Dear Birth Moms,
Just last month, we celebrated World Adoption Day. Maybe you knew that. Maybe you were totally unaware.
I don’t know if you checked your social media accounts that day. You may remember scrolling through selfies of parents and children who shared the story of adoption or if you were oblivious to it all.
If you were aware, I don’t know what kind emotions it brought up for you.
Maybe it made you feel proud. Proud of yourself for choosing life and playing the most important role in the adoption story. Maybe it made you feel grateful. Grateful you got to handpick the family to raise your precious baby or grateful there was a family who could take your children into their home and provide safety and love at a time when you couldn’t.
Or maybe you felt shame and deep hurt. Maybe you felt regret. Maybe you felt hatred towards yourself. Maybe every time the world celebrates adoption, it opens deep, lifelong wounds for you.
I don’t know how it made you feel, but I do know how I feel about you.
First, I need to tell you I’m sorry. I’m sorry because I try to forget you. I try to dismiss your part in my family’s story, the major role you played in bringing my family to life. I try to forget you exist because I don’t like that my siblings have parents somewhere out in the world that I don’t share. I don’t like that they have siblings, a mom and dad that I don’t. I want to be their only sister, sharing their only two parents. I also try to forget because while their adoption story is a gift to me, it’s a partial wound for them. Of course they know adoption was God’s plan for their life, but I know some days it also stings. I want to forget you exist, because I want to pretend adoption is without wounds.
I’m sorry for trying to forget you.
Secondly, I need you to know, I love you. I do. I know we’ve never met, and probably never will, but I love you and am so grateful for you. Thank you for choosing to give life when it would have been easier to terminate. Thank you for carrying a baby in your womb for nine months despite being judged in high school, or turned down for jobs you really needed to make ends meet, or even the inconvenience of it all.
You gave me one of the greatest gifts this world has to offer– siblings. Without you, I wouldn’t know what it’s like to braid my little sister’s hair or teach her how to harmonize, how to become best friends with a kindergartner while a senior in high school, or junior coach a little brother’s basketball team. I wouldn’t know the true sense of love: where I can be both willing to die for my sibling in one moment and want to murder her/him in another. You gave me playmates to grow up with, a best friend who’d crawl into my bed at night when I just didn’t want to be alone, and a sister who always, always has my back.
You are a hero.
God knows you’re not without your flaws (and certainly I’m not either), but you deserve to be celebrated more. We don’t tell you that enough. Things like World Adoption Day, Gotcha Day, all the days… they are wonderful and important, but I think we remember the adoptive families far more than we celebrate you.
Thank you for choosing life. Thank you for choosing adoption as the best story for your sweet newborn and toddlers. Thank you for choosing my family. Thank you for being part of our family.
You are a hero. Today, I celebrate you.
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This letter was written by Hanna Seymour and the original post can be found here!
