I think there are many lessons to be learned from the LA Times articles that I mentioned in my last post. We can learn from the mistakes that both the birth family and adoptive family in the article made. Each person that has read the article takes away a little something different but to me personally the most important lesson is that disappearing from our children’s life is very harmful and emotional to them.

For six years they had shared holidays and other times through out the years and Kendall had a relationship with not only her birthmother but with her half siblings as well. And then her birthmother disappeared without a phone call or letter explaining why or where she was going or anything and then reappeared into her life two years later, still with no explanation as to why she suddenly ceased communications with Kendall’s family.

The below statement from this article speaks to me.

Experts who advocate open adoption as well as those who oppose it say that adoptees grapple with a sense of loss. Virtually all adoptees understand that they have been given up by their birth parents and fear deep down that they might be given up again.

The above quote from this article is hard for me to read but it is something that I as a birth parent need to read and understand. Open adoption is not easy – it is hard on all involved and since there are few adult adoptees like Kendall who are sharing their stories it’s hard to know what the outcomes will ultimately be and what is right or wrong. We are all just kind of flubbing our way through navigating and learning as we go along.

It’s important that we as birthparents do realize and recognize that our children feel a sense of loss but we are able to share our love through open adoption. For one reason or another sometimes birthparents will drop of their children’s lives for periods of time. This makes them question themselves – was there something wrong with them? Were they not good enough?

I think it’s very important that once an open adoption has begun it needs to stay an open adoption with active birthparent involvement for the child’s sake. Of course as time goes on, birthparents may become more involved in other area of their lives and not have as much contact as they did in the beginning and that is understandable. There may be times that we as birthparents need a break or need some space and that is understandable as well, but the key is that communication remains open and that we remain in our children’s lives via our open adoption agreements so that open adoption is a benefit to them and not a hindrance.

Of course, we all knew this before reading the article, but the article just reiterated the fact.

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Related Posts:
An Interesting Article in the LA Times
Jenna's Take on the Article