Leaving Myself Out

“How can I assert myself authentically in a relationship when I was trained to erase myself for the benefit of others?” – Anne Heffron

When I read this quote, a lightbulb turned on in my head. How crazy is it that I’m just realizing that this has been my biggest issue? It affects my personal relationships and my work. This way of thinking allows me to pull myself out of every equation and see how everyone’s life would be better if I would just go away. The hardest one to talk about would be my adopted family.

We have had so much tragedy in my adopted family. More than our fair share. My parents lost two of their children tragically. One to suicide, one in a car accident. There are other things that happened, that were just as tragic, in my mind. I’ll be able to write about them someday.

In my mind, none of these tragedies would have happened had they not adopted me. Not only does adoption upset the natural order for the birth mom and baby, it upsets the natural order for the adoptive family.

What would their lives had been like had I not been there? With 6 older brothers and sisters, attention was pretty hard to come by. Let’s just add another child at the end of this family and see how much more that attention gets divided. They were all biological children of my adoptive parents. They needed their mom and dad. They never would have known the difference had I not been adopted.

Would my brother still be alive? Did I do something to contribute to his death? Would he still be here if they had not adopted me? My adoptive parents would be different today had they not lived through the tragedy of losing a son to suicide. My adoptive mom would be a much happier person.

Would my sister be alive if they hadn’t adopted me? This is a hard one to write. My sister had moved away to live near people that I introduced her to when she had her car accident. She wouldn’t have even been where she was if it weren’t for me. So much tragedy unfolded because of her death. Her kids paid the price. She was a beautiful person and she would still be here if my family hadn’t adopted me.

There’s no way to know what life would have looked like for my adoptive family had they not adopted me. I do know that things would be different. Also, I do know that had I been intended to be born into that family, I would have been. It’s easy to take myself out of the equation and look at other’s lives without me in it.

Before you “open your heart to another child,” please take a long, hard look at how it will affect the children you already have. It just isn’t the same as having another child. This child will be different than the rest of you and you will not understand them in the way you do your own. They won’t fall in line and think like you do. They won’t act like you. They won’t look like you.

I love the family in which I grew up, but I’m not sure their life was better because of me.

Before You Adopt

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This week, I was speaking with a co-worker about the adoption classes she was attending. She informed me that the classes were now a requirement in Tennessee because Tennessee has the third highest number of adopted children that are “re-homed” every year. What is rehoming, you ask? According to Adoption.com, “Rehoming” is a term used in situations where adoptive parents are trying to “get rid of” their adopted children.

Call me naive. Obviously, I am. I had NO idea this was such a big problem. Once you adopt a child, they are yours, right? You have made the commitment to be their parents forever. I was appalled that this “rehoming” thing was legal. It sounds like something for which an adoptive parent should be thrown in jail.

Growing up, I tried to be perfect. I wasn’t, but boy did I try. My biggest fear was to be given away if I was a disappointment. As an adult, I’ve told myself that this was a ridiculously unfounded fear. Apparently, it isn’t as ridiculous as I told myself.

Some things you need to be prepared for as you think about adopting. These are the situations that could come up with your adopted child. You need to be prepared to deal with them BEFORE you adopt:

1. You may not bond with the child. Babies know their biological mother. They know you are not their biological mother. It is instinct.
2. They experienced trauma before they came to you. They have abandonment issues that they can’t explain, but it will have an effect on how they react to you. They may push you away.
3. They will not have a personality like the rest of the family. Again….genetics. They may be loud while the rest of the family is quiet (me). The opposite may be true, as well. They may be shy and quiet. This doesn’t mean they aren’t as good as the rest of the family…just different.
4. They will not look like the rest of you. There may be some resemblance, but there is a good chance they will have different physical characteristics than the rest of the family. Without mirroring, they will need more reassurance from you that they are physically acceptable.
5. They will absolutely understand that they aren’t like the rest of the family. You may think they are unable to understand or that they are better off not knowing that they are adopted, but they will always feel different. Honesty is best.
6. They could have genetic tendencies to have addictions, learning disabilities, or mental illness. Any of these could run in their biological families and be in their DNA. You don’t get to give them away because of this. Your love must be unconditional. You must have time to help them deal with whatever comes up.
7. They may look for their biological family one day. Be prepared to be understanding. You don’t get to stop being there for them just because they look for and/or find their biological family. You may feel rejected, but this isn’t about you. Their childhood included you and rejecting them takes away their childhood.
8. Do NOT compare your adoptive child to your biological children. This isn’t fair. You are setting your adopted child up for failure. There is no way they will ever measure up and they will know that you’re comparing.
9. You can speak to a therapist about your concerns, privately, but you cannot discuss these concerns about your child with your friends or neighbors. It always gets back to the child and destroys the trust they have in you.
10. You shouldn’t adopt if any part of you is doing it for attention. If you are publicizing your adoption all over social media, at church, or you have a youtube channel that films every part of your adoption, just don’t. Your child will know why you adopted and it wasn’t because you genuinely care about them as a person.

Please read through this list carefully before you continue with the adoption process. It is a rare person that can honestly say, “I’m ready for all of this.” Education on the realities of adoption is so important. Many people lie to themselves and convince themselves that it is just the same as giving birth to a child. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I recommend reading “The Primal Wound” by Nancy Verrier. She writes the book from the standpoint of an adoptive mother and psychotherapist. She speaks to the trauma adoptees experience. It is the most eye-opening, honest piece of reading about the truth of adoption.

Re-homing has to stop. It is leaving so many kids devastated by the rejection, not once, but twice, that makes us feel like it is a defect in us. If you are adopting, know that it is a life-long commitment.

Read more about rehoming here:

medium.com/@sunnyjreed/rehoming-101-the-legal-and-devestating-practice-of-sending-adopted-kids-back-573ae05f81d

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/11/children-who-have-second-adoptions/575902/

The Adoptee and Suicide

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Suicide is something I really don’t enjoy talking about. I mean, who does? September is Suicide Awareness month, so it has been on my mind more than usual. Adoptees are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide than non-adoptees. I bet you didn’t know that.

There are so many reasons why this ISN’T difficult for me to believe. We are unwanted from the moment we are born….actually, from the moment we are conceived. Our mothers devised a plan to hand us off to strangers from the moment they found out about us. We immediately had a sense of being unwanted, a nuisance, and a secret that must be covered up. I mean, I even have 2 half siblings who know nothing about me. It’s weird.

My reasons for not committing suicide are different than most. I’ve seen what suicide does to those left behind.

I have not written or talked about this much because it is too painful, however, I am going to do it now. I’m doing this for the adoptee out there who thinks that you are not enough and everyone’s life would be better without you in it.

When I was 14, my brother, who was 23, killed himself. It was, without a doubt, the worst day of my life and the lives of my entire family. Even the day my sister passed wasn’t as bad as the day my brother died. It is worse when someone makes the choice to end their own life. He was not adopted, but he obviously thought the world would be a better place without him.

Here is the reality about what happens when someone commits suicide. Every single person you know will be shattered forever. They will constantly blame themselves for not being there for you enough. They will beat themselves up because they didn’t see the signs. There will be sleepless nights and days spent in a foggy haze. They won’t speak about it, because it is too hard. People will kick them while they are down and while they grieve. They will say stupid things to your family that make them feel worse. As an adoptee, my all time favorite is, “well, he wasn’t your REAL brother, right?”

Every year on my late sister’s birthday, I post something on Facebook about how much I miss her. I do not post about my brother. Not because I didn’t love him and not because I don’t care. I don’t post because it still hurts 30-something years later. It hurts that he didn’t love us enough to stay. It hurts that he chose to cause so much pain. It hurts because he didn’t understand how loved he was and how much his brothers and sisters loved him. It hurts because we don’t get the chance to tell him.

I believe that there is not one person on this planet that was a mistake. Everyone that God created was meant to be here. We all have a purpose and we all add to this world in some way.

Please, please….if you need help, reach out for it. If no one helps you, ask someone else. Please don’t give up. Please fight. Even if today isn’t a good day, hold onto the chance that tomorrow will be. You aren’t a mistake. You are loved by someone and that someone will be lost forever without you.

Dear Birth Mother,

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Dear Birth Mother,

Right now, you are carrying me in your tummy. You can feel me kick, you can tell what foods make me sick, and you have probably seen my heart beat at the doctor’s office. You know that I am a girl. You have thought of names and imagined what I will look like. Will I look like you? Will I look like my dad? Will I have blonde hair like him or dark brown hair like you? Will my eyes be the bluest blue or will they be chocolate brown like yours? Maybe I’ll be quiet and withdrawn or the funniest person in the world.

Sadly, you will never know. There are people that have told you that you aren’t fit to raise me. You don’t have enough money, you don’t have any family support, and my dad is already married. I was unplanned, but they say that there is a couple just waiting to raise me that is better qualified for the job.

What you need to know is this…. I will spend my whole life wondering why I wasn’t good enough for you. I will wonder why you wouldn’t want to keep this baby that grew inside of you. Every year on my birthday, I will cry. I will cry because you didn’t show up looking for me. I will never feel like I belong.

Strangers will say things to me like, “Aren’t you grateful to your parents for adopting you?” “Oh, you’re the one they adopted,” and “Are any of your siblings your REAL siblings?” All of this will make me feel left out. It will make me feel crazy for having any sadness about you abandoning me.

Forever, I will question whether or not my intuition is correct. When people are unsafe, I will know it in my gut, but I will question those feelings. You leaving me with people you have never met taught me that.

Every relationship I have will be affected by your decision to leave me. Every time there is a disagreement or my friends, family, or significant other treat me badly, I will blame myself. I will feel like everything is my fault. Unless someone gets me a great therapist from a very young age, I will gravitate towards men who blame me for everything. We will have that in common. We will both think everything is my fault, somehow.

You and I may reunite someday, but it won’t be the same. We won’t pick up where we left off as “mother and daughter.” You will give up the right to ever be my mother the minute you hand me over. A real mother doesn’t give her baby to strangers. A real mother will fight tooth and nail to keep her. We may reconnect and have some sort of relationship, but I will always resent you.

You will have your own problems as a result of abandoning me, as well. You will feel guilt like you’ve never known. A part of you will always be missing. You will wonder every day what happened to me and if my new family is good to me. You will ALWAYS wonder if you did the right thing.

So, if you are willing to let all these things happen, go ahead. Let me go. But know this. You aren’t “giving me a better life.” That statement is made by people that don’t know any better.

To the Partner of an Adoptee

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Congratulations! Your partner is a special person….one capable of empathy and understanding. We always stick up for the underdog as we have always felt like the underdog. Adoptees know what it feels like to be treated like we are “less than.”

Obviously, you are trustworthy, because we don’t truly trust many people. If you aren’t trustworthy, you may as well leave now. If we find out you aren’t trustworthy, we will push you away until you do leave. Trusting you is the biggest compliment we can pay. Loyalty is everything. For the adoptee, loyalty equals love.

I’m not sure that you understand what it feels like to be abandoned by the first person with which we ever came in contact. Your transition from nothingness to grand entrance to the world was met with happiness and love and joy. Ours was met with trauma and coldness and complete helplessness. Too young to speak and ask where our mom went. Too helpless to reach out for the only body we knew.

The independence started at birth…. At. Birth. The first lesson we learned was that we would be taking care of ourselves. We would have to self soothe. Any pain we had would have to be dealt with alone. Comforting ourselves in times of hurt is something that I think most adoptees I know do. Isn’t this how it’s supposed to be? We don’t really know any other way.

We are always reaching out for someone that isn’t there.

Growing up, we learn to make everyone else happy and ignore our own feelings. This is how we show we are “grateful.” We pretend. It’s hard to express our feelings. Give us time. Be patient. This talking about how we feel thing is new. Don’t get mad when it takes a while.

Don’t tell us how different we are than our adopted family. We already know. We may still love them. That is not something you need to point out. Learn to listen while we learn to talk.

Unconditional love is so important. Knowing you will not leave, no matter how difficult we can be, makes it easier to trust you and open up. Know that this behavior has nothing to do with you. Clamming up and walking away in the middle of an argument happens. It has nothing to do with you. It doesn’t mean we don’t care. It means we aren’t used to communicating our feelings. We don’t even know how we feel half the time.

I didn’t admit my sadness for decades. The sadness that comes from being abandoned stays buried deep in most of us for so long. We are afraid of how much it will hurt. When we finally do admit it, just listen. You aren’t adopted. Don’t presume to know how it feels. Just listen.

As an adoptee, we know from where our relationship problems originate. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to work on yourself, too. It isn’t fair to put all of the problems in the relationship on us. Just because we have our own issues, doesn’t mean you don’t have issues, as well. You aren’t superior emotionally because you aren’t adopted. You don’t have “lessons to teach us about normal families.” All families have issues. They are just different.

I’m working on mine. You should do the same. As long as you admit your weaknesses, we feel comfortable confiding in you about ours.

I wish you many years of happiness with your adoptee. We will always be there for you. As long as you’re loyal, we will be, too.

An Adoptee: In Tune to Everyone’s Feelings But My Own

Being in tune to others feelings, I believe, is a talent most adoptees possess. From the ripe old age of whenever I was adopted, I was hyper- aware of the feelings of everyone around me. I probably imagined my family was upset with me, at times, as well. As an adoptee, I thought I was brought into the family to keep everyone happy. If someone was sad, I would try to make them laugh, even if it was at my own expense. If someone was angry, I would ask why they were angry and try to fix it.

I know that some adoptees went in the opposite direction. They made it their mission to push as many of their family’s buttons as possible. This different direction still required them to be hyper-aware of everyone’s feelings. You have to really know what bothers people in order to do that one thing you know will send them into a tailspin.

As hyper-aware as I’ve always been of others feelings, I have not always been aware of my own. Or maybe I was, but I learned how to ignore my feelings to keep everyone else happy. Being liked was always way too important to me. After all, if I was likable, my family would want to keep me around. After all, I was “chosen,” so I better make sure they got a return on their investment.

Growing older and acknowledging those feelings has been painful, as a result. With lots of therapy, I realized that my feelings matter, too.

At the end of my long, unhappy marriage, I finally decided to go to therapy for myself. My dilemma was whether or not it was okay to divorce. I had so many reasons that this was the best option for me. However, family and people at church kept telling me that God could fix anything. Well….God can fix anything as long as people aren’t stupid….

So, I told my therapist that I didn’t want to divorce because I was worried about the happiness of my kids. She answered in a way I will never forget. Well, she asked me a question I will never forget. “Why is your own happiness any less important than the happiness of your kids, Maggie?” I was stumped. No one had EVER suggested that my happiness was important. EVER.

This was a revelation. MY happiness matters? MY happiness is actually important? Since when? I thought it was my job to make sure everyone else was happy and to bury my own feelings. My feelings always seem to make everyone else uncomfortable. What if I start saying how I feel? Will anyone even like me?

How do you undo a lifetime of burying feelings and tell the truth? For someone who has always been so adamant about everyone telling the truth, I had been lying to myself since birth. When people asked, “How are you?” I’d just say “I’m good,” or “I’m fine,” because these are the answers they wanted to hear.

I never talked about the hurt of abandonment by my birth mom or how it hurt me to be picked on constantly by my siblings. I held my chin up and moved on. Anyway, the answer given to me if I ever brought up my feelings was, “Don’t be silly.”

When having feelings is invalidated, you learn to stop trusting your gut instincts, you dismiss your own feelings, and it’s easy to fall into relationships with toxic people. It has far reaching effects that can consume your life.

I have finally learned to be honest with myself, but it has taken lots and lots of work. My circle is so much smaller now, but it is not toxic. Everyone of my friends now is a friend that I can be with and be completely myself.

If you have adopted kids, just listen. It doesn’t mean they love you any less if they have feelings. In fact, if you listen, they will love you more.

I am so grateful for the small, safe circle of friends that are still here for me. After all, I know they are here because their love and concern is genuine. Better to have a few that love me that many that do not.

What Changed When I Met Bio Family

 

Some of you reading this may know that when I was 38, I met my biological mother. We reconnected through a website. We emailed for a while until she slammed the door on me once again.

Fortunately, she gave me the name of her mother, my grandmother. I reached out to my grandmother in 2008 and it changed my life forever. She didn’t reject me. She didn’t dismiss me. She welcomed me with open arms….literally and figuratively. She planned my visits to see her and looked forward to seeing me for months.

My self-esteem shot up in a huge way. You see, before meeting her, I never had anyone to mirror. I didn’t really ever feel like I knew what kind of person I was because I had nowhere to look for those answers. Some attributes are environmental, but lots of traits are hereditary.

She happened to be a kind, loving, caring, funny woman… and it gave me hope. Maybe I could be all those things, too. I wasn’t sure. Being a nurse for almost 20 years, at this point, gave me some indication that I might not be all bad. Seeing kindness and goodness in someone that I was related to by blood made me hope it might really be true.

Our identity is more caught up in the people around us than we realize. This cannot be explained to the non-adoptee. When you are born into a family, you just always have that sense of identity with others. You kind of know what you were born to do and what traits are hereditary. With the non-adoptee, we are just guessing.

The first time I met her, I was shocked at the little things that made us so alike. She was a very funny person, she enjoyed caring for the people around her and she was the least judgmental person I have ever met. There were little things like how we ate our eggs and how we like our hamburger cooked…. how we dreamed about things before they happened. We also LOVED tennis. She had been playing since she was a girl and so have I. She had a tennis match playing on her tv most of the time. The people around her were shocked at how we could talk to each other without saying a word.

She was a beautiful person, inside and out, and that gave me hope. She was someone to emulate. Finally, I had someone to aspire to be like.

She was the first person to ever apologize to me for my relinquishment. An apology is everything. Truly. It validates that you have a reason to be upset and that the other person acknowledges it and has regret for the choices they made. She made sure I knew how sorry she was that she didn’t help her daughter keep me.

Most of all, she loved me. Meeting her was the best part of my life, other than giving birth to my boys. She gave me the greatest gift of all. She showed me that I was, indeed, lovable.

Motherless: The Adoptee’s Reality

It may seem odd to hear a person with two mothers say that they are motherless. Believe me, it feels even more odd. Let me explain. As a baby, my bio mom signed away her rights to me and gave me up for adoption. According to her, she never even got to hold me.

I was put in foster care for 6 weeks, then adopted by my adoptive mom and dad. They already had 6 biological kids, so my “adopted status” stood out, in my mind, even more. I grew up trying to please my mom. I wanted her to love me. I did just about everything I was told to do and only asked about my adoption 1 time while I was growing up…. even though I thought about it way more often. Somehow, I knew it would upset her to bring it up.

For many years, I searched, based on the information I had been given (which turned out to only be partially true), but did not find her until I was 38. It took a year after finding her to finally meet. “She” couldn’t deal with it.

If you notice, in both instances, it was about the mothers, not about me. I couldn’t talk about being adopted to my adoptive mother because I knew it would upset her. I couldn’t meet my bio mom for over a year because she couldn’t deal with it.

When I did meet my bio mom, my adoptive mother cut me off. It’s what she does. I’ve seen her do it to everyone in our family, at different times. I knew it was coming. I expected it. It still hurt. I continued to try with her. It didn’t help. Whether she liked it or not, she was the one who raised me and knew me for all those years. I was the one that had been there for her every single holiday and birthday. I was the one that moved near her to make sure she had someone close by in her old age, yet she couldn’t hear about the meeting with my bio family.

When I met my bio mom, I made her a scrapbook of my life so she could get caught up on the things that had happened in my life. They only made her sad. I do give her credit for trying.

My bio mom has no maternal instincts. She has never had to take care of anyone. She had no more children after me. She associates me with the saddest time of her life and hearing about my life only made her sadder. She has continued to waffle between needing me to take care of her and pushing me away. We haven’t spoken in almost a year.

Birthdays are absolutely the worst day of the year for me now. I turned 50 last year and heard not the first word from either of them. In fact, my birthmother refuses to remember on what day my birthday actually falls. When I did hear from her, it was a week before my birthday or even two weeks before. It was too hard for her to remember the actual day…. Even after I reminded her over and over.

I am motherless. I have had to be a mother to two women that should have been a mother to me. If I could change things, I would.

Adoptive moms…. When we want to find our bio mom, it is not a personal affront to you. It is a quest to get answers and find our roots. It doesn’t change our past and our bio mom has no idea what happened in our childhood. Don’t take that away from us by cutting us off. Our lives have been filled with abandonment and hurt. We don’t need you adding to that. Be the adult and understand.

People looking to adopt…. This child comes with a past and a family. Don’t pretend they don’t. Be prepared for the inevitable day that they will want to find their bio mom, if for no other reason, to find out why she gave them away. Stick by their side and be understanding. Let them know you still love them and understand why they would search.

Bio mom…. When you give your child away, someone else gets to experience your baby’s childhood and life with them. Don’t expect to show up one day and become their mom. In my experience, that isn’t how things will go. You can have a relationship, but it will not be a mother/daughter or mother/son relationship.

For once, put the child first. They are the only one in this situation that DID NOT HAVE A CHOICE.

Meeting your Birth Family

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As an adoptee in a large family, the only one adopted, I grew up wondering about the woman that gave birth to me. Anyone that is relinquished does. I wondered if she looked like me, acted like me, and most of all, I wondered if she thought about me.

In 1993, the state of TN opened up adoption records. Anyone could get their non-identifying records (medical history, ages, hair color, eye color, height of the natural family members). For $139, any adopted person had access to this information for the first time. If the state could get the natural mother’s permission, you could get your original birth certificate, as well. This would have the mother’s name, your first given name, and where you were born, as well as time and date of birth.

When this law was passed, I immediately wrote to the Department of Human Services for my information. It took months to get the information. At first, I just received pages of non-identifying information. It included information on my mom and my dad. It had medical history (this is HUGE to the adoptee), described my parents physical characteristics and the characteristics of their parents and siblings. I was so excited. After a lifetime of telling doctors “I don’t know my medical history. I’m adopted, ” and having them put a huge X on that part of my medical intake form, I finally had answers.

About 2 months later, I received my original birth certificate. The state sent it on to me because they could not locate my natural mom to get permission. My name was Jennifer Ann Thomas. I was born 5 minutes before midnight. I had a name to put to my natural mother, as well. There was no name where my father’s name should have been, though I had all the non-identifying information. So weird.

In 1993, there was really no way to find her, short of hiring a private investigator. It would be another 14 years before we met. I found her on a website notorious for bringing people together. I wrote to her in 2005. It took her 2 years to write me back. When she did, we emailed each other non-stop. I told no one, except my husband at the time.

At first, the correspondence was great. We both seemed so excited. Then things got weird. I could tell from her emails that she was not well. She seemed to have paranoid delusions. I did not know how to handle it. She lashed out at me and told me she did not want to communicate anymore. Not accepting this, I called her. She yelled at me, told me that she had been through lots of therapy over me and she didn’t want to talk to me again.

Here I was, begging this woman that gave me away to talk to me. She blocked me from her email and wouldn’t take my phone calls. I was NEVER mean to her about giving me away. It was difficult to understand why she would reject me a second time. It would take another year to meet her and that was only after I met my grandmother (her mother) first.

My point in writing this is to let you know that while you may have fantasies of meeting your natural mom, be prepared. I’ve heard stories of tearful reunions and great relationships that happen immediately. Just as often, it goes the way it went for me. Guard your heart, don’t blame yourself, go slowly…. and know you aren’t alone.

You may think that meeting your birth family will solve all of your problems and answer all of your questions. That will never happen. I thought it would. While there were lots of blessings in finding family, meeting her was not one of them.

She Loved You So Much She Gave You Up

This is something I heard my whole life. “Your mom loved you so much, she wanted a better life for you and gave you away.” Not understanding how a mother could give up her own baby, I often wondered how this could be true. But, like anything we are taught from childhood, we believe it and it becomes part of our core belief system. It may not make one bit of sense and it could be a complete lie…but it becomes our truth.

Let’s look at this statement for a minute…”she loved you so much she gave you up.” She loved you, so she abandoned you. She loved you, but she thought you’d be better off with people to which she and you had no connection. She loved you, but she thought you would be better off with people she had never met. She had so little self esteem after becoming pregnant with you that she thought giving you to complete strangers to raise was a better option than being with her.

How might telling your adoptive child “she loved you so much she gave you away,” be damaging to an adopted child?

1. Your child equates abandonment with love. If you REALLY love someone, you must abandon them and make room for someone else that can love them better than you can. Run! Don’t get too attached! Surely, there is someone else more worthy to love this person you’ve become attached to. This translates to every relationship in your life. Your friends, families, co-workers, etc.

2. You will never believe that anyone loves you. If they did, they would abandon you, too.  After all, isn’t this what we were taught from birth? The person that loves you, truly loves you, will push you away, eventually. There is no way that this person in front of you actually cares, or they would have abandoned you, too….. so you push them away, instead.

3. You only let people get so close. You fully expect the pattern of abandonment to repeat itself throughout your life, so you act accordingly. When my husband cheated after 6 months of marriage, it crushed me completely. I had decided to let him in and trust him… I made the ultimate commitment to him and was once again abandoned. But, by abandoning me, I somehow thought he loved me. So I stayed.

So, as an adoptive parent, what would be a more appropriate response to the question your child may ask you, “Why did my mom give me away?”  I can only give my own opinion, but here goes:

1. “You know, I cannot imagine giving away a child and I cannot imagine what kind of terrible situation she had to be in to feel that giving you away was her best option. I’m grateful that you are with us, but I know you and her must have so much pain surrounding the situation. I just pray that one day we have answers and they are enough to make you realize that it wasn’t your fault and it was not the result of some shortcoming in you.”

2. “I wish I had been there to encourage your mom to see that she was enough and raising you was the ultimate act of love. I wish I had been there to give her financial and emotional support so she felt that keeping you was an option.”

3. “I don’t know why your mom gave you up for adoption. I really want to know, too. But, boy, did she miss out. We need to keep up with everything that happens in your life in case you ever meet some day. It must be so hard for her wondering what happened to you. We should always pray for peace for her and understanding for ourselves.”

These are just some of the more “appropriate” answers to the question “why did my mom give me away”, in my humble opinion. Can you see how different the dialogue is and how the child is made to feel that abandonment is NOT the ultimate act of love?

Please comment and let me know what you think.