Conquering Chaos

by Catelynn Lowell

  We stayed with her for three days straight, which is the usual maximum stay for women who have C-sections. I didn’t have a C-section, but the doctors knew what we were doing and gave us the three days anyway. The hospital staff was really supportive, and the doctor and nurses came in every day to check on us. Brandon and Teresa had a room down the hall. For those three days we spent all our time talking to Carly, loving her, and taking pictures with her. We just soaked up as much as we could before we had to say goodbye.

  Tyler:

  We weren’t the only ones who’d had doubts about how strong we’d be. There was this one older nurse who was very cold and stand-offish to us, almost rude. She saw us spending all this bonding time with Carly in our room and she was convinced we weren’t going to go through with it. She thought we were going to break this couple’s heart. But she was the one who helped us out of the hospital, and she was crying her eyes out. When we got to the car, she gave Cate a hug and told her she was the strongest person she’d ever met.

  It was a crazy intense hospital experience. It was emotional and intense and long and draining. And we still had one last blow coming to us when we went to sign over the legal rights to Carly’s adoptive parents. Because guess who was there, objecting to our decision? My dad and Cate’s mom.

  Since Cate’s mom refused to have anything to do with the adoption, Cate had to request a guardian for the day from the court system. And so there we stood, doing this incredibly difficult thing, and our parents were there on the opposite side of the courtroom. But the judge would barely give them the time of day. After they pleaded their case he looked at them and said, “I don’t know what you’re seeing in this situation, but I’m staring at these kids and watching them make the wisest decision of their lives. I’m denying your request to have any involvement in this, and if I were you, I’d wake up and realize these kids are doing an amazing thing.”

  Our parents stormed out of there, pissed off, and went speeding out of the parking lot. We were left there at the end of this traumatic experience watching them tear out of there in a rage. What more is there to say about that, except that it shouldn’t have been that way?

  Catelynn:

  Since then, our parents have come around. They’ve apologized to us for not supporting us during that time, and we’ve forgiven them. And even though it still hurts to remember how unsupported we felt by them, I’ve found a way to channel that experience into helping others who are in the same situation. After my experience, I told Dawn that if a girl ever needed someone to talk to or support her, to give her my number. I wanted to make sure I was there to help, even if it was just by being someone these girls could talk to, someone who understood.

  Since I gave birth to Carly, I’ve been a labor coach for several girls who just needed someone to be there with them when their parents weren’t supportive and they need someone there, just to be there. And I always try and help them understand how much strength they have inside of them. I actually have a tattoo to remind me of the same thing every day: “You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.”

  Tyler:

  A lot of adopted children struggle with an identity crisis from not knowing who their parents were. But we made a scrapbook for Carly explaining our lives, our siblings, our favorite foods. Now we’ll have this book and she’ll have the show and she’ll know exactly where she came from. That’s the greatest blessing about doing the show and doing the adoption. She’ll never have those questions. And she’ll never doubt how much we’ve loved her and thought about her.

  Part of the reason we decided to keep working with MTV was because we wanted all those adopted kids out there to see what their parents might have gone through, and how much love they put into their decision. For parents like us, it was the biggest act of love we could have done.

  We want to be available to help people make the right decision. Not just to help the birth parents, but to help the children who are being brought into this world, through no choice of their own, and whose futures are at the mercy of adults’ decisions.

  Closing Thoughts

  We’ve had many young people approach us with questions about adoption. And our response is always, “Look at your own life, think about all of the options, and choose the one that’s right for you.” We don’t want to push anyone into anything.

  We hear a lot of fear of adoption. People think they won’t be strong enough to go through with it. To that we say, “You don’t know how strong you are.” We didn’t think we were strong enough, but we followed what we knew was right, and in the end we were able to step up to what we believed in.

  As for the people who still struggle with misconceptions about the adoption process and the motives of birth parents, we have two messages we want to spread. First, things have changed so much since the 1950s. Our adoption experience wasn’t secretive or shameful. It was transparent and supportive, and we had control every step of the way.

  Second, adoption is not an act of neglect or irresponsibility. The parent who chooses adoption is choosing to give their child a chance. That goes for the parents who choose closed adoptions and even the ones who make the choice and never look back. Even for them, adoption is an act of love. They didn’t get an abortion. They didn’t abandon the baby to neglect or worse. They made the conscious decision to put that child where there was a better chance of care and happiness.

  The only point we really push is this: No matter what decision you go with, you’re putting the child’s needs and necessities before what you want. Because what you naturally want will almost always be to keep that baby. But that desire of yours doesn’t always match up with what’s best for the child. You have to keep that in mind. You have to always make sure that you’re doing what’s right for the person whose life is in your hands.

  CHAPTER 7:

  * * *

  GROWING UP FAST

  One of the weirdest misconceptions about adoption is that after the birth parents return home without the child in their arms, they shove the whole experience in the closet like a painful memory best forgotten. You see this play out in movies and stories about adoption all the time: An adopted kid grows up and tracks down his or her birth parents, and the parents act like a ghost has appeared on their doorstep. Like they haven’t thought about that child in years. As if the birth parents’ post-adoption experience is a matter of “out of sight, out of mind.”

  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

  After the custody papers were signed and we watched Carly go home with another family, our lives didn’t just bounce back to normal. How could anyone expect us to dive back into our crazy misbehaving teenager lives, drinking and smoking and partying? After all that we’d just been through, were we really supposed to just pick up where we left off like nothing had ever happened?

  No way. No freaking way. We couldn’t have done that if we’d wanted to. And the important thing was that we didn’t want to at all. As Carly drove off with two wonderful parents, headed for the safe, secure and comfortable life we wished to God we would have been able to give her, we knew there was only one way to channel the storm of emotions raging inside of us. We were still just seventeen, but we sure didn’t feel like it. From that moment on, we dedicated ourselves to becoming the kind of people our daughter would grow up to be proud of. It was time to turn our lives around.

  When Nothing is the Same

  Tyler:

  Going back to life after Carly was really difficult. I remember being in Cate’s room after it happened and just lying there, miserable, for hours. No matter how many positive things we can say about the decision to place our daughter for adoption, there’s no getting around the grief and loss we experienced after we left without our daughter. Dawn had told us it was important to jump back into life as soon as possible. But that’s a hard thing to do when that one thing that happened has changed everything in your life, and everything about you.

  We did try. After we’d
sat around depressed for awhile, I turned to Catelynn and said, “Let’s go hang out. Let’s see what Jeff’s up to.”

  Cate started crying. “I can’t,” she said. When I asked why not, she said, “I can’t just go out and have fun. I feel like I should be miserable, and distraught. I feel like I shouldn’t be going out and having fun after what we just did for Carly.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. The goal was to get back into our lives and be normal, but it was so hard.

  Catelynn:

  After Carly was born, I stayed at Tyler’s for about a week before I tried to go home. When I did, I got into a huge fight with Tyler’s dad and my mom about the adoption. We weren’t even close to making peace on that front. So I left again that night and went back to Tyler’s. I stayed at his place for awhile. Him and his mom were my main support system at the time.

  I never had any regrets or second thoughts. I knew where Carly was and I had peace with it, and I was comforted by the fact that we’d made things open, so it wasn’t like I’d never see her again. But it was still incredibly painful.

  You have to go through that phase of grief and loss. Your mind is racing. They say that in a strange way, even though you know your child is safe and sound, your feelings are similar to what you would go through if she had died. She was there in my arms, and then she wasn’t, and I couldn’t go and get her. I had just given birth to her, and all the mom parts of me were active. But she wasn’t there. I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t check on her. I couldn’t hear her. It was an enormous loss to deal with.

  And on top of it there was that sense of, “I shouldn’t be happy.” Whether it was to punish myself or to try or because I just didn’t know how to express the right emotions for this serious loss, I don’t know. But I had this strong feeling that I should stay at home, be sad and not do anything for a couple of months. In reality, yes, you’re supposed to go out and do things and have fun. Every counselor gives you that advice. But it’s very difficult for a birth parent to do at first. It took at least a couple of months to get back into the groove.

  Tyler:

  We knew it was important to try to follow the advice and get ourselves out there. So we dragged ourselves out of the house, met up with our friends, had a good time and everything. But it wasn’t the same as before. We couldn’t just go out and start drinking and doing drugs. It was impossible. We were so impacted by this long, drawn-out experience that everything felt different to us.

  After a couple of weeks we finally talked about it with each other. Cate said, “Isn’t it weird how when we hang out with certain friends, we don’t laugh at their jokes anymore? Have you noticed that?”

  “Yes!” I said. “Totally!” We had this whole conversation about all of these weird changes we felt had happened. There were so many differences between our lives before and after Carly that we never could have imagined. Things we thought were funny before just weren’t anymore. Things that used to be fun before didn’t interest us now. Our friends would invite us out to a party, and we’d look at each other and have this awkward realization that we’d rather just go home and watch movies.

  Things changed for us. Our desires and ideals were different. Once we realized that, we had to figure out how to mesh our new outlook on life with the friends who hadn’t experienced this life-changing ordeal that we’d experienced. People thought once we’d chosen adoption we’d dive back in like, “Cool! Time to go back to getting wasted.” That’s not what happens. Your brain doesn’t let it happen. So we had to make compromises like, “We’re not going to go party all night, but we’ll hang out for a bit.”

  Then we’d go home and watch movies and be like, “What’s wrong with us? Are we seventeen years old or fifty?”

  Catelynn:

  When you go through such an adult experience, it forces you to grow up. Dealing with the pregnancy and making an adoption plan put us in a very grown-up position, and after so many months in that position, we got used to looking at the world in a more grown-up way. It was just all of the thinking, all of the hard decisions, all the sacrifices. We really became like adults in those nine months. We realized how life works. Stuff is real. Serious things happen.

  Not only did we have a more realistic and mature understanding of the way life worked, but we had a new understanding of its meaning and purpose. Doing what we did for Carly made us appreciate the makings of our own lives more. It made us realize that we needed to do something more with ourselves. We weren’t going to just place our child in adoption and then go back and go on being losers, doing drugs and flunking out of school. That was out of the question.

  Placing Carly wasn’t just a gift, it was a promise. And that promise was, “We’re going to become the kind of people who deserve to be parents.” We were going to make our lives ten times better than what they were, so that when we were ready to have another child, we’d be in the position to say “This child will be safe, secure, and happy in our home.”

  Of course, we had to figure out how to make that happen. Before Carly, I had no real goals or dreams other than being a mom and a wife someday. Now I knew that I needed to see drastic changes in my life to make that come true. But we didn’t have a roadmap or anything. So we sat down and started making a plan for ourselves.

  Tyler:

  We were still reeling with our grief and loss, but we started trying to turn our pain into motivation. It was like, “We feel this pain, but we’re not going to feel it for nothing.” Instead of letting it drag us down, we channeled it into this mission of turning our lives around.

  The first thing was to set our goals. Before Carly, my main goal in life was to not get suspended. I knew I needed to aim a little higher than that if I wanted to make something of my life. So we sat down and thought, “What do we need to do?” For our ultimate goal, we wanted to get our lives to the point where if Catelynn got pregnant again, we would be ready and qualified to be parents. That meant we had to overcome all those “cons” in our lives that made us decide to place Carly in adoption. What did we have to do to make ourselves ready to be parents?

  Honestly, a big part of our plan was just turning into normal people. A lot of that might sound simple to others: Graduating high school. Getting a job. Getting a cell phone. Getting a car. Going to college. But coming from our backgrounds, all of those goals would be major achievements. And they were all benchmarks we definitely had to hit before we could consider ourselves ready for a child.

  Catelynn:

  The first main goal was graduating high school. Before Carly, I just didn’t care about my education. I didn’t plan on going to college or have any idea what I wanted to do with my life. But as soon as she was born, I said, “I’m going to graduate high school, go to college, and do things that will benefit society. I’m not going to be some loser who’s high on drugs and fighting.” That was it. Tyler and I just sort of looked at each other and said, “Time to pull our pants up and get this done.”

  I had failed all of middle school, and we both messed up ninth grade. Then, obviously, we were dealing with the pregnancy and adoption. But we were able to turn things around by going to an alternative school called Riverview, which was amazing for us. We were a little behind schedule — Tyler was three months late, and I was a year late — but we stuck to it and graduated with our diplomas.

  We didn’t have to stop hanging out with our friends or anything. We still liked them and we knew they hadn’t gone through what we’d been through. We’d go out and do bonfires and have a good time, but it just wasn’t as much. After Carly, we’d do all the same things but in a different way. We’d have a beer and enjoy the company, but we wouldn’t get smashed and pass out. We stopped being the last people at the party and started going home at twelve thirty.

  Time to Get to Work

  Tyler:

  My very first job was at a pizza shop, running deliveries. I was excited about it at first! But my boss was a pizza nazi. He was in the military for five years, and he got it in hi
s head that the place had to be run like a military base. There were all these things we had to do: When we clocked in, we had to scream “DRIVER IN!” And when we left, “DRIVER OUT!” He’d scream, “PEPPERONI!” and I’d have to scream back, “ROGER! PEPPERONI!” Dude, it’s not war. It’s pizza!

  Everyone who worked there was miserable. I kept asking the other guys, “How do you put up with this for this long?”

  “It’s not that bad,” they all said. “You just learn to listen and keep your mouth shut.” Well, assuming you didn’t skip the first half of this book, you can probably guess where this is going.

  The Pizza Nazi had one of his sons working there, and the kid was, well, a little awkward. We didn’t talk much. But one day when I was folding boxes I asked him, “So you must get paid pretty well working for your dad, right?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I don’t get paid.”

  “Dude!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here, then?”

  “I don’t know. This is just what I do.” Turned out this kid went home every day from school, dropped off his backpack, and came to slave away for the Pizza Nazi for nothing.

  “That’s bullshit!” I was outraged. “You’re working full-time for free! I can’t believe this. He has to pay you. You need to stick up for yourself!”

  The kid got all nervous and told me to lower my voice. He wasn’t ready to take a stand, that was for sure. But that was one more reason for me to narrow my eyes at the Pizza Nazi every time he walked by.

  The last straw was this stupid test he used to secretly trick all the drivers into. We all used GPS on our phones to deliver the pizzas, which was the obvious, simple way to do it. But the Pizza Nazi had a buddy whose house was in a really weird spot that always confused the GPS. If you didn’t write down the exact directions, your phone would send you somewhere crazy. The Pizza Nazi knew this, but he wouldn’t say anything about it. In his mind, it was a test to see how long it would take us to realize something was wrong with the route and how fast we’d call him to ask for help.