Another Mother’s day approaches. An overwhelming deep sadness rolls over and thru me. Sadness that has changed me and as the years go by, this sadness is turning, however slowly, into resolved contentment.
I am an adoptee.
I have been given the gift of unconditional love by my Birth Mother. She was faced with the hardest decision of her life. Newly divorced, rearing 3 children on her own and pregnant with me.
My parents raised me with the full knowledge that I was adopted, but I didn’t understand what that meant until I was about 5 or 6.
They explained to me that my birth parents were too young to take care of me (they were only 17 when I was born), so they decided to give me to them so I could be raised in a loving and caring and better-prepared home.
Was your adoption open, semi-open, or closed?
It started out as closed, but I wanted so badly to meet my birth parents that my parents opened it up.
As the child of a closed adoption, I never thought to think of my birth mother’s sacrifice for me as anything but heroic. No doubt my thoughts on the subject were influenced by how my parents always framed the story – that my birth parents loved me so much they chose to provide a better life for me through allowing someone else to raise me. Perhaps, too, I benefited from my parents’ community of several other friends who had chosen to adopt so that it was not particularly unusual to me. Regardless, I grew up with the knowledge that I was loved. I was taught that I was deeply loved by two people who might not ever meet me, but considered giving me life and then providing me with parents who were equipped to parent me more important than the inconvenience of being an unwed, expectant teenage couple. Moreover, I knew that I was loved and wanted by my parents who raised me. I was shown that my parents had hoped, prayed and waited for me.
I have written to you once before. It was the day your adoptive family came to take you home. I was 15 at the time, and lost in my feelings.
I knew as soon as I handed the envelope over my mess of emotion would be read as immature and unwelcome. I am happy to be getting this second chance.
BraveLove is excited to share a series of four narratives during the months of October and November!
Taken from an article written by adoptive mom, Helen Harris, these four heartfelt narratives will captivate and challenge your perspective as they clarify how individual experience and relationships change over time. The authors include one adoptee, her birth mom and adoptive mom, and her sister. The relationships challenge the adoption stereotypes of good and bad, address the myths that surround reunion, and propose possibilities for children through adoption that values birth families.
Join us as we share these narratives in celebration of National Adoption month, and unfold the story of adoption through the lens of first the birth mother, the daughter she raised, the daughter she placed, and finally, the woman she chose to raise her daughter!
I have known for as long as I can remember. My parents tell me, “there was never a time when we did not tell you, you have known from the beginning.”
They always had books that were age appropriate when I was a toddler. Whenever we talked about family and love, they always told me how I came about and used the word adoption.
It was a closed adoption. I was adopted in Bergen County, NJ through Bethany Christian Services. The only information my parents and I were given was a sheet of non-identifying information. It had my birth mom’s first name, her date of birth, her occupation and her education. New Jersey was not allowed to release the birth mother’s last name to anyone.
This is an interesting question for me. My mother passed away in 1999, but in 2013, I found her picture on Classmates.com. When I saw her, I knew it was my birth mom, Joan Chanowski. It was my high school picture staring back at me. Sad, happy and nervous emotions rushed over me in a matter of seconds.
In a recent conversation, an adoptive mother shared with us about her daughter’s reunion experience. Her daughter and birth mother had been reunited after 18 years. When asked the question by others, “Didn’t you feel threatened witnessing your daughter meeting her birth mother for the first time?” Her response was an immediate “No, absolutely not. Would you feel threatened if your daughter had a hole in her heart her entire life, and you found the one individual who could fill that hole?”
Isn’t it interesting that the English language has only one word to express this complex emotion? In one sentence, we use this word love to express our affections toward our morning cup of coffee, only to be immediately followed by the words I love you towards the ones we hold closest.
When Clay was 29 years old, his parents received a letter from a woman claiming to be his biological mother. She said her name was Priscilla. And she had been searching for him for seven years.Throughout his life, Clay had struggled with his identity as an “adopted” son. Reconnecting with Priscilla turned out to be more life-changing than either of them could have imagined. Clay discovered that he was the center of one of the greatest acts of determination and heroism he’d ever heard of, and Priscilla re-opened the deepest wound of her childhood. But in the process, both began a healing process that could have only come from dragging a lifelong secret into the light...