In honor of Mother’s Day, a holiday that can have such complex meanings for all members of the adoption constellation. As members of the community and loved ones, I hope we can create a safe environment for adoptees, adoptive parents and birthmothers to share these feelings.

A Mah,

I was born on your twentieth birthday sixty years ago in New Orleans.  Since learning that in 1991, I’ve imagined every July 3rd, OUR birthday, that you would remember me. I’ve wondered how we are similar, what traits we’d share because of that.  You relinquished me on August 4th, 1953 at the Baptist Home for Unwed Mothers. What was that day like? It was Hot and humid, perhaps like HOME. Surrounded by whites and blacks, but no yellows; NOT like home. I know how that feels.

What could we have shared in the time we had together? What was it like to have me in your belly? Did you rail against me, or did you talk to me as I grew inside you? After giving birth to me did you see me, touch me or hold me? Or, in keeping with the times, did you know I was only steps away, yet as forbidden as the Forbidden Palace, to walk in and embrace me.  If you were like me, that compliant person who didn’t know that I was given tacit permission to look into my file when visiting at the orphanage years later, we stayed still and shamed, unable to peer in. Click here for complete letter.… Read the rest “Mother’s Day . . . my first letter to my first mother”