To Zambia With Love: Mothers' Days

One of the things I have had to come to terms with and am still working through is that I will not be the only mother in my child’s life. As someone who struggles at times with jealousy and insecurities, this has been a difficult pill to swallow. Although our adoption is closed due to the circumstances of our intercountry adoption, I know that there is a family out there that is connected to my son. We will most likely never meet them, but I know they are out there and as my son grows up, he will understand that as well.

As Mother’s Day approached, I started to think about what traditions we could start in our family to celebrate my son’s birth mother. Birth Mother’s Day was started in 1990 by a group of Seattle birth mothers and is held on the day before Mother’s Day. As with most of my questions, my first stop was Google. I typed in “ways to celebrate birth mothers”. What I thought was an innocent question that would bring up lots of Pinterest worthy photos and ideas, was obviously not that innocent. I was faced with sites that talked about “adoption propaganda” and blogs from birth mothers detailing their anger at having their role as a mother regulated to a separate day. There was talk of being degraded to simply a “uterus vessel”. It made me think about what I hoped to achieve with this celebration. Basically, I wanted our celebration to be a chance for my son and any future children we have through adoption to be able to honor their birth mother, or natural mother as some woman preferred to be called (although, I question the term “natural” – what does that make me? Unnatural?). To allow for a time to talk about his feelings about his birth mother whether it be love, loss, grief, confusion, anger, or questions. I realized that the word celebration may not be the most sensitive as one of the things that you learn during your adoption courses and reading is that adoption is created from a place of grief. Joy as well of course, but grief cannot be ignored. How my son experiences this grief or loss will change as he grows and develops.
So as with many questions, sometimes Google opens a can of worms, and unfortunately, sometimes it’s the angrier voices that get heard. Our adoption agency puts on a yearly picnic on Birth Mother’s Day. I find it hard to imagine that they would persist in this tradition if birth mothers felt strongly against it. Thus, I’m going to try to ignore the angry voices out there and make this day a special and positive day for my family. Markus had a great idea – planting a tree each year to commemorate the day and honor Isaac’s birth family. Even though our adoption is closed and we have no information on Isaac’s birth mother, I strongly feel that this doesn’t mean we can’t be as open as possible with our feelings. The idea of the tree seems fitting. As it grows the roots support it's growth and also the land around it. Although the roots are mostly hidden, we know they are there. Without them, the tree could not flourish, just as without Isaac's roots or his birth mom, he wouldn't be with us today, flourishing.