Dina McQueen: Birth Mother Pain -- The Only Way Out is Through It: 7 Steps to Liberation

Sitting around the supper table, my four-year-old, Ethiopian-born daughter recently asked me, "Who is your birth mommy?"

"Nana," I said, a bit stunned; she has only uttered the term "birth mother" three, maybe four times, and not recently. "Your nana is my birth mommy."

She looked at me without speaking. Then climbed out of the chair, headed toward the living room, and said, "Is it alright if I watch Curious George?"

1. Pay attention

Though I did not ignore the evening's inquiry, I have to admit that by the next day I had pushed it aside. Saturday afternoon I prepared lunch -- baguette with butter, cheese, and apple slices -- let her watch another something PBS, and again, out of the blue, another inquiry. This time I smelled trouble.

"I want to watch my baby video."

"Well, why?"

"I don't know. I just want to watch my baby video. That's okay, right?"

I reluctantly agreed. In my mind's eye, I knew what would result -- a crawling, baby-talking, whimpering almost kindergartner. But that was to come. When I said it was okay -- one time -- she jumped up and down and shouted, "Yipitee! I get to watch my baby video!" Africa & Home, 2008-2009.

She slid the DVD into her hand-me-down laptop, and I guided her through the steps to get it going. Her dad sat next to her, working on his own computer, and I kissed her and told her that I didn't want to watch it again right now. "Why not?" she asked, as the creaking door inside our Addis Ababa guest-house sounded through the computer.

"Sweetie, you know that the moment you were handed to me was the happiest moment in my whole life, but right now I don't feel like watching. It makes me so happy I cry." "Aww, mom," she said. "I'm going to exercise. I love you," I said and kissed her on the cheek.

Forty-five minutes later, when I was back from my walk and showered, the "baby" had returned. Crawling, baby-talking, arms reaching skyward to be picked up. Crap, here it was, just what I was inwardly clenching myself against: The infant had replaced the Big Girl. I dialed up my internal reserves, as Energy and Patience were called for duty. Baby girl wanted juice in the "baba" I had (stupidly) bought weeks earlier during another regression period. A few months back, upon advice from our social worker and a strong intuition of my own, I recognized and accepted that her need to feel nurtured like a baby was vital. To deny her cries for attention could be irreversibly damaging, I thought, so I made the decision not be that kind of mother; I would not be that woman who would make her own adult desires more important than her child's needs. No matter how long it took. That is what I promised myself.

After about thirty minutes of the grunting, crawling four-year-old, I said that it was time to do something else. "Let's read some books," I said. "Or we could make a collage. Or, I would love to play dollhouse with you."

"I want to watch my baby video," she said.

Innards tight against what I knew was coming. "No, we're not going to watch your baby video again. What else could we do instead? Maybe you'd like to help me make a cake? Or some muffins?"

"I want to watch my baby video! My baby video!"

The scene is set. You, my readers, are not idiots, so I will spare you the play-by-play. But it went something like this: Me, "No, I'm so sorry, but I don't like it when you watch your baby video because you become a baby, and I have so much more fun with the big girl." Tears streaming, writhing on the ground: "I want to watch my baby video!" This went on and on until I realized it was going on and on and I could feel my heart pounding far too strongly, and my neck getting gripped for a scream, and I actually told myself, You will not scream at her.

2. When you feel yourself boiling, give yourselves a time out

Finally, when I clued into the mad circle inside which we were spinning, I knew we needed a break. So I picked her up and took her down to her room. I went inside with her and she started to really cry, and I told her that I loved her, but that this was not okay, we were not going to watch the baby video again, not today, and when she was ready to come out and play something with me, to please do so. I shut the door gently and left.

Upstairs, swearing in a not-so-quiet voice: "This is f'ed up, what is going on? I don't know what to do? What should we do?"

Husband agreed that her behavior was not acceptable. That she needed to be in her room. But for how long? I paced and mumbled, my heart feeling like a building had dropped on it, as it pinched my insides and nudged me to let her watch the video again so she would stop crying and keep my heart from totally shattering. But the head took the wheel and told the heart to go to the back of the bus. I let five minutes pass, maybe seven. As the wailing seemed only to escalate, I made an executive decision to intervene. I know from personal direct experience how that kind of intense sobbing can feed on itself and result in vomiting, or a simple -- or not so simple -- feeling of insanity.

"I'm going down," I said.

3. Return to the zone

I knocked on her door, and opened it. My sad child had a binky in her mouth, and her face was streaked with tears as snot ran into her mouth.

"Come here, you precious one," and she fell into my arms sobbing. "Tell Mommy, tell me what's really going on."

"I wanna watch my baby video," through the dry rough throat of a cried-out child.

"Well, we're not going to do that."

A crescendo of wails.

"Tell Mama what is it about the video that you like so much."

"I just like watching my baby VIDeo!"

I was stuck then. What could I say? My mind rapidly visualized the video and what was depicted there: Her new mommy and daddy waiting in the gray and stark courtyard, slowly pacing, as the gate is opened and a thin Ethiopian woman walks through holding close to her chest a tiny sleeping baby in a red dress. The woman placing the baby in the new mother's arms. The nanny kissing the baby's neck before she walks back through the gate. A guesthouse employee checking to make sure that the neophyte mother holds the baby's neck properly.

"Lovey, tell mommy, do you like watching the video so much because you get to see a little of Ethiopia?"

"Yes!!!" and the crying heats up again, and I hold her more tightly, and her tears and snot dampen my shirt, and I hold her tighter. "I wanna go to Africa! I miss Africa! I MISS AFRICA."

My daughter buried her face in my chest as she cried, and I tried to reason.

"I know baby girl, but we're here right now. We'll go back someday, I promise, but we're here right now. Tell me more about what makes you want to watch the video over and over again?"

Nothing, I believe, can prepare an adoptive mother for what next my daughter voiced. She took a quick breath, and in a loud and mournful shout, she expressed clearly, decisively, and with the deepest conviction: "I MISS MY BIRTH MOMMY!"

4. Be present

I had a choice here, to appease her with pat comments of how her birth mommy loves her, and that she loved her enough to want to make sure that she never was hungry, or cold, that she always felt comfort and would always and forever be taken care of. In fact, I did say these things. And as I was about to say I know how sad you must feel, I stopped myself. There is not a chance in this complicated, messy world that I could possibly know how she feels. Telling her that would be condescending and a lie.

Instead, this is what I said: "My sweet girl, I miss your birth mommy too. I wish I could know her too, and talk to her and tell her how much I love her for trusting me and having faith enough to give us the biggest gift in the whole wide world. I miss her too, my love, and I feel very sad."

And then I held her as we both cried. Yes, even as part of my brain was shouting at me, Do not let your daughter see you cry like this! I did it anyway. I sobbed for my daughter's grief, and the grief she may carry with her for the rest of her life. I cried for the woman who gave up this astonishing child, this gift of love and joy, and I sobbed because the orphan situation on the planet is simply an unspeakable catastrophe, on so many levels, it's just an incomprehensible, overwhelming, likely never-to-be fixed planetary problem. F-it, I finally told myself, as I dropped my head in my hands and allowed my body to tremble with grief.

5. Allow for transmutation

Something remarkable happened next. The four year old's crying slowed, and then ceased. She walked over to the Kleenex box and handed it to me, then got the sparkly purple box she uses for her tissue trash, and reached that out for me. "Here, put it in the trash," she said. She went from handing me the Kleenex box, to handing me the Kleenex trash, back and forth. In a few minutes, she declared, "I'm done crying now."

At that, I looked up, as she showed a hint of a smile. I opened my arms, and she came rushing in. I held her and rocked her side to side. I kissed her cheeks, and told her how I would always be here for her, that we would get through this together, whatever it took. I told her how brave I thought she was, and how much I admired her courage and her strength. "I LOVE you, Mommy!" she said. "I want to go upstairs and see Daddy."

6. Expect a miracle

Dinner was simple, a "pizza party," on the floor, picnic style, in front of Mary Poppins. Spread out on the plastic Disney-themed table covering we used for her last birthday party, she sat between her father and me. Nearly done with the entire pizza, crust and all, she took a break and sat still, silent. Mary Poppins was singing, "A spoon full of sugar, helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down ..."

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, and quite matter-of-factly, Daughter said: "I see God."

"What? Where?"' I felt verklemmt.

She pointed west toward a wall where a floral watercolor Husband painted hangs next to a large window.

"Over there!"

"Really, wow! That's amazing. What does She look like?"

"Me!"

7. Express gratitude, often and without discrimination

I sat with my daughter that night for quite some time while she relaxed for bed. We read books, cuddled, and prayed our nightly prayers of gratitude. As I was about to leave, she voiced a quiet moan.

"What's up, precious?"

I turned to her and she waved her arm gently above her head. "I LOVE God!"

Astonished, and relieved, I affirmed, "And God loves you."

* * *

The only way out is through. --Alanis Morissette

I believe, with all that I am and all that I have come to know through my own decades of emotional and physical pain, that the only true way a human can attain the kind of freedom that is our birthright is to face one's personal demons head-on: shout, scream, cry, invite those intruders in for tea, then kiss them goodbye. Even if it takes the strength of a tiger, or a 4-year-old Ethiopian-born girl who lost her first mother through no choice of her own, the monsters must be shown who's head of the house. One must be allowed -- respectfully, and with unlimited comfort -- to do whatever it takes to stay with the suffering until it has vanished. Even it that means allowing for the process over and over again.

I have come to know that it is not only my responsibility to be present for my child, whatever shape the need at hand takes, that it is not only my job to hold space for as long as it takes for the shift to occur, but it is also my honor.

In the end, it is I who has been transformed. By choosing "yes" instead of "no," I become witness to the miracle that emerges when we say, "Thank you, God, for showing me the way things are, and giving me the strength I need to be still."

Paying attention, knowing your limits, committing to doing the work -- no matter what --believing in miracles, and expressing gratitude. This, I have come to believe, is the formula for, if not parental success, at least the satisfaction of knowing you did not quit. In the end, your child's mental -- and potentially physical -- health depends on it.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dina-mcqueen/birth-mother_b_1385908.html

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