Vacation feet: ready to go!
I am not crazy. There is a name for what is happening to me: ambiguous loss. And it is the most difficult type of loss to deal with.
In my case, I have experienced a slow accumulation of ambiguous losses, ranging from major ones such as my parents’ separation and divorce nearly 30 years ago to minor ones such as our move from one nearby community to another last year.
There is a lot of ambiguous loss floating around in adoption, on all sides of the triad, and much of it also takes the form of disenfranchised grief.
First parents, whether in or out of reunion, face the loss of the “normal” parent/child relationship. This can be complicated by secrecy or shame that may surround the adoptive placement.
More about first parents and ambiguous loss:
Adoptees in or out of reunion, similarly, must negotiate their dreams, hopes, and feelings in regard to their first families and, in many cases, foster families as well. Their attempts to do so are often frustrated by a desire not to hurt their adoptive families, messages from society that they should be “grateful” for their adoptive families, and societal stigma against first parents (first mothers in particular).
More about adoptees and ambiguous loss:
- Uncertainty management and adult adoptees
- A personal account of ambiguous loss
- Resources for adolescents facing ambiguous loss
- Healing loss in the traumatized child
Adoptive parents often come to the adoption experience through infertility and/or miscarriage, which are also types of ambiguous loss. Though probably better supported than either first parent or adoptee losses, these challenges are often overlooked, misunderstood, or minimized by society as a whole.
The thing that really strikes me about this is how much various members of the adoption triad try to legitimize their own grief by minimizing the losses of others. Adoptive parents may play the “just be grateful” card. First parents question the legitimacy of adoptive parents’ losses now that they have children. Adoptees rail against both sets of parents and overlook the pain they may have experienced (then again, what kid doesn’t?).
So here’s a plea for some gentleness, some thoughtfulness, and some consideration. According to what I’m reading, lack of ritualized community grieving is one of the main things that makes ambiguous loss so difficult. Can we come up with some rituals and kind words of our own, in our little community, to help each other along the road of these difficult losses?
Things that should not arrive together in the mail.
I’ll be teaching The Crucible starting in a couple of weeks. When we read a book, I always have students read the book first and watch the film (if there is one) afterwards.
This is the first time I’ve taught a play, though, and I’m not sure how to handle showing the film. What do you think?
So, about five years ago, I was grading papers for a freshman comp class I was teaching. And I was sick of it. Randomly, I turned on my computer and googled “I hate grading papers.” In this way, I found the blog of a grad student who was also teaching freshman comp. I followed the blog for a while, until he graduated and got a job and I got a different job and trimmed my blog list.
At the beginning of this year, my sister got a job at the same institution he got a job at, so I sent her a link to the blog, thinking he might have some insights on housing, culture, etc. Indeed, he hooked her up with a great real estate agent who helped her find her current digs. And now, they have been out on two dates and plan to go out again.
Who knows where this will lead, but I find it completely hilarious that my random Google search FIVE YEARS AGO led to my sister’s date this evening.
What bizarre connections have you made in blogland?
[Note: this was five years ago. Google rankings have changed, people. You won't see the same blogs I saw if you repeat this experiment.]
Still trudging along here. The past two weeks have been some of the most difficult of my life. In addition to a hard conversation that left me a weepy mess for several days, I also came down simultaneously with a stomach virus and some nasty back/leg pain caused by my piriformis pressing on my sciatic nerve. Physical therapy is helping, but slowly.
Some things at work and trying to pay bills at home helped pile on the stress, and I found myself absolutely drained physically, mentally, and spiritually by the end of the week.
Unable to do much more than plug in my iPod and stare out the window on my bus ride home, I unexpectedly found myself listening to a song that has been very meaningful to me in other difficult times of my life. Here, have a listen:
As I listened, it brought me back some perspective. Yes, things are hard right now. But God is still God. He is still in charge, and his heart is big enough for all my frustration, anger, and whining. These things that seem so big to me are really very small from his perspective, yet he takes the time to know me and my pain intimately. And so today, my heart chooses to say, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Looks like a great webinar series coming up from Ethica!
Ethica is pleased to offer its first webinar series for prospective adoptive families as they begin to pursue the adoption process. Please join us as we explore issues surrounding adoption fraud, how to choose an agency, and the implications of adopting from a “Hague” country. Note that space is limited so please register early. Thank you!
새해 복 많이 받으세요!
- Busy getting caught up on all 4 seasons of Bones
- Busy sitting around the house with a fever
- Busy getting ready for school to start again after winter break
- Busy pulling my school’s Poetry Out Loud competition together
- Busy taking Sprout to the E.R. for a 106-degree fever
- Busy sitting around the house with a sick, whiny boy
- Busy learning Korean on LiveMocha.com and Click Korean
- Busy coughing up a lung
- Busy migrating three websites from Textpattern to WordPress
That about summarizes my life since Christmas. But I have things to blog about. I’m telling you so you can remind me. I want to mention:
- crazy white people and affirmative action
- Great American speeches
- the eye incident
- “colorblind” transracial parenting and white privilege
- and…um…something else I can’t remember right now. I hope it comes back to me.
Don’t let me forget, okay? I’ll be back soon.
