My friend Nancy over on the Reactive Attachment Disorder blog has my wheels turning. Recently her two older adopted children have publicly questioned (on her blog) her decisions to talk the challenges of parenting them. Nancy’s probably the most straight-forward person you’ll ever meet. We tease Super Dad that he’s incredibly blunt, but Nancy could give him a run for his money.

One of the things that Nancy and I see eye-to-eye on is that Nancy is a truth teller. (This is not to imply that others do not tell the truth.) What I mean is that Nancy believes telling the truth, for truth’s sake, is important. Guess you could say “And the truth shall set you free” is a life motto for both of us. It is from that premise that each of us began our adventure of blogging here on adoptionblogs.com.

But truth telling often comes with a price. When you “call it like it is” in open forums you run the risk of sharing some deep, dark secrets or revealing details that others don’t want revealed. This is even more dicey when it is your own family…your own kids.

Some time ago I posted about a presentation I’d attended by Kathie Snow who emphatically stated that our children’s disabilities were NOBODY’S BUSINESS, so we needed to stop sharing every detail of our children’s diagnoses, their symptoms and behaviors and their struggles. While I was moved to question my own openness on this blog, it really didn’t slow me down much in talking about LuLu.

Sunbonnet Sue wrote a wise response to my early blog in which she said

"Yes, you are sharing details of LuLu's life. However, how many of your readers actually know who LuLu is? You've done a fine job of protecting her privacy."

Yes, LuLu is not my daughter’s real name, and that protects her some. But in reality, it’s not hard to know who I’m talking about if you know our family. Relatives and friends have found our blog, the school system actually quoted from it in court, my family’s identity is pretty transparent. It wouldn’t be too difficult to find us…if you really wanted to. Nancy had tried to protect her children the same way, and they opted to publicly comment, using their real names. Go figure.

But Sue’s second point was equally notable:

“…these stories are intertwined with ours. We are living this story too. Our story is just as valid as our children’s.”

And that’s it in a nutshell. The most life-altering thing I have ever done (or will ever do) is adopt a child with unknown (severe) special needs. We jokingly (and lovingly) refer to the timeline of our family as BL (before LuLu) and AL (after LuLu), because her arrival and subsequent challenges and changes to our family have been all-consuming.

So the story I share, and the story that many of the bloggers here share, is OUR story…the story of our unique parenting experiences. The reason these are interesting to read is that readers can related to them, learn from them, take inspiration from them. The reasons we’re compelled to write them vary, but include not only helping others in similar situations, but giving us a chance to document and process our own thoughts about some very complex parts of life. Are our children’s rights to privacy violated by our writing?

Perhaps, but no more than any other writers who write autobiographically. And, after thinking about this for awhile, I don’t think the NOBODY’S BUSINESS method is a good one. I don’t think it applies whether you’re talking about addressing racial and cultural differences brought about by adoption, or if your talking about a child’s special needs. (There I go with that truth-at-all-costs thought process again.)

Frankly, I’ve rarely been offended by people asking questions about my daughter’s obvious racial differences. It’s an opportunity to tell people about the joys (and the challenges) of adoption. And writing about her special needs is an opportunity to tell others that disabilities are real, that real parents are out there facing these challenges daily, and that mental/emotional/neurological disabilities are just as debilitating as physical ones. And those messages are important.