On separation, notions of abandonment, mothers, daughters, adoption, and birthdays...through the ethnographic 'I'
When fieldwork touches us deeply (as members of a research community/team) it is healthy and academically fruitful to write reflexively about our feelings and the way in which our positionality and openness moves others (and vice versa).
Reaching out to others is not a one way process - rather, it is a reciprocal and mutually performed act of caring in which we reach within ourselves to connect with the experiences and feelings of those around us (especially within the research community).
Yesterday in one of the hip-hop workshops I found Vera pretty down...she asked me if we could talk privately in a corner...I thought to myself perhaps it's glue depression or let down from the cold night she spent in the streets of la 'L' (within the eyes of mainstream Bogotá, an invisible yet deviant and avoided drug zone ironically located behind the district military barracks)...
As we moved two chairs into the corner of the concrete homeless shelter the tears began to fall onto her soiled jersey...I moved my chair closer and held her shoulder firmly in a half hug (to demonstrate care without violating personal space)...
"Wednesday is my daughter's birthday...I want to go to Ibague to be with her so I may not be here for the hip-hop workshop...I'm so sorry...I don't want anyone to know why I'm crying..."
We sat there for a few moments of silent tears. "Amy, the truth is, my daughter is going to be four, and I have never spent a birthday with her because ICBF [state child protection agency] took her away when she was little...every birthday that passes I feel so sad...I cry all day for her...and I don't want anyone to know...I want to be with my daughter on her birthday...I want to see her face [more tears rolling into sobs of anguish, sadness, loss]."
"Does she think of me?..."
At that moment I began to feel the lump in my throat...fighting it...determined to be strong...I replied, "I'm sure she thinks of you Vera...she wants to remember your face, she wonders if you think of her....she feels sad on her birthday...even if she is with a family who loves her deeply..."
"She may be in France," I replied, "and her words and thoughts may be in a language you may not understand...but you are in her heart."
"How can you be sure, Amy?" .... I replied hesitantly, "because I feel a sadness every birthday that I hardly understand...I wonder if my birth mother [I was born in Bogotá and adopted by an American family] thinks of me, if she remembers the day I came to the world, and I wonder if she loved me"....
At that moment, Vera and I looked at each other and shared a moment of understanding and exchange...
Vera must have thought, "Wow, maybe my daughter thinks of me...maybe she will think of me on Wednesday during her birthday party wherever she is"....
I was thinking, "Wow, maybe my birth mother thinks of me...maybe she cries on my birthday like Vera...maybe she wonders where I am"...
Although quite personal for both Vera and I, this moment of mutual understanding and reaching out soothed each of our respective wounds.
Vera's case, and my case, is quite common in Colombia and particularly with street girls. The pregnancy rate amongst youth sex workers is staggering and the majority do not end up raising their children directly (they are either seized by the state or raised by relatives and then follow similar street life patterns).
Those children who are fortunate enough to be adopted (such as myself) are extracted from situations of socio-economic and familial strife (among many other devastating contexts) and are given opportunities many worlds removed from the everyday reality of street girls.
Only a minimal percentage of girls will make it over the barbed wires binding so many within street life, exploitation, and social exclusion...such as the beneficiaries of la
Fundación Social Fenix, which provides a peer-led support structure psychologically, professionally, and academically to young women to pursue higher education in the social sciences or health-care fields (with the long-term objective and commitment to work as professionals within vulnerable and excluded street communities).
Mother-daughter dynamics are often complicated and the context of adoptees is no exception...
Fantasies about how things would have been or how things could be is a common theme that I come across in my fieldwork...
I talked with a young street girl who was convinced that she saw her mother on television begging for her daughter back (when in reality she had been seized by the state and lived in institutions most of her life and has no contact with her family). She was also on some sort of acid trip...but this still demonstrates how deeply the sense of longing and abandonment are ingrained within her mind.
Another girl once told me about the Christmas feast she enjoyed with her mother and family - when in reality she spent the night of December 24th in the streets of la 'L'.
These fantasies are devastating and when listening to the girls I often do not know how to respond. If these images are the one slice of happiness street girls have to hold on to, who am I to stomp on them with a reality check?
Practically living within the world of street girls during this period of fieldwork has been a reality check for me...it has helped me value the opportunities I was given through adoption, the family I have, the maternal love I have received all my life, and the privilege of returning to Bogotá to work with girls in the streets, rather than having grown up in them....
