"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

The pastors at my church like to do different learning series. We did the famous Rick Warren series right when it began to hit it big. We’ve done a series about ministering to others as well as different series on things involved with being a Christian, books of the Bible, seasonal things, etc… I usually enjoy them and learn a lot.

The current five week series we have embarked on really has me thinking, not about what we are learning per say but about people in the church. The current series is entitled “PG: Parental Guidance Required.” While the series is kind of based on... more

I must admit that I have been personally struggling with depression but the past week and a half has been much better than the past two weeks have been. I think that the depression results around my adoption issues that play right into the secondary infertility issues that my husband and I are facing coupled with seasonal changes that I deal with on a yearly basis at this time of the year.

I have been trying to avoid medications. Not that I view antidepressant medications as a weakness, but since we are technically still trying to conceive, I would prefer to be on as few of medications... 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

When my husband and I decided to adopt, after a seven year battle with infertility, we had a lot of emotional vulnerability, but an intense desire to still become parents. Adoption was offered up to us as a solution to the many feelings we were experiencing. Adoption was also promoted to us as providing an option, for a mother who might find herself unprepared to parent her child. Not a lot was ever said, about the conflicting feelings that could be experienced by the birthmother of any child we might adopt. We did not know that those feelings would change and morph, and... more

Earlier in the month, I shared with you that Charlie has asked me to go with him, his Mom, and his class on an upcoming field trip. That field trip is this Friday! I am excited (a little nervous too) about going. However, I am feeling a little bit of guilt. I think that it is probably normal guilt for Moms who have more than one child but this is the first time I have experienced it.

In order to be able to go on this field trip with Charlie, I have to interrupt Noah’s routine a little bit and as a special needs... more

It has been just a bit stressful in my home this week, so I am behind on pretty much everything including my blog. My daughter Cierra has had a very reactive couple of days after school, although (as usual) her teacher has reported that she was “just fine” when there. In the few blog posts I did accomplish this week, I was taken to task with some rude remarks from a reader ( no longer accessible because I took the liberty to hit the delete button). Then after not one, but two costly repairs needed for our van, we are basically broke till next week. So what has this got to do with... more

I was reading the open adoption forums, something I seldom have any time for, and I ran across an older thread that reawakened some difficult feelings that I too often experience as a mother involved with three open adoptions.

This mother was talking about the feelings of insecurity and perhaps jealousy she sometimes faces in her open adoption. Sometimes hearing her child’s birthparents talk about “their” daughter made her feel that disconnect that we... 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