My Interview with Harriet...

Harriet, holding Theo, and Mark

I'm so excited to post this!  I'm not certain whether I found Harriet's blog on the Open Adoption Bloggers Network, run by the wonderful & fantastic Heather, or whether I started following her on Twitter and then found her blog, but it really doesn't matter.  After I announced on Twitter that I was participating in the 2011 Adoption Blogger Interview Project, Harriet confessed that although she wasn't participating, she'd been wanting to interview me for a while.  I was surprised, flattered, and immediately said that I'd like to interview her as well.  Fair warning: this may be a lengthier post as I thought of lots of questions as I was reading her older posts.

Without further ado, my interview with Harriet of See Theo Run!

 Me: How did you get involved in Focus on Adoption? Simply because of your focus on journalism or was it where your heart was?

Harriet: I had no specific interest in adoption. I was a recent Journalism grad and a job for a magazine editor came up so I gamely took it. I worked there for seven years and wrote countless personal stories. I became an “expert in adoption” – something I now know is bullshit unless you’ve lived it!

Me: Did you get involved in the mentioned conferences, panels, interviews, and other things due to your involvement with Focus on Adoption?

Harriet: As editor of an adoption magazine, I listened to and wrote hundreds of adoption stories: profiles of families with over ten children adopted from around the world, a story of an adoptee who bumped into her birth sibling at a mall for the first time. I attended transracial adoptee panels, attachment workshops and worked closely with adoptive parents and adoptees. I knew everything a person needed to know about adoption before we adopted. But nothing can fully prepare you for the emotional complexity of adoption, the public nature of my family, and the amazing joy and sorrow of being a parent.

Me: I so agree with your "Home Invasion" post. I’ve often wondered why they put potential adoptive parents under the microscope but refuse to do the same thing with biological parents. Having endured the microscope, do you have any advice for potential adoptive parents who haven’t yet gone through their home studies?

Harriet: I have a few issues with the homestudy process. I understand why it’s necessary to vet future adoptive parents but I did not feel like we were a good match with our social worker. I would encourage anyone who feels this way to request a new one.

Me: I’ve recently realized that there’s a lot of agency bias against multiracial and African-American babies in US adoption agencies. What about with your agency? Did they ever treat you differently or tell you expectant moms might have a harder time selecting you because you’re a multiracial couple?

Harriet: No. Being a multiracial couple is very common in Vancouver and I thought that maybe a mixed-race couple or birthmom, who was not white, might select us. We were very surprised when a Jamaican couple wanted to meet us, and I think my husband’s first-hand experience with racism and cultural difference resonated with them. I also know that they liked who we were as people and that superseded culture for them because they had over 200 potential families to choose from.

Me: Why did you start your blog? What keeps you writing?

Harriet: I started the blog because I wanted to document our life as a family and explore what it means to be a multiracial family in an open adoption. I wanted to tell good stories and give people a glimpse of what open adoption is all about. It’s now a vehicle to express how I feel about adoption and way to connect adoptive and birthparents. At times, I don’t want to talk about adoption anymore; I just want to be a “regular” family and post photos about our outings to the playground and really lighten it up but as you know adoption is very deep and multifaceted and something you can’t ignore.

Me: I use pseudonyms for my daughter & her parents and it struck me when I thought you were divulging actual names early on in your blog. That is, until I read the post of January 9. 2010 when you admit to using pseudonyms due to some of the birth parents’ family not knowing about the birth mother’s pregnancy & placement. Do most of the people in their families now know? If so, were you involved in them telling more of their families? If not, would you like Theo to be involved in the telling?
Harriet: I think of our adoption as open to us but not open to everyone. Of course all of our friends know that we adopted but they don’t know who his birthparents are. It’s not public knowledge so I try to maintain privacy around their story. Besides who am I to know what someone else if thinking and feeling? It’s not for me to say.

Me: Do you still see Theo’s birth family often? Is there a specific schedule that you try to stick to, or do you just “go with the flow?”
Harriet: Our schedule keeps shifting based on the needs of all of us. We saw each other a lot in the first two months and then reduced it to four times a year with weekly emails. Now we update them monthly and meet when it works. There are a lot of variables still around the future so we are all just remaining flexible.

Me: As a birth mom, I loved the fact that you see and appreciate Theo’s birthmom’s pain and happiness too – that bittersweet combination in adoption of any type – specifically open adoption. Has she adjusted during visits or does she still need time to adjust? Is it still hard on you to see it?
Harriet: I would say that my biggest issue is being a sponge for other people’s pain. I don’t think it’s a good thing. I need to appreciate that placing a baby for adoption is excruciatingly difficult but at the same time, it’s not my journey. I need focus in being a good mother to my son while also supporting a solid relationship between all of us.

Me: What are your favorite posts on your blog (or just one post)? Or…what one post would you consider a must-read for a new reader to your blog?

Harriet: Here are four. I like the first because it brings back the mixed emotions of our first meeting with our son. The other three generated a lot of discussion, which is really the point of a good post. The Day We Met, Standing Out in a Crowd, Losing the Zen, and Adoption Guilt.

Me: Do you think your heavy involvement in adoption prior to marriage and subsequent finding of the fact that you are unable to bear biological children made it easier to consider adoption as a way to have children? I ask this because some couples who find they cannot bear biological children have to go through a lot of emotional healing before they’re ready to adopt and according to your blog, you didn’t seem to have as long of a healing time.
Harriet: When we found out we couldn’t have biological children, we decided immediately to adopt. We did not explore infertility treatments at all. We just didn’t want to go down that path. I never feel sadness about missing pregnancy or not giving birth. I even went to a new moms’ group where all the women had given birth and were breastfeeding. We still keep in touch. I see Theo as his own unique person with no biological baggage from either me or his dad. We joke that there’s no way the two of us could have produced such an amazing kid. I just can’t fathom my life without Theo.

Me: Do you think your prior involvement in adoption made it easier to handle the myriad of examinations all prospective adoptive parents have to endure? I personally think that knowing all about the tests potential adoptive parents have to go through is rather like knowing about what labor is like in your head. You may know all the “facts,” but until you actually go through it, you really have no idea. Would you agree?
Harriet: I think it did help. I understood how adoption is predicated on loss, how important biological connections are and the importance of race and ethnicity. I didn’t appreciate being “told” it all over again just like my husband didn’t feel the need to learn about racism having experienced it first-hand but you do what you have to do. And it’s true that nothing prepares you for adoption like being in one and we have many years of learning ahead of us.

Me:You said you went into adoption with the idea that you wanted an open adoption and it seemed that you really didn’t struggle with the idea at all. When did you first learn of open adoption, and how long would you say it took you to realize that it was a very good thing for adoptees?
Harriet: This is where my experience working at the Adoptive Families Association came in. I’d heard countless stories of adoptees that struggled with the closed system and could not imagine being a part of that. I genuinely did not want that for my son. Besides, I no longer believe that secrecy is even possible with social media. My hope is that the painful part of openness for us is now and will just get easier with our relationships. We will be super comfortable with it by the time that Theo would, in the old days, just be “reuniting” with his birthparents. The other thing is I really think it’s important for the birthmom. It’s not just about Theo.

Me: I realize since Theo is not yet 3 that you’ve not been in your own adoption very long in the whole scheme of things. However, you’ve stated that your adoption has been a lot more open than either you or your husband expected. Have there been any points so far where you’ve been uncomfortable with your level of openness? If so, how did you resolve the discomfort? Did you talk to the birth family about it or was there something you worked out internally?
Harriet: The reality is, in open adoption, you have veritable strangers joining together over a child that everyone cares madly about so there can be conflicting ideas of what’s best for everyone. We did have to establish boundaries after the first three months. We were having a really hard time bonding as a family. We moved everything from our house to the birth grandparents’ house, then we pared down visits to just us and the birthparents in a public space, and last week, we had the birthparents to our house … so it’s a work in progress!

Me: Do you see yourself adopting more in the future or are you happy with just one child?
Harriet: We have no plans to add to our family. We are happy just the way we are.

With that gorgeous family, who can blame Harriet for that sentiment?  Thank you so much for wanting to interview me in the first place, and for so wonderfully answering all the questions I had, Harriet!  For more of Harriet, and for Harriet's interview of me, see her blog: See Theo Run.

The adorable Theo :-)