Recent posts by Theresa and Cindy discussed how Mother’s Day is a hard day for their children which in turn can make it a hard day for themselves. I appreciated their posts as I had never thought about it from that point of view.

Mother’s Day is of course, a hard day for others in the adoption community as well. I don’t know that birthmothers experience the loss of their motherhood more on any other day as they do on Mother’s Day. It ranks right up their with your child’s birthday on the “painful holidays for birthmothers” list. Even birthmothers with other children still feel a sense of loss on Mother’s Day as they are “missing” one child to celebrate being a Mother to.

My heart especially goes out to birthmothers who have no other children. I’m not saying that Noah in some way replaces what I feel for Charlie and the sense of loss that I still feel daily from not parenting him, but at least I have Noah to focus on. I just think I might not mentally be where I am today if I didn’t have Noah to pour all of my heart and soul into.

My heart also goes out to the older birthmoms in closed adoptions when no one spoke of their status as a birthmother. I feel like they probably suffered in silence because no one or very few knew that they were hurting on Mother’s Day and if people did know, it wasn’t something you talked about.

But regardless of whether we (birthmothers) have one, twelve, or no other children, regardless of whether our placed child is twenty days old or twenty years old, and regardless of whether we tell the world we are a birthmother or not, and regardless of the type of adoption we have, you can be assured that we are thinking of our placed children on Mother’s Day and wishing that they were with us.