Sweet Sixteen

Post adoption one of the pieces of advice that stuck out to me the most was “Don’t be intimidated or threatened by the people that loved your older adopted child before you.” I remember reading those words of wisdom from one of the million books I was devouring the year before we brought our daughter home. I didn’t know then how much that sentence would flash off and on in my mind throughout this first year.

As a newly adoptive mom, this is extremely hard to do. EXTREMELY. You love this child so much, you have all these expectations of what your relationship will look like, you’ve worked for years to bring him/her home, and you’re fearful of whether she will ever open her heart to you. I would think to myself “all her previous foster moms had an unfair advantage and as a new family we/I just couldn’t compete.” And I would be so very jealous of the way she adored them.

If Richa would have been younger I might have chosen to keep her less connected to her past relationships for a while, but because of her age, the longevity of her Indian identity, as well as the many trust issues I knew she had I was conflicted. Then I would remember what I read…. don’t be threatened by those that loved your adopted child before you. “There is no cap on love. If your adopted child loved others before you then she can learn to love you too.” I have clung to that promise many times this year when the pain of her rejection made me want to shut everyone out of her life and lock her up Rapunzel style until Stockholm syndrome took over and she had no other choice but to love me the most.

Last night we celebrated her 16th birthday in our home filled to the brim with friends and family. In addition to all the new people in her life that love her, we were blessed with the presence of 6 of her previous foster moms/sisters. 5 of these young women live within 4 hours of driving distance and 1 was traveling with her husband so made a special detour. Crazy right? They all made the trip complete with Henna tattoos, Indian snacks, birthday gifts, and lots of fun stories of her childhood. When we sang Happy Birthday to my daughter I looked around the room and saw pieces of her story everywhere. Her past was celebrating with her present and forming a new and wonderful reality for all of us. Most importantly I looked at my daughter and saw her beaming with happiness. I saw her ability to love others as well as receive it.

In a way, I can’t compete with those my daughter loved before she met me, but as time passes I’m seeing that I don’t necessarily need to. Each love experience in our life…. our first love, our first heartbreak, our first child, friends, family, spouses…. they all exist independent of the other love, child, heartbreak, spouse, friend that sometimes proceeds or follows. One experience exists separate from the other, so no matter how many people we meet or how many times we allow ourselves to attach to someone we never risk hitting the proverbial glass ceiling and capping out. Our ability to love only grows.

The more I pretended to not care (emphasis on pretended) that she loved all these other people and seemed to only tolerate me the more I earned her respect and trust. The more she saw that I was forming friendships with all these young women, could love them alongside her, and that only I had the power to include them or exclude them in our life her view of me began to shift. I think she saw I wasn’t going to try and take away anything from her life…. only add to it. I’m also fortunate that the women in my daughter’s life understand the adoption process and the challenges we are facing as we try to form a strong family unit. They happily step down and allow us to be the boss, they support our decisions, and they point our daughter back to us anytime it's needed. This helps me have the confidence to continue sharing her, and the courage to not hold on to her too tight out of fear.

After a perfectly wonderful evening celebrating her birthday and lots of cleaning we got in her bed in pajamas and plates of chocolate birthday cake. Just the three of us. No one else.

Luke 2:9 But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. I get it Mary. I get it.