Forgiving and Forgetting

Grammy is here.

Hope is falling in love with her.

The last couple of days have been an interesting mini-trip on this adoption journey.  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I had some anxiety about what life would be like in my house with Grammy staying.  We’ve just had a rough go of it.

The truth is she’s been wonderful.  She’s in love with her granddaughter.  She wants to be helpful, even offering to do laundry and cook.  She’s told me I need support, especially for respite.  She’s observed all the things I need to take care of in a day to help Hope and to manage this huge transitional phase in our lives.  She realizes how different my experience is from her own parenting experience and is gaining a better understanding of why I need to do things differently.

I realized during the last few days that it wasn’t just that I was terrified of being judged, but that my overall confidence about being a new parent was in the crapper.  Having Grammy say she gets it, as she watched me try to navigate various systems and engage with Hope during the last few days, has greatly improved my confidence.  It is hard, but I got it under control.  I do need help, but let me be the one that decides what help I need; I’m best positioned to do that.

I got this.

For all of the rosiness, Grammy still feels some kind of way about how I’ve handled the last couple of months with Hope—mainly my need to cloister us a bit so that we have time to just attach and be mom and daughter.  She still disagrees with that choice, and she’s made mention of it repeatedly during her stay.

Sigh.  #cantwealljustmoveon

I finally just told her that I needed to not have this conversation again; I made a choice, I made the right choice for my family—MY FAMILY—and I would do it again.  And it’s done, why are we still talking about it?  I get that you would do it differently, but you aren’t me and you’re not dealing with what I’m dealing with, and it’s easy to pontificate about how you would handle someone else’s life without any skin  in the game.  Can you just drop it?

Grammy just looked at me, kind of stunned.

Then she simply said, “Ok.”

I found my voice, and I had to use it.  Funny, Grammy gave me the confidence to defend my parenting decisions and to defend them to her.  #nowcanwemoveon?

I’m glad she’s here.  I love Grammy. I laid my head in her lap for 5 minutes yesterday.  I hugged her.  I do need her; I always knew I did.  But I need her on my terms.  We’re forgiving each other.  I just want to move forward.  You can’t really change the past, and forgetting it can be challenging too, but you can choose to change your future.   I’m learning to let some things go with Hope; I think I’ve got to learn to let some things go with Grammy too.

I love her, and I’m hopeful about us navigating all these new roles, emotions and ideas in meaningful ways moving forward

Grammy’s here.