She needs time to process this information you gave her. It’s a lot of information to take in and even an adult would have to have time to digest it. Though with you still not admitting you were the liar, this leaves her to figure it out herself or have Todd tell her.
Good work, that’s just going to tick her off more and make her think you were just trying to look good.
You don’t have to be a perfect person to be a perfect parent. Hell, “perfect parents” don’t even really exist. My parents were great; loving, open, flexible, but they knew how to punish us when we did something wrong. They understood the difference between accidentally slipping a swear word we unfortunately learned from them, and using it intentionally.
Did they always know what they were doing? No. They’re human beings, not computer programs programmed to dispense hugs and cookies when their kid is upset and/or angry.
Andi is a HUMAN. She has made more mistakes then most but I know others who are A LOT WORSE then she is, and I thank GOD that they’re childless.
But damn it, Andi is TRYING and TRYING HARD to make up for A; lying to Todd for so long, and B; for giving up her child. She mentioned at one point that every time they passed by a stroller it killed her.
If you were a mother who gave up her child, for whatever reason [disregarding what Andi did to cover it up, because in this hypothetical situation you aren’t her] you would hurt. There are a lot of women who give up their babies for adoption because they don’t think they have what it takes to raise them properly.
I’m not defending her per se, I just understand. I want to have kids myself in my future, so if I had to give one of all of them up, it would kill me.
There are no perfect people, so there are no perfect parents. Even the greatest of parents make mistakes, but they make up for them. Even Todd. He may be a loving father to Selkie, but he doesn’t cater to her every need either. He snapped at her once when she was, unfortunately, getting on his nerves, but he apologized for it.
Andi has only had Amanda for a few days. She doesn’t have eight years worth of experience.
That would be an excellent idea. Honestly, the orphanage should have had her in therapy from the day she was returned. Do we know if therapists exist in this world?
with the current system we can’t even get background checks on foster parents done properly enough to prevent abuse, and there’s always stories about how the kids don’t get proper clothing, food, etc… yet you seem to think that they’ll have either staff on hand for therapy, or a budget to send them to one off-site?… yeah, nope… sorry to burst your bubble, but this is typical of the system, they’ll “make note of it” but they either don’t have the funding, the staff, nor the will power to buck the bureaucratic B.S. to ACTUALLY help the kids.
As a kid who grew up in the system, you’re partially right. Unless your case is PARTICULARLY bad, they don’t really make an effort to get you to actually see somebody, it has to be worth taxpayer’s money. Every house only got so much funding per month and what you didn’t use got taken away the next time a check came because, well, evidently you don’t need THAT much.
The system has its ups and downs, mostly downs, but the foster programs that are state-mandated and state-run are far better than the civilian-run ones. Those caretakers actually DO have to have training and experience.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Amanda is seeing one. However, I think they both need a *family psychologist* as well. Someone to check in with the two of them, because even if Andi didn’t make up the huge horrible lie, she’d still be going through a lot of this.
Given that journal, I suspect either that the orphanage was having her see someone before (at least since her downward spiral recently) or trying to compensate for not being able to for lack of resources by providing other outlets to express her emotions and the adults to keep tabs on her psychological wellbeing. But I really hope it’s the former.
And yes, they DEFINITELY need a family psychologist, and probably also some serious therapy for Amanda. (Even if she was seeing someone before, there’s clearly still a lot of ground left that needs covering.)
I would wager that Amanda’s been stuck seeing the school psychologist — possibly in a group setting, once a week. If the school psychologist is good, yay! If the school psychologist is okay, eh. If the school psychologist SCREWS UP… Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
I highly doubt that Amanda has seen a school psychologist for more than a single visit (and at best that was to determine how dangerous she might be to herself and others). My children attend public school. In our district there is ONE school psychologist for 6 schools. She spends most of her year just doing evaluations to determine if kids qualify for additional help. In most cases that help comes in the form of being placed in a special ed setting, being transfered to a “special needs” school or if you’re lucky getting a teacher’s aide assigned to the classroom. Most public schools do not have the budget or the staffing to allow weekly visits. Also, the schools will NOT offer group setting services. That would violate all sorts of confidentiality rules. Hell, if one kid hits another on the playground they won’t even release the name of the other kid to the parents of the one who was injured. There is no way they would allow kids to be in a therapy setting speaking about their issues openly.
It is indeed a wonder why Lillian did not suggest a psychologist. More of a wonder still why no one at the orphanage tried to get her to see someone. Honestly, the orphanage didn’t do the best of jobs either. They knew she had problems, they acknowledged it many times and just kinda… let it be. Like, as far as I can tell, not even a staff member really tried to talk out her anger and abandonment issues. They just kinda tuned it out and then when they remembered it they were like, “Errr… oh yeah… hm… well what do we do now?” They kinda handled it poorly.
One of Amanda’s biggest issues is that her issues were neglected while they gave their attention to some weired fishy girl. Cut to the present, Amanda learns that weired fishy girl is now her sister. I think she feels her needs will be overlooked again and if she sees her mother in the state she is in now, she might fear being sent away again.
If indeed Andi feels this way (that telling Amanda the full truth of being rejected on birth would actually push her further away), this is the only excuse I would accept for NOT telling her the full truth. You can always say “I gave you back and lied but I realized how wrong that was and I totally want you in my life now that I’ve grown up because I was so stupid back then. Please forgive me!” But no, she never says that, or tries to… Eh.
Well DUH. Of course it’ll push Amanda further away. Telling her the full truth is close to the most harmful thing Andi can do right now (discounting straight up abuse)
Right, I get that they didn’t have the funds, but the staff themselves seemed to have skirted the issue and pushed it aside. One of them could have tried to talk to her or given her more one on one time. She clearly has trusr, anger and abandonment issues. They know of it, Lillian gets called to the school often. I think she cares about the issue she just doesn’t really know what to do about it or doesn’t have the time. Even if she doesn’t have the time or the funds, it’s still neglect on their part to consciously be aware of the issue and don’t really do much about it. I mean, if a parent is poor and can’t afford to feed their children, it’s still neglect even if they don’t do it on purpose.
Erm, guys? Didn’t we just have a flashback of Andi getting direction on handling Amanda freaking out? Wasn’t there a rather vocal segment complaining because Andi didn’t get any training whatsoever on handling Amanda prior to that flashback? Maybe ya’ll shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions on the psychologist front until it’s positively stated somewhere that nobody’s getting therapy and/or has no plans to get it. Jes sayin’.
HUH?!, How can “Blazing Saddles” NOT be safe for work? ignoring the whole watching-a-movie-when-you-should-be-working issue and getting yelled at when the boss catches you… there isn’t much in that movie that can be taken as TOO risque… heck “I” saw that movie for the first time on NETWORK TV way back in the day… and they don’t show stuff that would be “out there”…
Priorly (with the promise of dress and cell phone shopping)? Yes. But I don’t see this as much as bribing here as offering something comforting after Amanda was hit in the face with two really big truth bombs. It’s not like Andi can go and hug her right now. She is letting Amanda come to her whenever Amanda sees fit. Also, Andi probably has a pretty tiny “toolbox” given her past history and the fact she’s brand new at this parenting thing. Even if she did read some great parenting books, it’s very difficult to fall out of what you learned from your own childhood—especially if you are a new parent to an older child versus starting out with a baby.
It also means Andi’s not (on the surface, anyway) paying attention to Amanda right now, which can give Amanda some privacy to vent and cry and do whatever she needs to deal with all of this.
I get after Andi, but in this case I agree with her. To use the earlier strip about helping a cornered animal, food helps. I similarly use food when my niece is feeling down. (I wouldn’t do what Andi did, but I am not going to call her out right now.) Food is just one of those things that’s really useful when you’re facing someone that feels horrible like Amanda does, and hopefully shows her Andi is there.
Pretty realistic portrayal of an adult trying to break out a dysfunctional behavior. She’s wants to change to make things right and is trying her best to do so (huge big steps), but still can’t see yet what she’s doing wrong. Been through this kind of thing myself and seeing an old friend who had similar upbringing as mine going through it with her baby. Cannot even begin to imagine going there with an older kid. It’s a big part of why I chose to start parenting with a baby first.
Just asking to clarify. You don’t have to answer if it is prying. Do you mean you gave up your child and reclaimed said child or do you mean just the whole going through the adoption thing without it being your bio kid?
I had a baby. However, adoption wasn’t and still isn’t off the table. We’ve always favored the local foster-to-adopt route versus private or international so if we adopted, it’d be a child versus a small baby. But for our first child, having a baby was a much better choice as a lot of emotional and family baggage came up from my past—which would have been a terrible thing to go through with an older kid as an older child from really needs you to be *together* and emotionally present versus going through a big drama cluster.
There ya go, Dave! No earrings? No problem! She took the earrings off in order to reject Andi on some level. No need to worry about them for now! I assume they are on her dresser or in a drawer or thrown somewhere:)
As much as I have been wanting to not stir up a hornet’s nest in the comments, I feel like I need to say this for the benefit of the writer. Dave, you’re really, -really- pulling at my heart with Andi here. At this moment I can’t say she’s my favorite character in this series, far from it sometimes… but she’s the one I want to reach out to the most, the one I wish I could help somehow more than any other. My mother has been through this struggle before… putting a child up for adoption hoping it would have a better life, only to find out years later that it was a mistake. I’ve sort of felt like telling you about it for a while. It makes Andi hit home in an odd way.
My mother became pregnant when I was seven or so, supposedly under circumstances that are best left undetailed here. When my brother was born she put the baby up for adoption rather than risk subconsciously favoring her existing daughters over our younger brother because of uncomfortable circumstances. She gave him to a family that she thought would love him and raise him as their own. They did… for a while, anyway. But then this family had a female child of their own, and where my brother had attention issues and didn’t always listen well, the girl was quieter and more obedient. Where my brother had some trouble in school and didn’t like to read, the girl got straight A’s with apparent ease. Where my brother had a hard time feeling like he really fit in, the girl felt happily settled and at home. I think you can see where this is going. By the time my brother started asking about his biological family at the age of ten or so, the damage had already started. By the time I met him for the first time three years later, I could tell my brother had some serious issues. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a damned thing I could do. His ‘family’ was adamant that he was a mess (but somehow by no fault of their own!!) and needed harsher discipline to ‘sort him out.’ One particular punishment I remember was making him stand in front of a wall, holding a penny against it with his nose. They expected him to hold it there for a half hour, and if he dropped the penny he had to start over. I tried to speak up against this, as it did -not- fit the actions they were punishing him for, only to be informed that it was none of my business and I would keep my mouth shut about it while I was in their home. This was apparently what he -needed,- because he was a -problem child.- The issue of not treating him as he deserved that my mother had tried to avoid? She had inadvertently threw him into a far worse situation by putting him up for adoption. It is fortunately the -only- time I have ever had the experience of seeing an adoption go bad with my own eyes, but it still hit hard.
And then came the night that my mother received a message on Facebook from an old boyfriend and, looking at his picture, could only see my brother’s face. I was there the night that my mother realized that she’d been pregnant weeks before she thought she’d conceived my brother, and that the entire reason she was afraid she might accidentally treat him differently was completely null and void. She had given him up to a family that had mistreated him and emotionally damaged him in ways that he is still recovering from… for nothing. I had to listen to my mother’s screams when she realized that she could have kept her child, because that’s what she did… she went out into the garage, and she screamed in such a way that I hope I never hear another human being scream again. I’ll be honest… I was twenty-three by this time and I wanted to hide under the bed. It was the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard.
And Dave, every time we see more of Andi’s mistake being rubbed into her face this way, I find myself quietly wondering if the strain of her lie ever got to her so badly that she had to find someplace isolated and scream that way herself.
Fortunately things have turned around for my brother. When he turned eighteen he moved out of his adoptive family’s home and in with my mother, whom he has a much stronger relationship with now, and the two have been working past his emotional issues, but it has taken a lot of time. There are occasions where it seems like he’s going to fall back on bad habits, but in the last year or so especially he finally seems to be settling down. It’s been a long time coming, but the damage is healing. On a related note things are improving for his sister as well; we didn’t even realize it until he moved out, but the strain of having to remain the ‘perfect daughter’ to stay in her parents favor was wearing her down, too. Every time my brother was asked “Why can’t you be like her?” it drove into the -daughter- that if she slipped, if she got a failing grade, if she didn’t keep up to par, her parents might turn on her as well. They were messing up -both- kids this way. I still haven’t forgiven them, but watching my brother heal does give me hope for Amanda… and for Andi, too.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me super-imposing my own experiences onto the comic, but the way Andi is written just feels too raw and too real to me. I saw my mother sit with her face in her hands the way Andi is standing in panel six when she realized she could have kept my brother… the feelings Andi shows towards her mistake and the ever-growing realization that trying to give her daughter a better life all but destroyed her are just a bit too accurate for me. As I said to start with, she’s not my favorite character… there are others I love far more, ones who make me laugh instead of making me rest my head on my keyboard and groan “not again” every time they do something dumb… but if there was one character I could sit down with in this comic and listen to, be an ear to whisper into and a shoulder to cry on, if there was one person I could hold and try to assure that everything would be okay if they just didn’t give up, if they focused on the needs of their child and showed her all the love in their heart, if there was one person who’s life I’d try to change if I could, it would be Andi, hands down. She -and Amanda- need it the most. And damn it, I’m rooting for them both so hard right now…
I guess that’s all I wanted to say… that and that I wanted to thank you, because reading about emotions so like my mothers this far after the fact is giving me a chance to look back on those days and finally understand better what she was going through. It was too overwhelming for me, even as a twenty-three-year-old woman, to hear my mother screaming like a banshee. As I said, it scared me. Reading your comic lately, I find myself drawn to call her more often, to remind her that I love her, and that I always thought she did the best she could for us kids… all of us, even him. After all, she couldn’t have known what would happen to my brother any more than Andi knew what would happen to Amanda. That, at least, was never her fault. So thank you for that, for giving me a bit of a deeper understanding of my own family. It was probably never your intent, but it’s helped me understand a lot. I look forward to what comes next!
Thank you for sharing such a personal story. I’m glad to hear your brother is getting the help he needs. Poor kid… half an hour squishing your nose against a wall is a ridiculously stupid punishment. I can’t stand hearing stories where “problem child” translates to, “I can’t be made to deal with this, put it in a corner and get me my martini.”
Hey, that’s a great reaction to a lot of things INVOLVING children, but never the child themselves. In my house we break out the chocolate milk and a nice distraction, like a movie, to go with mommy’s drink.
Hmmph.
Nah, Amanda’s just precocious and communicating in Teenager several years early.
She needs time to process this information you gave her. It’s a lot of information to take in and even an adult would have to have time to digest it. Though with you still not admitting you were the liar, this leaves her to figure it out herself or have Todd tell her.
Good work, that’s just going to tick her off more and make her think you were just trying to look good.
You don’t have to be a perfect person to be a perfect parent. Hell, “perfect parents” don’t even really exist. My parents were great; loving, open, flexible, but they knew how to punish us when we did something wrong. They understood the difference between accidentally slipping a swear word we unfortunately learned from them, and using it intentionally.
Did they always know what they were doing? No. They’re human beings, not computer programs programmed to dispense hugs and cookies when their kid is upset and/or angry.
Andi is a HUMAN. She has made more mistakes then most but I know others who are A LOT WORSE then she is, and I thank GOD that they’re childless.
But damn it, Andi is TRYING and TRYING HARD to make up for A; lying to Todd for so long, and B; for giving up her child. She mentioned at one point that every time they passed by a stroller it killed her.
If you were a mother who gave up her child, for whatever reason [disregarding what Andi did to cover it up, because in this hypothetical situation you aren’t her] you would hurt. There are a lot of women who give up their babies for adoption because they don’t think they have what it takes to raise them properly.
I’m not defending her per se, I just understand. I want to have kids myself in my future, so if I had to give one of all of them up, it would kill me.
There are no perfect people, so there are no perfect parents. Even the greatest of parents make mistakes, but they make up for them. Even Todd. He may be a loving father to Selkie, but he doesn’t cater to her every need either. He snapped at her once when she was, unfortunately, getting on his nerves, but he apologized for it.
Andi has only had Amanda for a few days. She doesn’t have eight years worth of experience.
Someone that gets it. (needs to be a thumbs-up smilie here.)
Exactly. She’s not going to know what triggers Amanda has. It’s going to take time – time and PATIENCE.
This post is a breath of fresh air in a comments section that has been full of hate and negativity. Thank you very, very much.
Hear, hear.
YES THANK YOU YOU SAID IT
Very well put. Excellent. Thank you.
Too bad she wasn’t suggested a child’s psychologist. That might help more since she’s not equipped to handle Amanda’s issues by herself.
That would be an excellent idea. Honestly, the orphanage should have had her in therapy from the day she was returned. Do we know if therapists exist in this world?
She probably is getting therapy. But it can take years to get a breakthrough.
and who would have PAID for said psychologist?
with the current system we can’t even get background checks on foster parents done properly enough to prevent abuse, and there’s always stories about how the kids don’t get proper clothing, food, etc… yet you seem to think that they’ll have either staff on hand for therapy, or a budget to send them to one off-site?… yeah, nope… sorry to burst your bubble, but this is typical of the system, they’ll “make note of it” but they either don’t have the funding, the staff, nor the will power to buck the bureaucratic B.S. to ACTUALLY help the kids.
As a kid who grew up in the system, you’re partially right. Unless your case is PARTICULARLY bad, they don’t really make an effort to get you to actually see somebody, it has to be worth taxpayer’s money. Every house only got so much funding per month and what you didn’t use got taken away the next time a check came because, well, evidently you don’t need THAT much.
The system has its ups and downs, mostly downs, but the foster programs that are state-mandated and state-run are far better than the civilian-run ones. Those caretakers actually DO have to have training and experience.
I’m very curious. Is there any advice you’d give to families who were considering fostering—especially if they already had children in the family?
I wouldn’t be surprised if Amanda is seeing one. However, I think they both need a *family psychologist* as well. Someone to check in with the two of them, because even if Andi didn’t make up the huge horrible lie, she’d still be going through a lot of this.
Given that journal, I suspect either that the orphanage was having her see someone before (at least since her downward spiral recently) or trying to compensate for not being able to for lack of resources by providing other outlets to express her emotions and the adults to keep tabs on her psychological wellbeing. But I really hope it’s the former.
And yes, they DEFINITELY need a family psychologist, and probably also some serious therapy for Amanda. (Even if she was seeing someone before, there’s clearly still a lot of ground left that needs covering.)
I would wager that Amanda’s been stuck seeing the school psychologist — possibly in a group setting, once a week. If the school psychologist is good, yay! If the school psychologist is okay, eh. If the school psychologist SCREWS UP… Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
I highly doubt that Amanda has seen a school psychologist for more than a single visit (and at best that was to determine how dangerous she might be to herself and others). My children attend public school. In our district there is ONE school psychologist for 6 schools. She spends most of her year just doing evaluations to determine if kids qualify for additional help. In most cases that help comes in the form of being placed in a special ed setting, being transfered to a “special needs” school or if you’re lucky getting a teacher’s aide assigned to the classroom. Most public schools do not have the budget or the staffing to allow weekly visits. Also, the schools will NOT offer group setting services. That would violate all sorts of confidentiality rules. Hell, if one kid hits another on the playground they won’t even release the name of the other kid to the parents of the one who was injured. There is no way they would allow kids to be in a therapy setting speaking about their issues openly.
It is indeed a wonder why Lillian did not suggest a psychologist. More of a wonder still why no one at the orphanage tried to get her to see someone. Honestly, the orphanage didn’t do the best of jobs either. They knew she had problems, they acknowledged it many times and just kinda… let it be. Like, as far as I can tell, not even a staff member really tried to talk out her anger and abandonment issues. They just kinda tuned it out and then when they remembered it they were like, “Errr… oh yeah… hm… well what do we do now?” They kinda handled it poorly.
One of Amanda’s biggest issues is that her issues were neglected while they gave their attention to some weired fishy girl. Cut to the present, Amanda learns that weired fishy girl is now her sister. I think she feels her needs will be overlooked again and if she sees her mother in the state she is in now, she might fear being sent away again.
If indeed Andi feels this way (that telling Amanda the full truth of being rejected on birth would actually push her further away), this is the only excuse I would accept for NOT telling her the full truth. You can always say “I gave you back and lied but I realized how wrong that was and I totally want you in my life now that I’ve grown up because I was so stupid back then. Please forgive me!” But no, she never says that, or tries to… Eh.
She did in strip 608. It was almost exactly what you put in the quotation marks except for the part about lying.
Well DUH. Of course it’ll push Amanda further away. Telling her the full truth is close to the most harmful thing Andi can do right now (discounting straight up abuse)
see my reply directly above…
Right, I get that they didn’t have the funds, but the staff themselves seemed to have skirted the issue and pushed it aside. One of them could have tried to talk to her or given her more one on one time. She clearly has trusr, anger and abandonment issues. They know of it, Lillian gets called to the school often. I think she cares about the issue she just doesn’t really know what to do about it or doesn’t have the time. Even if she doesn’t have the time or the funds, it’s still neglect on their part to consciously be aware of the issue and don’t really do much about it. I mean, if a parent is poor and can’t afford to feed their children, it’s still neglect even if they don’t do it on purpose.
Erm, guys? Didn’t we just have a flashback of Andi getting direction on handling Amanda freaking out? Wasn’t there a rather vocal segment complaining because Andi didn’t get any training whatsoever on handling Amanda prior to that flashback? Maybe ya’ll shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions on the psychologist front until it’s positively stated somewhere that nobody’s getting therapy and/or has no plans to get it. Jes sayin’.
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KMrMTkq3WQY/maxresdefault.jpg
(SFW)
The clip yes, the source material not so much.
HUH?!, How can “Blazing Saddles” NOT be safe for work? ignoring the whole watching-a-movie-when-you-should-be-working issue and getting yelled at when the boss catches you… there isn’t much in that movie that can be taken as TOO risque… heck “I” saw that movie for the first time on NETWORK TV way back in the day… and they don’t show stuff that would be “out there”…
I dislike how Andi tries to bribe Amanda into everything. Doesn’t she have anything else in her toolbox other than “DISTRACT WITH MATERIAL GOODS”?
Priorly (with the promise of dress and cell phone shopping)? Yes. But I don’t see this as much as bribing here as offering something comforting after Amanda was hit in the face with two really big truth bombs. It’s not like Andi can go and hug her right now. She is letting Amanda come to her whenever Amanda sees fit. Also, Andi probably has a pretty tiny “toolbox” given her past history and the fact she’s brand new at this parenting thing. Even if she did read some great parenting books, it’s very difficult to fall out of what you learned from your own childhood—especially if you are a new parent to an older child versus starting out with a baby.
It also means Andi’s not (on the surface, anyway) paying attention to Amanda right now, which can give Amanda some privacy to vent and cry and do whatever she needs to deal with all of this.
I get after Andi, but in this case I agree with her. To use the earlier strip about helping a cornered animal, food helps. I similarly use food when my niece is feeling down. (I wouldn’t do what Andi did, but I am not going to call her out right now.) Food is just one of those things that’s really useful when you’re facing someone that feels horrible like Amanda does, and hopefully shows her Andi is there.
^^^ all of the posters above. Andi is doing the right thing right now, even though she’s flying blind and has no idea if it IS right.
Pretty realistic portrayal of an adult trying to break out a dysfunctional behavior. She’s wants to change to make things right and is trying her best to do so (huge big steps), but still can’t see yet what she’s doing wrong. Been through this kind of thing myself and seeing an old friend who had similar upbringing as mine going through it with her baby. Cannot even begin to imagine going there with an older kid. It’s a big part of why I chose to start parenting with a baby first.
Just asking to clarify. You don’t have to answer if it is prying. Do you mean you gave up your child and reclaimed said child or do you mean just the whole going through the adoption thing without it being your bio kid?
I had a baby. However, adoption wasn’t and still isn’t off the table. We’ve always favored the local foster-to-adopt route versus private or international so if we adopted, it’d be a child versus a small baby. But for our first child, having a baby was a much better choice as a lot of emotional and family baggage came up from my past—which would have been a terrible thing to go through with an older kid as an older child from really needs you to be *together* and emotionally present versus going through a big drama cluster.
There ya go, Dave! No earrings? No problem! She took the earrings off in order to reject Andi on some level. No need to worry about them for now! I assume they are on her dresser or in a drawer or thrown somewhere:)
As much as I have been wanting to not stir up a hornet’s nest in the comments, I feel like I need to say this for the benefit of the writer. Dave, you’re really, -really- pulling at my heart with Andi here. At this moment I can’t say she’s my favorite character in this series, far from it sometimes… but she’s the one I want to reach out to the most, the one I wish I could help somehow more than any other. My mother has been through this struggle before… putting a child up for adoption hoping it would have a better life, only to find out years later that it was a mistake. I’ve sort of felt like telling you about it for a while. It makes Andi hit home in an odd way.
My mother became pregnant when I was seven or so, supposedly under circumstances that are best left undetailed here. When my brother was born she put the baby up for adoption rather than risk subconsciously favoring her existing daughters over our younger brother because of uncomfortable circumstances. She gave him to a family that she thought would love him and raise him as their own. They did… for a while, anyway. But then this family had a female child of their own, and where my brother had attention issues and didn’t always listen well, the girl was quieter and more obedient. Where my brother had some trouble in school and didn’t like to read, the girl got straight A’s with apparent ease. Where my brother had a hard time feeling like he really fit in, the girl felt happily settled and at home. I think you can see where this is going. By the time my brother started asking about his biological family at the age of ten or so, the damage had already started. By the time I met him for the first time three years later, I could tell my brother had some serious issues. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a damned thing I could do. His ‘family’ was adamant that he was a mess (but somehow by no fault of their own!!) and needed harsher discipline to ‘sort him out.’ One particular punishment I remember was making him stand in front of a wall, holding a penny against it with his nose. They expected him to hold it there for a half hour, and if he dropped the penny he had to start over. I tried to speak up against this, as it did -not- fit the actions they were punishing him for, only to be informed that it was none of my business and I would keep my mouth shut about it while I was in their home. This was apparently what he -needed,- because he was a -problem child.- The issue of not treating him as he deserved that my mother had tried to avoid? She had inadvertently threw him into a far worse situation by putting him up for adoption. It is fortunately the -only- time I have ever had the experience of seeing an adoption go bad with my own eyes, but it still hit hard.
And then came the night that my mother received a message on Facebook from an old boyfriend and, looking at his picture, could only see my brother’s face. I was there the night that my mother realized that she’d been pregnant weeks before she thought she’d conceived my brother, and that the entire reason she was afraid she might accidentally treat him differently was completely null and void. She had given him up to a family that had mistreated him and emotionally damaged him in ways that he is still recovering from… for nothing. I had to listen to my mother’s screams when she realized that she could have kept her child, because that’s what she did… she went out into the garage, and she screamed in such a way that I hope I never hear another human being scream again. I’ll be honest… I was twenty-three by this time and I wanted to hide under the bed. It was the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard.
And Dave, every time we see more of Andi’s mistake being rubbed into her face this way, I find myself quietly wondering if the strain of her lie ever got to her so badly that she had to find someplace isolated and scream that way herself.
Fortunately things have turned around for my brother. When he turned eighteen he moved out of his adoptive family’s home and in with my mother, whom he has a much stronger relationship with now, and the two have been working past his emotional issues, but it has taken a lot of time. There are occasions where it seems like he’s going to fall back on bad habits, but in the last year or so especially he finally seems to be settling down. It’s been a long time coming, but the damage is healing. On a related note things are improving for his sister as well; we didn’t even realize it until he moved out, but the strain of having to remain the ‘perfect daughter’ to stay in her parents favor was wearing her down, too. Every time my brother was asked “Why can’t you be like her?” it drove into the -daughter- that if she slipped, if she got a failing grade, if she didn’t keep up to par, her parents might turn on her as well. They were messing up -both- kids this way. I still haven’t forgiven them, but watching my brother heal does give me hope for Amanda… and for Andi, too.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me super-imposing my own experiences onto the comic, but the way Andi is written just feels too raw and too real to me. I saw my mother sit with her face in her hands the way Andi is standing in panel six when she realized she could have kept my brother… the feelings Andi shows towards her mistake and the ever-growing realization that trying to give her daughter a better life all but destroyed her are just a bit too accurate for me. As I said to start with, she’s not my favorite character… there are others I love far more, ones who make me laugh instead of making me rest my head on my keyboard and groan “not again” every time they do something dumb… but if there was one character I could sit down with in this comic and listen to, be an ear to whisper into and a shoulder to cry on, if there was one person I could hold and try to assure that everything would be okay if they just didn’t give up, if they focused on the needs of their child and showed her all the love in their heart, if there was one person who’s life I’d try to change if I could, it would be Andi, hands down. She -and Amanda- need it the most. And damn it, I’m rooting for them both so hard right now…
I guess that’s all I wanted to say… that and that I wanted to thank you, because reading about emotions so like my mothers this far after the fact is giving me a chance to look back on those days and finally understand better what she was going through. It was too overwhelming for me, even as a twenty-three-year-old woman, to hear my mother screaming like a banshee. As I said, it scared me. Reading your comic lately, I find myself drawn to call her more often, to remind her that I love her, and that I always thought she did the best she could for us kids… all of us, even him. After all, she couldn’t have known what would happen to my brother any more than Andi knew what would happen to Amanda. That, at least, was never her fault. So thank you for that, for giving me a bit of a deeper understanding of my own family. It was probably never your intent, but it’s helped me understand a lot. I look forward to what comes next!
Thank you for sharing such a personal story. I’m glad to hear your brother is getting the help he needs. Poor kid… half an hour squishing your nose against a wall is a ridiculously stupid punishment. I can’t stand hearing stories where “problem child” translates to, “I can’t be made to deal with this, put it in a corner and get me my martini.”
Hey, that’s a great reaction to a lot of things INVOLVING children, but never the child themselves. In my house we break out the chocolate milk and a nice distraction, like a movie, to go with mommy’s drink.
Thank you for sharing this. It is very powerful.
It’s not “Why did I think I could do this?”
It’s “Why did I think this would all go smoothly?”