Adoption Week e-Magazine Article

Josee Larose

There is no question that Mary Anne Cohen has a way with words. She writes with passion and eloquence. Sufficiently so that one can easily miss the subliminal undertones of her poetic prose.

Beyond the plea for a sense of proportion regarding our loss as first mothers, for the necessity to seek healing and for the need to get on with our lives, all points with which few would disagree, one finds a less obvious and more disturbing message: that our loss, all things considered, is not all that bad and that if we do not get over it smartly, then we are engaging in pathological self-pity and have only ourselves to blame for our prolonged grief.

Ms. Cohen makes the point that adoption loss is not comparable to death and not equivalent to the Holocaust or other global catastrophes, comparisons that are not particularly helpful. Why should we have to prove that our loss is "as bad as…" in order to have it fully validated?

Ms. Cohen writes that "… adoption loss is full of ambivalence and contradiction. There is joy as well as pain, sometimes mingled together. In some instances the joy erases the pain…". Loss is loss. There is no joy to be found in it. Perhaps some who truly and freely chose adoption are finding a modicum of satisfaction, if not actual joy, in knowing that they provided for their child as best they could. Maybe Ms. Cohen has found joy in adoption loss. But it is not my case, nor is it the case of any other first mother I know.

Moreover, adoption loss is never over, not even for those of us who are now in reunion. All that reunion does, in fact, is turn a closed adoption into an open one. The only difference is that now, we get to witness and experience our ongoing losses directly, as we variously hear our child call someone else Mom, are marginalized, are not included in important family events and are generally treated as second- class relatives. Yes, adoption losses go on and on.

Despite making provisions in all the right places for the variability of adoption experiences, for the validity of every point of view and for the duty to honor the losses of others, I find that Ms. Cohen's article, in fact, is an admonition to the rest of us to stop feeling sorry for ourselves. I find that it blames mothers who do not make their adjustment in the manner and according to the timetable that Ms. Cohen feels are reasonable. Perhaps her own adoption losses are not all that severe, in her opinion, but those of many others are such that expecting them to put their trauma behind them is both cruel and unrealistic. Some mothers had their babies literally pried from their arms without their consent. Some were told that their baby had died. Most were treated with shabby disregard for their basic right, as human beings, to fairness and self-determination. That is not something easily forgotten.

The truth is that regardless of adoption experience, we all deal with our sorrow in our own manner. Some bury their feelings forever, others for a time only. Some decide to "let go" while others use the energy born out of their anger to effect change. All are valid responses.

To summarize, I found Ms. Cohen's article, under all that beautiful writing, to be shaming and a step back for all first mothers.

Josee Larose jose.larose2@sympatico.ca

(This article is referring to an article by Mary Anne Cohen which appeared in the January 27, 2004 issue of Adoption Week (http://e-magazine.adoption.com/article.php?articleid=410).