Other People's Blogs or Things I Wish I Had Known...

I don't know why I allow myself to read blogs by PAP's.  Or blogs by pregnant mothers choosing adoption and blogging about it while still pregnant.  It drives me crazy, makes me want to jump thru the computer and shake them until they listen and truly try to understand living life with adoption loss.  For both the mother and the infant.

There are so many things I wish these people would really 

think about, and understand,when considering adoption.  

Things I wish I knew when I was making the choice for adoption.  

Thankfully, with the help of some wonderful bloggers, 
I have been able to begin to find my voice, to tell
others the things I wish I had known...

Sadly, for the ones who are pregnant and considering adoption, it is impossible to truly know what it is like to live without your child until you are doing it.  And then it is too late.

Nobody is entitled to be a parent.  Especially when the cost for them becoming a parent is another parent losing a child.  It is so hard for me to understand how people do not see the pain behind adoption.  Even when adoption truly is necessary ~ it starts with loss and grief.  How can anything that starts out by tearing an infant away from his/her family be considered a good thing? 

The "Dear Birthmother" letters.  They are nothing but coercion, from the salutation on. 

The term "birthmother" should be banned from the English language.  Especially when it is used to describe someone who has not even given birth yet.  The people that use this term don't even allow the girl/woman to be a mother before the child is born, when she is the ONLY mother that baby has.  But the adoption industry knows how successful it is when the expectant mother takes this name onto herself.

When a mother chooses to give her child up for adoption, she does not suddenly stop being a mother.  She will forever and always be a mom, from the moment of conception on.  She will simply be a mother living without her child.  Any problems she had before becoming a mother, will now be harder to deal with as she will also be learning how to live without her child ~ on top of the previous problems.  She will not have a "fresh, new life", a second chance to get things right.  Her second chance just became a lot harder, as she will also be dealing with the biggest loss she will ever endure.

The pain does not get easier over time.  In most cases it gets worse as the mother gets older.  She comes to see that many of the reasons she used to choose adoption were only temporary ~ but adoption is permanent.

Some of the other things I wish I had known when choosing adoption:

• That I would spend years, decades believing that I was not good enough.  Because I was not good enough to raise my own child.
• That trying to prove myself worthy by putting everyone else's needs before my own wouldn't work.  It only made things worse, it reinforced my belief that I wasn't good enough ~ that I didn't deserve better. 
• That doing as I was told and keeping the birth and adoption of my son a secret, I was only burying myself in shame.  Doing so made me carry the burden of grief and fear alone, making it impossible to now speak of the grief and fear, causing me to lose my voice. 
• That choosing adoption effected not only the son I gave up, but the children I went on to have after him.  They were all denied being raised with their sibling(s).
• That adoption would leave a hole in my soul that even reunion cannot fill.  Because we will never get the lost years back.
• That adoption would close my heart and leave me unable to fully love and be loved.   Because I lost a part of my heart when I lost my son.
• That I would lose the ability to cry, the ability to face the depth of the grief and loss in my heart & soul.  Because I am afraid of falling into that deep pit of grief and being unable to find my way out.   
• That by choosing adoption, I was not only losing my son, but also my grandchildren, and a beautiful daughter-in-law.  
• That even in reunion, the pain continues.

Some final words, from another mother who is Surviving Adoption Loss:

If you are pregnant
and considering adoption
my only word of advice is ... don't.

Listen to the screaming of your heart. Stop smothering it's cries with a pillow. The birth of your child WILL change you whether you parent or not. Embrace that change, don't turn in into a trauma.

Adoption is not "the answer." No, it is only piling on another problem and your life will become encased in thinly veiled layers of bondage. Unless you're violent toward children - your child deserves for you to take him/her home with you, so you can continue nurturing the bond that the two of you started 9 months earlier.

He/She already loves you. Please don't break his/her heart -
Don't damage yours.