Nature vs. nurture
I’m way behind on my blogging. I need to blog about our family trip to Illinois. And about how I ran into a Revels friend in DC when I was having a cranky morning. I’ll get to those.
I subscribe to Adoptive Families magazine. I was surprised to hear that such a magazine existed, but if there is a magazine for people who build historical miniatures, then why not adoptive families? According to their website, the circulation is 125,000. I was reading the August edition, and an essay, “Beyond Nature” by Raquel Willerman, captured so much I what I have felt and continue to feel, I had to include some excerpts here. I hope that these selections do justice to her writing. If you’d like to read the whole essay, I’ll get it to you.
Ms Willerman writes about the fact that she doesn’t have a biological link to her adopted children:
The notion that there is something wrong with people who can’t bear children – beyond the fact that they can’t bear children – lurks with the depths of my psyche. Just as a poor person may imagine that money bestows happiness, part of me believes “normal parents” live more fulfilling lives … That this lingering bitterness sits right next to my most profound happiness, being my children’s mother, bewilders me.
…there are still dark times when I am outraged by my infertility, when I can only think that I am an evolutionary dead-end. A discontinued line of goods. Furthermore, my infertility transforms my parents into genetic cul-de-sacs. My sister, their only other child, is childless by choice.
…in spite of the pain and loss that form the kernel of adoption, everything is fine. [I have reached] beyond the science I revered to open myself to something bigger, something more subtle, than inheritance and genetics.
My children and I found each other through a circuitous route, indeed. Though I didn’t make the Darwinian cut, I made the cut to be selected as a mother. After all, it is the joy we take in each other, not the way we came together or the “fitness” of our genes, that’s the ultimate measure of my family.
Someday I’m going to write an essay like this.
I subscribe to Adoptive Families magazine. I was surprised to hear that such a magazine existed, but if there is a magazine for people who build historical miniatures, then why not adoptive families? According to their website, the circulation is 125,000. I was reading the August edition, and an essay, “Beyond Nature” by Raquel Willerman, captured so much I what I have felt and continue to feel, I had to include some excerpts here. I hope that these selections do justice to her writing. If you’d like to read the whole essay, I’ll get it to you.
Ms Willerman writes about the fact that she doesn’t have a biological link to her adopted children:
The notion that there is something wrong with people who can’t bear children – beyond the fact that they can’t bear children – lurks with the depths of my psyche. Just as a poor person may imagine that money bestows happiness, part of me believes “normal parents” live more fulfilling lives … That this lingering bitterness sits right next to my most profound happiness, being my children’s mother, bewilders me.
…there are still dark times when I am outraged by my infertility, when I can only think that I am an evolutionary dead-end. A discontinued line of goods. Furthermore, my infertility transforms my parents into genetic cul-de-sacs. My sister, their only other child, is childless by choice.
…in spite of the pain and loss that form the kernel of adoption, everything is fine. [I have reached] beyond the science I revered to open myself to something bigger, something more subtle, than inheritance and genetics.
My children and I found each other through a circuitous route, indeed. Though I didn’t make the Darwinian cut, I made the cut to be selected as a mother. After all, it is the joy we take in each other, not the way we came together or the “fitness” of our genes, that’s the ultimate measure of my family.
Someday I’m going to write an essay like this.
posted by Talentedhands at
7:35 PM
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