Seeking God Knows What

I have a post about Memorial Day in my head but this has to be spit out first….
We had a visit with L yesterday.  We met her mom for the first time (we’ve only met her stepmother before).  It made me realize how different our backgrounds are.  I feel guilty because one of the things I thought was Widget has an utterly different life and that we are able to give her a more rounded, educated life than she might have had with L.  I thought I’m glad that L gave her this life, instead of the other.  Not because of a lack of love or even money but because of who we are and our overall lifestyle.  It was literally a feeling of being in different social classes and the whole “better opportunities” crap that adoption agencies, facilitators, lawyers spew.

Then today, my sister MK and I were socializing with my brother’s newish girlfriend- they’ve only been dating a couple of months.  She is a young (18 with a 10-month-old) amazingly mature, capable, excellent mother.  She almost placed her son in an open adoption with an aunt & uncle who have another child they adopted.  My sister asked her if she breastfed her son, and she said, “No.  I was told not to because I was placing him for adoption.  I would get too attached.” I got so angry she was told this by her social worker and, much to MK’s shock, who I’m betting would have agreed with that statement, I told E that it was so incredibly wrong for them to have denied her that if she wanted it and I was very, very glad she went with her instinct to parent.  For some reason related to ICPC and, I think, their homestudy, she was going to have to keep M for 6 months before they took placement.  I don’t know what was up with that, but in the end, it worked out for the best since she took M home from the hospital.  When her aunt and uncle came to visit shortly thereafter, and her aunt held M, E said she knew she couldn’t watch someone else raise him.

So on one hand, I am pissed off that E was fed all that garbage just because she was young and pregnant.  Then on the other hand, I’m caught thinking, “Placement was to Widget’s advantage.  We can give her more opportunities”, knowing that L was probably told several similar things as E.