Mothers’s Day Musings

If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Motherhood does not generally come easy for mothers of adoption, whether they are birth or adoptive mothers. Birth mothers have a keen sense of the strength of the bond that exists between them and their relinquished children. Sometimes I wonder if most birth mothers would ever have placed their children for adoption had they realized how connected they would always feel to that child lost to adoption.

Women considering placing babies for adoption are routinely told that they can go on to have “children of their own” and that the pain will lessen from the loss of a child. Sadly, neither of those happenings are guaranteed. In fact, the more we study the effects of placement on women, the more we understand the permanent damage it often causes to women.

Even for birth mothers who do have other children, they realize that there is no replacing one child for another. Every child born into this world is unique and to be cherished for their own special gifts.

For adoptive mothers, an appreciation of children is intense as well. Many women who adopt do so after the loss of their dream to have biological children. Women who come to motherhood after multiple miscarriages or the dissappointing inability to become pregnant have a heightened sense of the joys and privilege that raising a child entails. Many adoptive mothers expend tremendous energy to jump through all the hoops that adopting a child can require.

Motherhood is also a highly significant experience for adoptees as well. For some only at the moment when they give birth do they comprehend what their loss might have felt like for their birth mother. Sometimes motherhood triggers many feelings for adoptees and they are surprised at how deeply affected they may be.

The appreciation that I have for my children has changed since my son long lost to adoption has come back into my life. When my other son or my daughter call me “Mom” now, I have a much greater appreciation of how sweet those words are. My relinquished son will never call me Mom, and I regret that. Yet, I can hear his deep hearty laugh, get a hug from him and see his handsome smiling face once in awhile. I never lose sight of how fortunate I am to finally know my son – once lost to me via adoption -but now in my life due to our reunion. There is much joy in my life now. He is part of that joy, and in large measure responsible for the peace that I now feel as well – finally.

Further Reading:

An Adult Adoptees’ Open Letter to his Birthmom

A Tribute to Mothers

Photo by Jan Baker 2007

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