Susan Love
interviews Elizabeth Bugental, the mother of a young
woman who was adopted at 81/2 and is now 34 years
old. For 18 years Elizabeth was a member of the
Sisters of the Immaculate Heart in Los Angeles, and
for 12 years chaired the theatre arts department at
Immaculate Heart College. She holds a Ph.D. from
Stanford University. After leaving the religious
life she retrained in psychology, earning her MFT
License, and was in private practice for 15 years.
Elizabeth and her husband, Dr. James Bugental,
conducted workshops for several years and also
founded and supervised a low-cost counseling center,
Inter-Logue, in Palo Alto and Santa Rosa. She has
authored several articles including “On Intimacy and
Death,” “Challenge of the Heart,” and (with James
Bugental) “Resistance to and Fear of Change” and
“Dispiritedness: A New Perspective on a Familiar
State.” Elizabeth and her adopted daughter Karen
will be among the featured speakers at the Adoption
Unity Gathering on April 8 at Grace Cathedral.
Susan:
Could you tell me a little about yourself and your
husband before your daughter came into your life,
and why you decided to adopt an older child?
Elizabeth:
I had been a nun for 18 years so by the time my
husband and I were married I was 41 and he was 52
with two grown children by a former marriage. He
was a psychologist in private practice and I had
been a teacher. I had taught on all levels but
mostly in college. When we married I switched
careers and became a psychotherapist also. We were
very happy living and working together and in many
ways I felt I had it all.
My life in the
convent had been very rich and rewarding on many
levels, but I regretted not having any children. At
that time, the medical establishment was not as
encouraging as it is now to older women who wanted
to become pregnant and there wasn’t the support
there is today. So, after some attempts, I gave up,
but I continued to feel very sad about my loss. My
husband was very empathic about my feelings,
although he didn’t feel the need that I felt for a
child. Given our ages, adopting a baby was not a
practical option so he was willing to consider
adopting an older child.
S: So
how did you proceed to do that?
E: We
simply called and made an appointment in the county
where we lived. We walked in the door not knowing
what in the world we were doing and behind the desk
was this wonderful woman who became our guardian
angel and continues to be our dear friend to this
day. Judy helped us with all the paperwork and we
became more and more excited about bringing another
person into our relationship. We made no demands as
to gender or ethnic background. In fact, we expected
we would probably end up with a minority child.
S: But
that’s not what happened?
E: No.
At that time there was a great effort to match the
ethnicity of parents and children. We were shown
pictures and heard stories of many children and our
hearts went out to each one. But Judy was wiser
than we were, and given our ages and history and
education, felt that our lives would be totally
disrupted with many of the children who had very
special needs. We did finally settle on a little
boy, but he was given to a younger couple and we
were very disappointed. By now, maybe ten months had
gone by and we were tired and ready to give up.
Then the phone rang one night and Judy asked us if
we still wanted a child. Jim got very teary and I
saw that he really wanted this too. Our juices
began flowing again and in an hour Judy was in our
house with pictures and a story.
S: And
that was Karen.
E:
Yes. A darling little freckle-faced blonde whose
smiling face gave no clue as to what her life had
been like up to that point. We met her a week later
in a big mall where there was lots to do and look
at, rather than just stare at one another. Karen
took complete charge of our afternoon and we saw
what she was like. She worked very, very hard to
keep us interested and entertained, which was
amazing because I was so scared I was completely
numb.
Judy had told
us that once we met, Karen was ours because she had
been through enough rejection in her young life. And
I realized that an 81/2-year-old is a person, not an
unformed baby, and we had to like as well as love
one another. Then, at dinner, she fell asleep
exhausted from all her trying and pulled my arm
around her just before she dropped off. All my
maternal feelings rushed in as if I had just given
birth.
Judy was taking her back that night to the family
she’d been living with and on the way to the car she
was walking between Jim and me. Suddenly she
stopped, looked up at us and said, “I hope it works
with this family.” I knelt beside her and said,
“We’re all going to work to make our family. We’re
in this together.” I meant that from my heart but I
was also aware that our lives had changed
irrevocably.
S: How
would you describe that change?
E:
Well, first of all, we discovered we were living
with a lot of ghosts. We came from two different
sets of experiences and we didn’t know hers and she
didn’t know ours. I expected her to be a part of my
life forever but she, out of her own experience of
rejection and abandonment, expected no such thing.
S:
She’d been through a lot.
E:
Yes. She had been with an older couple for five
years who loved her but had no legal right to her.
When that was discovered and the home was also
deemed unfit, she was removed overnight with no
preparation. She was taken out for ice cream and
never allowed to go back. Her birthmother was
contacted and went to court to allow her to be
legally adopted. That was a generous act on the
birthmother’s part because she had to appear in
person and admit that she was an older woman, an
alcoholic, and wanted Karen to have a normal family
life.
Karen had been
taken precipitously from everything and everyone she
loved and was in a kind of emotional shock. She had
also been infantalized and was still on baby food.
The family she was placed with had two older boys
who terrorized her and, according to neighbors, she
was always being punished, emotionally and
physically. Supposedly, this was an adoption
placement, but the fit was wrong and nobody would
admit it was never going to terminate in an
adoption. Finally, some action was taken, the whole
family was put into therapy and the parents admitted
what Karen knew all along, that they didn’t want
her. This was how she came to us.
S: So
she was wounded. Were you aware of this story?
E:
Yes. The facts were not withheld from us. However,
I think it takes a lot of time to uncover how that
pain gets translated into behavior, and how a child
protects herself from more hurt. Karen held on to a
lot of fantasies. One night when I was putting her
to bed and was about to read her a story, she took
the book from me and said “I’ll read.” She always
preferred to be in charge and I was disappointed not
to get to be the reader and cuddle with her.
I guess she
sensed this because she had only read a little bit
when she suddenly burst into tears and screamed at
me, “Someday I’ll find my real mother. I know I
will. You’re not my mother and never will be.” I
was shocked but some instinctual part of me
recognized those feelings. I said “ Yes, I know.
Just like you’ll never be the child I gave birth to.
But we can be a lot to each other. We can be a
mother and daughte
but just not that way.” She stopped crying and then
said to me, “How did that happen to you, Mom, that
you never had a baby?” I said, “Well, I just gave
that up when I was younger and then it was too late
and I was very sad about it until I met you.” And
she said, “I’m so sorry.” And we connected at that
moment around our mutual loss.
S: So
you felt connected with her?
E:
Yes, at that moment, and there were others like
that. But deep inside she was always ready to
leave. She was alone in the world and needed to feel
that she could make it on her own. She insisted on
getting a job when she was 15 and always worked even
though we just wanted her to do well in school and
have a good time. She couldn’t stand to be passive
or dependent. She was much too vulnerable.
S:
This is what you mean by living with ghosts?
E: Yes,
Karen was so personable and attractive that we often
forgot how frightened she was. In fact, I had very
high expectations for her because her gifts were
obvious, but in a therapy session a few years ago
she was able to tell me how burdened she felt by my
expectations. She experienced them as “judgments,”
which, of course, they also were. I think many
daughters feel that way about their mothers, but
this had an extra edge because her feelings of
inadequacy were so deep and her fears so
overwhelming. She had no uninterrupted early bonding
to fall back on emotionally.
S: So
by this time you were committed completely to her,
but underneath she was still not sure about you.
E:
Right. And once she graduated from high school she
just kept leaving. She spent a summer in Europe
that she mostly paid for herself. Then she went to
live in Hawaii, then she went to Utah to become a
Mormon, left that after a year, lived in Colorado
and even New Zealand. We made up our minds that
wherever she went we would stay in close touch, go
to visit her, talk with her on the phone. Once we
went to Hawaii and she wasn’t there to meet us at
the gate. I thought, “Oh, I bet she doesn’t want us
here.” Then she came around the corner with flowers
and leis, crying, “I thought I lost my parents!”
So, she was needing that proof from us all the time.
S: Did
she ever seem to want to find her roots, her
birthmother, during this time?
E: Jim
and I had talked with her about this but it seemed
to be more our idea than hers. I felt it would
really help her gain some stability. We had taken
her to Ireland for her 13th birthday because we knew
her mother had been born in Ireland. We also knew
the county she was born in and her maiden name. So
we made a big deal out of seeing the name on pubs
and shops and encouraged Karen to identify with
being Irish. But when she finally went to register
to find her birth-mother when she was about 19, she
found her mother had not registered. She said she
didn’t need another rejection, so she dropped the
search, although she did register herself.
S: But
there’s more to the story?
E: Yes,
this is the happy part. After Karen finished
college and was settled down working and finally
living close to us, we were all feeling very
relieved. One day, Karen got a letter from a
genealogist who told her that someone in her family
was looking for her. It took Karen two weeks to
respond to that letter and once again we realized
how the specter of rejection and disappointment hung
over her. But she did make the call eventually and
found that her sister, who was 16 years old when
Karen was born, had decided to search for her. They
met for coffee one day and have been completely
connected to one another ever since.
Miriam, her
sister, has a husband and teenage son who have
become Karen’s other family and also part of ours.
They live in our area and Karen now knows all about
her mother, who died 17 years ago, and about all the
other members of her family, including a brother who
died of alcoholism. She has Irish cousins who’ve
come to visit and other relatives in Ireland she has
yet to meet. Karen is now engaged to a wonderful
young man and I think that connecting with her
sister and feeling all that stability helped make
her ready to make this commitment.
S:
After your experience, do you have any advice to
give people thinking of adopting an older child?
E:
Because children act out the pain they are carrying
inside, we need to help parents with truthful
preventive education regarding this wonderful and
difficult lifetime commitment. And we need an
experienced support system, groups, individuals, a
whole network of people to respond in the moment.
I guess the main thing is to be very secure in
yourself and your marriage. Enter into parenting in
this way not to meet some need in yourself or your
relationship, but rather because you have something
of value to offer a child – unconditional love,
experience, patience and a deep commitment to
parent.
S:
Anything else?
E: Yes.
One of the other things I learned is that it isn’t
just what you give them, it’s empowering them in
learning how to be the giver. I knew how to be the
helper and giver and worrier, but I wasn't great at
helping my daughter feel empowered. We need to look
for ways we can affirm who they are, coming to us as
separate people with something real to give.
Sometimes it's hard to find those things, and I wish
I'd done better. In the end, she's discovered her
own strength on her own, and now I learn from her
every day. I get it all back now and more.