To view information on Coronavirus COVID-19 click here.
Melissa Christian was an early childhood educator who became an intercountry adoptive parent of 3. Her journey to motherhood was long, 15 years in total, and there was time for lots of learning from Therapeutic Parenting to Circle of Security. However, something wasn't quite right post adoption. A type of post adoption depression called matrescence. While she now had the perfect family, internally something was not quite right. Melissa explains her experience, the feelings and why it is so important to be able to talk about it. Motherhood involves a change in economics, emotions, biology, physicality, culture, social and spiritual life. Ones self identity is forever changed. Add to that layers of perfectionism expected of adoptive parents and its a formula for disaster. Melissa encourages all parents, particularly adoptive, to seek help when you need it and talk openly about the adjustments and challenges to get the help you need. 00:00 - Start 00:50 - Melissa's journey to motherhood: 8 years fertility and 7 years before adoption 10:20 - What do adoptive mothers feel? Do all mothers feel the same? 13:57 - What is matrescence? 15:40 - So what did you do from there? What sort of things helped you? 18:23 - How do we help permanent carers, kinship carers and foster carers, who have similar experiences? 21:31 - You found post adoption services and other things that worked for you. What were they? 22:50 - What are some things that other expectant mothers (on paper), should plan for or expect that perhaps you didn’t? 24:13 - Were there some areas that you think we can better support pre or post adoption?
This is Sonia Wagner, representing PCA Families in one of our recordings that capture lived experience and best practice evidence based learning that assist kinship, permanent and adoptive parents/carers in supporting young people.
PCA Families has a zero tolerance of child abuse and follows child safe standards.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and pay respect to elders past and present and express our intention to move together to a place of justice and partnership.
Today we are speaking about Intercountry adoption and Matrescence with Melissa Christian. Melissa was an early childhood educator before becoming an intercountry adoptive parent of 3. Her journey to motherhood held a few surprises, one of which was a type of post adoption depression where expectations of a joyful motherhood and immediate connection were not the reality. Welcome Melissa.
00:50 Can you tell us a little more about your journey and the experience of becoming a mother?
Thankyou for this opportunity to share with you.
I am an adoptive mother of 3 and we adopted our first child after a 7 years wait in the adoption process itself.
We planned to adopt from China but a lot of things happened and we ended up with a letter stating we had a 22 year wait. We didn’t want to be in our late 50s adopting.
So then we discovered the special needs China program where they allocated children to the world and chose children for families. Ass we started that journey we had to look at different special needs that we were willing to accept. One of them was a condition with the heart.
We waited in this program and nothing seemed to be happening. China decided to upgrade their system and it was a month and another month and we were waiting to adopt for the past 7 years and prior to that in fertility prior to that for 8 years.
Then finally we had a phone call from our social worker about a little boy in Taiwan that had a heart condition. Thankfully we got accepted.
We had to madly get our paperwork together. It was about a 9 month “pregnancy” to apply to adopt and be accepted. That was all going smoothly and we got a phone call one day asking us to be in Taiwan by the weekend to attend court.
So we did this not having any idea about it. You do anything as you know this is your chance.
We met our beautiful son and spent 4-5 days with him and attended the court process and then we had to come home as the Australian Government doesn’t line up with the Taiwanese Government in being able to stay there and wait for the process of immigration to finish.
So we came home and with all of the waiting that was the hardest waiting that I have every done in my life. It was a very painful experience flying out of Taiwan and knowing that a piece of your heaert is being left behind.
It was really traumatising.
The 8 weeks was good in that we now knew our son, what clothing he needed and what his interests were. So we could prepare for him coming home. We knew it was roughly an 8 week wait and it was 8 weeks to the day. But during those 8 weeks I built up a little wall around myself to protect my heart. You are feeling very fragile and you are about to become a mother so a whole new world is opening up to you. So of course you protect yourself because you have had hurt and you protect yourself as much as you can with the slow adoption process.
This little wall I built up just made it a little bit harder to form attachment and bonding. I struggled before I met the birth family. I had all the care needs for my son down pat. The caring there was no issue with that I was all over a routine. But feeling like a Mum. How does all that feel. Am I meant to change overnight? I really struggled with that.
We met the birth family on the Friday and it was a hard morning for me to get myself there and and I just wanted to delay it as much as possible. Everything was signed off but there was that what if.
So I met the birth mother and she reached out to take our son to hold him and of course part of you goes oh that’s our child. He rejected her. That did not sit with me either. He had just rejected her in favour of us. It was an unsettling feeling. I felt really uncomfortable. This was her goodbye. I set up some toys on the floor and left for her to have some time together saying goodbye. I felt much more at ease after that. I feel so much better, he has claimed me as his mother and we can go forward now.
But I still struggled with this feeling of not feeling it. As time went by you sort of put yourself on this wheel of perfection. We are doing this and that and everything was all about the child. You support the child because you are so in love with this child that you never had. But you are not realising how depleted you are becoming yourself.
I believe I got to a point that I wasn’t coping as a Mum. I remember thinking what a thankless task this is being a Mum. I had to ring my Mum up and thank her for everything she had done for me. It was an awakening of the woman that I was and now I am just nobody. I am giving to everybody and I have nothing for myself.
So it was a really hard time and we struggled a lot with that.
So we kept on going and we applied to adopt a second time. You get yourself to a place where you are ok, or you pretend to be ok, but you aren’t really meeting that inner need that unsettled feeling of there is something not right on the inside.
We applied to adopt and were allocated 2 girls and it felt so right and the process was really quick this time. From allocation we were in Taiwan less than 3 months later to attend court. It was incredible meeting these two little girls. One was two years and 4 months and the other was nearly 12 months old. Now here we are a family of 3, more than we every dreamt of really. You pinch yourself going is this real. It was incredible.
We attended court again and came home. We had three weeks at home. Then we were asked to go back and pickup the girls. We were able to have time in Taiwan and share more of the culture with our son which was really good for him. Then we brought our girls home.
10:20 What do adoptive mothers feel? Do all mothers feel the same?
Just prior to bringing our girls home, our social worker put us in contact with a support worker from Relationships Australia. I had a great conversation with her but not one part of it did she recognise or understand what it was like to be an adoptive mothers. She understood child trauma, she understood additional needs and she understood all the psychiatric support needed for adoption. But she didn’t understand me and I was left with this empty feeling of but where is our support.
I started doing some research and got in touch with different support agencies, but we were living very remote and there was nothing available to us. So it did leave me feeling a little bit empty but of course we rushed into the next adoption. Of course my son struggled with having an additional 2 in the family. That was tough for him and we had some things going on in the family and we moved interstate.
The adoption was going smoothly. I did Therapeutic Parenting courses and Circle of Security courses. By chance I picked up a parenting wellbeing magazine and read this article about Matrescence. Oh my goodness. This was me. This was my lightbulb moment of realising everything I have been feeling as a mother. My economic lack. My emotions. So many parts of me all just came together in that moment. I got in touch with Amy Taylor-Kabbaz who does Mama Rising with the matrescence formula. I did do a podcast with her. Wow this is what we feel as adoptive parents, just like other parents do. Just having that acceptance and recognition that this is what all mothers go through. We are not taking away from the children at all. But all mothers feel the same things inside whether it’s all of the aspects of matrescence or one or two or whether it’s at the beginning of your experience or down the track some months later. In your spiritual being everything changes.
13:57 What is matrescence?
The physical change that mostly biological mothers will go through. But I was going through that too. Because my whole focus was on my child I stopped eating. So my physical did change in that aspect. Maybe others would go the other way. Your hormones change With my second adoption I really felt that maternal pull. My emotions kicked into gear. Your emotional status, your world has turned upside down and your emotions are crazy. You suddenly have this beautiful child. Your social aspect. Suddenly your friends have disappeared. There is no one to talk to, nooone understands. Your cultural. Suddenly you are their mother in this world. Your economic so you don’t have the income or independence any more. Everything is gone. And of course the spiritual. Your life revolves around this child and you are giving it everything. Your self inner identity changes. So its bringing all those things to the forefront.
15:40 So what did you do from there? What sort of things helped you?
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz had a short workshop through Mama Rising so I knew I needed healing and needed to put the guilt and shame away. The feeling of less than as a mother. So I started working on myself first. I then realised after talking to other adoptive mums, who had been friends right from the first adoption, that they felt these things to. So I started to launch out and joined a group for foster and adoptive mothers and started sharing. And I heard back that others felt this too. There are lots of different adoption groups. Just reach out and make this a conversation that you can talk about in an open way.
So its like self care and self identity that you are making sense of. Whether you are biological or otherwise. Where is that space for you so that you can give to everyone else in your environment, combined with the extra layer of perfectionism as the chosen adoptive parent.
Society puts us up there. You must be an amazing person because you are an adoptive parent. No I’m just a mother. This is how my family has come to me. But don’t make me feel that I am better than anyone else. I am just a mother struggling like everyone else is. Whether they came by adoption or kinship care or biologically.
18:23 How do we help permanent carers, kinship carers and foster carers, who have similar experiences?
Have an open conversation. It is ok not to be ok. We have to take that pressure off. In the adopted world especially you can’t fail as everyone is watching you. We need to take that pressure off. You are a mother. You know what is right for your children. You know what is best. There are failed families everywhere. It is ok to admit I am really struggling. Your children are not going to be taken away from you. There is no threat of you never being able to adopt again. We get it. Motherhood is hard. Today you are struggling, tomorrow we can go forward together. Kinship care, adoption and foster care organisations need to relax a little so that we can do this in a really productive way. Mothers will always make sure attachment and bonding are there. We feel it we know it. We need to be a little bit more open.
Maybe we need to look at a buddy system. I’m coming into adoption I’m not sure what the process is going to be. Here is a mother who has been through it lets buddy them up and let’s make a village. Our children miss out on the village. We ask they get back to it on their own. Lets get back to mothering and the village. I really love Eastern life and travel life which is about looking after the mother. The first 2 weeks, 60 or 90 days is feeding the mother healthy food and looking after the family and the mother to recover from the birth. Adoptive mothers feels that too just in a different way. If we can be there it can help them to understand we have got your back.
21:31 You found post adoption services and other things that worked for you. What were they?
Therapeutic parenting is great and gives you the tools you need to take a step back from perfectionism and to understand how to guide behaviour in the right way and to support children.
The Circle of Security is really important and about the attachment and bonding.
Relationships Australia has some great support workers who do get it in supporting foster and adoption networks. There are some great stories and there are some people that are definitely meant to be in the adoption networks. There are others that should find other employment. I am hearing some wonderful stories of supporting adoptive mothers.
22:50 What are some things that other expectant mothers (on paper), should plan for or expect that perhaps you didn’t?
Matrescence. Put it out there as a word. Be prepared for matrescence so that when they may experience it they know this is normal Im going to be ok. For myself the most I got was talking to other adoptive families. Even in the workshops we attended pre adoption it was hearing the other adoptive families stories. I remember even after our first adoption remembering what we were told – ok that makes sense now. A lot of those things are really really helpful.
24:13 Were there some areas that you think we can better support pre or post adoption?
Just having open conversations that you are not up on a pedestal, you are not the perfect superheros of the world. Reality and a realism check. You are going into this and it is not a lot differening in your mothering and mothering experience to any other mother. Just bringing it back to a real normal feel. Sameness. Im feeling it is the connection between the biological and adoptive foster mother is so similar. We do have some extra additional things there. But the actual mothering experience is not a lot of difference. So we need to break the barrier down.
25:30 Anything else?
I am a mama rising facilitator. I do run mother circles for foster and adoptive mothers. I do have a website if people want to find out more about my circle of grace. www.matrescencesupportsisters.com
For a book to read, Mama Rising by Amy Taylor-Kabbaz that helps explain a lot more than what I have mentioned today.
Thankyou.
To anyone making the time to listen to this recording, thankyou for giving up your valuable time for the benefit of the young people in your life. Until next time have an amazing week
Amy Taylor-Kabbaz – Book Mama Rising, including information about the Pillars of Matrescence (Physical, Hormonal, Emotional, Social, Cultural, Economic, Spiritual) which involves healing with Connection, Kindness, Strength, Trust, Value and Grace
Melissa Christian Matrescence Suppport Sisters – Adoptive, Foster and Biological Mothers Support Groups and Workshops
