At times, I think the grief with open adoption can be a misunderstood grief. There are even times that I misunderstand it myself. It is definitely a unique type of grief.

As a birthmother participating in an open adoption, I’m very happy to be able to see Charlie and be a part of his life. I’m grateful that S and A are so willing to include me and make me such a big part of their family and Charlie’s life as I know that sadly, that is not the case for every birthmother and every adopted child may not be able to have that type of involvement. I enjoy my visits with Charlie... more

Today has been a difficult one for me. Feeling under the weather, a balmy 75 today, expected to become a blustery 40 tomorrow, is just one small portion of the scenario though. Loss, and the losses we face as mothers, any kind of mothers, is yet another difficulty on my mind today.

Today is the birthday of my little nephew who passed away in 2000. He would have been 10 years old. His loss has me thinking about how mothers deal with the loss of a child be it through, death, or adoption, or the unrealized... more

Invisible >adjective - unable to be seen, either by nature or because concealed. treated as if unable to be seen; ignored.

Ok, so just how do I know anything about the birthfamily perspective, and how it feels to be invisible in the adoption scenario? Well, hang with me here, I can explain.

Sometime back I shared that not only am I am adoptive mom, but I am also a birthfamily member. Several (yes several) of my middle brother’s kids were all... more

"Just when I was getting used to yesterday, along came today."

A friend recently shared this quote with me and some other birthmothers and we really liked it. It explains how I often feel in the grieving and healing process that I go through as a birthmother. Do you feel that way sometimes?

I certainly know that I do. I have so many feelings regarding Charlie’s adoption and the subsequent loss of mothering him that came along with relinquishing my parental rights and then add in being the parent of a special needs child,... more

"No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear." - C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

When a child is placed for adoption, the obvious loss to birthparents is the ability to parent their child and be a daily presence in their life. Several of our first mom bloggers here, have talked about their feelings of loss connected to missing the day to day involvement... more

Today it was extremely dreary and rainy here. To add to the greyness of the day, my poor ten year old had a little crying jag over a friend who had invited her somewhere for the day, and then let her down by not showing up. Sometimes I get really worried when I see her fall so darn hard over what I consider to be the little predictable losses in life, I wonder at how much harder she is going to crash when the reality of adoption loss fully takes hold.

The fact is that even though we have an open adoption with this daughter’s older siblings and birth grandparents, we... more

One of the hardest things about being in an open adoption relationship, can be hearing from your child’s birthmother, that if she could go back, she would have never chosen adoption for her child.

While you might not fault a woman, for later feeling that her decision to place her child was not a good one for her personally, it is also hard not to feel blamed or inadequate if you are the adoptive family in question. It is hard not to feel like the source of the pain and regret.

While I doubt that adoptive parents expect their child’s birthmother... more

When I tell people that I am a birthmother or when I am talking with women who are pregnant and considering adoption, one of the most common questions I hear is, “Do you regret placing your child for adoption?”

On the surface, you’d probably think that this question has a simple yes or no answer. But it doesn’t! In fact, the answer is pretty complicated. I’m sure the answer and thinking process regarding regrets different from birthmother to birthmother, but here is how I look at it….

Do I regret that I did the best thing for Charlie at... more

Sometimes when I think of Charlie and I am missing him, I am especially missing the little baby newborn version of him that I spent three days with in the hospital, not the wild, rambunctious almost six year old he has become today.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t love who he is today because I do. (Lots and lots!) But those three days in the hospital, he felt like he was all “mine.” I hadn’t signed the relinquishment papers yet and I was his mother; just his mother, without the “birth” part in front of it. But then, I signed those papers and gave a... more

Right now some people would probably term our middle child’s “open adoption” as officially closed, I however do not see it that way. We have closed nothing, and we remain continually open to all the possibilities of open adoption, just as we have from the first. Our own input into the relationship is all we ever had, and continue to have control over.

Our family made the commitment to our child’s birthfamily to remain assessable for them, and we remain available.... more