“I Hate Your Life!”

Amarissa (age 10) told me she hates my life.

Let’s rewind.

These days, just taking a shower and getting dressed hurt a lot and leave me tired. Doing extra is… Extra. Cooking is hard. Even years ago I used to wish I had a chef to come cook for everyone. If I did, there’d be food for me too. By the time I am done cooking a foods (like the Fry’s veggie sausages I’m busy with), I’m too tired, too in pain to take care of myself.

Remember how just hanging one hanger in the wardrobe hurts my shoulder? Mixing up a pot of sweet potato, carrots and pumpkin hurt a lot too. Something so simple! I stood at the stove and wanted to quit.

But I couldn’t. The family had to eat. So I cooked a bit. Taught a bit, did hair a bit…

Then Amarissa came in and saw me cooking.

“You STILL have energy to COOK!??” She asked, aghast. She told me to go rest. I told her I couldn’t. I had to hang the laundry, supervise them, referee their fights, deal with our very irritable nonsense-verbal girl, medicate and feed them..and cook. I have no choice.

Then she said, “I hate your life. It’s not nice always bein’” (using her words) “in pain and not resting. It’s not fair. How about I cook?”

Now this is a girl who can’t even make a cup of tea.🤣So I kindly turned the offer down and told her she was about to go play so she mustn’t stress about me.

And so I have a question for the social worker who reprimanded me for getting in touch with her biological mother all those years ago. The social worker who told me that now my child would be “confused” about who her mother is.

The girl even met her BIRTH SISTER! And then that was it. After a week it was like brith sister didn’t exist anymore. She worried brith mom was dead because of her continued silence, but that’s it. It’s “Aunty P, the lady who gave birth to me.” I am Mommy.

I can show her all the hugs she gives as she calls me, “ My Mommy,” all the little notes “You and Me.”

My girl is very secure in whose she is. She has only one mommy. She only talks about her one mommy. She is..surprise surprise… Fine. Imagine that. An adoptee who knows who her mommy is!

Before we adopted, I read research stating how the adoptees who knew everything were able to assimilate all their feelings about being adopted better than where there was secrecy and denial of their past.

I’d rather deal with conversations about what is known, than heartache about what is not known.