Magnar teaches Sam and Cj to groom a horse
This reality, the one that has them having another place that’s home-like with the man who is their father, along with some woman I’ve never laid eyes on … and a baby on the way … is one that I never saw coming back when Mark and I were going through the adoption processes for them.
I’m not going to whine on here about ends of eras or dashed dreams or bumpy roads. In fact, I’m not going to whine at all.
I will, however, touch a bit upon how pulling rugs out from under the feet of children who began life with loss impacts, and how unfair it all still seems … to me, yes, but also, and more importantly, to them.
I was a child of divorce, so unlike my husband who conveniently assumes that “they’ll adjust” because “kids are resilient”, I know the consequences that come from abrupt shifts in the world, and I see the effects creeping in.
Although they are happy, healthy, smart and funny little people, emotional bruises are showing.
A few examples:
Cj now asks many times a day if I love her.
Every drive to school has her asking, “Will you pick me up?”
Sam refuses to mention one word about anything that occurred during his week away from home, as if it’s all one big guilty secret he must keep.
None of the signs I see are blatant examples of emotional upheavals, but all show cracks that weren’t there before their dad walked out. Their trust levels are way down, while their worry levels are way up. Stress, in other words, has come to their lives.
As long time readers have noted, I no longer write much about adoption, and since I used to post about 2,000 words per day on up to six different sites, this has been quite the drop-off.
The reason? I feel a bit a fraud touting the gifts it brings since I can no longer offer the bubble of security and protection I thought I was assuring when we brought them from Cambodia to Seychelles, promising, I thought, happy ever after.
Okay, life happens. I know this. And I also know the long term advantages of learning early that life is hard and that adjustments will have to be made as one makes their way down whatever path is put at their feet.
That was an easier take with my bio kids. For one reason, I was younger and less concerned by outcomes years down the pike. For another, they were the results of what had always been a crap shoot. Neither was planned, so their existence felt meant-to-be in ways beyond my scope.
Sam and Cj came to me through great and concerted efforts that involved much inward examination of motives and well-laid plans for futures based on foundations forged in determined ground that was to hold solid for them.
There is no lack of love around them … Mark does love them … and, in fact, they are getting love from sources that wouldn’t be showering it upon them now had circumstances not put people like Magnar in their lives.
And they are doing well, according to all observers, from teachers to friends to me and their dad. But they do, again, know loss, and that hurts them.
I may again take up the adoption torch and advocacy roll that had me so active, and in some quarters so hated, but I’ll enter that fray from a different angle now and with a cautious optimism that my kids will make it through the upheaval in their young lives and learn to live with a family much less the “Brady Bunch” than I’d hoped.
Not all sunshine and lollypops, for sure, and that’s a drag when learned at 5 and 3. But learned it must be, and I’m working like hell to keep the lights and goodies coming while helping them navigate the unfamiliar waters of a family broken.
Life is what it is, and theirs has already had such drastic twists and turns. I can only hope the result for them will be like it has been for my brothers and me … a capacity to roll with the punches and make lemonade.
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 
I think because you were a child of divorce too, that the loss issues seem (to me, an adoptee married to child of divorce) so similar and that you can walk them through.(maybe over and over)
The identity issues were something my husband did not experience like I did and those compounded loss issues for me. Hopefully you can help them navigate that identity part.
I hope so. Thanks for the encouraging words.
Fraud involves intentional deception. That was not the case here. For you to say you feel like a fraud because Mark is a spoiled horse’s ass is like saying you feel like a fraud because a volcano swept through your town and took away a significant part of their lives.
I understand, truly I do, the guilt that comes from failing to provide the upbringing we all swear, and sign, we will bring to our children. But guilt only has worth if it keeps you from committing a wrong. You did no wrong here. In fact, you moved heaven and earth to keep a wrong from having even worse consequences than it already has. So your guilt is this situation is only destructive to you.
I command thee….ease up on yourself!
You can’t beat yourself up about this. Your kids are dealing with divorce issues–not adoption issues. Yes, their adoptions might add an extra layer (or not), but you had no way of foreseeing Mark’s infidelity when you chose to build your family.
And, while I know this gets some people riled up, there are much worse things your kids could have been dealing with if you hadn’t adopted them. I have been doing a lot of reading lately on modern slavery (I’ve talked about it some on my blog, I don’t know if you saw it), and Cambodia is a country with a lot of problems in that area. While you obviously weren’t trying to fulfill some savior complex by adopting your children, the fact is that being an orphan in Cambodia is a much sadder reality than having divorced parents in the Seychelles.
Having the rug pulled out from under you in regards to your marriage doesn’t disqualify you from offering an authoritative voice about adoption.
I so look forward to the day when you’ll be back on our team at Adoption Under One Roof. We miss you.
Lisa S.
I think that it’s important to note that it wasn’t like you planned for this to happen, and that when it did, despite your own devastation and pain, which were palpable just through your written words, your thoughts were so obviously for the kids. You are and have been an outspoken advocate for your children, which is something I admired about you even when our views on the details of adoption as a whole were at odds.
And now, as you’re all healing and moving forward, you continue to acknowledge how the divorce affects them and may impact them as a new loss, as adoptees. That’s important. It’s massive, if you ask me. So many people can’t do that. Just the acknowledgment is a huge thing, and it can only help as you all try to navigate through the new roads you’ve found your family taking.
Peace to you and your wee ones.
I feel as though parents who divorce fundamentally don’t get what their kids are going through unless they also grew up through a divorce.
Without at least one of the parents appreciating that fact it’s hard to communicate the dissonance of it when you’re a child. I remember being 12 or 13 and trying to explain to my mother why I didn’t want to do bi-weekly visits with my dad anymore. I guess I was pretty vehement, because she kept saying, “I don’t understand. Does he hit you? Is his wife being mean to you?”
I couldn’t articulate my reason, and I don’t know that I can even know. Visits made me tired. I didn’t want to feel like a commodity to be packed and traded. I didn’t want to give up all of the things I wanted to do in my own house that weekend. I hated getting home late and Sunday and feeling like I didn’t have any time off from school.
Even now I see this to a lesser degree in E and her family, which divorced much later than mine. The fact that you can see it already means you’re going to be able to smooth it over for your kids as they grow up, even if your husband never really understands it.
Yes I am a child of a divorce too and if there is something we do understand it is the loss they are going through.
This is their 2nd loss…and yes it is difficult…but you know what? They have you…they have the love of their mother…a bright mother who realizes what it is like to be a child of divorced parents…a bright mother that acknowleges they might have identity issues…
But you know what…everymorning, Bhavishya asks me whether I will be picking her up and at what time. In 1 year and 3 months of school, I picked her up everyday except for 4 times…and these 4 times she got picked up 3 times by her Daddy, once by a Mark’s assistant whom she knows very very well (and tomorrow she’ll go at her friend’s Filippa’s until her Daddy can pick her up as I will be dealing with our Visas in Brussels).
I agree with Tisha; Ease up on yourself.
Bon apre midi & big big hugs to you all
Miss ya
Just chiming in (again!) to say I think Coco has a great point. Your ability to empathize with what your kids are, and possibly will be, feeling as a result of the divorce will go a long way toward making things “okay”. Not that divorce is painless or turns out “okay” just because you are a parent that understands the fallout from divorce…more that you are doing a fantastic job of minimizing the damage Mark has wrought. KWIM?
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Add me to the list of Children of Divorce. I have nothing to add, Peter summed it all up quite eloquently, except to say that I never knew my father. My parents split up during my mother’s pregnancy, and divorced shortly afterward. My whole life I felt that I was not worth the love of my father, so I must not be worth very much at all.
Though I still struggle with that mindset, I know it’s negative self-talk. That adults have complex issues that kids can’t even begin to comprehend in their ego-centric little world…and thank God for that! They’ll understand later, with a little more life experience of their own, and appreciate you all the more.
So, the fact that CJ and Sam *do* have two loving parents, despite the issues between those parents, will still go a long way toward their self-esteem.
And, you know full well, in spite of your own negative self-talk (always the by-product of our circumstances) that you are very much a valued voice, not only in the adoption community, but in other writing spheres as well.
Hugs,
M. 🙂