Songs For Adoption

I am among the fortunate.  For as far back as I can remember I always knew that I was wanted.  My parents planned for me. They celebrated my arrival. And they kept on celebrating me. I grew up in an environment of unconditional love.  I was consistently encouraged and enthusiastically supported in my areas of interest. 

I was thinking about what it means to be wanted recently as we were doing the final post production on our new documentary and music video project Under my Skin: The Heart of Adoption.  The piece deals with all kinds of want.

The Heart of Adoption

From the adoptive parents standpoint it deals with desperately wanting a child and not being able to have one.  Then comes the emotional ache of wanting an adopted child to know how deeply and completely they are loved, feeling like there is no way to adequately communicate that.  Finally, there are the complexities involved wanting to do right by the child who may one day feel like they need to meet their biological mother.

It was amazing to me that in editing process for Under My Skin I felt like the eyes of the parents said as much about what they wanted for their adopted children as anything that came out of their mouths.  It was clear to me that you have to be very tender hearted to adopt – or that adoption will wring a tender heart out of you.

From the outside looking in it feels like on the one hand an adopted child should feel wanted in a very special kind of way.  Adoptive parents have sought out the responsibility for raising a child that was born to somebody else. It is hard to imagine a more selfless, loving act.  One might think an adopted child would respond to this by feeling a tremendous sense of belonging. “Wow!  They went to a lot of trouble to adopt me. They must’ve really wanted me a lot!”

But for the adopted child there is a shadow side to adoption that can’t be ignored.

As songwriter, singer, and adoptive parent Regie Hamm says in the video, “

“I think the deepest challenge…is that all children who are adopted have some sort of attachment issue. When you think you’ve loved enough, you have to love more because they know they were ripped away from something.”

In writing the song Under My Skin that Regie and I were trying to express the idea that “you have to love more” in a way that will make adopted children feel the full measure of love and appreciation their parents have for them.

When one says someone is getting under their skin they usually mean that  someone is being annoying. We turned the phrase on its head. Adopted children are under your skin in the same way that your blood is under your skin. Or as Hamm says in the video, “They kind of get in your soul in a way that’s hard to explain.”

But the lyric tries:

You stay under my skin

You burst in my heart like a thousand parades

Oh you dance in my mind

And rush through my soul like hope in my veins

DNA can have its say

But nevertheless you remain

Under my skin

Our hope is that every child who hears the song Under My Skin will realize just how deeply loved and wanted they truly are.  Just like I was as a biological child, they have been planned for by the parents who adopted them and their arrival has been celebrated every bit as much as the arrival of any other child’s birth.

We also hope that Under My Skin encourages those who may have been considering adoption to hear the song as an invitation to follow through.  As drummer and adoptive parent Tony Morra says, “If it’s a heart issue and you think, ‘Wow, I want to adopt. We should or…’  You’ve made your decision. Just do it.”

For those who “just do it,” they will be giving the gift of feeling wanted.  And what greater gift could there be?

That is the heart of adoption.