Dear Eric: I really enjoy your column and could use some advice on tact and kindness. My spouse and I adopted our child when she was about one week old. Her birth mother arrived at the hospital on drugs and without any plan for the baby. She signed away her rights but took no part in selecting us to be our child’s parents.
An adoption agency selected us after the birth, and we jumped at the opportunity. The birth mother died of a drug overdose shortly thereafter. We never met her.
For the last five years, I have maintained a correspondence relationship with the birth mother’s mother (my child’s biological grandmother), sending her photos and updates. She writes often of her daughter and the pain of losing her. She also asks often to hear the adoption story because she is so proud and happy one of her daughter’s last acts was choosing us to raise her child.
I can’t bear to tell her the truth, but also can’t lie to her, so I’ve just been avoiding the question. But it’s gone on too long and she keeps asking. What do I tell her?
– Motherhood Truth
Dear Truth: Your child’s biological grandmother is doing something very understandable: reaching for a narrative to help her process and survive her grief. I daresay we all do it, to some extent. We use selected facts from life to tell stories about the deceased that help answer our questions or heal our pain. In a grief process, the whole truth may not always be what we want to hear but it can help guide us to a more healing story.
So, in short, tell her the truth as you understand it. “I know that you’ve been thinking about your daughter choosing us and, because we’ve established this connection, I want to make sure I’m not giving you the wrong impression. The adoption agency acted as an intermediary and so I never met your daughter, but I’m so grateful for the choice she made.”
It’s totally fine for her to incorporate this new information into her story. It’s very possible that it will continue to make her proud. Indeed, deep down the pride she feels may not actually be connected to her daughter choosing you specifically.
There are many ways of looking at the story of a person’s life. It seems that the mother is focusing on the foresight that her daughter showed by choosing not to try to raise her child. Ultimately, that interpretation still stands.
Dear Eric: Is it appropriate for a woman to give jewelry to a man who is engaged to someone else? I’m not talking about a watch; I mean an expensive and bold necklace. The woman in question is supposedly my friend, not my fiancé’s.
Am I the only one who sees this as a personal item, like something you would give a lover not a friend’s fiancé? Am I overreacting?
The gift giver is married; her husband and my fiancé are friends as well.
This was also a Christmas gift not a birthday gift, if that means anything.
I am deeply hurt and mad about this, but he says I am being jealous and that I need to get over it and let it go. I would really like to know your opinion on this.
– Inappropriate Necklace
Dear Necklace: If it’s bothering you, that feeling is worth listening to. It’s less useful to cite a hard-and-fast rule about gifting jewelry to men here. Each relationship is unique and it seems the specific dynamics of this set of relationships are getting muddled. For instance, it occurred to your friend to buy a necklace for your fiancé and presumably she thought that this gift matched their dynamic and indicated something platonic. It’s obviously not unheard of to buy friends jewelry, but because taste plays so big a part in it, it can be a risky choice. Clearly, she felt the risk was low. It either indicates she’s a master gift-giver or she feels she knows your fiancé well.
This, to me, suggests a disconnect in the relationships here. If she feels she knows your fiancé well enough to buy a big necklace and you’re feeling thrown off and upset about the present, the two of you aren’t seeing the relationship dynamic the same way. It’s worth talking to her about it.
Use “I” statements in conversation to let her know how you felt and ask her what she was feeling and thinking. Try to avoid accusations, if you can. You may find that you see the gift differently after a conversation or the conversation may lead you to ask her not to give such extravagant gifts to your fiancé anymore, for the sake of your friendship and your relationship with your fiancé.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
