You Are Not Alone
Are you a birth mom? Have you placed your child in the arms of another family? Have you walked out of the hospital empty-handed, wading through emotions unlike anything you have previously experienced in your life? You are not alone.
Others may not understand the grief you are feeling or the loss you have experienced, yet it is there. It sticks with you and does not just go away. Even in all of this, it is important to know that you are not alone.
Adoption involves loss for everyone involved: the birth parents, the adoptive parents, and the child. A normal, biological reaction to any kind of loss is grief. This applies to losses both small and large, and adoption is certainly a loss with significant impact. No amount of courage, peace, or praise from others can replace this loss. Yet, others have walked a similar road. The grief may feel isolating, but you are not alone.
Valuable Support
We hear again and again that the most valuable support for a birth mom on her adoption journey is to have a birth mom friend, someone who gets your experience and has lived it. This is a friend who, unlike others in your life, knows what it is like to feel peace in one moment and be overwhelmed with unique grief in the next. While there is nothing anyone can say to completely remove your grief, you can find priceless support from others who have walked the same path before.
Leah Outten, author of The Sixteenth Year: An Open Adoption Memoir shares that having a birth mom friend with her on her adoption journey was a gift. She states, “There is nothing like being in the room with another birth mother who knows the profound joys and aches of adoption though the situations surrounding vary” (2023, p.100). When Outten was in labor with the daughter she was making an adoption plan for, her birth mom friend was with her in the room. She shares, “Having her near was like a safety net, knowing she could advise me and listen to me in ways no one else could” (Outten, 2023, p.100).
Get Connected
Hearing the stories of other birth moms can be the first step to this unique type of support. BraveLove offers the stories of many birth mothers on their website. If you are ready to connect with a birth mom directly, Bellis offers local adoption support for all parties of adoption. You can also reach out to our Post Adoption Department to get connected to a birth mom for one-on-one support.
Outten, L. (2023). The Sixteenth Year: An Open Adoption Memoir. Kingdom Winds Publishing.