`Alrighty then..
Im very late to this parade, but this thread was brought to my attention and after reading it I cant help but reply.
Let me start with two things.
1) I gave up my daughter when I was 19
2) I say it like it is, and if it is offensive I will just give one sweeping apology now, and a fair warning...... I will
not speak or sound like everyone else, and if I am TOO straight forward...well.. sorry. .. this is a delicate subject and what I say will most assuredly offend
SOMEONE but that is not my intention.
anyway..
First and foremost, the more I read of someone saying " why didnt my parent love me enough to stay" the more I want to rail at the screen.
What kids do NOT know is that parents HAVE to give a **** about their child to make that decision. we HAVE to love you to KNOW that we can not provide for you , and for you to think that the ONLY show of love is to drag you through a life that we as adults know is not best for you, then you need to learn what love is, and you will with time and more life experience.
It is NOT a choice of simple convenience to say " hey you...stranger.. yeah you.. take my baby please" . Even the crack head mother, who is so addicted to a drug that she may have killed someone to get it...has sat with that decision for nine months. We mothers do not make that decision over night, and we birth mothers do not walk away from yall with out a second thought. Please do not make our reasons for adoption so selfish. Our decisions are ALL about you and no one else and until you have kids, you really will not get that. And that is ok
I didnt get it.... hell, i still dont get it and I have another child now.
But you also have to realize, from a very technical point of view, as a birth mom I myself will NOT contact my daughter until she is legal age. Why? Because that is part of the agreement i made when I gave her up and I could face charges ( though hard to accomplish, quite a stretch but still a possibility) if i were to cross that boundry. Children are not able to make those kinds of decisions and neither are the birth moms until you kids reach 18. THEN , you are legal and an adult. Before then the law says you can not make such an emotional decision with out an adult and we have to respect that.
But above that... contacting you will only make your sense of self skewed. You have grown up with a family outline that did not include me, so who am i to think i can just walk in and change that? I know that is your fantasy world, but honey..that would be absolutely rude of her or any birth mother to do. You children are not toys we have handed over to someone to watch while we race off to have a wonderful free life. It doesnt work that way.
Please remember that. Do not look at birth mothers as these women who are only looking for a simple life free of responsibility as if we dont care about you. You children are parts of our bodies and just like anything else, you are an extension of us, only walking free. we remember you and on some level, we all love you.
Until you are crying so hard you can do nothing but throw up over that kind of a decision... you cant understand.
You are never forgotten, but you are
not our child. Can you understand that? Honestly? And can you really
REALLY understand how painful that realization is? ... no. I know you can not, but I wish you would take the time to look at things through another set of eyes.
Just because you were born to us, does not make you our mandatory devotion. I dont know if I can explain this easily .. so I just have to write it as it is, and it sounds abrasive...
Yes. Birth moms ARE your 'mom' by dictionary definition, that can not be denied. We made you, we gave birth to you...we are your mom. But we are not your
mother.
A mother is a person who makes
daily decisions based on what she knows of you to help you grow, change and learn. A mother is someone who is actively
IN your life and has devoted her life TO you. A mother is someone who cares enough about your well being to sacrifice her own to ensure your safety, happiness and security
on a regular basis. These are decisions, actions and lessons she does every day. Not just once in her life like a birth mother had to.... but EVERY day..
THAT is a mother...
giving birth to you does not make any woman a 'mother' beyond being the vessel in which you were carried. This does not remove her importance in your life nor does it make her any
less of a woman, that is just the truth. Any woman can give birth, that is how we are made.....but not all women can be a real mother just like not all men can be a real father. There can be a ton of reasons for that too.
To say she didnt love you enough to stay..and putting that rule out there as the ONLY way she could have loved you is denying yourself and romanticizing a decision you have no concept of.
Until you are solely responsible for your
entire life ...finances...clothing..roof..food...friends..bills..etc,
you will not understand the variables that fall into peoples lives. You will not GET that making a life for someone is not always and only about love and it is not always decisions that make people feel happy. It really isnt. It is about what you can and can not do when it comes to kids and making the decision to go the adoption route...plus many other things. So many that I could not begin to list them all. The combinations, the reasons and the possibilities are absolutely endless.
As a kid myself ....i was 19 and scared to death that I could not provide for my child. Not to mention I didnt WANT to be a parent . She was a condom baby. At 19 I thought condoms were fool proof. Bah! I was the fool
But I knew this, waaaayyyy down in my core, I knew I didnt want to be a parent, and I was aware enough of my self and my limits that I knew as a mother I was going to give her a really bad life.
I was afraid that I would teach her that she was unwanted because I was afraid she would pick up on my desire to be child less.
I knew....at 19.. i still had many years of
stupid under my belt to go and I was scared of how she would be dragged through that.
I was afraid that I could not get a real job to support her. I was homeless for a few years before I got pregnant, did not graduate high school and the only long term job I had at that point was slinging dope. I was an idiot child with enough of a brain to know what i
COULD NOT do and that was support a child.
If I didnt love her, I would not have made that decision. I could have randomly left her at a church, or taken a ton of drugs and not cared about her well being, I could have done a plethora of other things.. But even that statement is not fair , as I have had an abortion since then and again..it was not from a place of being incapable of or lacking love.. I just know what I can and can not do. Not many people can be that clear with themselves.
But you really need to remove YOU from this equation and I do not know that you know how to do that yet. Not that you are stupid, not at all.. it is just that you do not have the
experience yet in life to really GET that statement. I have no doubt that statment makes
sense to you, but you wont
GET it.
Adoption is not a choice due to lack of love or caring.
Adoption is not a choice made for an easy out
Adoption is not easy.
Adoption
IS all about you...
believe me.....YOU ... have it easy in this equation. Do not turn it on her and judge her as someone who has a lack of caring because she left. Not all people CAN parent the way a child deserves and it is not fair to force the idea on her and say she doesnt love you because she did that.
Really sit with that for a while and think about things from another perspective. The possibilities are endless .....and not all are about you in the way you are projecting.
I absolutely understand how you are feeling. My dad walked out on me as a child choosing to be a drunk instead of getting to know me. Even now, 35 years later he is so close to me in my life that he could very easily extend his hand and say Hi. But he doesnt and there are days I wonder what in the world I did, why he didnt love my mother, and why he does not feel an empty hole because I am not there. And then I realize that is making MYSELF important to SOMEONE else just so I can validate my feelings. And I do not have to do that. I can feel abandoned, angry, lonely..etc .. and not have to attempt to push self importance on someone else just to feel as though what I am going through is valid. His decision was about me.... in that he couldnt afford me and alcohol so he removed me from his pocketbook and in a really fucked up way, that was the BEST thing he could have done. I
I know he is still a drunk today, his children totaling I think 13. I have chatted with some of them. Some have been around him and know him, some still have him in their life and out of all of them, I am the only one he never did anything for. Ever.
I get that feeling of 'why me'. I get the feeling of " if you loved me enough...." and I also understand feeling like the outcast because of it. I mean, EVERY other child of his got t be in his life.. but not me. What? have I got a booger or something? What the hell is wrong with ME that HE doesnt care? Yeah honey...I get it. I hear you.
please...please...PLEASE.. dont read this as a slam on you, an insult or as someone who is standing over you shaking their finger in your face.
I would start bawling right now if it were not for my 'new' daughter who is just 10 feet from me. She is my boyfriends daughter and just as much mine as anyone else in my family. I adore her. And yet.. here I sit describing to someone else why I chose to not keep my first child. Talk about torment. I hope my daughter never thinks that I dont think about her, or judge myself harshly because of my decision. I think about her every day.
Your mother thinks about you. It is impossible not to, trust me on that.
but you do not know the reasons behind her decision so please dont project.
She may NOT want to see you. She may NOT want to meet you. She may be feeling like she was a failure for doing what she did. She may be embarrassed, she may be addicted to something too. She is a human with emotions equivalent to yours, dont strip that from her because you are upset that you do not have an answer.
please..please.. dont look at this the way you are.
I know it is hard...it is a concept that you can only understand but not really get because you have not lived it yet. So please try to understand and some how find some peace in that.
At 18, you can walk right up to her house and get the answers you want and need. That is just around the corner.