As my thoughts these days have turned to how I’ve changed and how I’m living my life as authentically as I can, no matter what some may think of me, I’m making connections with what those in other types of circumstances have/are going through. What I’ve most recently been accused of doesn’t have a nifty alliteration, but I can make one up that I think the accuser would probably approve of: “crybaby cancer patient.”

We’re a society that loves alliteration, don’t we? We even like it better when the letters line up, as in “angry adoptees” and “bitter birthmothers.” Note the kinds of alliterative business names that make me cringe because they just have to spell one word wrong to make the name cuter: Kuts for Kids, as just one example.

But I digress, as I tend to do. Those “angry adoptees” and “bitter birthmothers” — wow, do they make some people uncomfortable. One way of say, putting them in their place, is to dismiss them with these not-so-nifty alliterative putdowns. Lump them into a category, and you don’t have to deal with them or their craaazy ideas again, do you?

But you see, as I’ve found through everything that I’ve been through, it’s very easy to label someone with “angry,” “bitter,” “whiny,” or “irresponsible.” In fact, it’s a hell of a lot easier than actually listening to that person, I mean really listening and trying to understand or empathize with their truth. Because, once again, it’s something that we can’t easily fix. This society in general, full of “fix-it” people, doesn’t have the patience for problems that can’t be easily fixed. So it’s much easier for some people to simply dismiss or minimize the problems of others, the truths of others. My cancer, while in remission, is in a way, lurking in the background. When I first learned that it had metastasized (soon after I learned I had cancer at all), my oncologist said that she’d “give me x years.” It’s hard for me to live with that in the back of my mind all the time, even though I know she’s not God and I may (and hope to) beat the odds. But you see, my fears, my doubts, make people uncomfortable, and some who can’t deal with it would rather label me as “whiny” or “negative” than face what my reality is.o

In a similar way, the feeling of not belonging, of being abandoned that many adoptees describe makes many people uncomfortable. They can’t “fix” it. So instead of honoring that reality and saying something like “I can’t fix these feelings for you, but I respect and honor your reality and will listen to you,” they often get labeled “angry” or are told to “get over it.” I simply don’t understand that philosophy. I mean, how in the world would I be able to tell someone to “get over” something that I haven’t even been through? Yet some others seem extremely comfortable in doing just that.

As first mothers understand the realities of their situations, the circumstances that lead up to the relinquishing of their babies, they understandably become sad and angry. They feel a loss. And that makes people uncomfortable. Again, it can’t be fixed. So it’s just easier to assign them labels — “bitter birthmothers” being just one of many. Can people instead honor their reality and listen to them, listen to the pain of their lives? Some can; many can’t.

As a “crybaby cancer patient,” I’ve come to understand firsthand how some people react to something that they simply can’t fix. “Just think positively!” “You HAVE been doing well, haven’t you?” “Just keep doing what you’ve been doing and you’ll be fine.” “Oh, breast cancer? That’s nothing these days.” And the worst, from someone I trusted for many years, that I’m “whiny” and “irresponsible.” These messages serve to simply tell me that the person to whom I’ve been speaking isn’t compassionate enough, doesn’t have the empathy to simply listen to my truth and honor it.

And while I tried to listen and be empathetic to adoptees and first mothers before the cancer, I think I understand — in a way — how it feels to be repeatedly dismissed, marginalized, and at the worst, called names by someone who desperately wants to silence me. In similar ways, adoptees and first mothers are repeatedly dismissed, marginalized, and called names by those who desperately want to silence them. Who are SO uncomfortable with their truths that their truths are dismissed.

I can’t “get it” like fellow adoptees or fellow first mothers “get it.” But I “get it” in another way. I get it to the extent that someone not in their shoes can get it. I get how it feels for someone to tell you that what you experience simply isn’t true, I get how it feels for someone to not want to hear your truth, and I get how it feels for someone to so discount your truth that they lash out at you and bring up every single thing they think you’ve done wrong in the past 20 years. I get that. I get how soul-crushing it is to be dismissed by someone of import in your life, although I obviously can’t get it to the extent that fellow adoptees and first mothers do. But I get it, in my own way.

Those adoptees aren’t angry. Or maybe they are, but they have reasons to be angry. They’re more than one emotion. They’re people with as many emotions and situations and ways of handling them as anyone else. The same with first mothers. If they’re bitter, have people stopped to find out why? Have they listened to them, really listened to their stories to discover the reasons behind the feelings of bitterness, loneliness, loss?

I’m not saying to these “angry adoptees” and “bitter birthmothers;”

I know exactly how you feel

because I don’t. How could I? That in itself would be dismissive of their feelings. I’m simply saying that, in my own way, I understand what it feels like to be dismissed and marginalized. I don’t know what it feels like to be an adoptee or a first mother. But I know what it feels like to make people so uncomfortable that labeling you is easier than listening to you.

I feel like I’m babbling . . . and not sure if I’m making sense or saying things “right.”

So let me just say to adoptees and first mothers that I honor your experiences and I’m ready to listen. I may not always know what to say in response . . . but I’m listening and I care. And I think you’re way more than “angry adoptees” and “bitter birthmothers.” No, scratch that. I know you are.