For adoptees, there may be a need to forgive your birth mother for the decision that she made so many years ago. Even if your adoption and life have been happy and fulfilling, you may still have felt some effects from being relinquished. Yes, you may have some anger. Birth mothers who have educated themselves about adoption may understand your anger. However, it may puzzle some birth moms that their children are angry.

Most birth mothers relinquished their children wanting the best for them, and believing that adoption was the best, most loving choice. Some were coerced into relinquishing. Many of us felt that due to lack of financial and emotional support, we had scant options. None of the birth moms that I know had even the faintest idea that relinquishing their child might cause any harm to their child. We were mostly young, naive and believed what we were told. Even now, women considering relinquishment are not informed how serious adoption issues sometimes may be for adoptees.

Some adoptees who have had wonderful lives stauchly deny that they have any anger at all. Maybe they do not, or maybe they are in denial - either is a valid possibility.

There is sometimes a need at reunion for an adoptee to forgive the adoptive parents. If adoptive parents did not tell their child that it was adopted, or were untruthful as to details about the birth family, an adoptee may have some anger for them. If an adoptee finds out that the adoptive parents may have treated the birth momther poorly, or particularly closed the adoption, anger may occur.

Most adoptive parents, particularly in decades past, did not have much information on parenting an adopted child. They were told to, "Take the child home and treat it as though it was your own." Keeping mum about the adoption was common. As for forgiving a parent who closes an adoption, in my opinion, that is a harder issues to resolve. Finding out that the adoptive parents mistreated the birth mom could be a difficult discovery as well. Forgiveness does not always come easy, but, it helps the healing to forgive.