Building Trust

The Risk of Trust in Open Adoption

We made a decision when pursuing adoption to chose open adoption. We would meet and know the birth parents of our child and allow them in to know and have a relationship with her, us, our family. This plays out different for everyone. No right or wrong way to do open adoption. We are blessed beyond measure with the close relationship we have developed with our daughter’s birth family but we know not everyone has this outcome. Still, whatever experience, there is an inherent amount of trust that must be given for even the most casual of relationships with a birth family. Boundaries abound in all relationships and they have been part of our relationship. But today I want to talk about the trust process of developing a relationship in a fragile emotional space.

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My first day as her mom.

The first time we met Riss’s birthparents her birthfather casually mentioned where he worked. It was just over a mile from our house and I started to say, “hey, we live right by there” but then wondered if I was supposed to do that. We had not established the rules yet. What if he started driving by our house or stopping by unannounced or ??? I don’t know what. Is it a good idea to tell a stranger where you live, especially one that is about to have a vested interest in a child in your house? I stopped short needing time to process what we were about to walk into, what level of trust I was going to give these 2 teenagers sitting in front of me, and how it was all going to play out.

That was 5 weeks before our daughter was born. We had been waiting for a year to be chosen but then had just weeks to get ready when we finally got the call. Maybe other waiting families are collecting baby items but I was staring at an empty room with a crib someone had given me waiting until we knew it would really happen¹. The whole meeting was both thrilling and terrifying. They were kids making very adult decisions. We didn’t know them, didn’t know what kind of people they were, what kind of families they grew up in. We did not know what we were getting into or what kind of relationship we were agreeing to enter. But we did know we wanted a baby, we believed in open adoption, and we were willing to take a risk and welcome them into our lives.

There is an inherent risk in trusting. Generally speaking, we are all a little untrustworthy at times. We don’t mean to be but we hurt each other, we cross lines, we say too much, we don’t say enough, we show up when we shouldn’t and don’t when we should. I have certainly given trust to people who have taken advantage of that trust. And I have been thoughtless at times and betrayed trust. Trust can be used to manipulate, it can be taken advantage of and can make you feel like you did something wrong. But trust can also be a gift that strengthens and builds relationships. Without it you never discover the depths of what it means to know someone.

Boldly we decided to take that risk and build this relationship. We had come to believe that the healthiest path forward for our adopted child was to allow a connection of some sort with her birth family. We wanted to be in relationship with the birth parents and the only way to build that relationship was to take a risk and trust.

I love everything about this picture. We were all so young and had no idea the lifetime adventure we had just begun.

The third time we met with them, a couple days before our daughter was born, we invited them over to see the nursery we had put together in the few weeks since we had met.² We went full on girl with pink walls and bedding. The first picture in her baby book is of the 4 of us standing in front of the crib. I often would point to Lauren’s stomach in that picture when Riss was little and tell her she was in there. Her first family picture.

Family picnic at 3 months old.

The first couple years of her life they came to visit about once a month. They often stayed longer than we had planned and we wondered if we should kick them out or just keep going with our life. Some months we proposed locations that required a time frame or scheduled their visits right before other events. But we knew they were just enjoying the regular life she had, eating, bath time, laying on the floor, fussing for no reason. Spending the day sharing all that with them was fun too. Those first few years of a baby’s life are magical. She was constantly changing and growing and becoming and it hurt my heart to know they were missing all of that. Those monthly visits solidified them as a part of our life, our people. She never saw them as strangers coming into our house but instead as part of her family.

Learning to walk with dad and birth dad.

We made a decision to create that, to trust them to support us. And to trust that the parent/child bond is about more than genetics. That being there every day taking care of her, loving her, comforting her, encouraging her, smiling at her, holding her, feeding, changing, bathing…and then teaching, training, correcting, guiding, exploring, helping, protecting, championing…Trusting that all we were giving her and doing for her defined us as her parents, that she would chose us because she knows us best, because we are where she feels safest and most at home. Because we are her parents. It was a risk but one we wanted to take.

The growing family.

Open adoption isn’t just about trust on our part. They had to trust us too. Once they signed the papers if we didn’t stay in contact with them they had little recourse. In a lot of ways their trust was bigger than ours. We trusted them but we were always in the drivers seat of the relationship. They had to believe that we were the right parents for their baby. That we would maintain a relationship with them as promised, that we would love their daughter, provide for her, raise her to become and give her the opportunities and lifestyle they could not provide. And then they had to stand in the background without questioning, without undermining, without wishing they could change their minds and take her back when they grew up and stabilized. They had to have the wisdom and maturity to understand that there is no perfect choice but embracing and trusting the process anyway is the best path forward.

Sisters!

And they have. When it was easy and when it was hard. When we knew what we were doing and when we felt like we were failing. Because while we did our best, we were not perfect. We couldn’t give her everything, sometimes even when she needed it. We made mistakes. Her life has not been smooth and perfect and easy. And never once did they blame us or question our parenting. They never tried to step in and solve a problem or have answers to things we did not. They always trusted us to be the parents. As she got older and as they got older we sometimes relied on them to give her a little encouragement when she struggled. To let her be loved by them and be reminded she was given to us with thoughtful purpose not neglect. And she too could trust this non-traditional family we had created for her.

Getting ready for a brother.

Our baby girl turns 21 next week. I still message her birthmother updates even though Riss usually communicates those same updates directly. They have their own sweet relationship which is fun to see. But I still like to share my mom perspective and get her mom perspective back. While Birth mom and I still confer on our thoughts about who Riss is dating, choices she is making, adventures she is taking, we mostly discuss how wildly proud we are of who she is becoming. We also chat about her 2 girls and little boy. Riss’s birthparents got married a few years after she was born, had 2 more girls, full biological siblings of our daughter, got divorced, remarried and added a half brother to the mix. We talk about the ways the girls are so much like Riss and the ways they are so uniquely themselves. I am honored to know and love them as I love my nieces and nephews. They are family, they are part of us, part of the story God had for us all along as we were creating our family. We were always meant to add more than just one child, we were meant to add a whole family to our family tree. If I could go back and do it over I would take this risk and chose this family every time.

The siblings and the moms.

Even though Riss is old enough to make plans to see them without us, we still love to all get together. We have plans on the calendar in a few weeks and I can’t wait to catch up, share a meal, talk to the kids and celebrate our non traditional but wonderful family.

1. See last weeks post on Hope to understand why:

2. There was a lot of shopping and painting that happened once we were officially chosen. If I was going to get a second chance to be a mom I was going all out. Full pink bedroom, cute pink clothes and a wildly expensive petunia pickle bottom diaper bag in a patterned pink silk that I used as a purse for a year. It was amazing.