I've Looked at Adoption from Both Sides Now

I am adopted, and I have an adopted son, and also one that I birthed. I searched for my birth family six years ago, through a Confidential Intermediary, and neither of my birth parents wanted to meet me, or have any contact. This was, and is, very hard. Needless to say, my son has an open adoption!

My birth father, though he didn't acknowledge me as his birth child, or want to meet me, allowed me to meet one of my my half-birth-sisters, and we met five years ago. We both have the same chronic illness, wierdly enough, and we have many of the same likes and dislikes. We are definitely genetically related. I found out in recent years that my birth father didn't acknowledge any of the five kids he engendered (by four different women). Sigh.

I hope to give my adopted son a very different relationship to adoption than the one I have had. We all have our pain to carry; and his will be his own. But I hope I can be a listening ear for him, and that I can have informed compassion when he begins to ask questions. As with every adoption story, there is a sad reason that his birth parents couldn't raise him. There always is. Nobody makes an adoption plan for their birthchild without a great deal of pain and soul-searching.

I pray that my birth parents know how grateful I am to them for my life, and for giving me up for adoption when they couldn't care for me (in the midst of divorce and poverty) so that I could be raised by my wonderful parents. I have had a beautiful life, filled with love and adventure, and I hope and pray that I can give my sons a life like that too.

I am still working through issues related to adoption, and always will be. It is particularly difficult that my adopted son is developmentally delayed because of his birth mother's intense drug, alcohol, and cigarrette use. When I think of how hard I worked to make a clean, safe nest for the son I was able to birth (and for the many miscarried children I tried to birth after him) it saddens me that, for whatever tangle of reasons, she wasn't able to do the same for my second son. I know she was young and unaware, but at times I can't help being angry on his behalf - at the circumstances, not at the birth mother. He copes with so very much because of that womb experience.

I feel sad for her desperate circumstances, and that she wasn't given better role modelling in her hard life. I hope and pray fervently that she will change her life for the better, for her sake, and for my son's. I fear, in my weaker moments, for his future with her as his birth mother. And we pray for both his birth parents every day; for healing and growth in their lives.

I struggle with feelings of powerlessness, and find my deepest comfort in faith. I have to believe that God chose our son to be a part of our family, just as God chose me to be a part of mine, growing up. And God means it all for good. For the best. I have to believe, with the medieval mystic Lady Julian of Norwich, that "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

God bless us all, and our families.

credit: Adoptive Families Magazine
link: www.adoptivefamiliesmagazine.com