Telling

One of the things I used to worry about right after I placed Roo was how I was going to tell people I was a birth mom. A lot of people knew already, but in my head I had a lifetime of awkward exchanges ahead of me, and I dreaded it. I felt good about the choice I’d made to place, but I didn’t trust that the rest of the world would understand. The fact that I was still extremely miserable compounded my worry – how would I ever convince people that I’d made the right choice when I was so unhappy?

I became preemptively defensive, and any time I was asked a question to which my birth motherhood was the answer, I warred with panic and lost. I became adept at explaining away my weight gain, my unemployment, my necklace. I had an arsenal of clever responses that were so well-rehearsed, I wondered if I would ever need to tell the truth.

I knew that in my personal life, I would have to be honest with certain people but I felt that such honesty would be a matter of much thought and prayer and likely panic. My thought was that adoption was such a special thing to me and not everyone deserved to know about it, about Roo. This didn’t stop me from doing presentations at high schools with my adoption agency, but classes full of teenage strangers didn’t bother me. I’d never seen them before and I’d never seen them again. There was no pressure. I had nothing to lose.

I felt that more was at stake with friends and acquaintances and co-workers. I thought more than once that if I said the wrong thing, or the right thing the wrong way, I could ruin a relationship. The first adoption conference I went to offered a class called “Who, When, and How to Tell Your Adoption Story.” I was desperate for this class, which was taught by two birth moms who had the experience and perspective I lacked.

The women who presented had very different ideas about telling their stories. One of them was very open about it. She said she tended to tell men she was a birth mom on the first date. I knew that would never be me. The other birth mom was more private, and she validated my idea that sharing my story was a matter deserving much consideration. Although I liked and respected both women, I connected more with the latter, and I decided to follow her example.

When I did occasionally feel that I needed to share my story with someone, I spoke carefully, mentally filtering out details that felt too personal or too irrelevant. I was careful not to appear too excited, because I didn’t want to give the impression that I didn’t love Roo, that placement hadn’t been hard, that I didn’t miss her. The people I told seemed hesitant to ask questions even when I told them I didn’t mind. Adoption made them uncomfortable and very often it was never brought up again.

I’m a little embarrassed at how long it took me to realize that these people were taking their cues from me. I was awkward about adoption, and it made them feel awkward. I had to ask myself what I thought was going to happen if I were ever completely honest with someone about adoption. I was afraid that they would think less of me. I knew that was stupid. Rationally I couldn’t think why anyone would think less of me for being a birth mom. And I decided that if someone would think less of me for having placed, I didn’t need them in my life anyway. Keeping quiet felt like an act motivated by shame, and I was certainly not ashamed of my choice. Placing Roo is the best thing I’ve ever done. I realized I needed to start acting like it.

The next time a question came up, I didn’t dodge it. I told the truth – that I had a baby girl, that I placed her for adoption, that it was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done, that it was worth it, that I love her. And I waited.

“That is so cool!” was the response. I showed them Roo’s picture on my phone, and that was it.

I know that I was lucky – the person I talked to could have reacted very differently. One or two people have, and I'm sure one or two more will in the future. But I decided then that I liked the feeling of being straight with someone about adoption. Once I realized that, it became much easier to talk. Or if not easier, then maybe a little less scary. I don't think I necessarily owe anyone my story. But neither do I feel like I'm doing anyone any favors by keeping quiet. I'm certainly not doing myself or Roo any favors.

The fact is that Roo is and always will be an important part of my life. It only makes sense that the people who get to know me know about her too. So much of who I am is because of Roo. So many things remind me of her. If I keep her a secret, I have to filter every word I say, and if there's one thing I am terrible at, it's filtering what I say (apologies to my mother, who tried her best to teach me better).

Most people who know me know that I’m a birth mom, and they think it’s cool. It like to believe that it doesn't define me in their minds; it’s just one of those things that are true of me like my height or my eye color or the fact that I talk really fast. (I hear things like, "I heard about adoption the other day, and I thought of you" less often than I hear, "I corrected someone's grammar the other day and thought, 'this must be what it feels like to be Jill.'")

So far, every date I have been on has been with a man who knew about Roo before he asked me out. Not that I have been on a lot of dates, but still. I have saved myself a lot of worry by being open about being a birth mom. The men who have taken me on dates knew what they were getting into when they asked me. I didn't have to worry about slipping up in conversation, or about an impending awkward discussion of my past. Everything important is already out there.


I have become that birth mother that was never going to be me. I am the woman who tells new friends, acquaintances, and random strangers that she placed a child for adoption, and I love it. I love being that woman! I want people to know about Roo. I want them to know that adoption can be an amazing thing. I want them to know that even if they know of fifty other adoptions gone wrong, or five hundred or five thousand, adoption can still be an amazing thing.

Roo's adoption is an amazing thing. And I'm telling everyone.

Openness and Contracts

My dad was almost never sick, but when he was in his late twenties, he was sidelined by a bout of pneumonia. If I had been allowed to choose what I have in common with my father, pneumonia would not have been on my list.

A few weeks ago I thought I had the flu, which depressed me because I have never had the flu, and I didn't want to break my 28-year streak. The urgent care doctor told me that he didn't think it was the flu, because his office gets a memo from Maricopa County any time there's an outbreak of something like that. I wanted to tell him that I get those memos, too, because I actually work for Maricopa County, but I was having trouble breathing. The doctor suggested a chest x-ray (I can cross that off my bucket list), and forty minutes later (I apparently wasn't suffering enough for them to hurry) I had something new in common with my dad. There was a colony of intrepid little pneumoniae in my left lung. But I am much better now, and on the bright side, I managed to lose 4% of my body weight in a week. Achievement unlocked! I bought new jeans to celebrate.

And that concludes The Happiest Sad's version of What I Did for My Summer Vacation (the abridged version, anyway. The full version includes a lot of Doctor Who). Back to business. And by "business," I mean, "expressing an opinion that is going to make me a handful of angry enemies." It's been a while since I've done that, hasn't it? I think it's time.

A few days ago, the Salt Lake Tribune ran an article about open adoption. Specifically, the article addressed the idea of a legally enforceable openness contract between the birth parents and the adoptive parents. It's an interesting read, although in typical internet fashion, most of the comments will make you weep for humanity.

Many of the people I colloquially refer to as my "adoption peeps" have taken to blogs and Facebook to opine. They're making a lot of good points. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't have my own little opinion about things. So here's what I think about this issue as it pertains to me.*

The argument on the birth mom side makes sense: an openness contract gives a birth mom peace of mind. It also gives adoptive couples a push to be completely honest about how much openness they're comfortable with in an adoption, which can save a birth mom from the heartbreak of an "open" adoption that suddenly closes. Such an agreement would be periodically re-evaluated to suit the changing needs of all sides of the adoption triad.

I understand that, I really do. And I don't have a problem with an enforceable openness contract if both the birth parents and the adoptive parents want it. But I think such an agreement should be optional, not mandatory, and I would not have taken that option had it been presented to me.

I want to make it abundantly clear that this is just my opinion about my individual situation. There are likely countless adoptions where an openness contract would have been beneficial. Mine just isn't one of them, and I want to explain why. 

I realize I'm not the best person to talk about the problems that can arise in an open adoption, because although my relationship with P and M has been imperfect, we've been able to work through the problems that have come come up. I am acutely aware that the openness I've got is what many would consider a best-case scenario. Our level of openness has changed from time to time, but there has always been communication and love and respect. I know that there are plenty of birth moms who placed with couples that later reneged on the openness they agreed to at placement. I've never felt their particular pain, and I am grateful that I've never had to. I've never been there. I can see where a contract would have benefited them. But I don't think it would have benefited me.

In my case, an enforceable openness contract would have made me suspicious of any contact I got from P and M. The openness I have now means the whole world to me, because it comes from love rather than legal obligation. If there were a contract, I would always wonder - did I get a picture and an update because P and M wanted me to have it, or because they felt like they had to give it to me? At the time that I placed, part of me - the part of me that never got over being bullied in grade school - was always slightly suspicious of people who regarded me with any affection. I think that if my openness were a matter of legality, I would feel like a burden to P and M. I would never quite have trusted that they loved me, or that they really wanted an open adoption. I would be grateful for contractual openness, but I would worry that it wasn't freely given.

Relationships are about people, not paper. I would have been uncomfortable with a piece of paper dictating the terms of one of the most important relationships in my life. Part of being an adult is learning to work through problems rather than hiding behind a legal document. (I refer to adoptive couples as well as birth moms. I know of at least as many immature adoptive couples as I do immature birth moms.)

But (I can hear you saying) what about couples who promise openness and then disappear, leaving a birth mom heartbroken? It happens. Shouldn't there be some kind of legal safeguard for the sake of the birth mom?

I'm going to say no, and despise me if you will (I can take it). Because adoption isn't about the birth mom. The choice I made to place Roo for adoption was the first decision I ever made in my life that had absolutely nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with her. I placed with the hope of an open adoption, but I also placed knowing that openness wasn't guaranteed and that it might not be forever. I had to be okay with that.

I reminded myself of this dozens of times in the two weeks between meeting P and M and placing Roo, and I am glad I did. I had to know that I was making the right choice. If I had faltered at the thought of a closed adoption, I think I'd always wonder if I really, truly made the right choice for Roo. But each time I thought, they could close the adoption at any time, my next thought was and if they do I will learn to live with it, because this is the right choice for Roo.

My conviction had to be about what Roo was going to get out of adoption, not about what I would get from it. My choice for her wasn't open adoption. It was simply adoption. Openness was a happy by-product, not the end goal.

The thing is, I trust P and M to make choices for Roo that are in her best interest. If I didn't trust them to do that, I wouldn't have trusted them enough to place her with them. I will admit that in the beginning, openness was very much about me and my needs. I feel kind of bad about that in retrospect. The most important person in Roo's adoption is Roo. Every decision about openness that is made should be made in her best interest.

The Tribune article about openness contracts says:

"In Utah, courts have ruled that adoptive parents can [close an adoption] because after the adoption is finalized, the adoptive parents are the sole and absolute judges of what’s in the best interest of the adoptee."

Adoptive parents are real parents. I don't use modifiers when I talk about P and M. They're simply her mom and dad. Roo's welfare is completely up to them. They are the sole and absolute judges of what's best for her, and that's how it should be. They know her a lot better than I do. If there ever came a time when openness wasn't good for Roo, I would expect them to close the adoption, because Roo comes first. I'm sure I'd be wrecked for a while if they closed things, but I trust them completely, and I trust that if they closed things, it would be because it was best for Roo, and that they would communicate that to me with love and respect. I would do my best to weather that storm. I've been through worse.

But that's just me with my happy little open adoption. I reckon if Roo's adoption had closed abruptly and without reason, I'd be singing a different tune. (But, trust me, you don't want to hear me sing any kind of tune.) I think an openness contract should absolutely be offered as an option. But I wouldn't have wanted one, and I wouldn't take one now.

I do think the idea of a legally enforceable openness contract has merit. But I also don't think it's for everyone. Adoption isn't for everyone. It's a choice that some people make. I think that openness should also be a choice. 

I recognize that I'm probably oversimplifying a lot. I'm in a really good place with adoption right now precisely because of the openness I've had. It's easy enough for me to say that I'd have gotten to this point even with a closed adoption, but I don't know for sure.

So let me say this about that: I think that couples who want to adopt should think long and hard about what they're really willing to do as far as openness, and they need to make this decision before a child is placed with them. I think that a verbal agreement should be honored, because that's part of being a compassionate human being. If a couple agrees to a certain level of openness and they realize after placement that it's not working for them, they should have the decency and maturity to discuss it with the birth mom like grown-ups instead of cutting her off without a word.

If a couple needs a legally enforceable agreement to tell them to be decent and kind and respectful to the woman who gave birth to their child and then broke her own heart to give that child the best life possible, open adoption or no, then they have no business adopting.




*Me, not you. You (whoever you are) have a different adoption situation than I do, so your opinion will vary and rightly so. I'm not going to presume how to tell you to think or feel about this. I won't judge you for whatever opinion you have about this and I ask that you extend me the same courtesy.

Three

Today is an important day.

It's marked on every calendar I have, and I've been thinking about it for months now, trying to figure out what I want to do to celebrate, trying to anticipate how I might feel. It's been a source of some anxiety and wonder and excitement.

Three years ago, I fell in love.

I was in love before. For nine months, actually. I had thought my heart couldn't possibly grow any more. I was nervous. I wasn't sure what it was that I was supposed to be thinking or feeling, and I had no idea how much longer my c-section might take. It seemed to be taking a long time.

Then there was an intake of breath from my doctor, and everything was quiet for a moment, and I heard a nurse say, "Oh, she's beautiful!"

I waited to feel something different. I didn't feel anything. Just tired. And then ... and then I turned my head to the left and there she was, this tiny bundle of new baby, and I knew I'd loved her before but that love had been nothing compared to what I felt that moment, meeting my baby girl.

I became a different person entirely.




* * *

Roo is three today! I am so proud of her. She is the cleverest, sweetest, happiest, cutest three-year-old I know. She is my favorite thing ever.  I am so blessed to be her birth mom!

Happiest of happy birthdays, Roo! I love you.

Change of Plans

It's Father's Day. If I were more thoughtful and a better planner I'd have something deep and meaningful to say about the importance of fathers; or something about birth fathers, and H in particular; or something about how my big brother has been a good substitute dad since my own father died.

But in thinking about Father's Day I've found my mind consumed with thoughts of my dad, who died almost four years ago. I've been missing him a lot lately, more than usual. In honor of him, the best dad in the world, I want to share something I wrote last year for a college class. I also used it as a speech in Toastmasters. Now I'm blogging it; I think my dad would be proud that I've found so many uses for this essay.

I typically write about pretty personal things, but this feels somehow more personal than usual, so please restrain any urges to critique my writing and know that it did earn me an A. This is a little long, but I think it's worth soldiering through.

When I was little, I decided that I wanted to grow up to become an astronaut. My parents were supportive, as all parents of six-year-olds are. My mother took me to the library for books on the stars and planets, and my father took me with a telescope outside on clear nights to help me find Mars. The city offered a summer kids’ program about space, and I attended with great enthusiasm, certain that the knowledge I gleaned that June and July would help me on my way to a successful career as an astronaut.

Then I discovered opera. I adored opera. I decided that my new aim in life was to headline at La Scala. I had a delicious mental image of myself wearing a horned helmet and ornate breastplate, hitting notes high enough to shatter glass. But my newfound enthusiasm came crashing down much like the chandeliers in my opera fantasy. I couldn’t be an opera singer if I was an astronaut. I turned to my parents for guidance. My mother told me, as she so often did, that I could do anything I set my mind to, and that there was no reason I couldn’t sing opera in space. My father was a bit more pragmatic.

“Well,” he said, “you might find it hard to do both. But the nice thing is that you don’t have to decide right now what you’re going to be when you’re older. You’re allowed to change your mind as many times as you want.”

“Did you ever change your mind?” I asked.

He replied that he had. It wasn’t until I was much older that I came to understand just how much his mind had changed over the years.

My father was the fifth child of a Marine Master Sergeant and a homemaker. The homemaker, my mild-mannered grandmother, has always been the kind to take life in stride and brush off awkwardness or insult with a few murmured words. Master Sergeant Barber was a horse of a different color. I’ve heard his behavior explained away with any number of diagnoses. One relative suspects Grandpa had bi-polar disorder. Another of them chalks it up to a dangerously short fuse, a gift from his Scots-Irish forefathers, ostensible pugilists. Yet another says it was his gypsy blood. But whatever the reason, every few years, my grandfather would lose his temper at work, quit his job, and move his family to a new city to start over.

This had no small impact on my dad and his brothers and sisters. While they became accustomed to frequent uprooting, they never took to it the way Grandpa did. My dad was still in Little League when he made a vow to himself that he would never, ever allow himself to turn out like his father. At this point the Barber children numbered six. The colloquialism these days is “menopause baby” but in 1965 my uncle David was simply called a surprise. My dad, who was nine, had absolutely no use for a baby brother.

“What was I supposed to do with him?” Dad said once. “I couldn’t throw a baseball to him and he couldn’t fire a pellet gun. He was useless.” Dad had no previous exposure to babies, and so his experience with David soured him on the prospect of parenthood. He decided then and there he would never have children. “I always hated kids,” he would frequently say of his younger self.

Kids were off the list, but marriage was still a possibility until his sister wed, also in 1965. Her marriage was hasty, precipitated by a surprise pregnancy (those seem to run in the family). My aunt Patty was still in college at the time, as was her new husband, and their first apartment together was, my father reported, “a hole.” The newlyweds simply couldn’t afford creature comforts. Dad added to his list of personal vows: he would never, ever be a poor, married college student.

He would, however, attend college. Bad vision killed his dreams of becoming a fighter pilot, so the military was out. In the fall of 1974 he packed up his baby blue Superbeetle and moved to Flagstaff to study computer science at Northern Arizona University. He drove home on the weekends to visit his girlfriend, but his plans for the future were firmly set in his mind – a college degree, a successful career in the burgeoning computer industry, and a solitary life of academic pursuits. But the longer he dated his girlfriend, the harder it got to leave her on Sunday nights.

“One night I was driving home,” he recalled more than once, “and I realized that it physically hurt to be away from her. I decided I had to marry her.” He dropped out of college after three semesters – he was not going to be a poor married college student - and got a job working for Salt River Project. My parents married in October of 1976. My oldest brother was born the following July, and my dad must have discovered that babies aren’t so bad after all, because I am the youngest of four.

I couldn’t have asked for a better father. Sometimes he worked long hours, and he frequently threatened to throw away the toys I left on the floor, but I never doubted the depth of his love for me and my siblings. He wasn’t perfect, of course. He worked hard and he expected the same of his children, even the one who is by nature a lazy girl (that would be me). He yelled at my brothers for fighting on a regular basis. I don’t remember the words he shouted, but I do remember overhearing a subsequent conversation between my parents. My father was frustrated.

“I never wanted to be like my dad – never. And dang it, I’m just like him. Just like him!” my dad told my mother. The older I got, the more I came to realize that precious little of my father’s life had turned out according to plan. Every few years he would talk of taking a few college courses so he could finish his degree, but the money was never there, or if it was, he lacked time. SRP paid the bills but we were never wealthy. My dad did keep one promise well. He moved his family exactly twice, and both times were before my oldest brother was in school. Mine was a very stable upbringing.

I think that’s why my father’s brain cancer diagnosis was such a shock. It was unstable. It didn’t fit in anyone’s plans. “Man plans, God laughs,” my father quoted when I complained. Still, it seemed terribly unfair. Why did this have to happen to my daddy?

His attitude was the exact opposite. “Why not me?” he said more than once. “I’m not so special that I can’t get cancer.” He didn’t seem to realize that to me, he was special. He was my daddy. But I suppose he was right. He wasn’t invincible. Still, he pulled through the two surgeries that followed better than his doctors had hoped. He seemed to respond well to radiation, and the chemotherapy pills he took each month kept the cancer at bay.

We planned a family trip to Disneyland for the following year. My father knew his prognosis, but he was determined to beat the odds. He also knew that he needed to keep working until he turned 55 in order for my mother to get the best benefits when he died. He went back to work as soon as he was able, and for a little while it felt like business as usual. The only sign that anything had happened to my dad was a pencil-thin white scar that ran along his hairline, vertically bisecting his left temple.

The day before his 52nd birthday, my father attempted to write a grocery list and failed, suddenly unable to properly write his letters. We took him to the hospital. The news was bad. A snip of tumor that had, in June, been the size of a shelled peanut, was now the size of a lime. My father was going to die. Soon.

“Well,” my father said with equal parts Zen and Midwestern stoicism, “we knew this was coming, and here it is. I’m going to die.” There was a catch in his voice as he said the word “die” and I wondered if it really hit him just then as he said the words out loud.

I was stunned and devastated. I’m sure I sputtered something about out forthcoming trip, about retirement, about grandchildren. I don’t remember my words from that day, just the feeling that the laws of physics had failed me, and that a black hole had managed to open up in that curtained-off half-room, sucking away light and joy and air. But I must have listed off a number of things that my father would never get to do, because of what he said to me next.

“It’s okay,” he said. It seemed strange for him to be consoling me. After all, I wasn’t the one with a terminal cancer diagnosis. But there was a strange sort of peace about him. Several times over the next few days he would say that he didn’t much care about his own mortality but he felt awful for those of us he was going to leave behind. At that moment, he told me it was okay.

“You know, it’s not like I’ve got a list of dreams that will go unfulfilled. Nothing’s really left on my bucket list. I married a great woman, I have four children and seven grandkids and they're all on the right track. I know where I’m going when I leave this earth. I’m not going to be able to re-trace the path of Lewis and Clark, but I don’t think your mother was looking forward to that one, anyway.”

It wasn’t that he wanted to die, he explained, but he didn’t have a say in the matter, and he felt like he was as ready as a person could ever be. He’d lived all the life he’d hoped for. To him, death was just another adventure, another change of plans in a life full of them. He died a month later with one last shuddering breath that left me gasping for my own.

In the time that has passed since then, I have thought plenty about my father’s words in the hospital that day. It seemed wholly implausible that he could die without a single regret, without any unaccomplished goals. How could that be possible for a man who had once had so many ambitions? It was illogical.

But the more I think about it, the more grateful I am for that last meaningful lesson my father taught me. It’s not our grandest accomplishments that define who we are, or that even bring us the greatest sense of achievement. It’s the things that seem little that mean the most. My father was the smartest man I knew. I think he could have cured cancer if he’d put his mind to it. Instead, he died of it. But he was content with the life he led, because he had a family he loved, who loved him, and of whom he was immensely proud. It was not the life he’d planned, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t just as fulfilling. He would have made a fine fighter pilot or computer engineer. But he left a much greater legacy by being a good husband and father.

The life I’m living at present is the complete opposite of what I planned so carefully in my younger years. Sometimes I get frustrated by that. So I try to remember what I learned from my father all those years ago. It’s never too late to change your plans, and sometimes the new plans we make – the unexpected changes - can lead to much greater things than we can ever imagine.

Always

A few days ago, I missed Roo.

This is nothing new. I miss her quite a bit, not in a sad way, just in the sense that I love and adore her and I don't see her every single day. I don't need to see her every single day, mind you, and I certainly wouldn't expect to. But when you love someone, and you're not around them, you miss them. It's not a sad or angst-filled thing. It's just ... a thing. I miss her, and I smile at the thought of her because I love her so much and she is so precious and amazing.

Anyway. I happened to mention this - that I missed Roo - to a friend, and she said, "It's always going to hurt, isn't it?"

I think I responded in the affirmative, because it seemed like the thing to do. But I've been thinking about her question since then, and the more I think about it, the more I think that I gave the wrong answer. It's not always going to hurt, and I know this because it doesn't hurt.

I should say, it doesn't hurt in the ways that my friend and that others probably expect. But even then, I don't think that hurt will always be there.

I've been trying to figure out how to explain this for a few days, because I feel compelled to talk to my friend and tell her that she was wrong about hurting. This is how I've worked it out in my head.

I still cry when I tell Roo's and my adoption story. Not a lot, and maybe not every single time, but I do cry. Usually the tears start when I talk about the day I met P and M, when Roo's daddy held her for the first time. These are happy tears. I have tried several times to blog about that day and that moment in particular but I stop each time because it was such a sacred moment and I don't want to cheapen it by reducing it to mere words on a blog.

When I tell that part of the story, I cry. And because I've got some kind of short in my brain, once I start crying, I find it very difficult to stop. So when I talk about placement, the tears are already there. I'm sure those who listen think I'm crying because placement hurt and I'm still upset. Placement did hurt, but it doesn't hurt anymore. Even remembering it doesn't hurt so much. It feels like something that someone else lived through, I think because I have changed so much since that day. I know rationally that it hurt, but whether it's mental health or a defense mechanism, I have a hard time feeling sad when I look back on that day.

It doesn't hurt. The part of my brain that remembers almost can't believe that, because I hurt so deeply and for so long. But that pain is gone.  Roo is a happy thought. I can't think of her and feel sad. Those two ideas - Roo and sadness - cannot coexist in my mind. It's like they each require the complete attention of some cortex or other, and as soon as Roo comes to mind, sadness is forced out. There's never any pain.

Not when it comes to the real Roo, anyway. I've mentioned before that there are different Roos. There's Roo, who will be three - three! - this summer, and who is clever (genius, really) and sweet and busy and whose lion impression sounds more a like a dinosaur (but it is still the cutest roar I have ever heard). This Roo is my happy thought, my little friend, and my favorite person in the world.

The other Roo, the phantom Roo, is the Roo who was my newborn baby. This Roo ceased to exist when I signed placement papers. She's the one I grieved, and quite often when I mention "my baby" this is the Roo I'm talking about. I do miss the real Roo, but sometimes my arms just ache to hold newborn Roo again and be her mommy - to be a mommy, period.

This is where any pain factors in. It's not that I'm not Roo's mother, because she certainly doesn't feel like mine and I wouldn't change that. It's that I'm not anyone's mother, and I'm not getting any younger or any closer to motherhood. I like to think I've gotten through my grief but the fact is that while the heavy adoption grief is gone, I'm still grieving the life I thought I was going to live and the woman I thought I was going to be.

It's getting better. I am finally starting to be okay with who I am and where I am and the life I'm building on my own. But the one thing I am completely okay with - better than okay with, in fact - is the choice I made to place Roo with her parents. It's the best thing I have ever done. It always will be.

Birth Mother's Day

I didn't know this until a few years ago, but the day before Mother's Day is Birth Mother's Day. I'm guessing Hallmark is unaware of the potential marketing implications inherent in such a holiday, because I have never seen a Birth Mother's Day card in a store display.

I think I've probably blogged before about Birth Mother's Day. The risk in having a blog with such a narrow focus is that I'm bound to repeat myself every so often. So please forgive me if this post feels redundant. But I keep hearing more and more about Birth Mother's Day, and I feel the need to opine.

I don't celebrate Birth Mother's Day.

It's not because of any feelings of sadness or bitterness or unresolved issues surrounding placement. It's not because the more time that passes, the less connected I feel to the adoption world. It's not because of any kind of modesty on my part.

I don't celebrate Birth Mother's Day because I don't need to. You know what holiday I do celebrate? Mother's Day.

I am not a mother in the traditional sense of the word. I am not parenting a child. No one calls me "mom" and when people ask me if I have any children, I respond with a carefully crafted "None of my own."

But my current lack of maternity doesn't change a few basic facts, and those facts are all reason enough in my mind to celebrate Mother's Day. Fact 1: I conceived* and carried and delivered a baby. I celebrated my first Mother's Day three years ago a few months before Roo was born, because the tiny feet digging into my ribcage (and sometimes my kidneys) meant I was already a mom. I was, at that time, only a mother in the biological sense of the word, but that was enough for me.

Every birth mother was a mother plain and simple before she signed paperwork.

Fact 2: For the nine weeks between Roo's birth and the day I placed her, I was her mother. I'm not her mother anymore, but that doesn't take away the weeks in which I was. I celebrate Mother's Day in part because of those precious months I spent loving and caring for the baby that was mine. I'm not a mother, but I was a mother. I always will have been a mother. Nothing can erase that.

Fact 3: I am not Roo's mama, but I still have a mother's love for her, and I always will. I think anyone with a mother's love for a child should celebrate Mother's Day.

I appreciate the thought of Birth Mother's Day. But I don't need it. I don't need a separate holiday that indirectly suggests I'm not celebrating Mother's Day because I chose adoption. The choice I made to place Roo was made as her mother. I can't separate my love for Roo like that. I celebrate Mother's Day as a former mother, as a birth mother, and as a woman with a mother's love in her heart.

I will not be offended in the least if you wish me a happy Birth Mother's Day. I'll be happy you thought of me, because even though I celebrate Mother's Day I know most people won't think of me on that day. I love hearing from adoption friends on Birth Mother's Day. Roo's parents have been so good to let me know they're thinking of me on past Birth Mother's Days (they are awesome like that) and it means the world to me. But please know that my heart doesn't need a different day.

I'll be celebrating on Sunday.



*For the record, I think just the first of those qualifies for motherhood. A miscarriage or stillbirth doesn't take away the hope and excitement and love that a woman felt for the child she carried. She's still a mother in my book.