I live in the Washington DC metropolitan area so I saw, first-hand, the article on the front page of the Washington Post about the woman who is seeking to un-adopt her son. As I read it I cringed and thought to myself, "Oh no. Another bummer adoption story." I don't know why I take every adoption story personally. I don't know how to explain it, except to say that my personal investment in the adoption stories of other people is excessive. Particularly when the adoption story becomes public. If it is a positive story, I want to jump up and shout "Yay, adoption!" If it is a sad or tragic story, I just go into an immature funk.

If there is a story about an abusive adoptive mother, I get all worked up about it, as if that mother's abuse reflects poorly on all adoptive mothers, including myself. Usually I can find my way to asking compassionate questions about what would lead a mother to do whatever it is that she is accused of having done. But, before I get there, my initial response is completey illogical, just plain stupid: She's making all of us adoptive mothers look bad. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth and it sounds so stupid I hesitate to include it in this post, because I know it will make me sound like an idiot.

If there is a story in the news about an adopted child who goes on a rampage and wreaks havoc in some way or another, I get so sad, to the point of almost not being able to think of much else. I go into this whole fit over why didn't someone do something, notice something, say something before whatever happened, happened. It becomes as if one adopted child's psychiatric disturbance is a reflection on all adopted childrens' mental health, including my adopted childrens' mental health.

So, I had the same feeling when I was reading about the woman who wanted to dissolve the adoption of her son. As I read about the mother's assertion that she had not been given full disclosure about her son's history and background, I found myself becoming defensive (against what or whom I don't know) over how well informed I was about my own daughters' histories and backgrounds. I went into this anxious state and began to busily reassure myself that this woman's experience, as she relates it, of being deliberately deceived and mislead was not my adoption experience. But as an adoptive mother, it still made me angry to think that it possibly could have been.

I think of myself as a parent who went into adoption with my eyes wide open. Not only had I heard about the horror stories and the failed adoptions, but I had seen them for myself up close. I guess it is to be expected that I didn't feel a personal connection to them until I became an adoptive mother myself. The psychology of all that still doesn't make sense to me, though. Nevertheless, it is what it is and when I hear about, or read about, another unhappy, or tragic, adoption story it makes me very sad.