Yolande

I have an idea and I'm really excited to share it with you guys.

Be prepared for a blog takeover of sorts, because I have a boat load of guest posters lined up for this baby, which is something I've never done in the past. There are twenty-four guest bloggers to be exact, and all of them are pretty fabulous if I do say so myself. What is this excessive guest posting all about, you say? Well...

Social media is my friend and I truly love being a 'mommy blogger,' but something has been bothering me for awhile now.  What is with the judgement, the mommy wars, and the idea that there is only one right way to do this motherhood thing? Especially when it comes to 'working moms' versus 'stay at home moms', the hurtful comments are ridiculous and unnecessary. I haven't been on the receiving end of these battles, thankfully, but I've read enough of them over the years to know that these mommy wars really bug me.

Because here is the thing: all moms are freaking rock stars. We all wear multiple hats, spread ourselves a bit too thin at times, and juggle the demands of busy lives every single day. Whether or not a mom leaves the house to work outside of her home, if she owns her own business based out of her house, or if she answers to the tiniest slave driving offspring as her primary job---it's all super challenging at times. Of course, it's also wonderful, but motherhood is quite the trip. We all do it differently because there is no one correct choice that fits all moms and all families.

One thing I feel the blogging community is lacking is a collective voice of REAL moms, coming from all backgrounds, speaking about what 'works' for them. Hence my idea of making this blog a central site for moms to post about their experiences as a working mom, stay at home mom, or something in between. It's all good and it should be really interesting to read everyone's take on this topic. Support. Togetherness. Kumbaya, friends.



Before we start the twice weekly posting from these fabulous bloggers, I will give a quick review on my personal set up as a working mom. I've already done a post all about working part time as a Physical Therapist, but I will recap to get the ball rolling with this series.

I love my job and love working three days per week on MWF. I could not mentally or emotionally handle working full time at my job and I'm not sure I'd choose to stay at home full time either (probably for the same reasons). So basically, I feel like I have the best of both worlds by flip flopping my 'Home with the Kids' and the 'Physical Therapist' hats depending on the day. I know not everyone would want my job and that is totally understandable. But I earned my Masters degree for this job and have been practicing for eight years now, so I think I can officially say that I'm glad I became a Physical Therapist. I know you are happy to hear that, mom and dad;)

I say that I couldn't emotionally handle working as a home care PT full time because my job is not a place when I get a 'break' from the chaos of life at home. I'm not saying it's especially difficult or anything but it's also not easy to emotionally invest into the elderly and usually very sick population. In their homes. As they offer me cookies and coffee just to stay and chat a bit longer, because they are lonely and scared and facing some serious life changes. Of course, not every patient of mine makes me feel emotionally exhausted but when they do, whoo boy. Not to mention that working in healthcare can often be thankless, the opposite of glamorous, and incredibly frustrating at times. Dealing with people, especially those that are sick and sometimes quite stubborn about wanting to stay in their own homes until the bitter end, can be trying. I don't have an office, time to relax and drink coffee/check the internet with my job (although thank goodness for my iPhone because duh, I DO find time to surf the net a little bit!).  I'm in and out of my car all day, busting it to and from patients houses and squeezing in some paperwork in between visits and also in the evenings after the kids go to bed. But I still appreciate and am grateful for my job. I love to help others, stepping outside my own tiny privileged world for a bit, to feel like I'm making a difference. It's also really nice to interact with other adults while contributing to our family financially---there are just so many positives to working part time.

The biggest negatives? Two things: the hustle and bustle of work day mornings (hate having to rush out the door with the kids, especially in the dead of winter), and juggling the demands of a sick child while working. I have flexibility with my part time schedule but it's always tough to manage a sick babe who needs mommy at home and patients who need to be seen. When a kid is sick I just want to be home with them but that always puts the rest of the week in a tail spin trying to squeeze patients into my other days at work. It's worth it, but those are my two biggest challenges as a mom who works part time at a job like mine.

This is my advice to the working mom: find a career that you truly enjoy. It's a job and it's not going to be perfect but if you can like it you will be a lot happier. This definitely helps me feel balanced and guilt-free when I leave my kids at daycare. I've also written about daycare before, but obviously finding the right childcare provider is also a huge key to success.

My pep talk to any mom dreading the day she returns to work after a baby? The anticipation is worse than the reality. It IS hard and it's such a huge adjustment, but you can make it a positive experience or you can make it a miserable one. Just do your best and know that you are a great mom no matter what. Consider that my virtual fist-pound to you, working moms of the world.

And to the stay at home moms out there? Major kudos, girls. On my SAHM days of the week I am every bit as exhausted as my Physical Therapist days. It's a different type of exhaustion but since I consider being a mom the most challenging and most rewarding job in the world, it's a great kind of exhaustion. Providing opportunities to learn, play, burn energy, gain independence, and rest for the kids is enough of a challenge. But then add in a bit of housework, errands, providing meals for the family, staying emotionally connected to my husband, and carving out a bit of time for myself (which usually comes last)? Full.Plate. I love it, but it's no joke being at home either. I'm already questioning my ability to handle three little children all by myself on my days at home. Thankful that Truman will have a few hours each day in preschool at that point. But still. Woah.

So there you have it. My contribution to this series on moms who 'make it work'. I can't wait to read the posts from the other ladies we have planned on Mondays and Thursdays from now through the end of April, and I hope you are just as excited:)

Anything specific that you want us to cover? Thoughts? Questions?

In the beginning of January this letter and response appeared in Ask Amy, "I am OK with leaving this woman alone now. However, now I would like to contact my half siblings. They probably don't know anything about me. But I would like to at least try." A week or two later the following rebuttal letters appeared arguing against contact, found here and here. These articles got me to thinking, and thus the following article was born;


I am an only child.

My parents adopted me when I was a baby and shortly after my father was transferred to another state and my (much older for that day and age) parents had to make a decision. Either he left his job so that they could stay within the state and adopt another child, or take the transfer knowing that they would be aged out before the process could be completed again in another state. Obviously, given the opening statement of the piece, we know how it turned out.

I am an only child…except I am not.

In fact, I have two half-sisters who live in California. I have two half-sisters who I am sure have absolutely no idea I even exist. I have actually known about them for over a decade now and have regularly tracked them on social media for most of that time (even from all the way back when one of them was still on MySpace).

I won't lie. There have been times that I have felt weird tracking their lives. I have felt strange when I have found pictures of a baby shower shot by a professional photographer who put them on her web page. I have felt weird watching them update their public information to include degrees earned, weddings attended and babies added. I even found a bio for one on her company's website and I wish I had copy and pasted it because it was so eerily similar to my own life and interests and I don't think it is up anymore.

Before you think I am a total internet stalker (although I really do feel like that sometimes), it isn't like I spend hours of my time on this (also, they are my sisters).

Often times I go trolling late at night when I can't sleep, or if something happened that made me think of them, or the overwhelming need to reach out and contact them becomes too much for me and I feel like I have to do something. It is then that I will cast out the net, typing in their names and following leads that I come up with. Since most adopted children unintentionally become expert online researchers, I am usually pretty successful coming up with new information. Not always of course, but when I do find new information it usually assuages my need to click that "Friend" button on Facebook or the "Follow" button on Pinterest.

It would just be soooo easy to click it. One click, one message and the proverbial cat is out the bag, the beans are spilled, the skeleton is out of the closet. One click and….SURPRISE! But then I pause.

Is it really fair to them?

Is not contacting them fair to me?

Where do the ethics lines lay?

I don't know. And until I am sure, it isn't something that is fair to anyone. And so I leave the button unclicked, the email unsent and Pinterest board unfollowed.

My Mom and her birth daughter insist that it is just fear talking when I say it isn't time yet. The two of them pressure me to contact my half-sisters almost every time we all get together. But, to be fair, they also pressured me to get a mediator to contact my birth mother and that didn't exactly turn out like the fairytale they assured me it would be. Their credibility is a bit shot at this point *sorry guys*. My default sister, as my mom's birth daughter calls herself, regularly threatens to contact them on my behalf because she thinks it is mad, crazy, insane that I don't just ring them up and let them know I exist. The problem is, if I allowed her to do that (I am fairly sure she wouldn't do it on her own.....pretty sure anyway) I would feel like I was acting in a very vindictive way from the rejection of my birth mother, and not in an effort for positive growth. That is certainly no way to begin a potential relationship with family.

I am lucky enough though to have been adopted from the sunny state of California, one of the primary champions of the adoptee rights movement. As a result I have many options available to me. Since I am over 21 (although we won't mention howover) and my half-sisters are over 21, I can petition the courts to legally contact them regardless of any birth family objections (statue referenced here). I have actually been three quarters of the way through that process for about two years now, but I have been sitting on the last bit of paperwork because I am torn.

I want to be fair to my birth mother. It was very clear both from her rejection letter to my mediator and through conversations with my birth father's family, that I am most likely a closely guarded secret. I have to admit, it is weird knowing that you are the skeleton in some one's closet, the scary thing you don't want coming out, the deep dark secret that should be hidden from the light. It is an odd identity for any person and I won't lie, sometimes it makes me angry. It is a lot of power to wield over someone’s life, and as the saying goes, “with great power, comes great responsibility.” So, I continue to stay my hand, so to speak.

On the other side of the coin though, I watch my sister and my Mom together and I see how far they have come. When she first contacted my Mom it sent my Mom into a tailspin. She had to dredge up and face some of the most horrifically painful times in her life, and it was really hard for her. I watched her struggle, and cry, and rage against all the things she had buried for so many decades; the shame, the heartbreak, the anger, the uncertainty, the trauma. Ultimately though, I have watched her blossom into a better person. After processing through most of it (not all yet) I have seen the two of them dig deep and connect and understand each other in a way that my Mom and I have never understood each other. God bless genetics, right? I am so proud of how far they have come and how much they have processed through and that fact alone gives me pause. Maybe I should reach out. 

The saying goes, "the truth will set you free," and that is what I want for my own birth mother. I don't want her to think that I regret her decision. I don't. I love my Mother, and all she has ever wanted to do is look my birth mother in the eye and thank her for her generous gift. She told me many times that she just wanted to thank my birth mom for giving her and my Dad the opportunity to raise me. This was especially true after she gave her only child up for adoption and delivery complications meant she would never again carry a child to term.

If contacting my half-sisters forces the truth out into the open, isn't that a good thing? Doesn't it fall under the greater good, or acting in her best interests or something along those lines? Isn’t forcing her to face things she has stuffed deep down inside a positive thing? Or would it be more prudent to adhere to the responses of the Ask Amy writers and, "leave that poor birth mother alone?" Is living in denial and anger really a life worth protecting? Or does some pain run so deep that it is best left buried?

And last but not least, what of my half-sisters? Don’t they have the right to know that they have another sibling in the world? Isn’t that something that should be their choice, not something kept from them? What about their rights?

I am grateful for my new sister. I am grateful that she went out on a limb and forced my Mom to face her worst fears. I love her for it. She is a wonderful, generous and caring person and now that she is here, I can’t imagine our lives without her in it. Don’t my birth sisters deserve the same thing? Or am I just being selfish?

Please comment. Help me work through the philosophical conundrum of this crazy adoption journey.

What do you think?

Would you want to know if you had an unknown brother or sister?

Whose feelings do I defer to first? My own? My family’s? My birth family’s?


 

 

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