Adoption Hopes Dashed, Rekindled

One day, you meet a young couple in a hotel room, and they tell you all about their hopes for their daughter, hopes of her escaping poverty and drug addiction and family dysfunction. And they choose you for their baby's family.  They text you as soon as their doctor schedules the delivery, and you fly there and set up camp.  They invite you to try hospital to meet the baby, and she's beautiful. You hold her.  You feed her.  They let you meet with the pediatrician.  But their families don't like the plan.  They promise to help. And the grief and reality set in for the parents.  And three days after the baby is born, they decide against adoption after all.  You cry in your hotel, and you hold each other, and you start looking for plane tickets home, and you take back the diapers and the wipes and the formula you bought thinking the baby would be discharged to you that day.  But this isn't your baby.

And another day, a young woman you've come to care about is telling you how excited she is for the baby to meet her big brother, referring to your son.  She's been talking to you for ages.  She chose you months ago.  She's using your name for the baby and texting you with updates every few hours. A few days later, the baby is born, and you buy plane tickets in the dead of night.  You know something is wrong as soon as the phone rings, because it's six in the morning, and you are in the driveway loading your luggage into a cab to go to the airport.  Your social worker's tone makes your stomach drop.  Things are starting to look dicey.  You head to the airport anyway, not knowing what else to do with limited information.  At the gate, you learn it's really over.  And you are at the airport with your son, and your checked luggage is full of baby stuff.  But you can't cry, because you're in the middle of the airport.  So you send a nice text to the young woman wishing her the best, knowing she'll never reply, knowing she's already unfriended you on Facebook.  And you hold it together somehow, because what else are you going to do?  And your son asks you if you want a snuggle, and you thank God for him as you say, "Yes, please." You thought you were on your way to meet his sister.  But this isn't your baby, either.

Adoption is not the the faint of heart.

We adopted our son about 5 years ago in a domestic open adoption, and we've been waiting to adopt child number two for the last two and a half years.  We recently suffered our second "hospital unmatch."  That's what it's called when a mother makes an adoption plan with a family during the pregnancy but changes her mind in the hospital after the baby is born.  On the one hand, I try to rejoice in the fact that a child gets to be raised by his or her family of origin.  I am glad that parents have the time to change their minds about adoption after the birth.  Anything else would be monstrous.  On the other hand, I grieve for our dashed hopes.  I grieve for the fear we now feel of continuing to pursue adoption to grow our family.

It is hard not to get your hopes up during a match with an expectant mother, especially since you have to be prepared to take a baby home if the adoption proceeds.  That's a lot of onesies and swaddles to wash without getting excited about the baby.  And it's hard to face the idea of endangering your heart again after it has been broken.  Twice.  It's hard to believe that you'll ever adopt a baby when a mother who sounded so certain of her decision to place her child for adoption during the pregnancy finds herself so uncertain after the baby is born.  If it weren't for our son, I'd have a hard time believing adoptions ever really happened.  Sometimes I look at the pictures of the other families using our agency, people whose adoptions seem to have gone so smoothly, and I wonder, why not us?

So, we grieve and we try to decide whether or not to throw our hats back in the ring.  Perhaps we should be grateful for what we have and accept that our family of three is pretty great as it is. Perhaps we should be happy with the chance to chase other dreams that a newborn baby would forestall or delay.  Perhaps our money and our emotional energy would be better spent elsewhere.

Or . . . perhaps we should remain open to the possibility that we might be the right family for some baby out there in the ether, even knowing that it might not ever happen for us.  Perhaps we should leave that door open and continue to live in uncertainty.

This is incredibly cheesy, and I hate to admit it, but I was quite touched by a pop song I heard in the car on the way home from the airport after our latest adoption heartbreak. Music often helps me come to terms with weighty emotional issues.  Maybe not usually music from a European house producer, but desperate times.  The song is Avicii's "Waiting for Love, and these are some of the lyrics:

Where there's a will, there's a way, kinda beautiful

And every night has its day, so magical

And if there's love in this life, there's no obstacle

That can't be defeated

Monday left me broken

Tuesday I was through with hoping

Wednesday my empty arms were open

Thursday waiting for love, waiting for love

Thank the stars it's Friday

I'm burning like a fire gone wild on Saturday

Guess I won't be coming to church on Sunday

I'll be waiting for love, waiting for love

To come around

You can watch the video here.

When our social worker called us to tell us everything was falling apart . . . in that moment, trying to hold myself together in front of my son and an airport full of strangers, I certainly felt broken.  In the following days, I couldn't face the prospect of continuing to hope, because as far as I could see, hope only brought pain.  As the weeks pass, I'm starting to think maybe I could open my arms again.  

Maybe.  Maybe we can keep waiting for love.

A.M. Manay is a writer and stay-at-home mom whose new novel, She Dies at the End, is available on Amazon Kindle. Her family is once again waiting to adopt. View their profile here, and please feel free to share.

The rosary and the ties that bind, or religious imagery in vampire fiction

There is some religion in my first book. I hope it isn't an obnoxious amount. Because the main character spends the whole story facing the issue of her own mortality (spoiler alert?), it seemed only natural to me that issues of faith and spirituality would surface from time to time. My protagonist, like most of us, wants very badly to believe that her life has a purpose and that God will protect her, even as she doubts God's existence and benevolence.

I'm a Presbyterian these days, but I grew up Roman Catholic. And not just a little bit Catholic: I went to Catholic school K through 12. I taught Sunday school and sang every week at mass. There are many aspects of Catholicism that I still miss, even though I left the Church for what I think are good reasons. My Catholic upbringing certainly still affects my spiritual outlook. One of the things I still miss and that continues to have an important influence on me and my writing is the rosary.

Protestants tend to frown on the rosary. The think it's about worshiping Mary, which it isn't, not exactly. Catholics do revere Mary as the Mother of God. We ask her to pray for us. The rosary is part of the rhythm of life when you are Catholic. When times are tough, there's a rosary in your pocket to remind you that God is with you. There is a meditative quality about praying the rosary that is largely absent in a mainstream Protestant spiritual life. The beads add to the centering quality of the ritual: the feel of them, the noise of them clacking against one another, the counting of the repeated prayers. It also fills the need many of us feel for a more feminine spiritual presence in a religion dominated by male authority and male imagery.

In my novel She Dies at the End, the main character, November, carries a rosary that belonged to her grandmother. She doesn't consider herself particularly religious, and she feels a lot of anger toward God, but she still carries it in her pocket. It is her touchstone, a tangible symbol of love and family as well as spirituality.

There is one scene in which November, in a moment of extreme desperation, uses the rosary as a weapon. It occurs to me that some of my readers might find that episode troubling or offensive, and I want to assure you that was not my intention. Rather, I meant it to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual armor many of us who are religious need in order to withstand the slings and arrows of our lives. You know, like one of those metaphor type deals. Yeah, I'm pretty deep. It's okay if I'm blowing your mind.

Moreover, the story of Mary is the ultimate example of a strong woman who accepts a heavy burden for the good of the human race, much like other heroes both fictional and historical. Then there's the motherhood aspect of the Blessed Mother: November has lost her earthly mother, but she can still turn to a spiritual mother in her moments of distress.

None of us will get into a fight to the death with a super-powered fairy in a gas station bathroom (well, I certainly hope not), but we all have moments of desperation, and when they hit, I still find myself saying a Hail Mary or clutching a rosary. It seemed fitting that November would do the same.

Read my book! She Dies at the End, available exclusively on Amazon Kindle.

Can I get that novel with soy milk?

I love to write and edit at Starbucks. I know it's a waste of money. I know I should prefer my local independent artisanal hipster fair trade coffee shop, man, but that's a fifteen minute drive and has questionable WiFi. There are few things I enjoy more than pulling out the laptop or tablet at the closest Starbucks, setting it up next to a caffeine and sugar delivery system, and getting down to work. So why do I love it so much?

1) I have a terrible sweet tooth

I love sugar. I love carbs. By a stroke of genetic luck, I'm still skinny. Of course, I also have Lupus, so maybe that wasn't really a winning ticket in the genetic lottery after all. Anyway, I try not to go too overboard (only two pumps of sweetener, please), but I do love a scone or chocolate croissant to go with my creativity. I had a green smoothie for breakfast, so it's cool, right?

2) Home is too distracting. Starbucks is just distracting enough.

Starbucks may be bustling, but there's no laundry to do there. No dishwasher to empty. No dinner to prep. No bills to pay. No garbage cans to roll to the curb. No children's torn clothes to mend. No floor to sweep. There is just me, the computer, my characters, and a bunch of strangers who won't bother me. The music and people coming and going are just the right amount of background stimulation for me.

3) My local Starbucks is the best

No, for real. Starbucks #6532 is the best one I've ever been to, and it's less than half a mile from my house. The drinks are always perfect. The people are super nice, and they are really good at their jobs. The place is always clean, including the bathrooms. The music is never too loud. The parking lot isn't too crazy. The WiFi always works. They've never poisoned my dairy allergic child. Pretty much the perfect Starbucks experience every time.

4) Seeing/Spying on my fellow humans

Being a stay-at-home mom can be isolating. So can being a writer. Thus, I find being around other adults energizing even if we're not interacting all that much. Also, people do an interesting variety of things at Starbucks: dates, job interviews, meetings, catching up with friends, snacks with the kids, etc. It's kind of fun to see what other people are up to, and it's all grist for the inspiration mill.

I suppose I will continue being a cog in the corporate machine and do a fair bit of my creating at the neighborhood Starbucks. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs, so I guess a frappuccino and a petite vanilla scone or three isn't the end of the world.

Read my novel, She Dies at the End, available for on Amazon Kindle.

Sick Day Reflections

Here are a few moments of gratitude resulting from my child's recent (minor) illness.

1) Thank goodness for my husband

My dear husband fetched Gatorade.  He got me two hours to myself outside the house when my cabin fever set in.  He got up at 2 am to dose the child.  He got me naps.  He entertained Mr. Cranky McFeverpants.  MVP right here.

2) Thank goodness for the DVR and YouTube and smartphones

Those screentime limits go out the window when the thermometer hits 103.  Yay for having hours of cartoons stored away and/or available on the internet.  Chromecast for the win.

3) Thank goodness for pharmaceuticals

Motrin and Tylenol: two great tastes that taste great together.

4) Thank goodness for plumbing and running water

Stomach bug.  Enough said.

5) Thank goodness for the Target dollar section

That last day, when they're mostly better but can't go to school yet, those cheap art projects and activity books are lifesavers.  Yay for stickers and coloring and card games.

6) Thank goodness for snuggles

Snuggles are the best medicine, for caregiver and sick one alike.

Of course, all of these things I'm grateful for have something in common: they rely on my husband's employment.  He has the kind of job that allows him to run by Rite Aid during lunch or go into work a little late without getting in trouble.  He has the kind of job where he makes enough money that I can run to get him from school the moment a virus rears its ugly head, stay home and snuggle with him as much as he wants, and keep him home as many days as necessary.  My husband makes enough money that I can grab some fun stuff from the store just because and not worry.  He has the kind of job that has good family health insurance.  And I am beyond grateful.

I am acutely aware of the fact that this is not most people's reality.  That's why we need things like paid sick days (shout out to my cousin at PathwaysPA), the Affordable Care Act, and a decent minimum wage.  Being able to care for your sick children shouldn't be a luxury of the few.

Baltimore Uprising: True and False Conclusions Drawn from this Week

People are drawing a lot of conclusions from recent events in Baltimore.  Let's examine a few, shall we?

True Conclusions

Decriminalize drug possession already

A huge amount of police harassment occurs over checking people for drugs.  The drug war destroys lives and does nothing to actually help people not do drugs.  It makes money for police departments and private prisons and serves no other useful purpose.  It gives police a reason to harass people who live in low income neighborhoods.  And I'm pretty sure being a police officer would be safer and more rewarding if we ended the war on drugs and they could spend their time helping people instead of effing people up over an ounce of weed.

Our justice system is fucked up beyond belief

Literally.  White people and people with money don't believe how fucked up it is.  Police and prosecutors are incentivised to make as many arrests and get as many convictions as possible no matter how penny ante they are, no matter whether or not it makes people safer.  Private prisons make a mint off of small time drug offenders.  Black people are more likely to be charged with resisting arrest for the same behavior as white people who aren't charged, more likely to be prosecuted for the same crimes than white people. Cities balance their budgets with exorbitant fines extracted from the poor rather than raising taxes on people who can afford it.  Protesters are held for two days without charge, in crowded cells, with no access to food or water or lawyers.  It is a right mess, and police and local governments need some real oversight.

The people of Baltimore care about their city

They care enough to protest, and they care enough to clean up the mess when it gets out of hand.  They care enough to try to find ways to feed and care for their children when the city cancels school for a bunch of kids on free breakfast and lunch.  They care enough to speak truth to power when the cable news tried to peddle bullshit.  They care enough to try to prevent violence between police and protesters.  

The people who run Baltimore are bad decision makers

I know, let's shut down public transit right when kids get out of school and meet a bunch of teenagers with cops in riot gear.  That can only end well.  Oooh, and let's let drunken sports fans mix with protesters.  Sounds fun.  And I sure am glad we didn't buy body cameras for our police a while back.  Jesus Christ.

Half the people (at least) on Facebook are hypocrites

Why don't the looters take personal responsibility for their own neighborhoods?  Well, why don't the cops take personal responsibility for killing someone for the crime of pissing them off?  Why don't they take responsibility for breaking someone's neck and failing to call the paramedics?  

But, looting isn't the right way to protest!  Oh, did you miss the week of peaceful protests before the riots started? Of course you did. Before they started breaking stuff, you didn't even know who Freddie Gray was because the media figured they couldn't make enough money off of telling you about it until there were sirens and fires and ghettos to make fun of.  I'm not pro destruction.  I'm not pro lost jobs and pro grandma not getting her pills because the CVS burned down.  I don't like it, but I sure as hell can understand it.  If you don't understand it, it's because you don't want to.

A person is smart.  A person is moral and kind.  Mobs are destructive.  They have been ever since there were enough people on the planet to make one.  Take a group of people with nothing to lose and do something that fills them with anger, and had things happen.  That isn't due to race.  That's just human nature.  Maybe our society should make sure even the poorest of us have something to lose and something to live for.

But white people don't do this kind of thing.  The Black community needs to condemn the violence.  Oh, like the white community condemns the violence when white kids riot after they lose and/or win a basketball and/or football and/or baseball game?  Or when one of us shoots up a school or movie theater?   Oh, I forgot, only Black people represent the entirety of their race when they break the law.  Our criminals are crazy, and theirs are symptoms of social pathology.  And the French and Russian revolutions don't count.

Some police need to learn better coping skills

We cannot continue to give police a pass on brutality, a pass on killing unarmed people who pose no threat to them.  I realize being a cop is dangerous and difficult, but they need to be held to a higher standard.  There are a lot of jobs more dangerous than being a policeman, and we don't give the people who do them a get-out-of-jail-free card.  Donny killed somebody?  Oh, but he's a crab fisherman, so it's cool. Mark ran a guy over with his garbage truck in a fit of road rage?  Well, shit happens.  That guy should have stayed on the sidewalk.

You know who manages to deal with mouthy, uncooperative young people in large groups all day long without laying a finger on them?  Teachers.  Somehow we manage without a gun or a taser.  Some of those kids even smell like weed and swear at us and have criminal records, but by some miracle, we all get through the day alive.  And we get paid a hell of a lot less than cops.

  

If you can't deal with assholes all day without losing your temper, don't become a cop.  That's the job.  

False Conclusions

Protesters are anti-police and want cops to get hurt

Most proteseors don't want police to get hurt on the job.  Most people know there are good police and appreciate what they do for society.  What people are against is a culture in many police departments of dehumanizing the very people they are supposed to protect and serve.  What people are against is the refusal to address the biases that permeate our society, implicit racism that teaches all of us, cops included, to be terrified of young Black men to the point of killing them even when they don't pose an actual threat.  Being anti police brutality doesn't make you anti police officer.

Black moms need to beat their kids more

Oh, yeah, if those looters had been smacked around some more, there wouldn't have been any riots.  Riiight.  More violence, that's the ticket.  You know what else would prevent riots?  The police not killing people for no reason and then doing their best to evade responsibility for it.  

And all those people in prison? It's totes because their moms only gave them timeouts or took away their toys or their allowance when they acted up.  If only they had beaten their children.  Oh, my bad, almost everyone in prison received corporal punishment as kids.

And let's not even bring up how much slavery and Jim Crow play into corporal punishment in the Black community.

If you don't run and don't fight, you'll be fine.

Running from the cops is not a capital offense.  Neither is resisting arrest.  Neither is mouthing off to the cops.  It's foolish, sure.  You know who tends to make foolish decisions?  Young people and frightened people.  People with mental health issues and people in altered states.  You know who should have better judgment?  Adult, professional police officers trained to deal with stressful situations.

Also, there are plenty of dead people who neither ran nor resisted arrest and were killed by police anyway.  I love how we're apparently supposed to treat the police with the level of caution usually reserved for wild dogs, but it's the protestors who are called animals.

This will never happen to your Black son, because you are raising him right (unlike all those Black parents)

I am raising him right.  He's smiling and friendly and kind.  He yes sirs and no sirs and pleases and thank yous with the best of them.  He never gets in trouble at school.  He already has a college fund.  He already knows not to take his hands off the wheel.  He knows to wear his hood down.  He knows not to run from the police.  He knows not to break the law.  He is 5 years old, and everyone loves him.  Am I reducing the odds something bad will happen to him?  I certainly hope so.  Is it foolproof?  Hell no.

When he gets old enough to go somewhere by himself, my white privilege isn't going to cover him anymore.  And when he's a teenager, he may go through a rebellious stage, like a lot of kids.  He may go through times of looking like an angry black kid instead of a happy one.  White kids get to go through phases like that.  They get to make mistakes of youth.  They get to swear and smoke weed and dress poorly and put stupid pictures on Facebook and act generally like idiots and still be "good kids with a bright future ahead of them."  Black kids should be able to do the same without having to worry about getting shot for it.

And the implication that I am necessarily a better parent because I'm white and married someone with earning power is racist and classist, and I don't want to hear it.

Marathons

I go to church in Oakland, and yesterday, the Oakland Marathon ran right past our side lawn.  The pastor made good use of this fact in her sermon.  Marathons make good metaphors.  One thing she mentioned is that long-distance runners hate when spectators tells them that they're "almost there" when there are still miles to go.  Those final miles, in fact, are the hardest and most painful, and the runners are not "almost there."

Right now, this feels like the story of my life.  I feel like I'm on so many long-distance journeys, and I'm starting to feel it,  I'm trying to finish my first novel and get it epublished before summer, and I have so few hours in the week to devote to it that it seems like it will never get done,  And then I get to thinking about the sequel and when I'm going to find time for that, and I'm overwhelmed.  Then there's the Lupus, which is a journey that will probably never be over, and right now, I'm in the hills, hoping for some flat stretches around the corner.  Then there's our effort to adopt a second child, a process that began over two and a half years ago.  Even when we do match with an expectant mom, those last days of waiting and hoping and not knowing are brutally long, and you don't feel "almost there" until you're sitting in a hotel room looking at a baby with a dumbfounded look on your face.

So when I limp by and you give me some water, please don't tell me that I'm "almost there."  Just remind me that I'm looking good and that I can do it.  I'll do the same for you.  ;-)

Arkansas Re-homing Atrocity

This story has pretty much all the triggers, fyi.

Sometimes adoptions get "disrupted" after finalization.  There are cases when it is in a child's best interest that he or she join another family because their current one cannot meet their needs.  This tends to happen to older children with extremely difficult-to-handle emotional and behavioral problems.  Sometimes the family wasn't honestly informed about the child's issues pre-adoption, and the child poses a significant physical danger to to others in the household.  Sometimes disruption is done with the supervision of professionals, and the child goes to a family with a valid home study where the parents have been trained to help a child with severe issues, or they go to a residential treatment program for those with mental illnesses.  It is always a tragedy, but sometimes is a tragedy with the transition conducted in a responsible, loving manner.  This post is not about one of those times.

"Re-homing" is a term used in the adoption community when parents simply give their adopted child or children to another family, often with minimal vetting and no supervision by any sort of adoption professionals or governmental agency.  They just sign over guardianship and wash their hands of a child they no longer want in their house.  It's a horrible practice that leads to lots of abuse and trauma for the kids, as you might imagine.  It's something most people never would consider doing if they had a bio kid with difficulties rather than an adopted one.

In Arkansas, a state legislator (R-Crazytown) named Justin Harris adopted two little girls, age 2 and 4 at the time. The elder one had been sexually abused in the family of origin.  Mr. Harris and his wife were allegedly informed of the child's emotional issues.  They were, in fact, strongly discouraged from adopting the children by the girls' foster family and by various social workers who felt that the couple were not equipped to handle their needs.  They ignored this advice, because Jesus, or something?  Anyhow, they adopted the girls against advice, allegedly by exerting pressure on the head of DHS, whose budget Mr. Harris just happens to oversee on his legislative committee.

After about a year of doing things like locking the older girl in an empty room for hours at a time and conducting exorcisms failed to heal her trauma (shocker, I know), they turned the girls over to some guy who used to work for them-- at their government funded super-Christian preschool, natch.  New dad promptly began raping the older girl, and he is now in prison.  The girls are now apparently doing okay in yet another new family.  Mr. Harris, of course, blames everyone but himself and his wife for this horror show.

Adoptions that go terribly awry tend to do so because best practices are ignored by agencies and hopeful adoptive parents.  For some reason, this seems to happen more frequently in a certain part of the Evangelical community that is really into promoting adoption and large families.  Most of these situations could be prevented if people would simply do proper research, listen to people who know what they are talking about, think things through, and not take parenting advice from wingnuts,  I don't just blame the adoptive parents in these situations.  Many of them have the best of intentions when they decide to adopt.  Agencies and DHS need to do more to stop bad placements.

Reasons I think you should not adopt an older child with a history of trauma or other special needs

1)You think love is enough.

Everyone wants to believe that love is enough to heal a broken heart.  It isn't.  Love is necessary but not sufficient.  You also need knowledge and professional help to assist a traumatized child in recovering, attaching, and learning to thrive.

2)  You think you can pray it away.

I go to church every week.  I pray every day.  But God gave us brains so we can use them.  We have psychologists.  Go to one who specializes in adoption and trauma.  You can pray all you want in the car on the way there.

3)  You already have a boatload of small children

High needs kids need lots of attention in order to recover.  That is kind of their whole bag.  There are only 24 hours in the day.  You think God will make a way?  Maybe his way is another family with fewer demands on the primary caregiver's time and energy.

People act like there is no way to foresee that a mom home-schooling five other kids under the age of 12 can't handle a 4-year-old with an emotional problem or a health issue that requires four doctors' appointments a week.  Anyone who has a grip on reality can see that train wreck coming.  It isn't fair to the new child nor to the ones you already have.  Why do agencies let people do this?

4)  You're adopting out of birth order

Do not adopt a special needs 3-year-old when you have or are expecting a new baby.  That high-needs kid needs to be the center of attention for at least a couple of years.

5) You have an authoritarian parenting style

I'm not saying you can't have rules and structure in your home.  I'm saying if unquestioning obedience and submission to authority is what you require of your children, a child with a trauma history is not a good idea for you.  Quite frankly, I think it's a terrible idea with any kid, but with a traumatized kid, it is a disaster.

You can't punish kids into forming healthy attachments.  You can't use the rod to make them trust you.  You certainly can't regularly lock them in a room all alone with no toys or books for hours on end because you think they are possessed by demons and expect that they will get better.  That makes you a child abuser, not a parent, and they shouldn't let you adopt a hamster much less a child.

6) You're going to treat your adopted kids like second class citizens in their own home

Your new kids will be able to tell if you treat your bio kids' health, safety, and happiness as more important than your adopted kids' health, safety, and happiness.  Kids aren't stupid.  How good do you think that is for attachment?

7) You have a savior complex.

It is noble to want to help a child who needs a family.  It is horrible to place obligations on a child to be grateful to you for "saving" them, or to teach a kid that their home country is a horrible place you saved them from, or that their family of origin was terrible.  It's wrong to adopt because your church is putting pressure on you to do so or because you want to look like a saint or a martyr.  It's gross and harms the kids.


Families in crisis need more resources.  Particularly in international adoption, once that adoption is finalized, sometimes parents have nowhere to turn for help.  Mr. Harris claims DHS threatened them and refused to help them when they asked for assistance, and that the head of DHS knew about the rehoming,  If true, that is a real problem.  But in in addition to providing resources for these families, more care needs to be taken pre-placement to ensure that the fit for the child is a good one.

The Harrisses abused these girls and then turned them over to a monster.  They should experience consequences for that.  But they also should never have been allowed to take those girls home in the first place.