Adoption Stories
If ever you are feeling discouraged about the world and the news of the world you hear on TV, I recommend that you watch Adoption Stories on the Discovery Channel.
These are true stories of people who know how to love, lay their hearts right out there, and open their homes to beautiful children who need their love and a family to call their own.
If you just looked at pictures of the people who want to adopt, at first you might think they’re just ordinary, or maybe not much at all, but then you can't help but see that they are extraordinary. These are not people who want to adopt only perfect babies. They want to adopt older children, ill children, troubled children from anywhere in the world. Love really does remove boundaries.
When I see the lengths these men and women go to receive the blessing of a child, how they give the children limitless love, my heart expands and, at those moments, I know all is right with the world. I see that the adoptive parents want only to serve God through the children they make their own.
These parents make me proud to be a human being, and I know then, without reservation, that the world is a wonderful place.
Comments
I cry as I read this. Now I tell a family secret--one that few outside my immediate family know. I gave a child up for adoption when I was 19 years old. This was the hardest decision I ever had to make. Truth be known, if abortion had been legal, I likely would have aborted my daughter.
With the help of an excellent counselor, I explored all my options (including traveling to New York City for an abortion--the one place it was legal). However, by that time, I was near the end of the first trimester.
My family was against the decision to adopt. If I had been younger (15 or 16), I likely would have been sent away for a time and a quiet adoption arranged. But since I was 19, a legal adult and on my own, the attitude was more "how could you even consider giving up your own flesh and blood?"
My parents offered to raise her, a great-aunt and uncle went to a judge to see if they could adopt her without my knowing. Everyone else pressured me to keep her.
There was a lot of soul-searching and thinking about about all the ramifications for her life and mine and how this would affect ALL involved. I was in and out of college (mostly out) and basically trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.
I was not ready to be a parent--I knew I wasn't mature enough to be a good mother. I couldn't face burdening my parents, who still had my younger brother and sister at home and had just had a business fail. Most importantly, I did not want my child to face all the trauma and drama that being the product of a single mother would bring.
My decision was made easier knowing that there were SO MANY couples out there desperately wanting to be loving parents. I wanted my child raised in a two parent home and having all the advantages of a loving, stable home life. NOT a single mother who didn't know which end was up half the time or who dumped her child on her parents.
So despite all the resistance--right up to the nurse who wheeled me to see my baby in the nursery (she let me know in no uncertain terms how awful she thought I was for giving my baby up)--I made the absolutely hardest decision I hope to ever have to make.
I loved my child. She was a beautiful baby (seeing the baby was very much discouraged in those days, but I insisted). I named her, even though I knew the adoptive parents would give her a new name. For a few brief moments she was all mine, but I knew I could not give her what I wanted most for her. So shortly after her birth, I went by myself to the courtroom and signed the papers giving up my parental rights for all time. It was just a few days before Mother's Day.
At that time, adoptions were closed. Years ago I sent permission to open the records if she should ever search for me. Maybe some day she will. Maybe not. My biggest hope is that she has a good life with a loving family. I think about her every day.
How wonderful you are to reveal your heart to us. Now we are really down to basics. What you have written touches me more than I can say. Your decision was almost an impossible task. So brave, Pam. And so brave to post it here. That says a lot about you, and a lot about us, too, I think.
Dear Pam, my feeling is that your beautiful baby was destined to be raised by the loving family who did raise her. You were the surrogate mother. And you fulfilled your role.
Pam, you are ahead of us all. For every woman your daughter's age that you see, you can ask yourself: Is this my daughter?
And so you are closer to complete universal love where everyone is our sister or brother, son or daughter.
I am reminded a little bit of Carol's comment under Value Clarification about looking for the Christ in everyone.
The daughter you gave birth to could be a Heavenreader!
Maybe your daughter will seek you out tomorrow!
Regardless, in spirit you are joined. And you can communicate, as I am sure you have been, on the etheric and telepathic levels. I picture a beautiful arbor. You and your daughter embrace under this arbor. Over the arbor is a sign in flowers that says Love.
God bless you, Pam.
Big love,
Gloria
Thank you for your comments, Gloria. I never thought of it as being a surrogate mother! How comforting that is to me.
As I've been growing and forgiving others and ultimately myself for harboring whatever grudge that I thought needed forgiveness, I've also started letting go of the shame.
This is such a wonderful place of love and acceptance, yet has that certain anonymity that makes it easier to let some of those big skeletons out of the closet.
You talk about charm in another subject--and this you have in spades--the wonderful, giving, innocent, childlike, generous charm that is expressed throughout this website. And this has drawn to you so many wonderful contributors! You, those you have drawn to you, and this site are SUCH a blessing! THANK YOU ALL!