“In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm.” - Isaac Rosenfeld

Of course, every aphorism has a disclaimer. Mine is that in my extended family, one of the sibs broke off from the family through no failings of the parents. Only someone who has lived this has any real concept of the anguish involved, having lived it.

I’m currently thinking of a grown adoptee whose adoptive parents have rejected her. I’m not privy to any of the details or reasons, except as she has shared, but it sure seems to me that it would constitute two rejections in her life, first from her bio parents and then from her APs, hurtful to a visceral degree.

What can be said to to offer solace? Maybe nothing. Maybe it is one of those places in life where we simply have to muddle and grieve through as best we can, looking for happiness in other places. And finding mentors or friends who will walk the path with us.

Someone who hasn’t lived it cannot really know the depth of anguish it causes.

If you are thinking of becoming a parent, and most especially if you are thinking of adopting, or if you are a parent already, what do you realistically expect? I know if you are adopting or have adopted, you’ve talked about it with a social worker, but have you really, really thought about it.

Our children, bio or adopted, are not clones. This can either be magical or difficult. But we shouldn’t be glib.

They have their own thoughts and inspirations and aspirations, as well as talents. It’s good if we can mentally look out from their eyes. Then we can ’see’ some of what they are facing.

If we know where we’d like to be when they are adults, we can strive to take the steps in the present that will get us to that point (a la the movie Premonition, which admittedly didn’t work too well in that regard.) Denial of the self of a child is rarely going to lead to anything but estrangement, whether it is the child who does the estranging (or feels it, even if they never speak of it), or if that has occurred over time by the parents, the relationship may be irreparable without some major changes.

Some children slip into our lives so effortlessly and seemingly without any seams. But other times it takes a lot of work to get to that point, and sometimes we have to change our expectations (and our tactics.)

Love and rejection are polar opposites.

Can we love enough to be accepting? Think of your own personal worst case scenario, could you accept your child if you found out that was who they were?

I think as we mature, we gather our own group of friends to be a kind of family to us especially if we have lost relationships important to us. Sometimes God gives us a friend who functions like a sib, or an older woman who becomes like a mother to us (or even our daughter can mother us, as one of mine has me now that my mother is not alive) and likewise, we can be that to other people.

Love large and see where it leads you.

Ps 68: 6 God setteth the solitary in families: KJV

Karin

ON CHILDREN

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said,
“speak to us of children.”

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you they belong not to you.

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies, but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which
you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make
them like you.
For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living
arrows are sent forth.

The Archer sees the mark upon the Path of the infinite and He
bends you with His might that His arrows might
go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer’s hands be for gladness,
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves
also the bow that is stable. Kahlil Gibran

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Categories:

Adoption, Just thinking, Parenting, Quotations, Spirituality and God

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