Letters to My Girls

Naomi's Story: Adoption and Sisterhood

I strongly believe that certain souls are placed into your life to teach you something you need to know that is spiritually significant.  My friend, Naomi, is one such person in my life.  We worked together in the 80's in banking, where I was lucky enough to learn some very useful lessons in management from her.  She helped me to be a kinder, gentler person.  We lost touch, found each other last year on Facebook, and she now is teaching me even more about life and motherhood.  I knew she had stories to tell, so I asked her to be my first guest blogger. 

Naomi (39) lives in Illinois with her husband, John, son Jordan (16 and just started driving), and daughter Jillian (5).  She is the consummate stay-at-home-mom, with family, photography, and fitness her chief interests.  And, she has some beautiful, touching stories to tell us.  Today's story is about how adoption became a part of her life through her sisters and her children.  Check back next week to read her story of living with infertility and the loss of a child.  

Thank you, Naomi, for being my first guest blogger!  

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From as early as I was old enough to understand, I was told my oldest sister, Lainie, was adopted.  Lainie was the firstborn.  Jess and I soon followed, biological daughters of my dad and my mom.  I always knew we were different because people were always very quick to point it out….how come Lainie doesn’t have blond hair?  How come Lainie is so quiet?  Lainie must look like your dad (always the assumption made when the three of us girls were with my mom).  Jess and I were the spitting image of my mom, blond hair blue-eyed Norwegians.  Lainie had dark hair and different facial features.  As the three of us girls got older the differences became more obvious.  Lainie was a straight A student.  She was very quiet in the classroom and obedient.  Teachers loved Lainie.  Next in line was Jess.  Jess was also a straight A student and the teachers love her too,  but she was much LESS quiet in the classroom.  Back in our high school days, teachers gave a letter grade for assignments and a number grade for “respects the rights of others” and such.  Lainie always had A1’s, which meant quiet and a good listener.  Jess always got A3’s, meaning not so quiet and not a good listener unless that meant listening to gossip.  When I entered high school it was inevitable that I would get the same teachers as my sisters.  I remember one teacher saying, “So which sister are you like, Lainie or Jess?”  She said it with such hope….hoping my answer would be Lainie.  I guess my behavior modeled more closely to Lainie's and teachers were happy about that.  As I recall I had a lot of A's on my report card too, but not straight A's.   The comparisons and the questions never sat very well with me.  I always took it as some sort of dig….like the difference wasn’t good. 

As the three of us entered college and went our separate ways in the world, we followed our own paths.   As we were all in different cities and rarely got together, we weren’t compared to one another as often.  Jess and I each got married.  We both got pregnant at the same time.  We delivered our boys within 3 days of each other.  Lainie soon followed with marriage and a baby girl.  Now we were all mothers.

 After I had my son, my husband and I started trying to have another baby.   The second time it wasn’t so easy.  We found ourselves unable to have another baby and started thinking about adopting.  My first thought was, what if our child is treated differently like Lainie?  You see, growing up I always cringed when the questions would come.  It made me uncomfortable and it made me sad for Lainie.  When John and I started seriously considering adoption my first phone call was to Lainie.  As John and I were looking at  all ethnicity options of babies we might receive I couldn’t help but think of how different they might be from us.  When I called Lainie I simply asked her, “How did it make you feel when people would ask why you looked different?”  In typical Lainie fashion she said, “Well I always knew I was adopted, so to me  it was such a stupid question.  Duh.”  It truly amazed me.  What I had always seen as a jab or a dig, Lainie saw as a stupid question.   She always knew she was wanted.  She was loved.  She was part of a family.  She had parents who loved her the second she was put into their arms.  She had sisters that would be with her for life.  Suddenly having a different “birthparent” seemed so irrelevant.

Shortly thereafter John and I dove headfirst into the adoption process.  We filled out all the paperwork, usually me filling out the papers while reading aloud to John.  I recall his only hesitation.  We were filling out our preferences for a child.  I checked off ethnicities I didn’t even know existed.  John nodded or voiced a yes as I went.  We got to type of birth….I read single, check.  Twins, check.  Triplets, check!  John yelled “WHOA.”  That seemed to be his only concern.  We did the FBI background check, home study, and fingerprints.  We made a book of pictures and descriptions of our family, why we thought we would make a good adoptive family.  The first week of July we received a letter from the adoption agency saying all our paperwork was done and we were ready to be “shown” to birthmothers.  The last week of July we got a call from the agency….a birthmother had chosen us.  I remember being overjoyed and just knew this was meant to be!

Jillian Faith was born November 17^th.  John, Jordan and I flew to Florida the day she was born.  When we arrived at the hospital, we went straight to our birthmother’s room.  We all took turns holding Jillian, staring at her, crying with joy.  When our adoption coordinator told us it was time to leave, my heart sank and I cried.  The birthmother had until the next day to change her mind.  We went back to the hotel and waited.  The next afternoon, we got the call to come pick up our daughter at the hospital.  We couldn’t get there fast enough.  The nurses took us through everything that I remembered going through when I left the hospital 10 years before with Jordan.  It still didn’t seem real.  Did we really get to leave the hospital and bring this perfect little life with us? 

We did!  As I write this I am trying to think when Jillian became ours.  Was it always written this way?  From the first phone call from the agency, she seemed like my daughter.  Was it our first meeting with her birthmother when she said she would trust us to raise her birth child?  Was it during the last couple months of her pregnancy when I dreamt about when this baby would come, what she would look like, what our first moments together would be like?  Was it the first time I held her in the hospital?  Was it when we left the hospital as a family of four?  I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I do know that Jillian was meant to be my daughter and I was meant to be her mom, the same as Jordan was meant to be my son and I was meant to be his mom.  I see no difference between them, no distinction of biological and adopted.  Maybe that is why Lainie never saw the questions as an issue….she was raised not thinking there was any difference between adopted and biological and that everyone looks different.  That is what makes us each unique and wonderful in our own way.

We talk about Jillian being adopted.  She knows we brought her home from the hospital when she was one day old.  Jillian understands as much as she can at 5 years old that she was in another woman’s belly. She knows that her birthmother gave her to us because she thought we would be the perfect family for her.  We certainly don’t talk about it everyday.  But I want Jillian to be aware of it, to know it is part of her story, to understand that being adopted is a great thing.  That way when the questions come, the differences are pointed out, she can embrace it and tell her story just like Lainie always has.  No big deal.  I’m different because I am me.  Adopted or not, isn’t that the best lesson we can all learn?  Embrace the fact that what makes you different, what sets you apart, what some people criticize and fault,  are the same amazing things that make you you!  Nobody else in the world is just like you?  That is a wonderful thing!

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Have a question or comment for Naomi?  Write us in the comments section below and Naomi will answer! 

High Maintenance? Are You Kidding Me?

If I hear the words "high" and "maintenance" used in a sentence together ever again I might just explode like a firecracker.  Errr, I guess I already did that once this year. 

We use the HM phrase to refer to the behavior or personality traits of human beings.  It's one of those terms that seems to easily define complex people who have needs or standards that are hard to meet.  And, we are all about easily defining others. 

A friend of mine recently used this term to frame a description of herself as she related to others.  I can't remember the exact phrase, but she was basically saying that if I believed certain things about her, then the only conclusion I could believe was that she was "high maintenance." 

Unfortunately for my friend and for our friendship, the explosion was deafening. 

My anger at her partly resulted from feeling she was not only dead-wrong about herself, but for an incredibly intelligent, educated, and savvy woman, her reasoning skills seemed to have flown out of a very large hatch that opened at the top of her brain.  Her behavior was juvenile and self-destructive. 

I admit I also felt insulted. How could she disrespect herself so much as to pull out those words to describe what I found to be a lovely entanglement of admirable qualities she had nurtured over the years?  What could she possibly gain from offering a closed-ended ultimatum to someone who had absolutely no intention of defining her in such base terms? 

I think I sputtered out something like, "I couldn't care less about whether you're high maintenance or not.  We aren't in a barnyard."  Bad, I know. 

What I hope my girls can gain from my friend's mistake is to respect their wild intricacies and not spend a bunch of time defining themselves, either to themselves or to others.  Also, give friends respect by trusting they will admire you, if not understand you. 

Now, what can I learn from my own mistake? I'll go to bat for a good friend - even if it's against him- or her-self.  I may just need to curb my enthusiasm. 

   

Changed For the Better...Spiritual Connections in Friendship.

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return.

 

Stephen Schwartz

"For Good"

 

Dear Daughters:

 

You've heard these lyrics a number of times since I discovered this song from the musical Wicked a few months ago.  This song came into my life at an opportune moment - one in which I was pondering how very important friendships have become to me.  I often think that songs come into my life in a very spiritual way, seemingly drifting along at just the time to make full impact, the message being, "Pay attention, Lorie.  There's something here for you to learn."

 

I want to share with you another spiritual thing about my life in hopes that you also have this experience - and enjoy it to its fullest. 

 

There are a dozen or so people I've met in my lifetime who have made a significant positive and lasting impact on my life.  I can picture each one of their faces, and bring their names to mind instantly.  It's as though each has his or her imprint on my soul.  It's not that I haven't met lots of people who made a difference - I'm talking about those who absolutely changed me. 

 

I'm not sure I can describe adequately what happens when you meet such a person.  It's interesting to me that several of these folks have spent very little direct time in my life, but have had the most percussive effect. Finding it is like tuning into a radio station that suddenly becomes crystal clear in its sound.  It's a level of knowing, of faith, of existential certainty. 

 

If you read this as a teenager or young woman, you might wonder if I'm talking about being in love.  The answer is no.  This isn't the type of connection you have when you crush or feel giddy around an attractive person, nor is it the "soul mate" experience you may have with someone you love.  I'm talking more about a feeling that you have some deep understanding of another human being, that he or she is a representation of something greater than you can define, and who you feel is absolutely meant to be there. 

 

I'm a parent first, and while I want you to know that this may happen to you, I also want you to know that the initial outcome isn't always positive.  You may feel drawn to a person, but still feel hopelessly unable to connect at any social level.  Or, perhaps this person is a teacher (as several are for me) and while you want desperately to meet his expectations of you, you occasionally disappoint him with your efforts, only knowing much later in life that it's the recognition (and correction, of course) of that failure that counts. 

 

You might even feel as though someone you meet has been a part of your life for all eternity, and that your relationship is meant to correct some unapparent wound of a soul from a past life or existence. 

 

These encounters aren't always lengthy or complex.  You may have one thing to learn from someone and that may be all there is.  You may have this experience and not even know it until years later. 

 

It's not always easy to identify these people in your life.  You become more skilled at it as you gain experience with relationships and social situations.   Try not to look for it, but once you find that connection and know it's true, bask in it.  Take full advantage of the moments you have.  Learn.  Give.  And, know that even if the physical presence of that human being doesn't remain, the spiritual significance will, your whole life. 

 

I hope you both open yourselves up to this concept and have many such experiences.  I hope you perform the same role for others in your lifetime, and recognize when you are the one who has something to teach another. 

 

With all my love,

Mommy