Oversharing a Child’s Story
A recurring theme here on Motherlode is the intersection, overlap and separation of our children’s lives from our own. Where is the line between helping and hovering? Between caring and smothering? Protecting and snooping? Letting go and abandoning? Sharing and betraying?
A number of readers have suggested guest posts on facets of this subject lately, and I’d like to spend the day exploring these questions through their words.
First up is lie Ruby, the author of The Language of Trees, and the mother of three children whom she and her husband adopted from Ethiopia nearly two years ago. Theirs is probably a fascinating story. I wouldn’t know, though, because Ruby won’t share it with me. She won’t share it with anyone but the closest of friends, she writes, even though complete strangers ask often. It is her children’s story, she believes, and theirs alone to tell.
MY RIGHT NOT TO TELL
by Ilie Ruby
Everyone wants to know the story of how we adopted three children from Ethiopia. But do I have a right not to tell it, existing as I do right out here on the front line, looking as I do, a Caucasian mom with three African kiddos? Taking my children to the grocery store or to the library without announcing where they came from? Do I have a right to live in the world, fully and enthusiastically and not announce my history or that of my children? I think, yes. Read more on NYTimes
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