Ambivalence

As I mentioned, we read Before I Met You last night, and it says, "we can talk about all your feelings and thoughts like . . . Can you look for your birthfamily when you are older?"

I expected Zoe to be interested in that question, but when I asked her what she thought, she did her "Mo-om!" routine: "You know we can't find them! We don't know their phone number or where they live or anything (if I'm this dumb when Zoe is 8, can you imagine how completely stupid I'm going to be when she's a teenager?!).

I acknowledged that it would be really hard to find her birth parents with what little information we had. But I also told her that 30 years ago, people thought it would be impossible for people adopted from Korea to find thier birth families, but that things changed and many are now able to find them. (I didn't want to raise her hopes for what is likely to be at best a remote possibility, but I also wanted to be truthful.)

Given her strong interest in her birth parents, I expected a positive reaction from her, but she seemed ambivalent. She wasn't interested in talking more about that issue, so we moved on to finish reading the book.

I wonder about the ambivalence. She's really invested in her birth parent fantasy these days -- they are nice, kind, perfect. . . . Maybe she's afraid the reality can't live up to her imagination. Or maybe it's anger -- even with the fantasy, she struggles with being angry that they abandoned her.

So, it was an interesting little conversation, and I'm sure we'll be exploring more on the subject.