Something pretty incredible in my extended family happened this recent Independence Day. It all began 38 years ago when my aunt placed a tiny, brand new baby girl for adoption. In those days, adoption was something that was not respected. It was something that was hush-hush and stigmatized. This baby was delivered and ushered from the room and all my aunt knew was that it was a little girl. My mother was there for the delivery and six months pregnant with my oldest sister. Eighteen years later, this girl decided it was time for her to start looking for her birth-mother. She felt like something was missing and so she began her search to find what she missed. It was twenty years ago that this girl put her name on a list in hopes that one day her birth-mother would also put her name on the same contact list so that the two could be reunited again. The fateful day came (a year or two ago, I can't remember specifically) that my aunt began the process to find her birth-daughter. She had been thinking about it for years but wasn't sure where to start. Any seeking she had done was in vain as the records were all closed. My aunt learned within 20 minutes of putting her name on this contact list that her daughter had been looking for her and wanted immediate contact with her. And so began the journey to this most recent Independence Day when this beautiful woman took an incredibly brave step towards meeting her extended family.
My mother is the second of 11 children. I am one of over 50 grandchildren to my grandmother, and there are over 70 great-grandchildren in this one family. It began as a casual family get-together. Anyone who could make it was encouraged to come for an afternoon of fun. And then we all learned directly from my aunt that this beautiful daughter of hers was going to be in town and it grew to be a mini-family reunion where the guest of honor was someone we didn't know was out there but that we jumped at the opportunity to welcome into our love. I was sitting at a table eating lunch and I looked over to notice a gentleman I hadn't recalled seeing before. With mentioning how large my extended family is on this one side, I need to say that it is pretty normal for us to not directly recognize someone as new additions through marriage occur often enough that it could be a couple years before we meet the "new" additions. So, I was thinking to myself Whose been married recently? Which cousin did he marry?
And that's when I heard my mother, along with a couple of my aunts scream excitedly and a mad rush was made towards the center of the room and a hugging mosh-pit happened. That's when I realized that this man was a cousin I hadn't met yet, afterall, and his wife was the cherished cousin that this get-together was honoring and whom was the center of the hugging mosh-pit. I jumped up and made my way over to this woman. I introduced myself to her and I told her that I was the niece of her birth-mother and share the name as her birth-mother. I then told her that I am also a birth-mother and that I was so happy that she was here with her family. I was tearing up. I hugged her and she hugged me and we were both emotional and it was beautiful. I was able to spend some good quality time talking with her and it turns out that she is also a birth-mother. When it was time to say good bye, I hugged her multiple times and the last time I told her that I may not know her that well but I love her and I'm so happy she is here. She said something similar and we are now friends on Facebook.
A couple things. How awesome is modern technology that you can stay in close touch with the people you care about? And secondly, how beautiful is adoption? More specifically, how beautiful is open adoption? I think it's easy for birth-mothers today who have an open adoption to take for granted how truly blessed we are to be able to maintain contact with the parents of the child we all share in common. I'm not saying that every birth-mother today has a dream adoption plan, because I know that there are so many adoption couples out there who made countless promises in order to secure the child and then turn their backs on those promises made once the adoption is legally finalized. You all know my feelings towards those types of parents. And I know there are people out there who really try their hardest to tarnish the name and intention of open adoption, and it's those people who have not done objective research because if they had they wouldn't be so biased. And I know there are people who have had traumatizing and hard personal experience with open adoption who choose to defame it by painting all open adoptions in the colors of their own individual experience, and I don't agree with those people, though I truly can understand where they are coming from.
All I want to say though is that in my experience and the vast experiences of countless others whom I associate with who have direct experience with adoption, whether it is open or closed, adoption has been the single-most greatest blessing in their life. That doesn't mean it was a hard blessing to accomplish, but it was an importantly life-altering and mostly positive experience for them, and they wouldn't change their mind if given the opportunity to go through the experience again. I'm one of those people. And on July 4, 2014, I learned something so precious and sacred, that adoption is a means of uniting family. Whether that family is created through adoption, or is reunited after years of searching, adoption means family. And family is sacred. Family is not something so easily defined as the traditional nuclear family we all were taught about while growing up. Family today is much more extensive and hybrid in nature and it's beautiful. I am grateful for adoption. I am grateful to know my cousin. She is lovely and so much like my aunt in her mannerisms, it's uncanny (in a wonderful way). She always felt like there were more people out there that she needed to know. And ultimately, I think that's something we all wish one day for the child we placed for adoption. Through open adoption, connecting back to the "other" family is much easier. For closed adoptions, it's much more difficult and can take decades. But we all have that burning question about who and where we came from. For adoptees, this question is much less existential. I couldn't be happier that she found us. We love her and are so excited to know her.
It's time to paint adoption in an unbiased light. It's beautiful. It's fulfilling. It's tragic. And difficult. It's rewarding. It's honest. And heartbreaking. But in the end, if the focus is what is best for the child, it's honorable and nothing to be ashamed of. For those out there who disagree with me, I would love to engage in an unbiased conversation with you. The moment it becomes biased is the moment I will disengage. The fact remains that adoption creates family and family is important and essential to existence. And no one has the right to say that any family is less important than another simply because of how it was created. That's all there is to it. It's time to take a balanced look at what adoption is, and stop focusing on what it isn't. It's a blessing.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Growth Mindset
It's been almost 6 months since I've written. And in those 6 months, University has continued to be my main focus in life. I'm officially in the Education Program this semester and it's been awesome. I'm taking Educational Psychology, Secondary Curriculum Instruction and Assessment (CIA, tee-hee), American Foundations of Education, Exceptional Students, and Methods II in teaching English. Yep, it's a heavy workload but it's been manageable. I've been creating curriculum right and left ll semester and have been analyzing my lesson plans to learn how they've been encouraging cognitive development for the age groups they've been created for. I've been learning some really amazing things in my Educational Psychology class and some of that stuff I'm going to share on this blog because they are too good not to share.
Carol Dweck is a Psychologist who devised a theory about fixed vs. growth intelligence mindsets. She wrote a book about it called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. This entire theory is based on the concept that many students have that intelligence is something you are born with and therefore a person's intelligence is limited. So, if a student with this mindset struggles with math then they feel defeated because intelligence to them is a biological thing, therefore they will never understand math so why put in any effort? Carol Dweck says, however, that intelligence is not fixed (biological), but rather it is something that needs to be exercised and strengthened and able to grow. She did a study with students where she divided them into 2 groups. Group A was put through an intensive 8 week intervention program to boost their math scores that focused solely on teaching them study skills to help them find success in their math grades. And along with teaching Group A the study skills, she also taught them that intelligence can be expanded and that it is not fixed (biological). Group B had the same 8 week intervention program focusing on study skills, but were not taught fixed vs. growth intelligence theory. At the end of a couple of months, students from Group A (compared against students from Group B) showed improvement in their math grades. The only difference for these groups was the change in motivation that students experience in Group A because they were taught that their brain had the ability to grow in intelligence. It's quite fascinating. You can read more about this study by reading this article: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2007/pr-dweck-020707.html
Why am I excited about this? Because this doesn't just apply to the adolescent mind. I probably didn't mention that the study Carol Dweck performed was on Jr. High students. How many times have you been faced with an experience you don't believe you can get through? I know I've faced so many of those moments that I can't count them. I want to say that I don't think that Carol Dweck's theory only applies to cognitive intelligence but also emotional intelligence. You always hear that saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle," but what if He does? I read another blog a while back and I can't for the life of me remember the name of the blog, so just realize that this idea is not original to me. This woman, in her blog, challenged the notion that we aren't given more in this life than we can handle. But it wasn't defeatist. She ended her blog by saying, essentially, that God does give us more than we can handle, but He does so that we will learn to turn to Him and let Him carry the part that we can't. That's pretty cool. I want to add to this that I think He does give us more than we can handle, because maybe that's the point of this existence; for us to learn the valuable life lessons that we would otherwise not learn unless faced with despair, trial, hopelessness, loss, anger, and etc. That sounds depressing and I don't mean for it to. All I am saying is that just like growth intelligence mindset (cognitively speaking), I also believe that we have a growth emotional-intelligence mindset.
Those of us in the Adoption community have faced hardship, and we continue to face hardships. You know what I'm talking about. As birth-mothers and birth-fathers (they matter too), and birth-families (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.), we experience a great loss in the placement of our beloved child to another family; a family that will have complete legal authority for the child. As parents who are looking to adopt for reasons related to fertility, they've endured loss over and over again in their attempts to grow their family. I can't speak for adoptive children, because I'm not one, but I can only imagine some of the emotions they would face at different times in their lives, especially people who were placed for adoption during time-periods where adoption was closed and considered taboo. That kind of loss (for all of us) is deep and difficult to navigate, but we are navigating it and that is powerful. Don't limit yourself in the amazing things that you can accomplish, but most importantly don't doubt yourself in the emotional depth that you can achieve when you face something that feels too big. You can get through it. We all can.
Carol Dweck is a Psychologist who devised a theory about fixed vs. growth intelligence mindsets. She wrote a book about it called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. This entire theory is based on the concept that many students have that intelligence is something you are born with and therefore a person's intelligence is limited. So, if a student with this mindset struggles with math then they feel defeated because intelligence to them is a biological thing, therefore they will never understand math so why put in any effort? Carol Dweck says, however, that intelligence is not fixed (biological), but rather it is something that needs to be exercised and strengthened and able to grow. She did a study with students where she divided them into 2 groups. Group A was put through an intensive 8 week intervention program to boost their math scores that focused solely on teaching them study skills to help them find success in their math grades. And along with teaching Group A the study skills, she also taught them that intelligence can be expanded and that it is not fixed (biological). Group B had the same 8 week intervention program focusing on study skills, but were not taught fixed vs. growth intelligence theory. At the end of a couple of months, students from Group A (compared against students from Group B) showed improvement in their math grades. The only difference for these groups was the change in motivation that students experience in Group A because they were taught that their brain had the ability to grow in intelligence. It's quite fascinating. You can read more about this study by reading this article: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2007/pr-dweck-020707.html
Why am I excited about this? Because this doesn't just apply to the adolescent mind. I probably didn't mention that the study Carol Dweck performed was on Jr. High students. How many times have you been faced with an experience you don't believe you can get through? I know I've faced so many of those moments that I can't count them. I want to say that I don't think that Carol Dweck's theory only applies to cognitive intelligence but also emotional intelligence. You always hear that saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle," but what if He does? I read another blog a while back and I can't for the life of me remember the name of the blog, so just realize that this idea is not original to me. This woman, in her blog, challenged the notion that we aren't given more in this life than we can handle. But it wasn't defeatist. She ended her blog by saying, essentially, that God does give us more than we can handle, but He does so that we will learn to turn to Him and let Him carry the part that we can't. That's pretty cool. I want to add to this that I think He does give us more than we can handle, because maybe that's the point of this existence; for us to learn the valuable life lessons that we would otherwise not learn unless faced with despair, trial, hopelessness, loss, anger, and etc. That sounds depressing and I don't mean for it to. All I am saying is that just like growth intelligence mindset (cognitively speaking), I also believe that we have a growth emotional-intelligence mindset.
Those of us in the Adoption community have faced hardship, and we continue to face hardships. You know what I'm talking about. As birth-mothers and birth-fathers (they matter too), and birth-families (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.), we experience a great loss in the placement of our beloved child to another family; a family that will have complete legal authority for the child. As parents who are looking to adopt for reasons related to fertility, they've endured loss over and over again in their attempts to grow their family. I can't speak for adoptive children, because I'm not one, but I can only imagine some of the emotions they would face at different times in their lives, especially people who were placed for adoption during time-periods where adoption was closed and considered taboo. That kind of loss (for all of us) is deep and difficult to navigate, but we are navigating it and that is powerful. Don't limit yourself in the amazing things that you can accomplish, but most importantly don't doubt yourself in the emotional depth that you can achieve when you face something that feels too big. You can get through it. We all can.
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