AFTER THE REUNION: A RELATIONSHIP

WHITNEY FRITZ

JOY LIEBERTHAL RHO, LCSW

KAAN CONFERENCE

JUNE 29, 2019

PRESENTATION GOALS

• Developmental milestones
• Normalization of process
• Cultural context
• Maintaining relationships
• Ways that can help in supporting the adoptee in reunion

THE BREAK AND THE REPAIR ARE ALL A PART OF THE HISTORY AND VALUE OF AN OBJECT OR A PERSON – NORA MCINERNY, “TERRIBLE THANKS FOR ASKING” PODCAST

FOUNDATIONAL FRAMEWORK

• Freud - Melancholia
• Pathological mourning without end
• Dr. Shinhee Han and David Eng - Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation
• Desegregating love chapter
• Knowing who we lost is different from knowing what we lost
• Pauline Boss - Ambiguous Loss
• Psychic loss while physically present
• Physical loss while psychologically absent

CURRENT STATE OF BEING IN REPAIR AND IN RECONCILIATION WITH THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

• Incompatible relationship between dating and grief
• Dating – trying to establish a relationship based on scant information and first impressions
• Grief and mourning – the winding road we need to walk through

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THE OPRAH MOMENT: HOT. ENMESHED. LOVED.

• The first meet, the first correspondence, the first encounter
• The most talked about stage of a reunion
• The intensity of the first meeting

ROMANCING: NOW WE ARE COMPLETE…NOW I’VE FOUND THE MISSING PUZZLE PIECE

• I wonder what life would have been like if I was never adopted
• Wonder how to get there so I can LIVE with them
• Could I leave my school, job, partner, kids, parents, etc.
• This time it will be great
• Can we make up for lost time
• Will she be my mother, my father in the ways I always wished

THE PAUSE : time, language, culture, life

• “escape…now and then in order to tolerate the long term ambiguous loss – Pauline Boss, p. 115
• The pause lasted over 5 years: I was 25 years old, living on my own, trying to figure out how to get thru grad school, work and support my sisters...too busy trying to keep my head above water and I needed to breathe. I needed to reclaim my space and it didn't include her. I had nothing that could be a connection to her - barely spoke Korean at the time, no money, no ability to see her.
• The pause lasted about 4-5 years. Returning to US from Korea suffered severe depression. Couldn’t figure out my place. Not Korean enough/”American” enough. Always stuck in the middle. Could not invite them to my wedding. Finally settled down a year or 2 after getting married.

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PRUNING: YOURS. MINE. OURS.

• There is no such thing as a normal family
• No one has a monopoly on truth
• Pain, misunderstandings, miscommunication, disparate narratives, resentments
• They are strangers, we have nothing in common
• She is my mother, but not my mother; she is so Korean
• Don’t call me Omma, I don’t regret giving you up, Don’t come to visit again
• If she were not my birthmother, I am not sure I would like her a whole lot
• He expects me to move in and take my place as his first born son
• I am the secret
• I know other family members’ secrets

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CULTURE OR CULTURE? (part I)

• What are our own romanticized ideas of Korean culture?
• What are their romanticized ideas of American culture?
• Cultural context colors and impacts our gender, birth order, how we were conceived, who we have chosen to love and be in relationships with, our children
• Being in Korea, reality is suspended for all of us. We play a part, superficially or we double down on intimacy to knit tightly a sense that we are connected

CULTURE OR CULTURE? (part II)

• The next time I go to Korea, I will really enjoy myself. It was way too much family & they don’t get it.  (They keep wondering…) Why do you ask so many questions? If someone is ill, why do you not ask any questions? (They said…) No, the doctor will tell us if there is something wrong.  What does that even mean? I am a New Yorker! I need to know what the hell is going on & no one will answer any questions. I could see they are getting annoyed with me & after three days, I just stopped.  It wasn’t like this before. When we first met, it wasn’t like this, but now, I am not so sure I want this. I have a life in NY, I have my own shit to take care of.
• All I do is cook, clean, work... just too hard. They have no idea how hard I am working! So passive. No questions. They just want to be by my side.

CULTURE OR CULTURE? (part III)

• Being married to a Korean man was a worry, having sons a relief, being a working parent was a worry. She added to the burden of my ruminating mind.  Psychologically always present and I could DO nothing about her, nothing for her….we didn’t move any closer toward each other.

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• Mental health issues became apparent. It was too much to bring her to our turf. There, she can work and live in her own space. We meet for a meal but carry on with our own business. In US, too much time on her hands. Too many scary thoughts coming to light. Too much head space to think. Never again.

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SO MANY MORE QUESTIONS

• “Knowing is necessary to resolve the loss, even if their search yields news that is less than ideal” “Such ambiguity in our grief process “erodes our sense of mastery and destroys our belief in the world as fair, orderly and manageable place.” - Pauline Boss, p. 36 and 107, Ambiguous Loss
• What would the answers mean to us? From whom do we want answers?
• Do I want to know the answer or the context?  
• The answers are never the same
• How did she not know my whereabouts? How did she account for the lost years?  She has memories of those years and they are illuminating but also frustrating.  Listening to her reasons and the ways in which my grandmother and extended family handled or didn’t handle the situation as an adult did not make sense to me. �

THE BATTLE

• Conflict is inevitable in every relationship.  It can lead toward more intimacy and it can also lead to permanent fracture.  
• IS IT A FAIR FIGHT? ARE WE EVEN FIGHTING ABOUT THE SAME THING?
• Being with them and trying to meet their different demands is Like boiling pots and the lids keep popping off. Can't keep them covered anymore
• My Umma just wanted to see in real time what I do. To be able to close her eyes in Korea and know, at this time, I am taking the kids to school, cooking dinner, going to work...she had no intention of taking up any bandwidth.  And yet, all she did was distract me from everything I was trying to do day by day.
• I can't keep this up. The show is over and they will leave me. They have been together their entire life. They lived in Korea their whole life. I have been alone. All these years I have been doing this alone. Will they still love me if they know too much?�

SIBLINGS: COLLATERAL CHARACTERS

• Oftentimes unaware that we exist for much of their lives
• A real life comparison chart of what if this never happened to me
• Gender and birth order: Being a daughter vs. son
• Ways birth family uses the other children in the family or extended family:
• Cousin sent to Australia to master English
• Requiring extra English classes of subsequent children to serve as translators
• Dispatching them to America to visit
• Demand/force relationships where there is no connection
• Asking adoptee to sponsor/invite siblings’ children to the US - continuing the chain that was created by adoption

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THE REPAIRING: PERSPECTIVE

• This IS a new relationship
• “To regain a sense of mastery when there is ambiguity about a loved one's presence or absence, we must give up trying to find the perfect solution” - Pauline Boss, p.107
• You are starting from scratch, there is no ONE template for this reconciliation
• You are an adult now
• TIME: our nemesis and our best friend – we cannot change the past but we can create a future�

EXPECTATIONS AND BOUNDARIES

• “Stop expecting rational explanations for the unexplainable; let go of trying to control the uncontrollable” - Pauline Boss, p. 134, Ambiguous Loss
• What did I want?
• What do I want now?
• What am I willing to offer to the relationship?
• What am I willing to give up?
• What am I willing to learn?

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WHO IS IN AND WHEN?

• Know we are psychologically present but physically absent to each other and that distraction ebbs and flows
• Adoptee advocates have said from the beginning that the sole proprietor of the decision to search for birth family belongs to the adopted person. If this is true, do we give up that agency once in reunion? Why do we do this and should we?
• Our culture and the rules of our society have no rituals or ceremonies around the creating of relationships with our family of origin, thus...
• WE ARE THE ONES TO CREATE AND SUSTAIN
• Only keep moments and relationships that are significant and worth the work and time - birthday, holidays��

RECONCILIATION

• “If reconciliation is possible, let it be glorious”- Beyoncé
• We have learned more of our story, but now it's up to us to decide who the narrator is
• We can create the family rituals.
• There is room in the empty landscape of reunion for us to be creative
• In adoption we talk about chosen family
• Be a seeker and get help
• No two stories are the same, ever. But we aren’t alone in our journey to make sense of this experience.

THANK YOU!

• Whitney Fritz
• Joy Lieberthal Rho, LCSW
• www.IAMAdoptee.org
• https://wethelees.wordpress.com