Adoption Ghosts and Unlived Lives

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.   ~ Carl Jung

While Jung did not have adoption in mind when he said these profound words, how interesting to explore the concept within the framework of adoption.

The unlived life of most who adopt is evident and is carried with them forever: the ghost of the child they might have had. It is much of what creates what has become known as the pseudo "postpartum" depression, blues or letdown. The reality, the disappointment and the eternal wonder what a child "of my own" may have looked like, smelled like, sounded like, behaved like.

 That shadow ghost child remains a constant comparison.  I wonder if my child would have liked sports more, as I do; would my child have acted this way or that.

What, they are left to wonder would my life - our lives - have been like had i not been afflicted with infertility, not spent years undergoing painful and expensive tretments, facing disappointment after disappointment, and made to undergo the scrutiny of adoption. 

Adoptive parents live with the uncertainties of not being their child's "real" parents; fear of blood being thicker than water. They often live reactively to the threat of loosing the love and affection of their child to the ghost of the birth parent.

When we morphed gradually from the days of adoptive parents being encouraged not to reveal to their child that they were adopted to more openness and honesty, it was with a belief that telling a child they were 'chosen' would make them feel special and wanted.  How lacking in understanding of the psyche - how indicative of adoption as a social experiment - not to have anticipated that most every adoptee would figure out that being chosen meant having first been given away, unwanted, rejected, abandoned and that that in turn meant there was something inherently wrong with them.  Add to that the constant - very real -  feeling of being constantly compared to the child that did not grow in their mother's tummy...the adoptive parents' "real" child, their ghost child...and you have a whopping dose of feeling unworthy, never good enough.

The adoptee also has the unlived, "fantasy" life they might have had, had they not been placed for adoption.  Who would they be had their original parents found a way to provide a safe home for them to be nurtured in?

And then there is the unlived life of the mothers who loose a child to adoption? The ghost we live with forever...the "what ifs." How would life have been had we received the support we needed not to have had our child amputated from us? That ghost hovers over our every action and reaction, it haunts all of our relationships and it howls at our subsequent children as they wonder if they live up to our yearnings for the missing puzzle piece in our family portrait.

Unlived lives are powerful. Ghosts are daunting and can be relentless and demanding in their haunting and howling to be heard.

Jung knew the power, the influence of the ghosts of unlived lives we live with every day.

Today, we are trying yet another pendulum swing of an experiment with the lives of adopted children: open adoption. In this scenario, when it is done to the fullest and truest extent and not just "identified" adoption called open, where the openness extends beyond a knowing of the two sets of parents to the child.... children grow not with total fantasy unlived lives, 

but are exposed to them.  How will introducing the ghosts, inviting them to sit at our dinner tables play our for this new generation of experimental rat children? 

How will being invited to your ghost mom's wedding be internalized? Witnessing the addition of subsequent children - KEPT children - do to the psyches of these new world adopto-kids? Only time will tell.

We do know that for many mothers involved in these experiments it has meant deceit and betrayal as promises are broken. For others it has meant pain too excruciating to endure...playing our a scene from Thorton Wilder's play "Our Town" where you are the ghost present yet unseen and your child is calling another "Mommy."  Seeing, witnessing, being right there in the center of your unlived life.  Watching the parents who have more to offer and deserved your flesh and blood more than you did. How are they doing, the parents you CHOSE? 

Unlived lives are ghosts that haunt us and effect us in myriad ways - all of us - even when we live in a trance of denial and believe it doesn't matter at all. Our beliefs create a "reality" that can be shattered at any time by the truth. 

Because, what is real is never necessarily true.

You are really my mother; I am really your child.  In this life. In this reality that has been created by the stroke of a pen on a piece of paper. But not in our unlived lives that haunt us and shape us and influence everything we do.

And we wonder why reunification is so fraught with difficulties, when there are four of us reuniting - you and your ghost me and mine....and perhaps the adoptive parents ghosts as well....  

A poem I wrote back in the 80s..... for alicia, my eternal ghost child.... 

DREAM MOTHER

Before you were whole

and really alive

I dreamt of you and I

            together

            forever

That dream was shattered

by a tugging too real to be imagined

they were taking you

            from me

tearing my insides out

I tried to hold on to you

but they pulled you

            from me

I closed my eyes

thinking you'd still be there

where you've always been

            in my dreams

In my dreams where

            I hold you

            rock you and

            comfort you

In my dreams where

I watch you

as you grow into

            a happy child

             gorgeous child

            a brilliant child

A child who laughs

and plays and throws

            kisses to me

because I am always with you

Hush now,

            mamma's here

In my dreams where

you grow taller

and more beautiful

            than ever

In my dreams where

            I am at graduations and

            Engagement parties

In my dreams where

            I am your proud mother…

But then

in my dream

your mother turns

and she's

            not me.

I waken with

            a start

to a nightmare

of emptiness and

            loneliness

soaked with tears

            and sweat

I can recall your

            birth

with vivid sweet pain

but, the rest

the rest

            is it all

            just a dream?

Once I saw you

we spoke

we touched

we broke the cardinal rule:

one mustn't touch

            a dream.

I tried to bring you

            back with me

to my reality

and almost lost you

Hush now,

            mamma's gone

I will not scare you

            again

You needn't run away

I'll go back

and content myself

with my beautiful

dream of you

in which you are

my child

            forever