The more I think about the subject abandonment the more I think I should write a little more on the subject.

Doesn’t the word abandonment itself seem to cause a lot of hurt feelings? Don’t all triad members have their own strong feelings about the word itself?

Maybe adoptees want an acknowledgement that they felt abandoned. It doesn’t mean that the adoptee blame the natural mothers or think that they had a choice about it. I am not saying to deny the natural mothers experience. The closed adoption era was a different time, and era when being an unwed mother was shameful to families that mothers were sent away and really didn’t have another choice. However, with that said, it doesn’t change the adoptees experience.

I have had my own issues about being relinquished to adoption and feeling abandoned. I feel bad for the things my natural mother went through in her life. It certainly isn’t what I have wished for her. For the longest time it was an internal conflict. On one hand I know I was better off not growing up in my natural mothers life but then what would her life have been like if she hadn’t gone through having to relinquish me to adoption.

I had a difficult time reconciling it. I love my adoptive parents very much. They are the only parents I have every known. At some point in my own life I cam to the point about the word abandonment it self that it just seems to me the word is so emotionally charged. To natural mothers it seems that the word has blame attached to it and when adoptees use the word it comes across as if the adoptee is blaming the natural mothers for leaving them. It is possible to feel abandoned and understand at the same time that this was not what the natural mothers wanted. In many cases they didn’t want to give up their child and this is just the way society was at the time.