The Many Sides of Mother's Day

It's been twenty-four Mother's Days that I've been in reunion with my birthmother, Kate, and I still haven't found a way to celebrate it.

My own boys are 8 and 6, so, as a mother, I am in my prime years for Mother's Day enjoyment. They look forward to Mother's Day. They make me gifts at school, and enjoy making them. They will bring me coffee in bed, and then we'll pick an activity that we all enjoy -  a hike or drawing pictures or playing basketball. The best part is that I get their appreciation for the things I do for them the rest of the year.

As the adopted daughter, it's easy for me to celebrate Mother's Day with my adoptive mom. I send flowers and call her and we both seem good with that. I get to appreciate all she's done for me.

As the relinquished daughter, I am stymied. I don't really want to rejoice being relinquished. I don't imagine Kate associates joy with being a desperate and isolated pregnant teenager who is giving away her daughter. Appreciation the years of care and nurture and sacrifice - well, that doesn't work either. And I've come too far to fall back into the old, tired and inaccurate mantra of the birthmother's noble sacrifice to give me a better life.

I love Kate, and am happy to have her in my life. I wish I could acknowledge her in some beautiful way, but I can't seem to find a way to do it. Over dinner last month, while discussing the difficulty of finding the right word for who she is to me (I find birthmother as a term to be weak and missing the whole picture, Kate down-right hates it), Kate insisted that she is my mother. "It's just as a matter of fact," she explained, "I am your mother." She was trying to get across that biologically, it's just fact. I gave a small shrug, unconvinced. While I could see her reasoning, it still didn't ring completely accurate.

Kate  has only been in my life during my adulthood. While she became a mother when I was born, I became the daughter of my adoptive mom by the time Mother's Day came a month after my birth. Although I existed for Kate, though I was out of her life, she didn't really exist for me. Certainly not in my child's mind. To me, she was more imaginary than literal. Saying that I had a birthmother was akin to saying there is a Santa.

While I know Kate is my mother, I can't acknowledge her as my mother because I wasn't mothered by her. Mother is both a noun and a the verb. If the verb isn't part of the relationship, does the noun still stand? In one way but not the other. It doesn't fit.

Yet, there is still pressure to acknowledge the day in some way. Mostly, all I've been able to manage is a phone call to say, "Happy Mother's Day," while trying to keep the question-mark out of my voice.

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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The Men of Reunion

It seems that men often come as an afterthought in reunion conversations. One of the attendees at our talk at the American Adoption Congress asked if I have a relationship with my birthfather. I said that, yes, I do, and that we have a good relationship. But, I also explained that my relationship with him just isn't loaded like it is with my birthmother. I said I don't know why exactly, aside from the obvious part that relinquishment wasn't his decision (he didn't have a part in the decision). But even when it comes to the connection to the larger family, my connection with my birthfather feels less ... important isn't the right word ... less heavy, less significant, less immediate. That's it - less immediate. It feels one step removed.

I talked about this with my birthfather, John. when we spoke a couple weeks ago. He was saying that he finally got it and that it's because the father is NOT the mother. That the relationship with the mother is so fundamental, that it's just a different thing.

I get that, but it still doesn't quite satisfy my curiosity about the difference in relationship with not only my birthfather, but the men in reunion vs. women in reunion. In addition to my birthfather, I have a birth-step-father, Kate's husband, who I've known nearly as long as I've known Kate. There are my uncles, my grandfather (Kate's father is still living). Kate's husband's father just died this past week, and he was more a part of my life than Kate's own father. I feel that loss so much right now and it makes me want to have a stronger connection to the men in my life.

Maybe it's just that men are different than women. Maybe that's as simple as it is. Because they're different the relationship isn't as complicated, isn't as intense, isn't as loaded. And maybe that's okay. It doesn't mean they're not important, it's just that it's easier. And with adoption, I'm totally okay with anything being easier.

After all, my boys will soon be men, and my reunion is theirs as well. They are a part of all of these families in a way that will come much more naturally to them than it has for me. I don't think they'll question their connections with the families in the way that I have. It will be easier.

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts from the Conference

In 1997, eight years into our reunion, Kate and I had been through many dramatic ups and downs and deep challenges. There were times that we didn’t know what would happen, or if our relationship would survive. After years together working through it, we got to a solid footing with each other. Not perfect, but stable.

It was at that point, we decided to go together to the American Adoption Congress Conference in Vancouver WA, hoping to gain more insight into our experience.

Now, seventeen years later, we got to experience the American Adoption Congress Conference again. This time, even deeper and longer into our relationship. And, we were going to present, as well as listen.


The introduction to the conference took me right back into the swirls of amazement in being with people who have an instant understanding of what you are experiencing. It's the experience of being enveloped in honesty. Considering that what we are experiencing 
- questioning the good of adoption, discussing the wounds and issues it causes - are topics that aren't acceptable in our society, it felt like an act of amazing bravery.

It made me realize that in presenting, I would be speaking those unacceptable truths. Despite my time and experience in reunion, and no matter how much of a rebel I may feel that I am, once I was about to cross that line to talk in public about something that's passive-agressively forbidden by society, my heart started racing and my head began swimming. I couldn't eat and couldn't sit still.


That anxiety morphed as we began the talk itself. We went into the very large conference room with lines of chairs and I worried that no one would come to the presentation (Kate and I joked that we would have one person there, and we could sit on either side of them, reading our parts to her one by one). 


Once the room filled with people and we began our talk, I worried that people wouldn't related to it, or that we were droning on too long, or that this was all just ... wrong. 
Then we were done. And we had questions from the audience. And we had conversations. Suddenly, we were all there together, all going towards the same goals, holding similar values. I felt full, and right, and heard. 


We were able to speak the unspeakable. Nothing came crashing down, the world didn't stop. 


Of course, the world didn't change overnight to knowing the truth about adoption and reunion. But maybe our little talk will cause a ripple that will go out and on. I want people to talk about their experiences in adoption and reunion. Everyone's story is important. More than that, everyone's story is interesting. 

What was different at this conference was the variety and depth of the adoption and reunion experience. No longer was long-term reunion unusual - there were lots of people in our talk who were in reunion as long as we've been. And there was a talk on donor-conceived children who have such a similar circumstance to the adoptees with so much of the same issues. They were all there because they want the openness and honesty about the experience. 


I'm sure I'll still feel the pressure that we shouldn't speak out, but I'll just get used to doing it anyway.  :)

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

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Birthmother's Blog

For those of you who might be interested, my birthmother, Kate, is also doing a blog - http://mothertone.wordpress.com/. Keeping in the same spirit as the memoir, we've decided to do the same with the blogs, and not them influence each other's writing until all is said and done. I hope at some point we can converge and comment back and forth on each other's writing, and that will be part of the fun - or, maybe not fun, but interesting and thought-provoking anyway.

In the meantime, it's just too easy to be influenced by the other's memories so we wanted to steer clear of that. What we will probably do is agree on "prompts" or topics that we find interesting and both comment on it from our individual sides, but not read each others' postings - for now anyway!

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!