A Hard Realization for Ashlie

I remember when we first began thinking about adoption, I read a book that explained that when a child reaches a certain age, they will realize that along with the joy of adoption there comes a very real sense of loss. Their beautiful adoption story has a very sad side to it: the birthparent's loss of a child, the child's loss of a birthmother, and the adoptive parents' loss of the time that they didn't get to spend with their child. I cried when I read that and I honestly didn't want to think about it. How could I possibly take away a pain that was so deep, so primal?

I've since read countless books about helping our children work through their feelings, but it's been a while since I've done all that reading. Oh how I wish I'd done a refresher course recently.

Ashlie's forever family day is tomorrow, and I knew that she'd been doing a lot of thinking these last few days, because she was saying things like "I'm glad I'm not an orphan anymore, because then I may never have got to go to school" (she's really looking forward to kindergarten.) I knew her little brain was working. We're celebrating early tonight, having a Chinese dinner with family here in town since we'll be out of town tomorrow. She's been so excited and we've been talking a lot about "5 years ago on this day we were, . . ." Last night we were talking more about when we got each of our young daughters, and Allie was trying to figure things out. "So first it was our birthmother, and then it was our aunties? (orphanage workers)" "That's right, Allie, and after the aunties it was US, your FOREVER mommy and daddy!"

Ashlie was sitting on my lap and she got very quiet and said, "That probably made my birthmother sad." & as I lifted up her chin and looked into her sweet eyes, she had tears running out of them. Oh my precious child, I didn't want you to think about that, yet, I thought. & her tears turned to gut-wrenching sobs, and she held me and I held her and rocked and rocked and rocked. It seemed like the cries lasted an hour, but I don't think it was actually that long. I couldn't think of anything to say to make her feel better. I could only affirm that it was probably one of the hardest things her birthmother ever had to do, and that I loved her birthmother for wanting Ashlie to have a good life, and don't we wish we could somehow send her birthmother pictures and stories about Ashlie so she could see what a beautiful, happy, smart, kind and loving girl Ashlie was? I think that we need to start including their birthmothers in our prayers. Knowing that God is helping them to feel better would most certainly help Ashlie feel better for them. Nothing I said last night seemed to help because the sobs just kept coming, but maybe she just needed to let those cries out?

After all our preparations for our girls, I felt totally unprepared for the depth of Ashlie's sadness last night and I felt like I had somehow failed her by not being able to make everything better. Time to dig out our books again, and see what I should have done and said. & I also realize that last night's grief was really just phase one. She did not yet acknowledge any sense of loss for herself.

How did she finally stop crying? LOL, I've been promising the girls that we would be counting the money in their shared "Scooby Doo bank" and letting them divide the money and go shopping to let them each pick out a toy for Wrigley. So it was 9:30 at night and I suggested that we count money! (I just wanted to try to change her train of thought before she went to bed) So we sorted quarters and nickels and dimes and pennies and they made big plans for a shopping day. :-)

She did wake in the middle of the night from bad dreams. I asked what she'd been dreaming about, just knowing that it was her birthmother, but her reply was "Batman." (no, she hasn't seen the movie!) & her cries woke up Annie. & we ended up with FIVE IN THE BED, with our littlest one's nose out of joint because she was in the middle. She fussed, kicked, cried, protested for nearly two hours.

I think we're all exhausted today. We're supposed to be cleaning house, but maybe we should just go shop for puppy toys!

Meanwhile, should we watch our forever family day videos today? That is our tradition for their special days, but should we do it this year? My gut says yes. What do you think?