What an amazing time we live in. Social media has literally changed the way the entire globe interacts with one another. I can’t even remember a time when we weren’t connecting through our tiny screens. Love it or hate it, it has played a crucial role in the way we conduct business, build personal relationships and the way we see, embrace and even judge humanity.
I know that technology has almost become another language we can add to our skill set on any resume, and in times of great crisis like the one our communities have been in these past 4 months, our favorite platforms have offered our only option for connection with others.
I am a birth mother and I placed my son for adoption in 2006, 14 years ago.
That just happened to be 2 years after the founding of Facebook, and even if it would be a few years before Facebook started testing publicly, it was being used by Universities all over the world. Twitter was launched just a few weeks before my son was born.
We all know how much social media has changed our culture, let’s talk about how much it has changed our relationships, specifically in adoption.
With my son’s adoptive parents, we had a handful of years in the beginning where communication was sparse to none. Any kind of relationship that we were building up until 2011 were happening through correspondence sent to the agency, consisting of letters, VHS tapes, printed photos and tangible gifts. Sometimes I received them, most of the time not. Both by choice and neglect of the agency.
To say that social media was not a part of our relationship is an understatement. It was completely non-existent as far as our private triad was concerned.
When we reconnected over an email in 2011, we started with a personal relationship. We met in real time for visits, we sent gifts in the mail, we emailed or talked on the phone. We were rebuilding trust after so many years of hurt and lost time.
The foundation of our relationship was not built on a screen. It wasn’t instant gratification for updates and quick and easy facetimes. It wasn’t online gift cards and demanding a simple text. It wasn’t damaged by passive aggressive posts and the inability to read tone. There was no drama in picture sharing or hurtful DM’s. It wasn’t unraveled by political or religious posts. It wasn’t deemed dangerous based on an individual stance, or party with a beverage present, or the company we keep. It was not about assumptions.
It was built on patience, timing, touch and knee-to-knee conversations about the really tough stuff. That is just the way our open adoption organically developed without the influence of social media.
While we have seen amazing developments in connection and ease in keeping our promises of updates, pictures and “face-to-face” through social media, I wonder how much have we lost?
How much of the effortless sharing has made us lazy in building true and solid relationships?
This week we experienced our first real “social media crisis” in the entire 14 years of our open adoption. To keep it simple: My son followed me on IG, I called his mom, we decided it was not the best thing for him, I was asked to block him so I did, they sat with him and talked about boundaries like parents should.
It was a strange thing to block him from me. What would that mean? How would he read into that? How would he feel?
Here is what I know. Social media has to have boundaries. And for us, we have full confidence that if Derek needs or wants to know ANYTHING about me, about us, about how I feel about him and my decision, about his birth father, about my kids that I parent, about regret and grief, ANYTHING, he can come to me personally. We can sit knee to knee and we can talk about the really tough stuff.
This is 100 percent because we built a foundation of in person connection.
The boundary wasn’t about me and what I post and how often I share, it was about him and what they decided he was ready for. It is about protecting his mental health, it is about understanding his ability to separate reality from social media, it is about the deeper understanding of advocacy work vs. attachment to our personal and sacred relationship. It was about how much we love him and allowing space for healthy boundaries while still having the opportunity to take our relationship to the next level.
We can talk all day about how Adoptees need to have all the information about their story by a certain age, but that doesn’t mean giving them free reign to that information on a platform that doesn’t offer a safe space for them to process what they see.
I wanted to share a few testimonies with you from some friends that wanted to share how social media has played a role in their adoption relationships:
“I have decided, 7 years after the closed adoption reunion, that becoming friends on social media with my daughter and her family members has enabled us to be lazy in a time that it was critical for us to get to know each other through real connection. We all know how easy it is to make assumptions about a person based on what they post to social media. But there is a whole complicated and multi-faceted human behind every word we read and pictures we see and when we don’t also make the effort to connect with the real human, so much of that authentic relationship is lost.
I believe that my daughter and her family have made a lot of assumptions about me based on my posts without taking the time to get to really know me. On the flip-side, as I used to observe what they posted closely, I would find myself experiencing a lot of sadness and feelings of rejection knowing that their life continues without me in it and the glimpses from social media do not satisfy my desire to know my daughter or for her to know me. As any birth mom in an open relationship tends to be worried about being cut off from their child, the block function holds that anxiety for me. Posting or making a comment about something they didn’t understand or agree with led them to justify using the block function to cut me off from the only connection I have. That’s where we stand now and every day, my heart aches for the opportunity to connect with her face to face so we can get to know each other as real people and not as social media profiles. I don’t know that I will allow them to follow me on social media again.” – Amy, Birth Mother
“While social media seems to be in our everyday lives, many people forget that social media is a relatively new platform for many. While it allows us to stay connected to friends and family and keep them posted in our day to day lives, it can also create a very false impression of reality. From my experience, social media has not been a healthy space for our open adoption. Not because we don’t love each other because we do. However, there are things that I don’t need to know, and vice versa. Like any good relationship, boundaries are essential, and for our family, the boundary of social media is essential for everyone. It gives us all space to use the platform however we want without constantly feeling like we are unintentionally hurting anyone. This removes offense and defensiveness. It also somewhat forces us to connect on a deeper, more personable level.” – Anonymous Adoptive Mother
“I’m very torn about social media being a part of my open adoption. It has really only been a part of our keep-in-touch processes for about five of the last 18+ years. My birth kids don’t post often and their parents really aren’t on much. I do get so excited when I see that either of my babes have posted though because I get an extra glimpse into their worlds. Sometimes it stings a bit, feels impersonal and like I don’t know them except through social media, now that they are teenagers and basically adults and ‘updates’ are a thing of the past, for us now. I, on the other hand, am a very open person, some would say to the point of sharing too much. They get to read everything, and I love that, yet, they get to read everything and that terrifies the hell out of me. I never want to share my journey to hurt theirs. The screens will suffice until face to face is possible, but if social media wasn’t a means to communicate, maybe we would be more intentional about deepening those relationships. Distance makes social media helpful, but I look forward to cutting out the middleman as much as possible in the future.” – Sarah, Birth Mother
When social media breeds individual worth based on likes, followers, blocks and freedom of speech, we need to understand our mental health boundaries and not be afraid to make the tough calls.
I recognize that every relationship is going to look different and that you have to come up with boundaries that feel good for you and the members of your personal triad. I know many open relationships are only possible because of social media, but I challenge you to shake things up and work a little harder to discover possibilities that may require a little more creativity and effort.
If social media is our only form of connection then I fear we have missed the humanity behind our open adoption relationships.
I believe that you can love well and have very close and powerful relationships even if you are not on social media. It is not a requirement just because it has become a social expectation. I want to encourage you to build something more tangible off a screen where it is possible.
Go on, be a rebel. Reach beyond the screen.
WRITTEN BY ASHLEY MITCHELL
Ashley Mitchell is known for her vulnerablity and realness through her speaking, writing, mentoring and advocay work for the adoption community. She is the founder of Lifetime Healing, and she believes strongly in the power of sharing your story. Ashley is the mother of 2 and a birth mother of 1. She is learning daily how to navigate open adoption and how to create a life after placement and helping others through theirs.
