Although she was adopted at the age of six, Bonnie has lived with unanswered questions her entire life. Were they in love when they made me? Was there a reason they couldn't be together? And, perhaps the most common, why did they give me up?
Bonnie's Story
"Adopted children are very different than children who were not adopted."
I was not adopted until I was six, and I lived a holocaust before then. I remember thinking that people having the right to take children and give them away is not a good thing. The last family I lived with was an elderly couple, and I thought I belonged to them. At the end of the summer, this lovely couple that I was living with proposed that I become another couple's child. I was suspicious of the man -- there was something about him that I wanted nothing to do with -- and I could tell immediately that they had some type of investment in me.
When I was a child the system was a different system than it is today. People could pretty much do what they wanted to do. Adoption was rare, and being a Native American child, it was even rarer for me. By the time I was six, I knew more than you know right now. I could read people, I had had experiences that I couldn't even dialogue for another 20 years. I have met many other adopted people, men and women, and we say the same thing -- that we were old, wise souls and that the people who took us in had no idea who they had under their roof.
"When you adopt a child, you have loving expectations, but you really don't know what conflict is there, particularly with an older child."
I would counsel anyone who adopts an older child to immediately go into therapy with that child, whether there are signs of anything at all. Children are great chameleons, and even if there's nothing in their past, their adoption will come up in the future. At some point in that child's life, they are going to wonder, why did they give me away, and they're going to want an answer.
I have a dear friend in Boston who became pregnant while we were doing a play together, and she had made it very clear that she was going to give the baby up. One day I sat down with her and told her I was adopted. All at once, she had her future standing in front of her. She asked me some questions, and I suggested she write an explanation to that baby answering the questions it was bound to have. I also told her to be prepared for that child to knock on her door one day.
"The one thing I would like to know about my mother and my father is that when they made me, they loved one another."
Knowing whether they loved one another or if it was just a passing fancy would somehow make a difference to me. If they loved one another, I think that would be completely forgivable. Circumstances are circumstances, and we do the best that we can, so if they loved one another, that would be okay.
"Being adopted helped me to be a better mother to my own children."
I couldn't wait to have my own children. Being an adopted child and being an old, wise soul made me view children as very special, highly intelligent, in need of great respect and care. One of the greatest blessings in all of the complexity of being an adopted child is the ability to take that knowledge, those experiences and place them in motherhood, where you can be extraordinarily in tune to a child. You can offer them a life that is aware, rich and full. I may not be able to do that if I was a woman with a normal life.
