Adoptive Mommys
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Don't you dare pity me!
Aug. 3, 2008 at 6:55 PM
by
SalBac
posted to Adoptive Mommys
- 1 Replies
- 108 Total Views
When women tilt their heads and say to me sympathetically, "I'm sorry you never got to experience the joy of pregnancy" I widen my eyes and say "I'm sorry you've never experienced the joy of adoption!" I truly am.
To these women pregnancy is the way to have a child. Two people who (hopefully) love each other join together and create an experience that brings a precious new life to both of them. They imagine anything else is somehow less - the life is less of a miracle, the experience is less profound, the parenting is less something... less secure, less bonded, perhaps less "real."
To me adoption is the exponent of the creation miracle. Adoption takes the superlative event of humanity and makes it even more so. More profound. More breathtaking. More incomprehensible. More everything.
It is the ultimate trust - very often forged by strangers who searched without knowing who they were searching for, yet found each other among everyone in the world. Birth parents and adoptive parents trust each other to be who they seem to be. Each trust the other to weigh their decision with the greatest care, and to speak only what they know to be true. Birth parents trust adoptive parents with the gift of a life they created, and adoptive parents trust birth parents to know their own hearts.
Experiencing adoption is akin to receiving an organ donation or being rescued from a burning building by a complete stranger. It is incredibly humbling to be chosen to receive a birth mother's grace. At the same time it is intoxicating to know that you have the power to change her life forever by accepting her gift.
If you think my life is less because I will not experience pregnancy, please keep that to yourself. And I'll hold private my thought that yours is less because you have not been blessed to witness the purest form of motherhood - sacrificing one's own heart for the sake of your child.
I will live the rest of my days amazed and grateful that our daughter's birth mother had the grace, maturity and love to give her child the life and the mother God intended her to have.
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by jordunmom on Aug. 9, 2008 at 1:05 PMI've been touched by adoption in MANY ways. First, I AM an adult adoptee, and always felt very special, because "I was chosen", as my parents told me on an (almost) daily basis :^ ) Second, I am an adoptive mother, yet we also have a biological daughter. After years of infertility, we somehow (miraculously) conceived our daughter. We adopted our glorious son 3 years later. I agree with some of what you say. I don't feel sorry for you or pity you because you've never experienced pregnancy, because I will tell you that there is NO difference in how I feel about my daughter than the feelings I have for my son. INFACT, it irritates me when people ask me "which one of your children is adopted"? I simple tell them "I don't know, I forgot". The experience was the same, the bonding was the same, the love is the same. Please don't assume that ALL women who have given birth feel the way you've projected them to feel in your post, it's simply not true. I can not agree with you that adoption is "better", or a more profound experience than giving birth, because as I've said, I've done BOTH, and they don't feel ANY different to me. I'm sure there are MANY parents out there that would agree with me. Don't be bitter because one jacka@# said something to you about never experiencing pregnancy, MOST people DON'T feel that way, and it's what YOU and your family KNOW and feel that means the most at the end of the day. Cathy |
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