Supermotherhood
A fictional conversation about motherhood
Here I have created a recording of a fictitious conversation that could take place between a biological mother (mother 1) and an adoptive mother (mother 2) and a child. This conversation never took place. It shows attitudes that I have witnessed in our and other adoptive families and relationships with birth mothers. But the way I put this into words is based on my imagination and has no concrete connection to reality.
I've been a mother since 2011, but I've been thinking about motherhood ever since I felt a great desire to have children. The desire to have children began 9 years (not months) before becoming a mother, in 2002.
I am very grateful to Cathwel for the relationships and encounters that they provide with the birth families of the adopted children. This creates so much understanding and wholeness and makes such fictional conversations possible in the mind.
- Author: Fee Rojas, born in 1965 in Germany, she and her husband adopted two children from Taiwan. The whole family often travel to Taiwan.
- The actors:
* Mother 1: Gave birth to the child and later gave it up for adoption.
* Mother 2: Adopted the child - not as a baby but as a child that can still remember the time before they were adopted.
* Child: The child is older than 16.
- Location: In a social station somewhere in the world
Mother 2 : I think a lot about what I do, so I'm happy I think that you're joining me for this conversation.
Child : Yes, it's annoying that you think about things so much - you're too self-aware as a mother!
Mother 1 : It's good that you're here.
Child : Who?
Mother 2 : (to Mother 1) You
Mother 1 : (to the Child, quietly )You too
Mother 2 : I know, I worry too much about motherhood. I've become too self-aware as a mother. Maybe because I so urgently wanted to become a mother.
Child : That annoys me
Mother 1 : If I had worked harder, you all wouldn't be so stressed
Child : Everyone here has a guilty conscience, that’s clear, and I too clearly feel guilty about that sometimes.
Mother 1 : That's nonsense. If anyone has to feel guilty for having failed, that’s me.
Child : Do you want pity as well now?
Mother 2 :You are hard on your birth mother - why?
Child : I just say it how it is. (Turning to Mother 1) You gave me away and (Turning to Mother 2) that made you happy.
Mother 2 :Yes and no. Yes, in that I was happy that you came to us. No, in that I know it’s really tough to leave your family of origin.
Child : But you don't know that from your own experience.
Mother 2 : That's true. But sometimes (turning to the child) when I was small I wished I had a different mother, just like you had. You also often compared me with other mothers, and you wanted another mother.
Mother 1 : And (cautiously looking at the child), I often wished that I hadn’t had to give up my child. I don't know what would have been better. I don't regret it, but I often get lost in thoughts about what happened.
Child : (To Mother 1) Don’t do that, and (to Mother 2), you can stop wondering. There’s much that’s good. Don’t dump your feelings on me. I’m just the arrow, and you two together are just the bow that fired me
I love Gibran's poem "On Children" so much because it puts my view of parenting into such clear and beautiful words. We (mothers or parents) are only bows and where the children (arrows) fly is up to them.
It's interesting to think that the author wrote this poem 100 years ago.
On Children by Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
* Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, in Bsharri, Lebanon. He immigrated with his parents to Boston in 1895, and later settled in New York City. His works, written in both Arabic and English, are full of lyrical outpourings and express his deeply religious and mystical nature. The Prophet (1923), a book of poetic essays, achieved cult status among American youth for several generations. Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931