My name is Margaret Jane and I was adopted in 1997. My birth mother found herself in an unplanned pregnancy. My birth dad was struggling with addiction and not able to support her or raise a child. She was faced with the impossible decision and chose adoption. Raising me wasn’t an option in her opinion because she didn’t want me raised around my birth father. He was insistent on being in my life, but she knew that he would only be able to bounce in and out due to his addiction. She had been raised with a reliable and strong father and wanted the same life for me. She was shown many profile books, nearly 40 families were presented to her by her attorney. After settling on a couple to adopt me, the placement fell through just a few short weeks before I was supposed to be born.
Now enters my adoptive family and my in-laws. Yes, my in-laws. Because of my initial placement falling through at the last minute, my birth family was in a panic. What was going to happen to the baby? Will they have to have me live with them for a while? Will they end up raising me for lack of a solid placement?
My biological great-aunt made a phone call to her best friend, Joy. She asked Joy to pray for this seemingly impossible situation. Joy then made a call to her sister, Lisa, who was friends with my adoptive family. She knew that my soon-to-be adoptive parents were interested in adoption. They had suffered many miscarriages, and the hope of having a biological child was shrinking rapidly. My adoptive parents drove directly to where my birth mom was, and when they met, my birth mother chose them.
Lisa is now my mother-in-law and Joy is now my Aunt. When Lisa made that phone call to my adoptive parents, she was freshly postpartum with her 7th child, a baby boy. Nearly 20 years later, I married that boy. The connections between my in-laws, biological, and adoptive family are very intertwined. It’s quite the way to find a wife for your 6-week-old baby! My great Aunt Miriam is still very good friends with my husband’s Aunt Joy, so the connections just continue to grow. It truly is like something out of a cheesy Hallmark movie.
Who would have thought that nearly 30 years ago my mother-in-law was calling about placing me into my parents’ arms? As a Christian, I believe it is nothing short of God-ordained. And although adoption is always born of loss, mine was also a gain for not one, but two families. The complexities of adoption and the trauma that follows it sometimes feel never-ending. But I believe that God can take an incredibly sad and broken circumstance and make it new and beautiful. I have found my way back to my birth family after 23 years. And although I will never get those years back with them, I am happy for the future years I have.
So, am I thankful for adoption? That is a hard question to just answer. Am I thankful to have been pulled out of my original family? No. But am I glad to have been placed into the family I’m in today? Yes. Am I happy that my adoption ultimately resulted in a wonderful marriage to my lifelong childhood friend? Of course.
Adoption is something that will forever hold both positive and negative emotions. Believe it or not, you can actually feel sad about something that is happy, and happy about something that is sad. If you stuff down all the pain of adoption, you can’t truly feel all the joy. Those two big emotions have to be able to exist together. There is a lot of talk amongst the adoptee community about thankfulness. For some, hearing, “you just need to be thankful” is offensive. And I totally understand and relate to that reaction.
Sometimes when I discuss my birth family, or the desire I had to have a relationship with them, I would be met with that reaction. The reality is my desire to know my birth family has absolutely nothing to do with adoptive parents. My desire to know my origins, who I look like, and where I came from isn’t a diss on my adoptive parents. They gave me a great life and I love them, but there was always a piece missing in my closed adoption. I believe many adopted kids not only have the desire to know where they came from, but the right to know too. You wouldn’t expect your biological child to not know that they grew in your belly, right? Adoptees have the right to know their beginnings just like anyone else.
In light of the upcoming holiday of Thanksgiving, I would like to list 4 reasons I am thankful for adoption. The first thing I will start with is my husband. Despite being loved and well taken care of, I never felt like I fully belonged in my adoptive family. This wasn’t because of anything that my parents did. It’s just part of the complexity of adoption. I didn’t look like anyone, I didn’t sound like anyone, and I had different likes and preferences from everyone else in my adoptive family. They were loud and Greek, and I was quiet and English. Even when I entered into reunion with my maternal biological family, I still didn’t fully fit. Even though I looked like them, and had similar interests and hobbies, I wasn’t raised with them. That’s a period of time I will never get back, and that is just something I have to accept.
Despite all this, the one person I feel like I fully belong with is my husband. We did grow up together. After spending all of our childhood together, we started dating at 16. We were engaged at 18 and married at 19. Not only did we spend our childhood together, we grew up sharing in our faith, ideas, and opinions. We really have molded into one brain and I love it. My husband is a wonderful man, supportive of my adoption reunion, and a great dad. He is the only place I feel like I fully belong, and because of this, I am thankful for adoption.
The second reason I am thankful for adoption is Walter, my sweet firstborn son. I had him at the tender age of 20, the same age my birth mom was when she had me. I was young and dumb and inexperienced in life. He was my poor guinea-pig baby. I didn’t know what I was doing, but together we made it through his infancy and my postpartum.
Being pregnant with him was emotionally taxing. The entire pregnancy all I could think of was, “Why did my mother place me for adoption?” If I had been raised in a more open adoption and been given the proper information, I could have avoided some of this. But pregnancy really made me wake up and realize that my birth mom was a real woman who went through a lot of really hard things to get me here. When Walter was born, he was my first biological connection.
He arrived looking just like my baby pictures. I felt so incredibly bonded to him so instantaneously. This deep connection also made me question my worth as a child who was placed in adoption. The emotions of extreme love and deep abandonment by my own birth mother were hard to wrestle with shortly after giving birth. But because of the wonderful little person that is Walter, I couldn’t be more thankful for adoption. He is smart, loving, quiet, charming, and a deep thinker. He loves to ask tough questions and he has lots of big ideas. He wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for my adoption and the man I married as a result of my placement.
The third reason I am thankful for adoption is little Wesley, my second-born son, and my spunky middle kid. Wesley’s pregnancy wasn’t emotionally taxing like his big brother’s. I had been through it all before, and I had come to a degree of acceptance about my adoption. As Walter grew up, he started to look and act just like his dad. Although I loved having a mini version of my husband walking around, I was a tad irritated that my only biological connection didn’t even look like me. My little Wesley was born looking just like me and has continued to be my little mini for nearly 5 years. Wesley and I think the same. We laugh at the same jokes, we have the same eyes, and we are very bonded. Wesley is the dearest and most wonderful little boy. Wesley was born when I was a bit more of a seasoned mother. Instead of being in constant worry and panic, like I was with Walter, I was much more content to just sit and hold Wesley. Wesley got all the snuggles and all the peace of my motherhood. He is Walter’s best friend and the light of the family. He is silly, emotional, sweet, and loves to be with his momma. Because of Wesley, I am thankful for adoption.
And now we have come to my fourth and final reason: little Eliza Jane. The icing on the cake of my life. My one and only daughter, and the baby of the family. I’m not going to lie, Eliza’s pregnancy brought up more of those tough adoption thoughts. My birth mother was pregnant with a girl, me, so as soon as I found out I was having a girl, it made me start to think deeply. Something about having to be separated with a girl seemed worse to me—not that my boys aren’t the most precious thing in the world, but a little girl has the potential to be a future best, girl friend.
My teeny tiny Eliza was born too early and had many complications. Because of this, we were separated after 24 hours together. That is almost the exact same amount of time my birth mother had with me before having to hand me over to the social worker. I had to hand my daughter over to a medical team where she would be poked and prodded without me in a great big effort to save her life.
Thankfully, these attempts worked, and Eliza is a healthy and happy 2 ½ year old. She is the most charming, most adorable little girl I have ever met. She has a huge personality. She has her big brothers wrapped right around her little finger. She takes on everything she does with such boldness. She is clever, cute, and has an incredible sense of humor for someone so small. Eliza is an independent little girl just like her mom. Because of adoption, I have Eliza. I couldn’t love her any more than I already do. Because of Eliza, I’m thankful for adoption.
When Eliza was diagnosed in critical condition, she had to ride in an emergency ambulance without me and with a bunch of strangers. Similarly, I had to ride in a vehicle with a bunch of strangers to be delivered to an unfamiliar foster home. These similarities were not lost on me during our stay at the NICU with Eliza. My ability to hold her was difficult and limited due to the many cords and needles that were attached to her 7-pound body. The separation was one of the most painful things I ever had to go through.
Mothers are supposed to hold and nurse their new babies, not watch them from across the room in an incubator with a breathing apparatus taped to their face. When we finally got to take her home, I hardly ever put her down. I often thought of the horrible loss my birth mother went through when placing me in the arms of strangers. I also thought of the terrible loss I had to suffer as well. Instead of the comfort of my mother, all my comfort came from people I didn’t know. There wasn’t a day I didn’t rock Eliza to sleep during the first 6 months of her life or where I didn’t cry thinking about how we almost lost her, and also the extreme loss I went through when I was as tiny as she was.
Adoption is always born of loss. A baby has to lose its first connection in order to gain an adoptive mom. It is a lose/win situation. If all members of the triad can’t accept that inherent fact, there is no healing and no moving forward. It’s hard to reconcile with, but you’ll be better for it. Openness and transparency in adoption situations can avoid some of the heartache I had to go through as an adult. I know that it is a common experience for adoptees to “come out of the fog” of adoption when they experience pregnancy. Coming out of the fog is an expression used by some to explain what it’s like to realize that adoption isn’t all sunshine and roses.
I came out of the fog during all of my pregnancies and through the journey of motherhood. Despite the complexities and the difficulties that adoption has brought to my life, it has also brought a lot of good. Gratitude in adoption is very tricky. I don’t believe that adoptees should just move on from grief and pain and be expected to be thankful for everything life throws at them. Am I thankful to have not been raised with my biological brothers? Absolutely not. Am I thankful I missed 23 years with my awesome birth family? No! Am I thankful for not having my medical history all that time? Nope. And I shouldn’t be thankful for that stuff.
I can be thankful for my adoptive family just like a non-adoptee born into their family might be thankful for their parents. I can be thankful for my husband, who I met because of my adoption. I can be thankful for the God-given blessing of my three precious babies. And I can be thankful for the ability to write about the adoptee experience and hopefully connect with other adoptees. So overall yes, in a complicated way I am thankful for adoption. I am thankful for the trials I had to experience in order to become the person and mother I am. I am thankful for the people I believe God put in my life all as a direct result of my adoption. I’m thankful for the love and provision God has shown in my life, and I’m thankful for the family I believe God created for me through adoption.
