“My child’s life didn’t start the day he met me. I probably won’t ever know anything about his origins, but that doesn’t stop me from remembering the mother who came before me. I can almost-kind-of-but-not-quite see her in the corner of my mind.”
The first Mother’s Day Jill Robbins celebrated as an adoptive mother, she bought a special card–one for her son’s birth mother in China, whom she had never met and knew nothing about. She just wanted a way to express her heart to this woman who was never far from her thoughts. To let her know that her son was well and happy.
And so began a tradition that she has continued since then. It started out with one card, for her first adopted son, but then became two, after she adopted her second son.
“I write these notes during my quiet time, after everyone else is in bed. I re-read my words and then I seal the cards. And then I put them away in a shoebox that sits on my closet shelf because I don’t know what else to do with them. I don’t have any place to mail these cards, you see. There’s no such thing as an ‘open Chinese adoption.’”
So, although she knows these are cards that will probably never make it to their intended recipients, she continues to write. “These women wonder where their babies are. I know they do. Although I don’t know the circumstances that led to their decisions, I do wish them peace. I wish they could receive these cards I write every Mother’s Day. I wish they knew their babies were safe and loved. Cherished. Thriving.”
You may know Jill from the blog Ripped Jeans and Bifocals or her articles on Babble. She wrote about this tradition on her Facebook Page and shared a letter on her blog.
