In so many ways, my daughter Julia is a young soon-to-be 12-year-old. Though she’s in middle school, she’s unconcerned with fashion, boys or other pre-pubescent experimenting. Julia, adopted from a Siberian orphanage at 8 months old, is on track intellectually but is still catching up emotionally. She is a wonderful violinist and artist and an honor student, but she hasn’t yet learned how to make a BFF, nor (and I suppose I should be thankful) has she attached herself to a clique. My husband and I are her whole world.
The other day, Julia and I were in the car waiting for my husband to pick up cat food and chicken feed. Her mood had grown stormy, and I was restlessly impatient. I honestly can’t remember what we were bickering about, but I had said “no” to something, and she replied by telling me she didn’t have to listen to me. “You are not my real mom,” she said defiantly.
I knew this day would come. I can’t say I was prepared for it. I wish I had handled it with aplomb. I didn’t. I snapped back by saying, “Oh yeah, then who is?”
I regretted these words as they catapulted from my mouth. Judging from Julia’s reaction, I could see she also felt very sad about the exchange. “That’s so mean,” she said.
I knew it was. We sat silently. I was choking back tears. She managed to be the bigger one and said she was sorry. I was sorry, too. I asked her to never say that again. Finally allowing tears to flow, I told her being her mother was the most important thing in the world to me. She reached toward me from the back seat and threw her hands around my neck and shoulders. I clutched her wrists.
Mothers and daughters clash, especially when young girls are entering puberty. Tweens are hormone-addled and gaining confidence about their place in the world. Julia is experimenting with a range of new behaviors lately, maybe taking a swear word or two for a test drive. Asking more-incisive questions about why people do the things they do. Taking greater notice, too, of my life.
But those four words “you’re not my mother” are this adoptive mother’s nightmare, especially because it took more than a few years for my child to attach. In the early months after we adopted Julia, she would not let me hold her without recoiling and she wouldn’t make eye contact. Her “terrible twos” were indeed terrible, and confusing. She was constantly oppositional and distant. During this time, I assumed I was deeply flawed and not fit to be a mother. I certainly didn’t feel like Julia’s mother.
Clues along the way led us to a syndrome called Reactive Attachment Disorder, which is a serious condition suffered by some children who have experienced early neglect or abuse. With concerted effort, a host of counter-intuitive parenting techniques and all the love we could muster, Julia released her armor and began to bond and trust us. It was slow and steady progress, and when I look back, I think of us as survivors. Like a former alcoholic counts his sober years, I ponder seven years bonded, and I’m so grateful that we’ve never looked back.
Julia is my daughter, in all the ways that mothers and daughters love and hate, push and pull, know they belong to one another. Yes, the words “you are not my mother” are just words, but they are true in one sense, and they are words a birth mother is not likely to hear. They hurt.
As parents, birth or adopted, we steel ourselves for moments when our child turns mean or hateful. I should have been better prepared to hear those words. Unfortunately, they seared my heart,and, caught unaware, I responded in kind.
As I thought about her words, I wondered whether Julia was just experimenting with a spectacular way to push my buttons, or whether she was trying to tell me something deeper and more complicated. I must keep my antennae up. Over the years, she’s asked briefly about her birth and her origins, and we’ve told her everything we know, which is practically nothing. If this should truly preoccupy her down the road, I will do anything necessary to meet her needs. Of course I would. I’m her mother.