Blog Post #4: From adoptee to birth mother

To start of this week’s blog, I first want to address my reaction to Tuesday’s speaker.  It fascinated me to listen to an adoptee talk about her experience.  She is 48 and still looking for her birth parents.  I found this to be interesting because I wanted to get a perspective from another person on how the birth parent search may work for someone.  When she talked about being 18 and possibly running into her birth mother in college that gave me chills.  When told the class that she was in the library, came back to her dorm and talked to a middle aged woman on the way in, and then found out that woman was looking for her, I couldn’t imagine how that would have been.  It’s hard to try putting myself in her shoes because I grew up with my birth parents, and I don’t have to wonder if they are my birth parents.  Plus, how would I feel if a person who is practically a stranger came looking for me in this secret fashion?

I found it interesting too when our speaker talked about how she wants to see that someone looks like her, etc.  To relate that back to the YouTube video we watched, I wonder how many times she stops and wonders about the people she walks by everyday in the supermarket, shopping mall, etc.  I would be in constant curiosity.  Still, when she told us her sister doesn’t want to know her birth parents, it goes to show that every experience is different. 

To relate this to a reading for Thursday, I want to talk about Kathleen Scully Davis’ “A Love Story.”  It was interesting to read an experience from a birth mother who went to meet her daughter.  Plus, it was interesting to read a story where the family had an open adoption and welcomed in the birth mother with hugs.  Then the story went on to talk about how the daughter now calls her adoptive mother and birth mother, “mom.”  Again, it goes to show that all experiences are different, and that there is so much to take in with adoption.   It definitely makes me think about the possibilities that could happen if I decide to adopt one day.  I cannot say that these readings will prepare me, but they give me an idea of what an experience could be like for my adoptee and his or her birth parents.  Plus, I think it's okay if my child wants to know his or her birth parents.  I do not want to pretend that they do not exist.  

To close, I want to address my favorite quote from “A Love Story,” “Love isn’t enough.  Love does not conquer all.  Often, the greatest act of love is to give a child loving parents and some opportunities.  Personal experience in our now blended family shows me clearly that love parents don’t need to be related by blood to their children.  We are all children of God, or the universe, or life.  Each new baby deserves the best home, and sometimes the at isn’t the home of the biological parents.”  What a poignant and honest quote from a birth mother.   

-Mickey N.