Sunday, November 13, 2011

Imposter

You know when you should really spend a great deal of time studying up on a topic, finding great quotes to include, supporting your thoughts with research, so on and so forth?  I should be doing all of that.  But instead I'm thinking that I've got a moment or two so I need to just get it out there.  Hope that it makes some kind of sense.  Hope someone out there gets it and doesn't misread.

One of the reasons blogging has gone on the back burner has been the amount of reading I've been doing from the view point of the adult adoptee.  Powerful stuff.  Lots of thoughts, lots of truth, lots of, well, back to thoughts.  Yeah, lots of thoughts.

It's important to realize that this post is not a whine.  It's not a complaint. It's an opinion, and one that I have to get out there or I fear I will remain stuck.

Truth is, I started my blog at the beginning of our beginnings of making our family.  We were a bit lost at the time, and I needed an outlet.  We went from a focus on infertility to a focus on adoption to a focus on international adoption to a focus on Ethiopia to a focus on motherhood.  My eyes went from being shut to being wide open to the point where I eventually froze.  Afraid of saying the wrong thing.  Afraid of offending someone.  Afraid of everyone out there hating me.  Afraid of ruining my son's life. 

I have read so many books out there.  Books on adoption.  Attachment.  Ethiopia.  Children.  Transracial adoption.  Being Black in America.  Being African in America.  Obviously I'm a reader.  It's one of the ways I gather information and make decisions in my life.  With that in mind, and with my interest in blogging, I began searching the Land of Blog for viewpoints from the adult adoptee.  Although I have my own history with adoption, I knew that I needed more.  Information from people who were placed immediately after birth.  As toddlers.  Into families whose skin color and culture and history and background were different from their own. 

It didn't take long to find that many, many people out there are unhappy.  Abused.  Lied to.  Hidden.  Angry.  And while I was able to find some stories in which people had some joy to spread about their lives, those were minimal.

As a new mother who had started out on this journey with the plans of forming my family with love, love, and more love?  All those questions, all those anxieties, all those wonderings I had as we waited to meet our son, as I walked the streets of Ethiopia, as I glanced at the stares in the airport, as I watched movies and television shows, as I watched my son glob onto my husband but push away from me.... I quickly became aware of the thought that had been settling deep within me:  I was an imposter mother.  This blog said it.  That blog said it.  The stares said it.  The attachment struggle said it. 

Imposter.

It can make you freeze.  It doesn't diminish your love for your child, it doesn't necessarily mean you're lying in your bed with the sheets wrapped around you for days on end- it just meant, to me anyway, that I began to doubt myself in a way I had never doubted myself before.  And I still couldn't write about it because I certainly didn't want to come off as someone complaining.  As someone who couldn't know what it was like to be adopted as an infant, so who in the hell was I anyway.

I'm tired of apologizing to the Land of Blog for being an adoptive mother. 

I am a mother.  I am providing love, a home, warmth, comfort, security (the list can go on) for my son in the best ways I know how.  No, I'm not perfect.  I screw up a lot.  But this continued thinking that I'm an imposter mother for my son is doing nothing but harm for him.  For me.  For my family.  For our lives- both present and future.

I'm tired of hiding. 

I am a mother.  And I'm not sorry for it.  Not in the least.