A mother's heart…in pieces

I can't make my brain and my heart stop whirling. I can't stop the anger and the tears! I can't stop the guilt, and that last one maybe the reason I have chosen to blog about this.

The guilt seeps in slowly and tends to fog my overall vision of what is going on.

I am an adoptive mother and I love my child with every fiber of my being. I have, since the day I started the process, known that I would always share his story with him. That he would know how we came to be a family. Even at his age, he knows about his tummy mommy, we talk about what I "know" of her. We talk about how he grew in my heart until I could get there to bring him home. I am his momma. I am with him everyday to help him grow.

I am a mother. A mother who would move heaven and Earth to keep my child safe. I am a momma bear when it comes to protecting him. I can't keep the pain away, I can't stop the hurts, but I can arm him with love, confidence and knowledge to help when hurt and pain happens. I am there to help, to protect and to guide him.

I am an advocate. I fought for my child's health and well-being. Both physical and emotional. I have spent countless hours with therapists and doctors to make sure he is growing into his full potential. I have worked to create the safety and security he needs. I regret not one penny, not one mile on the road back and forth, not one minute of the time it took for healing.  We worked for secure attachment, we worked to be a family,  and we continue to work to process the hurts and fears of the past so we can live today.

Those three parts of me all come together to form the mom that is raising the most amazing young man. And yet, those three parts can not seem to all work together to process the mess that is whirling around us right now.

I am his mother.. and he is my son. I love him in a way  I never knew was possible. When I first got the news about the fraud I panicked. I admit, with some shame, that I worried about me and what would happen to us. I was selfish and asked first "can they come take him?" "Could they make him go back to Ethiopia?" Am I proud that those were my first thoughts and not thoughts of truth and justice? No, I am not, but I am a mother and protecting him is my first instinct. We are a family and I will fight for my family.

Not long after those thoughts, wrapped in anger and fear, ran through my head, the tears started to fall and my heart started to break. His tummy mommy….the thought of her crawled through my brain, my heart, my sunken stomach. What if……what if she had not intended to give him up? What if she is healthy and could be raising him? What if she is sitting worried and wondering where he is? Is he alive? Well cared for? Fed? Warm? Happy?  I am a mother, I may not have given birth to him, but I am a mother and I would hunt to find my child. If the proper channels were not followed and this mother had wanted to raise her child what do I do? How do I give him both of us? How do I honor her and me at the same time?

And as those thoughts finished winding their way around my heart, I was brought almost literally to my knees. My Little Man's face race through my mind and waves of pure anger and total devastation both washed over me at the same time. The littlest victim in all of this is him. I am all he knows…I am the one who gets to hug and kiss him everyday. I am the one who gets to wipe away the tears when hurts happen and share in the joys and laughter in the good moments. After all the work I am his safe place, his security. But she gave him life. And possibly she wanted to raise him and due to the greed of this agency she is not. He has been through so much in his little life and now this. He is too little to know this and I won't share it with him. But one day it may need to be a part of the story I tell him.

And then the guilt takes over and some shame. I was called to adopt, wasn't I? Didn't I know from a young age that I was suppose to adopt? And this is how it turns out…my brain can't comprehend the evil that led to this. And my heart it is in too many pieces to put it all together right now. *

This is the whirlwind I have been going through.

(* I know that Little Man has received medical care and opportunities with me he would not otherwise have had. I have come to realize that maybe I was called to be the soft place he landed in the midst of all the evil. But it is still hard to wrap my brain around it all)

How do I process?

    There are many emotions that swirl around you as a parent period. There are times that even more emotions are brought to surface (birthdays, adoption days, mother's day) as an adoptive parent. But I have never had emotions like I have in the last few days.

    I don't guarantee this will make sense to many people, but I process by writing so I am going to write. 

     In the last few days I have discovered things that are the storylines for Lifetime movies about my adoption agency and by extension my life. I have found myself angry one moment and in a puddle of tears the next and sick to my stomach the next. 

How do I process that there is a possibility that Little Man did not come to me through the correct channels for adoption? 

How do I begin to process that there is the possibility that there is a mom in Ethiopia who never intended for her son to be adopted and wonders where he might be and if he is safe? 

How do I process that I truly believe I was "called" to adopt and yet there is all of this stuff?

How do I process all the families that have been hurt by this evil?

How do I process the innocent victims, that people would do this to children?

Just how do I process

Topsy Turvy

I am still in the process of processing what all this means, but last week things went a little topsy turvy in my world. New information is coming in daily and it is too much and too hard to even comprehend it all at once.
Yes, this is the agency I used to adopt Little Man. Let me answer a few questions first before we even get started.
Could he be sent back?
    He is my son and there is no process for undoing an international adoption even when fraud is involved.
Is his paperwork fraudulent?
   That I don't know yet and I am working on figuring it out. He deserves to know the truth when he gets old enough to understand it.
 Did I know this about the agency when I started the process?
    Absolutely not! I researched and had heard good things about them. There were things that were brought to my attention a few months after coming home. But what I knew was one piece of a large iceberg. Even the families involved in this initial indictment are reeling from all we are discovering now. As we read and learn more we are ALL shocked, angered and sad and so many other emotions by what we learn.        

There are many other questions that people and myself have that I can't put to words yet. Give me time to process this and I will write as I go. Please know this is a tough and vulnerable time for me and many parents who adopted with this agency. There is much pain and much anger for so many at this point.

Let me reassure one more thing…right now he has no idea any of this is going on. He is too young and it is too early. We are doing daily life like normal…today we will go swimming and playing with friends. I will post later about some processing I am doing.

But for now here is the article that sent my world upside down last week.

IAG Indictment