This is the last post in the series, continued from here ...

Although birth parents and adoptive parents come at adoption from different directions, there can be a few places where paths cross.

Agencies can be where the concerns meet, and both partners in this dance may be unhappy with the tune played by the professionals ... since the end result is supposed to be one partner ending up with an armful of love and the other walking away empty handed, it is in the interest of the piper to keep the steps simple and the dance going as long as possible.

On the one hand, they do no business without children. On the other, someone needs to want the kids. If you're making your living from putting these together, you're darned careful to keep the proportions about even, and have each side thinking you're working for the benefit of both ... but with a little extra care for their angle on the deal.

Agencies moving between one side and the other can create tension, build walls and foster misunderstandings. Relationships that begin this way may tend to continue as they started.

So, feelings about professionals and their involvement in so personal an endeavor may be one area where the ideas of birth parents and adoptive parents could meet, but rarely do. Even in cases where all parties sit at the same table and have the same conversation, what looks like communication may not be.

It could be a bit like a possible scenario in China:

To over-simpify to an almost criminal extent ... There are hundreds of Chinese dialects, many completely incomprehensible between speakers of one and those with a different version. The script, however, the written language, is the same. Because it's not a phonetic language, because the symbols mean what they are, the word horse, could mean 'horse, and would be written 'horse', put pronounced 'watermelon' in one dialect and 'shoe', in another. A conversation could stick strictly to an agenda, but it would be pretty hard for either side to understand more than the very basic basics of the business at hand, and misinterpretations would be pretty much guaranteed.

Birth mothers worry about coercion. Adoptive parents worry about scams. Birth mothers complain about severed contact. Adoptive parents complain about uninvolved or disappearing birth parents. Trust is hard to come across and suspicion is considered wise.

One side sees a world of sick, starving, homeless children, and picks up on every story of drug-addled pregnant teens, abusive and neglectful moms forgetting to feed the kids they locked in the closet before going out on a date, and women popping out baby after baby without a thought toward responsibility for the welfare of any of them.

The other has frightened, confused women in mind ... women who could and would parent well if given the chance ... and focuses on the losses and grief that are by definition a deeply ingrained and life-long feature of children relinquished by birth parents and the parents that relinquished.

Bottom line?

Jan and I sit on opposite banks of a wide chasm. Raging torrents of reality sometimes make it impossible to hear what's being shouted from one side to the other. With some effort, brought about by a strong desire to see what the world looks like over there, we've built ourselves a fragile bridge.

I can't speak for Jan, but I am now much more comfortable standing on my side, whistling my note of the triad, and knowing I can harmonize without someone telling me to shut up. After all, it's the third note ... the children .. that is what this song is all about, and the sweeter the tune, the better for all.

My hope is that we will continue to shore up this connection and eventually feel comfortable going back and forth without fear, and that others may use our foundations to build their own bridges.

(I would like to announce that I have unilaterally declared September 6,7 & 8 the International Days of Mixed Metaphor. As you will note, I have celebrated the occasion enthusiastically.)

Here are the links to the whole series ...

Part One,Part Two,Part Three,Part Four, Part Five , Part Six, Part Seven