This last weekend was a big one for our family. Our son got to meet his birthfamily for the first time since he was just a few weeks old. We were invited to a family wedding on pretty short notice, but decided this might be a good time to try and make that connection with his biological family that up until this point had only been happening in letters and pictures. It was a beautiful experience and we were very blessed by their loving acceptance of this son we share and our family.
There was something especially poignant about seeing our child in the context of his birth culture. He was being held and cuddled by people who looked like him. And that’s when it struck me-
His story is big.
With our biological baby, I feel as though his story is my story. His relatives are my relatives, his medical history is my medical history, his blue eyes came from me. I think that’s why it’s easy to feel like I “own” him and his story. It’s a very false sense of control when you think you’re totally responsible for the fate and future of your biological child.
I think this is why some people have an adverse reaction to the idea of adoption, especially open adoption. There’s this loss that comes from not having total “ownership” of your child. By sharing their life and their love with another family, it’s easy to think you’ll be losing something. But I think that assumes that a child only has so much love to give and that it will be made less in sharing. We know as parents of more than one child that isn’t true for us. We are plenty capable of loving multiple kids without diminishing our love for the first.
There are moments that I want to feel like our adoptions are final, now it’s time to shut the door and be our family. But something about that just doesn’t feel right. This child’s story didn’t begin with me and it won’t end with me. My children’s lives started long before we first saw their faces. My adopted children have a history I didn’t make, but it has reached out to include me. That reality has implications that are both positive and negative. There are sad truths I now have to explain to my children—choices I didn’t make, but consequences I will have to deal with. There are also beautiful stories of self-sacrifice and cultural histories that are rich with meaning.
We often laugh about how so many ancestors are forgettable, but we won’t be. You look at a grainy black and white picture and for many of us who aren’t the family historian, the faces seem entirely anonymous. That isn’t true for the generation who adopts transracially. For us, we will always be the family picture where the ancestors changed colors. My brown great great great grandchildren will look at our family picture and know exactly what happened. We owe them the honor of doing this thing well.
My children’s story is big enough to include their history and our future. I don’t have to close one chapter to be able to start a new one. I get the joy of seeing their story expand to include those they love—their adoptive family, their biological family, the family they will someday create. I have the honor of being part of that big story and getting to help them learn how to own it.
None of our children belong fully to us. We parent them with open hands, recognizing we don’t get to control their story. This is a perspective we’ve had to come to early, for the benefit of our children and ourselves. The love of our kids and their biological families is something that allows our story to be big, too.
(*I wrote the majority of this piece about five years ago. When something feels this personal, sometimes I have to put it away until I see where the story is going. This story and these relationships have only continued to grow since then. We are thankful.)