National Adoption Week - Tuesday

In honor of National Adoption Awareness Month (US) and National Adoption Week (UK + me), I am celebrating. On Monday, I celebrated adoptive parents.

Today, I celebrate the women and couples who have made adoption possible for families by permitting a family to adopt their biological child. My husband and I are traveling the road of adoption seeking to be adoptive parents; it is a big part of our lives, and we have shared this news with family and friends. In the midst of sharing our own journey, two women in our extended family have shared that they "gave up" a child as a young woman. While they are happy for us in our journey, the decision to forgo raising a child themselves at that point in their respective lives was a profoundly difficult one, and while they each felt they made the right decision for themselves and for the children, the memories of the past carry a great deal of emotion.

Even as I write this, I agonize over my word choices, because I do not want to choose hurtful words and diminish in any way the LOVE these women had and still have for their children, the RESPECT I have for them and their decision, the GRATITUDE I already feel toward my own child's birthmother, and the HONOR that it is for me to receive encouragement from these women and have their "stamp of approval" when they tell me that I'll be a great mom. I appreciate that they acknowledged limitations in their ability to personally be the parent they wanted their child to have at the time, and that they placed their trust in another couple to be the parents. One of these dear ladies has met her all-grown-up child and their parents and keeps in touch; the other hopes that her child is content with their adoptive family and might not search her out, for the emotional pain from that time of her life was very great.

As a prospective adoptive parent I feel a responsibility not only to my child but to his/her birthparents, especially the birthmother, who will be entrusting us with so great a treasure. May God enable me to prepare myself, prepare my home, be wise in decision-making, and to respect the need of my child's birthmother, whether it be communication from our family, or separation, or something inbetween. I think of my child's birthmother often, even though I do not yet know who she is, even though I might never even meet her. I pray for her even though I don't always know quite what to say.

Thank you, dear birthmothers, for choosing LIFE for your children and for enriching the lives of other families through adoption.