Open Adoption Roundtable #13—Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

I had to think quite a bit about how I wanted to approach this edition of the Open Adoption Roundtable, which deals with disagreement about open adoption—between those on the same side of the triad. Initially I thought: I’m completely unqualified to even begin to answer this one. While George and I weren’t entirely on the same page with regard to openness when we first started out, we came to a consensus fairly quickly and easily. And certainly the “classic Hallmark movie of the year scenario� doesn’t apply to us; the few close relatives who had concerns early on in the process proved to be wonderfully open to learning about it, and with good communication we were able to dispel some of the myths and allay some of their fears.

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing—perhaps we haven’t been inundated with well-meaning concerns that our life would turn into a bad Lifetime movie, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t sensed disapproval on some fronts.

Sometimes this is so subtle it’s hard to characterize it as strongly as “disapproval�—it’s more a judgment issued based upon a perfectly acceptable but incomplete understanding of open adoption. Other times, it’s disapproval, loud and clear. And occasionally it’s the sort of thing that seems so absurd to me, knowing as much as I do from my own experience, that I have to try hard to stop myself rolling my eyes. But because these are people who are close to me—people I care about—I have to walk the fine line between frank directness (my default position) and sensitivity.

So how do I deal with the friend—an adopted adult—who is outspoken in her disapproval of our open adoption precisely because of her own personal adoption experience? Or the well-meaning friend who, not quite understanding the importance I place on my relationship with D—my friendship with her, for her own sake, not simply as JellyBean’s first mother—suggests that maybe she has become too much a fixture in my life, or I in hers? Or, yes—the (thankfully distant) relatives who wonder aloud whether D will “try to take JellyBean back� or whether we’re just setting JellyBean up for a world of confusion when she is older and realizes that most kids don’t have multiple parents and siblings who don’t live with them.

Well, to be perfectly honest, my natural reaction is to say that none of this is anyone else’s damn business. This is our life, our family; these are our choices. And frankly, I don’t remember asking for anyone else’s opinion or advice.

What can I say? I’ve always chafed a little at even the perception that someone else was telling me what I “should� do. But I recognize that such a reaction is neither kind nor particularly conducive to fostering greater understanding—and isn’t that really what we want out of exchanges like these?

So I invite discussion about it. I explain as best I can why we believe open adoption is not only the best choice, but the only choice for us. I listen to their concerns, and I respond—and I often learn something from them, whether it is an angle I hadn’t thought of or a clarification of something I already believed. And I hope that when the discussion is over, the other person understands this life we’ve chosen a little better.

And on those occasions when I can’t accomplish this, I remind myself that it is, after all, our life, our family—and none of this is anyone else’s damn business, anyway.

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