rides and he went on every one of them with me. I was hungry for a father having lost my beloved grandfather when I was three and then my adoptive father leaving shortly after.
I can remember how pretty my adoptive mother looked and smelled that day; how bright the sun was and how blue the sky. It came time to eat, and the boyfriend's love language was gift giving, so we ATE. It was the first time my mother's daughter and I got to order off the menu. He said we could have ANYTHING we wanted. I can remember my adoptive mother being palpably anxious. And the boyfriend kept saying, and this was a lifelong mantra for him, it's okay xxxxx - relax. She never relaxed and today I realized - neither have I.
I got a hot dog and fries. I can taste them. That kind of taste you cannot replicate but you can recall with ease. And I asked for a large soda. The older kid in line ahead of us had gotten one. I was about four. But, like men who have no children but want to impress one, he bought it. My adoptive mother, always anticipating my failure, didn't have to wait long. We had just sat down. And with an excited gesticulation; over it went. The hot dog, fries were swamped. My new to impress pants were soaked. And ... so was the new man. My adoptive mother was a flutter trying to dry him off yelling at me to clean up my mess. He's yelling "it's fine xxxx we will just get a new one" and "clothes wash". She grabbed my arm and snarled in my ear "this is why you don't get nice things you ruin everything".
And there is that shame - as present as the taste of that hotdog. I remember falling asleep in the car and waking up at home in my ruined clothes. And I knew I had ruined our whole day. For every outing after that for the next 15 years, not only was my adoptive mother anxious - so was I. I also think, as I unpack this, that this was the first time she was mean to me let alone physically harmful. I am not even sure that I was hit before this ... I have so few memories. I do know that she never looked that pretty or smelled that good to me again.
I want to say mothering is hard. Single mothering is harder. Dating with children is a nightmare until you get it right. And sometimes you never do. The pressure we put on mothers, especially any type of non-traditional mothering generates a kind of shame and violence that eats a mother and her children alive. I have done this violence to my own children. I also know that shame ... that shame ... is connected to money, worth, food, love, and joy for me. I don't think I ever learned, probably because my adoptive mother didn't have the capacity herself, to let go and enjoy life. There wasn't a day when I can remember her just sitting back and laughing when I was around.
This shame, and the sense that I stressed her out all the time, lent itself to something I hear adoptees talk about all the time - the realization that we are on loan and that if our genetic parents could give us away, certainly our adoptive parents could too. I am certain that had someone given my adoptive mother a way out of having to follow through with parenting me, she would have. I was the black sheep. I was a problem. I was an embarrassment. And I think she blamed me and my behavior for her issues with the boyfriend who stayed married and living with his wife until the day my adoptive mother found him dead in their house. As his intolerance of me grew, her physical and emotional abuse of me escalated.
The abuse was a team effort. They favored my adoptive parents’ genetic daughter in every way. She got gifts, toys, clothes, private high school. I got punched, kicked, and starved. They would go out for dinner and leave me home. I was ravenous. But the hunger was more than physical. When she finally let him put his hands on me ... life was unlivable. I slept with a razor under my pillow and would draw lines across my arms that would dot with blood to let some of the pain out of my skin. I did everything I could to not explode; to stay in my body. The rage, the sorrow, the scream that ran along my spine.
When they were away, I would steal food and eat until I was sick. At some point she didn't grocery shop anymore. I spent my life so hungry. I still am. It's a hunger that exists at the same time as feeling like I don't deserve to eat. I remember seeing depictions of orphans and adoptees on tv being mistreated and thinking ... this is how we are supposed to be treated. I could have been Cinderella, but I knew there was no fairy godmother coming to save me.
I remember wishing with everything I had that my real mother would come and get me. What I realize now is genetics do not a real mother make. In the darkest hours, when the cuts on my arms were more than fine lines; I imagined I deserved it. I would think that, if my real mother didn't want me, why would my adoptive mother or anyone after her. I used to think, and sometimes still do, that I must be a terrible person - why else would she have left me. Right?
The sad realities of adoption reunion are that there are so many messages and behavioral dynamics that affirm that thinking for me. I hear this from other adoptees as well. When I intellectualize it, I know it is my genetic mother's trauma and mine bumping into each other. But the broken child inside me also knows that she chose freedom and sentenced me to a pretty horrific childhood. A reality she doesn't own. "We made the decision so you could have a better life."
The only person who got that better life was her. My adoptive mother ended up divorced, living off the good-will of her mother and her married boyfriend, raising someone else’s kid. She never forgave me for what I took from her life. My genetic mother never had another child. When I first heard that it made me very sad. Now I realize she married well, traveled the world, had a huge successful career, retired young, travels 30-40 weeks out of the year, and seems to experience abundance and joy with regularity. I try not to begrudge her that. But, it is likely because she decided to relinquish me.
What I also know is that I have struggled so mightily so that she could have that life. Had she kept her child, had my grandparents helped her keep me ... her life certainly would be or have been less easily enjoyable and abundant. A reality I keep to myself. I made a different decision. The better life I wanted for my children was with me. I couldn't have imagined a better place for them to be. I was so outspoken about the violence of adoption as a teenager, they wouldn't tell me anything about my adopted-adoptive brother’s background. They tried to convince me that one of them wasn't adopted so that I wouldn't "get upset".
One of the most painful if not ridiculous things my adoptive mother ever said to me, when I confronted her about not telling my brother he was adopted, was "You would have had a better life if you had never known you were adopted, if you thought you were mine". I actually don't know that she was wrong. Being a transracial adoptee that was not an option. So, I was trapped in a death spiral with a woman, my adoptive mother, both fighting for that promise of a better life.
Neither of us ever got the relief we were looking for. My genetic mother and her family did. Adoption is violence that sows other violences, and I may not fly free of it before my life concludes. I assure you, however, that I am fighting to give my children and grandchildren lives that allow them to feel joy every day. And when they share their stories of pain, of the pain I caused them through my mothering, I listen. I want them to know that those stories matter. That they matter.
When I finally was able to choose a better life ... it was them. I chose them.
More soon...
Baby Girl