The dream of adoption is powerful. But the path is often strewn with pitfalls, as we will read in He comes from elsewhere by Christine Eickmayer, poignant testimony of a childless mother. Formerly a bookseller in Tournai, the author certainly talks about adoption, but above all recounts her long and difficult love story with a little boy who will never recover from his abandonment syndrome and who, after twenty years of trial and error, will end up ending his life. Since her book came out, she has received many reactions and did not expect such a reception. She does not hesitate to come from Tournai to Brussels to take the time to talk about it, all the time necessary. We immediately feel how much the writing saved her.
“With hindsight, my approach would have been different, because adoption cannot be a last resort, when you cannot have a child”. When Christine Eickmayer, in her early forties, learns that she and her husband are expecting a child in Colombia, she knows that her life is turned upside down. But it is miles away from imagining in what sense. From the beginning, the meeting with Daniel-Alexandre – he will initially bear the two first names – proves difficult. The child is restless, cries, refuses contact.
“We wanted a healthy child who was as small as possible, but Alexandre was already 4.5 years old. The first meeting is difficult. We are in an administrative corridor, like in a hospital. The child is terrified, closed , suspicious. The story is badly handled from the start. The child is not prepared. He is very attached to his foster mammy. He cries and cries all the time. Me, that attacks me. I am a new mum. As soon as we take our eyes off him, he runs away. Finally, after two weeks, we come back from Bogota with a Belgian child.”
A love out of time
Arrived in Belgium, Alexandre adapts to European culture and quickly learns to speak French, with a good level of vocabulary but he gets lost in abstraction. His seizures continue. “Medellin is the city of eternal spring. Our climate must throw him off his feet. Moreover, he cannot hold a pencil, cannot recognize colors, cannot sit still. He quickly becomes aggressive towards others, cannot not to be connected, to join a group. He will try several activities but everything will always slip on him. At home, he bombards the walls with mashed potatoes and peas. I quickly consult a shrink. They declare him HP and we put him on medication. In sports, he begins to manage but at school he complains of bullying. He is very complexed by his skin color and begins his headlong rush. From the age of 8, I realize that “He’s going to become homosexual. I try to keep in touch with him, but he doesn’t confide. I explain to him that his mother hasn’t abandoned him, that she has entrusted him to a foster mammy, because she was too young, at 14, to take care of him. There is a part of him that no one has access to. His wound is pr ground.”
Alexander resents the whole earth, dresses colorfully, has no friends. We laugh at him. He walks away, takes refuge in his silence. They call him a stranger, and later, when he is disfigured by acne, a toad or a leper. If childhood is not easy, adolescence is even less so and Alexandre will be hospitalized in a psychiatric institute. He will pass by La Ramée, Fond’roy, Le Domaine… The family will always be well helped by the psychiatrist Denis who signs the preface to the book. Adolescence is very complicated, marked by insults, lack of respect, violence, waltzing objects. Christine Eickmayer is often afraid. His couple does not resist.
Little by little, Alexandre will take his independence, will live in Brussels in a precarious situation, will tattoo his whole face and claim to be Indian before committing the irreparable, creating an abyssal void in the heart and the life of his mother.
The Life in Verse of William Cliff
“I always believed that it would get better. I accompanied a child in pain. I did not succeed, because it was not possible to succeed. I just put some sparks in his life. If it had to be done again, I don’t think I would do it again, but if I hadn’t adopted Alexandre, I would never have become who I am. He gave me an extraordinary life lesson. I started writing right after his suicide. I started with the last three chapters and then for a month I fell into a kind of coma. I confused day and night, I ate at any time, I drank because it anesthetized me. Finally, it was my dog who saved me. He came towards me with his leash. I had to go out to walk him. This rhythm was important to me. I walked him, I took pictures, I thought of my sentences while walking, and every day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. I wrote. While I was writing, Alexandre continued to live and I understood his problem. I wrote this book because I promised him. I rehabilitated him. He now has his place.”
It comes from elsewhere, Christine Eickmayer, Plon, 287 pp; €21.
“You don’t adopt to help a child”
A psychologist and psychoanalyst for over forty years, Diane Drory is also the author of several books, including Le Complexe de Moïse. Perspectives on adoption, published by Albin Michel.
What are the main pitfalls to avoid when deciding to adopt a child?
Preparation for adoption is essential. Parents must be helped to understand the exceptional situation in which the child they are going to adopt finds itself.
Are there good or bad reasons to adopt?
You don’t adopt to help an unhappy child or because you want to save the world, because that child risks suffering the consequences all his life. We adopt because we want children. It is then more easily accepted for what it is.
All stand up to resist
Is the adoption journey harder than you think?
Today, we have to go through an official body that involves preparation to know the degree of motivation of the parents, to help them understand that it will not always be easy. Every child tells his mother one day that he is not, but when this sentence comes from the mouth of an adopted child, it comes like a stab and the parent believes he is not loved. Parents need to be prepared for this. The child will grow up like any other child and will say things that will be misunderstood, for which it is important to be prepared. Parents should also be monitored from time to time, if only to take stock, to clear up misunderstandings.
How to overcome the abandonment syndrome from which adopted children often suffer?
This syndrome of abandonment, each child experiences it differently according to his story. A child abandoned by a very young woman, because she is the shame of the family, is marked by the heartbreak of his mother. He won’t feel the same as the third or fourth child of a woman who feels she won’t be able to take care of it properly, but who leaves positive messages for him.
“All those involved in the international adoption of a child must look reality in the face”
When to tell them about their origins?
They must be told that they are adopted as soon as they arrive home. Afterwards, there will be no good time. When I see adopted children in difficulty, I make them draw their family of origin because often, we haven’t told them much about it, and 95% of them just draw a woman. As if men did not exist, which also leaves little room for the adoptive father. The biological father is often regarded as a monstrous, abandoning being. However, the child must be able to have a mental representation of his biological parents, because he does not come from nowhere. He must be able to reconstruct his primitive scene, know the romance of his life.
Is adoption more or less easy depending on the culture of origin of the child?
It may be easier to explain to a child that his parents died in the war than to tell him that he was abandoned in the street, but a young person can be helped to form a narcissistic image despite the situation. in which he was conceived, to remind him that if he lived until he was born, it was because he was loved, because a woman’s body accepted him.