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I Love My Adopted Child Biologically

Anyone who ever wondered how much they could love a child who did not spring from their own loins, know this: it is the same. The feeling of love is so profound, it’s incredible and surprising.

NIA VARDALOS, INSTANT MOM

QUESTIONS I GET ABOUT MY KOREAN DAUGHTER:

“Do you know anything about her real mom?”

“Do you think she’ll ever find her real mom?”

“Are you her real mom?”

(People often italicize this word in case I am a bit slow on the uptake and don’t catch their meaning.)

And once, at the grocery store, from the cashier: “Are you her nanny?”

Snarky answers:

“Yes, in fact, I know everything about her!”

“She should have no trouble because they live in the same house.”

“Yes! Her hologram mom is much less attractive.”

And to the woman at the checkout, “She couldn’t afford me.”

I know, I know. I should be nicer about the whole thing, and mostly, I am. I understand that by “real,” folks are trying to say “biological” or “birth.” They don’t have the right words to wrap around a complex relationship. Still, it hits me sideways every single time.

My girl has used this line with me, and it doesn’t just hit me sideways. It hits me like an arrow to the heart. Bull’s-eye. “Will I meet my real mom when we go to Korea someday?” she asked me once, out of the blue. I knew what she was asking. I knew she, at eight, nine, or ten, didn’t have the correct language, either. But oh how it hits that bull’s-eye, every time.

I know Phoebe doesn’t mean to hurt me. I said the same sort of thing to my mum years ago.

Where does this come from, this use of the word real to describe biology and genomic links?

I would like to call for a halt to this word in this context. Because like orphan, I do not think real means what you think it means.

Real: actual, physical, material, factual, tangible, existent, genuine, authentic, valid, true.

It describes the ways moms are with and for and there for their children, 24/7, actually, tangibly, and genuinely, does it not?

The antonyms of real are even worse:

Nonexistent.

False.

Fake.

Artificial.

And don’t get me started on natural. (“Do you think Phoebe will ever want to search for her natural mother?” Gahhhhhhh!)

“Natural makes me think of organic, gluten-free, dairy-free,” said my friend Sheri, who adopted the African mini queen Nkia after being her foster mom. Nkia, with her majestic long braids and strong, tall body, found a place of belonging in a household full of big brothers and a mom and dad who thought their family was complete until this little three-year-old girl needed them. Much like Marilla and Matthew, they needed her even more.

Nkia is Sierra Leonian by birth and Dutch/Puerto Rican via her forever family. She’s even a little Haitian through her brother Shelton, adopted from Haiti a few years before Nkia came along. The way Nkia fits in with her family is as organic, whole, and pure as plantains (for tostones) or kale (for Dutch boerenkool) planted in a community garden.

I know an adoptive mom who makes her own vegetable dye for use in cake decorating. In the food she’s feeding her family, this mom can check off everything as organic, gluten-free, dairy-free—not to mention grass-fed and rBGH free. She may also be a sprinkler of flax seed and whey. She’s a natural wonder, a wonderful mother, but apparently, according to many people who perpetrate the word natural in this circumstance, is mothering her children on some sort of “unnatural” pretense.

Yeah, that word’s gotta go too.

Or at least, we should be using those words to describe both biological and adoptive mothers, especially the word real.

Dora is a real part of my story, as is Moon in Phoebe’s story. So per “real,” let me give credit where it’s due. To birth mothers, including mine and my girl’s, who step up in an extraordinarily real way for their children, thank you. Most of you made a brave choice to surrender your child to another to be raised and loved.

Whether or not you ever have a relationship with your child, your journey together continues through the years, through love, prayer, thoughts, and yes, DNA. Speaking for adoptive moms everywhere, we think of you always and tell our children you love them and did the best you could.

You are real moms.

And to moms who have been told over and over again, in ways subtle and blunt, that your role in your child’s life is somehow a fraud, as artificial as Popsicles with red dye, you know better.

You are the actual mommy who soothes her crying baby, banishes monsters from under the bed, and calms her fears in a thunderstorm. You are the factual mom who sits in frozen arenas and on the sidelines of soggy soccer fields, cheering until your voice goes croaky. You are the authentic, valid, and true mom who takes the call from the principal, the friend’s mom, maybe even the police.

Spirals of DNA are responsible for characteristics such as brown eyes, but a parent’s devotion shapes traits of character. Features such as love, joy, and peace, patience, kindness, and goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control . . . against such there is no law.[88]

We love our adopted children biologically, regardless of the fact that we didn’t carry them in our wombs or deliver them. Follow me on this: If people equate “real” and “natural” with biology and physiological makeup, there is a verifiable chemical component to bonding. It’s not DNA, but it is chemistry.

When we hold our children close to us, our brains and theirs release opiates, which is why we both feel physically better after a good snuggle. Holding Phoebe on my lap after a hard day at school, rocking her back and forth, and crooning words of support and care, actually doses her with a pain-numbing anodyne that soothes and settles her. It restores her peace in spirit and body. Another “feel better” compound released by loving touch is oxytocin, which scientists call the “cuddle chemical.”

Any kind of love, including a mother’s, dwells in the limbic brain. Through touch and talk and care, we’re able to form, in ways perhaps more profound than we’ve imagined, the orb between our child’s ears.

Each time my mum rocked me, squeezed me in a hug, rubbed my back—all this is bundled in my limbic brain’s memory. Phoebe would fight her naps as a baby and toddler, and I would draw gentle little circles with my finger on her cheek or temple until she finally sank into sleep—another kind of limbic love note. Over the course of thousands of cuddles, hand holds, and forehead kisses, the neural notes become imprinted and shaped, much the same way PEI sea glass is sculpted by the eddies of the sea.

A mother’s love changes the chemicals and structure of her child’s brain for the good; so does the love of a father. Love is biology—a continuous life-giving and shaping force throughout the years. Clara adored her baby Maud, just as Dora and Moon loved the girls they had to surrender. Their love notes remain tucked away deep in our minds.

When I was swiped from that hospital at two weeks of age, my forever mum took up her pen and wrote countless notes, building on the ones left by Dora. I am adding to Moon’s collection every day I get to be Phoebe’s mother. All the hard things in this world cannot overwrite a mother’s love, whether she gets to be a birth mom or an adoptive one.

So for those who are concerned about a biological connection, look no further than the next time you touch your child. Look no further than love.

Dora gave me life, and my mum shaped it. Moon gave Phoebe life, and I am forming it. One mother was a guiding star; another the North Star. Nothing could be more natural. Nothing could be more real.