In early May, my husband was offered a position in London, England. What an adventure. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And so, we asked ourselves, what would stop us from saying yes to this? Or, in other words, what would keep us in America? It was a quick and easy answer for both of us.
Birth family.
We are moving children who were adopted. Children whose ability to attach and maintain strong bonds within their community is something to be taken very seriously. The idea of moving abroad feels particularly heavy for us as adoptive parents. That first mother/child bond was broken at birth. More bonds are being broken. Is there harm in this? Leaving our community? The boys’ community? A move out of the country feels particularly reckless in terms of the well-being of our children.
We think we are making a choice that will create more of the community and the bonds our boys need to thrive, but what will they be leaving? Or pulled farther away from? We are entering the unknown, and there is enormous risk. Even more risk because our children were adopted and have strong ties to their birth families.
More questions came.
How do we tell the boys’ birth moms we’re moving abroad? We want to promise it won’t change anything. But will it? What about when the boys get older? If they ask for more visits? For more connection?
We were able to tell one of our children’s birth moms in person. She LIT UP and said she would come. And I believe it. Passports, etc, will be a hurdle to get through, but she can do it, and she will. She’s unstoppable. We told our other child's birth mom via text. A call would have been strange; it has been established that texting is our best way. It was not a fun text to write. We knew the news would be difficult to digest. We said moving wouldn’t change our yearly visits. But how can she know that? Or how can we? She took the news better than I would have imagined. When my son was still in the hospital in the days after he was born, she told him he would see the world with us. We’ll be sure he sees the world, but we will always return to a world with her in it.
So then, another question. How are we going to maintain yearly visits?
These are more than yearly visits. These are times of deep connection, of building relationships, of strengthening family ties. As we look ahead to our plans to come back to the states, there is only so much vacation time, so many school holidays, and so many family members to spend time with. How will we manage birth family visits and visits with our own extended families?
As we began to think about this, we quickly assumed that we would always make my parents, and E’s family a priority, but when we first thought about the move and coming back for visits; birth family felt like … an additional expense (flying, rental car, accommodations, etc), an added stressor as we thought about family visits back to the states. Looking back, there was a very clear (albeit unconscious) delineation between our family and our child’s birth family. Yes, a ranking, of sorts. Who gets the priority? This wasn’t a conscious question I was asking myself; it was more that my mind went to my family first; of course we can fly home for Christmas to see our family, and maybe rent an Airbnb, and a trip at Easter, I thought, even if it’s more expensive—we have to see our families for a couple of weeks.
All of a sudden it felt like a drag to have to “slot in” visits during our time home with our family, and worries about the “extra” expense of traveling to see them kept cropping up. Why were they the “extra” expense when we were planning? Why not the priority? How, right after a visit in which we all, with full honesty and love, declared our family to be the greatest, was my default to still think of them second?
When you agree to an open adoption, it is a lifelong agreement to be flexible, to notice when you make assumptions based on previous experience. Open adoption is an invitation to continuously reflect on what family means and how to honor the definition of family that connects adoptive family and birth family. Open adoption means many things: a connection to culture, identity, and family of origin. It also means the expansion of our family. I had my way of unconsciously having a hierarchy of “family”; who we planned to make time for, and when.
But it’s not a hierarchy, it’s more about shifting expectations for ourselves, our children, and our extended families.
There will be times when birth family will take priority over a visit with my mother, which makes me deeply sad. But I know I will also find deep joy in being with my kids’ birth families. It can never be stated enough—adoption is both/and. As we continue through life, this idea permeates all things, and the newest one is that when we move abroad and come back for limited visits, I will have to hold both the joy of prioritizing birth family, and the sadness that that will mean less time with my own biological/extended family. It occurred to me—could it be that my boys live with that sense of sadness all the time? Always missing out on time with their birth families? What must that be like? Feeling a sense of sadness or loss before they can even name it?
I wonder if they will want more visits as they grow. This is something we’ve said we would always accommodate, and we will. While we can’t live for the future, we do need to continue to look forward and anticipate our children’s needs.
My boys LIGHT UP with their birth siblings and birth mothers. However cliché this sounds, it is like finding that missing piece that completes a puzzle. When we are with our boys’ birth mothers and siblings, our family puzzle is complete. And so, we’ll work our hardest to find opportunities to see our puzzle come together, even if it now means crossing an ocean to do so.
The 4 of us are about to leap into the unknown.
Off we go across the pond, ready for this new adventure, ready to take on the challenge of maintaining and growing our relationships with our children’s birth families. Ready or not, here we come, London.
