messymiraculousmommy

I am participating in the six month # INSPIRE2020 challenge, in which Indian Catholic content creators write about a particular topic every month. This month’s topic is Mama Mary. As with every blog, I asked Jesus what I should write about. And He said: write about a controversial mother . Huh? I dropped it for a few days and then asked again. He said: Write about an interview with my mother. Ask the controversial questions that you really want to. This is not the first time Jesus has asked me to do something I’ve never done before. So, here goes…. Me: (clearing throat): Good evening, Mother Mary, uhhh Mama Mary uhhh Mary…what would you prefer to be addressed as? You’ve got so many titles, I’m confused. Is there a special way to address you? Mary: Where I come from, children call their mothers Eema. You can call me whatever you feel comfortable with: Mama, Amma, Ma or just Mary. After all, no matter what you call me, it doesn’t change who I am. Me: Ok. I’ll try ‘Eema’. E

As the years rolled by, we got more and more comfortable with the variety of people's responses to our family's adoption status. We started enjoying the process of revealing the fact of our children's adoption. We began helping people understand adoption because we really wanted to normalize adoption for every future adoptive family. One of the ways we did that was to allow new people we met to really get a hang of who we were as a family, to get to know our children and us as individuals and then casually slip in the fact that they are genetically unrelated to each other and us. One of the funniest responses we got was: "are they really adopted??!!!" I said "yes". The lady asked again, in complete shock: "so, they are not your own?" I said, "of course they are my own, they are just not born to me." More shock on her face and more free entertainment for me ;) But her question was coming from a place of complete disbelief:

  Adoption has meant different things to me at different times in my life. As a child, adoption meant the relationship that my school mate shared with her parents who loved her and raised her although she was very obviously not born to them. As a young adult, it meant being very inquisitive about my college mate's internship at an adoption agency, finding opportunities to tag along where I could. As a woman wrestling with ill health and resultant infertility, it meant a distant option that was possible only after I got well enough to care for a child. As a prospective adoptive parent (PAP), it meant figuring out a whole new world through reading books, meeting adoptive families, having a lot of difficult conversations with myself, my spouse, my closest friends and family members. But on the day, I had to sign a legal declaration saying that I would be the main caregiver for a three month old baby I had met only once, it was the beginning of a brand new life. A