Three days after starting my adoption search, I was able to go to bed that night knowing for the first time in 16 and a half years that my son was alive, that he was OK. I knew his name, I knew where he lived, I knew what he did, I knew what school he went to. It was the most amazing feeling on the face of the Earth. For the first time in sooo long I felt some peace.
Before I knew anything really about adoption searches and reunions, I had adoption fantasies about his 18th birthday and the telephone ringing, or the door knocking and tried to imagine how it would feel.It was pretty obvious that I knew little about adoption for real. I knew nothing about what an adoptee really could feel or think and my closest foray into a real reunion was watching Lifetime Movies.
It worked out reasonably well until it all fell apart. I am not going to name names but our constant adoptive moms from Anti-Adoption Insights ended up getting fed up with feeling defensive about their positions.In anger, they created Evil Adopters Haven on MSN to kind of mock the attitudes of the hard core anti-adoption folks on Anti-Adoption Insights. It got pretty ugly, pretty fast.
About 14 years after the loss of my son, I was still a “Happy Birthmother”. I was still under the belief that adoption was a great option, my son was having a great life (though it was traditionally closed..so what did I really know), and it was all my supreme choice that cause the typical “no regrets”.
I have come, over time, to embrace the one real meaning of my name. I am broken. I am disabled. I am different and injured. And while the obvious and usually most predominant reason for thus is because I am a mother who lost her first child to adoption, loss and being broken has been a constant theme in my whole life.
I’d like a gift, too, for those who think they have a right to the children of others. I’d like their present to be a nice, big reality check and ability to see through their own propaganda. An unselfish conscience in their stockings also would not be amiss.
Instinctual knowing your child cannot be replicated in Adoption. It must be really scary to an adoptive parent. For the natural parents have the one thing that they cannot ever have; the true cognitive, cellular bond.
Carol Anderson’s 1982 adoption reunion classic: “Why did your birth mother refuse to meet you? Your natural mother lost a great deal when she surrendered you to adoption.” Fabulous insight for any adoptee about to contact or having been refused contact by their birthmother. It won’t make the pain go away, but hopefully can shed a bit of understanding.
A proposed federal bill to provide grants for pregnant & parenting students, prospective parents anticipating a birth or adoption, and students who are placing or have placed a child for adoption.
Adoption made me welcome in constant sorrow. Once welcomed, there is no turning it away like some unwanted guest who stays too long. I had wanted to live my life, but instead I gave it away and the loss of my son cut though my life like a bright red marker carving a path for me to follow.
Want to Learn About Adoption? Every voice of every adoptee blog here is speaking for the thousands of adoptees who are still children and not have found their voices, yet. Yes, every adoption experience is individual and different, but the range of human emotion knows no bounds. Read, learn. These most gifted of writers open up their hearts and souls so that you might understand. Listen to the Adoptees Read the Adoptee…