Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 December 2007 11:46:17
"There are no facts, only interpretations." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
welcome to your decision to adopt. you must now learn a new language and begin to relate to others in different terms to what you have done. they will continue to hear you use your old language, but you won't be using it. they will expect you to mean one thing when you speak, but you will mean another. but you're not allowed to tell them that. in fact you can't tell them anything. speaking, and communicating are no longer necessarily the same thing. neither are explaining and understanding. the truth can be true without being completely accurate. and telling falsehoods is no longer always lying. you have spent 20/30/40/50 or so years learning what reality is. forget it all when speaking with someone who speaks this language.
this could be a confusing post. it involves me walking around inside my head and our experience and trying to explain what is there and what has been there. however it involves me trying to do that and to communicate to you in a language that you probably don't know (even though you might think you do). some of you will have heard this language before. some of you will be fluent, some of you will know a few words and some of your will be comepletely lost, but it's unlikely that you will know which one of those three you are even if you think you do (fluent, few words, or lost - although fluency does bring with it knowledge of certain 'secret handshakes' that you can identify each other by). therefore this will be a confusing post. i'll come back later and try to explain the simpler practicalities of matching panel.
i will once again attempt in all of my wibblingness to clarify things. i just thought i'd try to explain, how we have used this blog and why. the why bit will come towards the end. we have gathered from talking to friends who read this blog that different people understand different things to differing levels and to different levels of accuracy. this is inevitable. the process is steeped in secrecy, which is fine, but confusing. not only for you, but for us too. from day to day what qualifies as 'confidential' slightly changes a bit in a way, and we've had to ask you for patience. i have realised, whereas up til now we have lived our lives amongst good friends who we trust and who we share things with, that now even those closest to us haven't got a clue what we have been doing/learning/working/going to/attending/fretting about/hoping for/rejoicing because/managing/juggling/planning/preparing/dealing with/processing/coping with/add verb here ad infinitum...those things are natural to us now. the things we know are second nature. we're talking about our child, they are our every minute. but they're not yours.
that's fine and as it should be, but i realise this when i see someone who i know 'knows' me. i suddenly realise that that person hasn't done all of those things with us when i have a conversation like this:
'hi'
'hi, any adoption news?'
'well, yes, we're going to matching panel this week where a recommendation will be made as to a match with our child.'
'oo that's exciting! do you know anything about them? do you know if it will be a boy or a girl?'
wham! smack! bang! i've just driven my car straight into the 'HELLO!!' sign that has jumpped out in front of me and i suddenly have the revelation that 'oh, my gosh, they have no idea what i did/found out/decided yesterday/last week/last month even though they do read the blog, and i can't tell them.' i guess at this stage, and after what we know and what we have done since september, it kind of feels like someone asking an author who is about to send his book to the publisher whether he knows if his book is going to be long or shot.
that's all fine and as it should be, i just sometimes forget. it has been complicated even more by the fact that not everybody understands the same things to mean the same thing, and that's fine and as it should be too, we just have to remember who understands what by what. a=a however a=the first letter of the alphabet too. both are correct. but who is going to think 'a' when you say 'a' and who is going to think 'the first letter of the aphabet' when you say 'a'? both are correct and accurate, but slightly different.
it's like when you go to church on a sunday morning and your elderly friend gives you sympathy for your headache because they care and they understand that headaches hurt. and your best mate gives you sympathy for your headache because they understand WHY you have the headache (and they probably have one too cause they were probably at the same party the night before) you've told both people the SAME thing "i have a headache" but they understand it differently to each other.
and that's fine and as it should be. it can just get a little confusing when trying to remember how everyone is going to intrepret everything. we need to remember who is going to interpret 'i have a headache' as just what it says, and who is going to interpret 'i have a headache' as 'i went to a party last night'.
ok, to 'why write the blog', and particularly why write the blog if we can't tell you everything? one simple answer. support, and you've all been tops! way back in the very first (ish) post or so, i said the intention was to 'documment' our journey. well, we've done that to some degree, but the deeper we got and the more we knew and the more we knew about what we couldn't doccument, we haven't told you everything along the way. it's a story with holes in it. the 'documentation' is going to have to happen privately for us. many of the posts, like the one below, like the posts nov 06, aug 07 etc, often come at turning points, crisis points or times when we just need a good whinge or a good hug. and you have allways allowed the whinges and provided the hugs, so thank you.
so forget the whinges, forget the crises, things are ok now, because you were there to dish out the hugs and shoulders, but of course 'ok' only 'for now'. unfortunately, it may not give you the most accurate picture of the whole, but you don't need a completely accurate picture of the whole. we'll get there in the end, and we know you'll still be there, and that's what counts.
i must go for now, but i'll be back later i'm sure... and possibly because the postman has just been, and the thing that was meant to be in the post for another deadline was unsurprisingly not in the post! grr.
but that's the process, and this is the choice we've made. . . and that's fine and as it should be .