Finding her family - The next part of the story...

I intended to write this post almost a month ago, but as usually happens with my blog, I let a lot of other things distract me.  It is always more convenient to let my responsibilities in real life take me away from dealing with difficult feelings.  Then I write, and I wonder why I didn't help myself sooner. :)  I began my story of how I came to relinquish through Bethany a few posts back.  You can read it HERE if you need to catch up.  My intention is to give you the background on how I relinquished and where I was at emotionally and psychologically so that you can understand how I got to where I am now with my beliefs about adoption.  I hope tonight's post will help you understand even more...
I said before that I didn’t want to go into my time at the shepherding home too much, but there are some things that merit mention. As I said before, I worked on school and had some duties around the house. One of the things I did to help out was drive the kids to their various activities – and they had a LOT of activities. Ballet, jazz and tap, theatre practices, karate… In a way it was kind of fun because you can bet that I would never have attended a ballet class otherwise. LOL I also would never have known much about theatre, but because of this family, I got to see how much hard work went into productions, and I was able to really cheer them on during performances when they hit a routine just right. To this day, I can sing every word of West Side Story and The Fiddler on the Roof. :) In a way, I became a little part of their family, and I don’t really think I could find a way to convey how much I appreciate how they opened their home to me. I was very lonely being apart from my family and the few real friends I had. Looking back now with older eyes, I can see that it put a BIG strain on what seemed like an already fragile marriage (I believe they are divorced now), and there were plenty of awkward and embarrassing social moments. The mom took me to doctor appointments. Did people think I was her pregnant daughter? The family didn’t really have a home church, so when we visited places, my obviously pregnant teenage belly got some disapproving stares. It must have been uncomfortable for everyone, and I know they had to set aside their pride at times. Plus, just think of living in a college town and being young and pregnant. You pretty much get the stink eye everywhere you go. The two kids involved in theatre were extremely outgoing and seemed to be mostly unaffected by answering the probing questions of nosy people. But the middle child, the more quiet and pensive one… Even though he was very sweet to me, I know that he must have dealt with a fair amount of embarrassment and frustration. I have a lot of guilt over that now, but I sure can’t go back and change things. I never felt like they opened their home reluctantly, but rather, they were warm and probably pretty tolerant of the changes my presence brought. Their youngest even gave up her room for me and moved upstairs with her brothers! Now that’s sacrifice! LOL

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I met with my social worker regularly. We met in person about once a month and talked on the phone in between. I think we had a hard time getting on the same page from the get-go. It is difficult to explain the dynamic there… Because of my age and the way things were “arranged” for me to go away, it was kind of like I was riding a big tidal wave from the very beginning. And there wasn’t really a way to get off. Everything was just set in motion in the direction of relinquishing. Everyone expected it of me. It was the default. Of course I wouldn’t KEEP the baby. I would just get through the experience the best I could and figure out how to prepare for moving forward with life. I have a really unpopular yet descriptive phrase for this, but I’ll save that for another post.) It was uncomfortable discussing parenting with the social worker. It was as if she wanted to acknowledge that I wanted to talk about it, but it was a distraction from the plans we were supposed to be making. Everybody was on board with the original plan – my parents, people from my church, the shepherding family, the agency people – you name it. The SW was gentle and kind. She listened and offered a lot of Kleenex to dry my tears. She walked me through a lot of questions (many of them listed in my Checklist from God post.) But ultimately, we always needed to get back on focus. My perception of that time was that it was very much ok for me to have feelings; those were validated. But it was not really ok for me to have a voice. I was the child in the situation.

Trying to select another family for your child is one of the most unnatural, frustrating, discouraging things a mother can experience.  Every couple looked nice enough.  But that was really the extent of it.  I was staring at strangers that wanted to parent my child.  What can you truly know of a complete stranger?  I have a very, very distinct memory of a conversation I had with my social worker regarding how surreal the process was.  I was explaining to her how guilty I felt about "choosing" one couple over another.  I remember asking her, "How can I pick one couple over another as if one is more deserving?"  She did her best to comfort me, but I'm not sure she knew the depth of what I was struggling with.  Oh, did I have it backwards back then. :(  I felt such a burden to choose the right couple for their sake.  I felt like I was being unfair to the couples I didn't "like" on paper.  I didn't realize that I was not selecting them for their benefit, but rather, I was selecting someone for Ellen's benefit.  No one ever addressed that.  When I had questions and doubts, I was always reassured with positives about the families I was looking at.  They were so nice and so neat and so this or that...  I honestly don't believe that my social worker meant me any harm.  I think she genuinely had good things to say about the couples we were looking at on paper.  But the problem was that I didn't want to be choosing in the first place.  I was going through the motions.  Doing the next thing in the process.  Being the good girl.  That is why I could not zero in on a couple that "felt right".  None of it felt right to me.  It was weird.  Unnatural.  Exhausting.  Like being in a bad dream and begging to wake up.  But you don't.  I wish very much that my social worker had possessed the maturity, discernment or insight to point out that I did not have an obligation to the families I was reading about.  I wish that she would have helped me understand that if I was selecting a family for my child, that it was good and right for me to be focusing on what was in the best interest of my beloved daughter.  I needn't worry about who might be "let down" that they were not selected, but rather, I needed to find parents that would be a good fit for Ellen.  (As if a person can even know something like that.)  Overall, I wish that she would have just given me permission to NOT choose... permission to say that I didn't want to look at any more families.  Because I didn't.

I didn't know that writing about this would bring back such vivd memories.  It gives my stomach a pit and makes my head a little light.

I do have to say that I am very, very glad that they did not have those profile books on steroids back then.  And of course, the internet was in its infancy at that time, so very few people had acces to it.  The family I lived with actually got connected while I lived there, but with it being dial up and brand spanking new, every minute online cost mega bucks.  It was like talking on the phone long-distance. :)  LOL  All that to say, thankfully, there were no sappy YouTube videos either. :)  I wrote a detailed post a long time ago regarding the way profile books are handled today and a proposed solution to the serious problems they present.  You can find that post HERE.  I beg you to read it if you are unfamiliar with how women select adoptive couples for their babies or if you are familiar but have never really considered the perspective of a "birth mom" looking at profiles.  But I digress...

This looking at families on paper went on and on for months.  I wondered to myself what would happen if I just kept telling my social worker that I didn't feel right about any of the couples.  I wondered if it might mean that I didn't have to go through with things, but a larger part of me felt like they knew I would be "stalling". Such is the mind of a 17 year old.  Then one day my social worker brought a new folder with her to our meeting.  I remember she came to the shepherding home for that visit.  She was collecting a stack of folders that I had been looking through since our last appointment, and I think she had prepared herself to hear that I didn't have an interest in any of them.  The gist of the conversation was that she had a really great family in mind but that she had been holding back on showing their folder to me because another girl was seriously considering them.  She really shouldn't be telling me about them, but she just really felt like this was the family I would like.  She left the folder with me, and we agreed to talk on the phone in a few days.  I did like that family waaaaay more than I had liked any other family I had read about.  I don't want to share my reasons here on the blog, but my heart received them differently.  I know that is vague, and I apologize.  I know I usually tell a lot more than you probably want to read about my personal thoughts, but this is an area I don't want to divulge.

So I kept the folder, and as promised, my social worker followed-up with me soon after.  I told her that I liked them best of anyone I had seen, but that the problem was that I just wasn't sure I wanted to choose ANYONE.  This was not a surprise to her.  Her response was sincere, but again, in hindsight, not appropriate.  She informed me that I really needed to think about this and decide if I wanted this family because this other girl might choose them, and then I wouldn't be able to do anything about it.  It was like reserving an apartment or something.  Sigh.  And honestly, after our conversation I DID have a sense of urgency.  But before we got off the phone, I told her that I would have to take that risk because I just didn't know what I wanted to do.  If that girl had her heart set on that family, then I didn't want to be "mean" and "steal" them away. (How do you like my overuse of quotation marks?) :) 

A couple weeks later, I got the call from my social worker that the other girl had made ammends with her baby's father, and they had plans to get married and parent their child.  They were no longer working with Bethany, and I was free to reserve that family's folder if I wished.  I knew I didn't want any of the other folders I had previously seen, so I said, yes, I wanted to "reserve" them.  Doesn't all of this sound completely like something out of a Lifetime Movie?  I hate it.  But it is what it is.  Or was what it was.

This conversation took place about four or five weeks prior to my due date.  My social worker was going to contact the family to let them know I was interested in them, and we were going to discuss possibly meeting at the Bethany office.  We would not have that opportunity, though, because I went into labor 4 weeks early.  The ride I was on instantly got a lot faster, crazier and more scary.