Why I'm not celebrating "Birth Mother's Day"

A really bad idea

The world's worst "holiday" is just days away--Mother's Day. For many mothers who lost their children to adoption, it is a day of miserable reminders of the children we do not have, and we approach it with all the joy of someone on her way to her own execution.

Lorraine, not on Mother's Day

And it can't be ignored. Ads are everywhere--in the newspaper, on television, in magazines, on the dam Internet, on Facebook. Send flowers! Buy a bracelet!  Perfume! A day at the spa! Will a card come in the mail? Will my daughter call? I must admit that I was not more zen about this when my daughter was alive, because I couldn't stop hoping she would call, send a card, do something to acknowledge that I'm her mother too. Of course I imagined that flowers, dinners, et cetera were going on back home to assure her adoptive mother she was appreciated and loved. I never found out if all this did happen because I couldn't make myself ask. But knowing the situation--the need to prove to her adoptive mother that Jane was indeed a good daughter, she she, the adoptive mother was the only mother who counted--well, I imagined flowers, dinner, the whole works.

Maybe it's because I never had any other children--I'm one of the vast number of first mothers who chose not to have a second child, the misery of relinquishment too keen on our minds to set us on that path--but Mother's Day, before, and then after, I found my daughter, was pure hell. No matter how I tried to steel myself against it, the ole' blues came up and got me.  Those years she did remember me with a card were wonderful, and I could sail through the day on an even keel. But of course, she didn't remember a great many years.

As for the substitute celebrations that some adoption agencies hold--Birth Mother gatherings to celebrate our "birthmotherhood"--don't get me started. Well, I am started. I can't think of a single thing worse that pretending that Birth Mother Days are anything but pap started and nurtured by adoption agencies to somehow...I dunno. I can't even imagine what they are for because they only emphasize the fact of our...er, birthmotherhood, which has to be one of the worst words ever concocted. Various websites blame this new holiday (another reason for a whole new set of cards from Hallmark) on a group of birth mothers in Seattle. If anyone has any more information about them, I'd love to hear it.

Were they women who were meeting under the aegis of an adoption agency? Whose social workers were holding their hands while they signed their children away? I know some of our readers have participated in these events, and said they were well, sweet, but they make me ill to think about. Kinda like, let's celebrate the worst thing that every happened to a lot of us. What's next? Rape holidays?

Okay, I know, we relinquished under all kinds of pressures and for all kinds of reasons, but if adoption is about finding homes for children who need them, why are mothers told today how "happy" they will make someone if they give up their child? That has nothing to do with finding a home for a needy child; it emphasizes finding a child for a "needy" couple or single person. It's $#@-backwards, that's what it is. At the site below,  you can even find a card that "thanks" the mother for "giving us the world." This is designed to make us feel as if we are doing something good for the child rather than setting him or her adrift among people who will never be like our child. This business of "thanking" the mother is wrong, wrong, wrong, and designed by adoption agency types to coat over the violence and trauma that is really being done to a child being given away.

I loved Jane's cards when they were the funny ones--especially one that showed an old picture of a mother and daughter who looked like carbon copies of each other. The one card I did not keep, that hit the trash can a week later--was the stupid BIRTH MOTHER CARD. Do the folks at Hallmark realize how much we hate BIRTH MOTHER cards? How demeaning they are?  How they small they make us feel? If you are an adoptee and reading this, and can't find a card that suits how you feel, send nothing and call instead. You don't even have to use the word, you can just say, I was thinking about you today...." We'll get the message. Flowers? We'd swoon.

If you are an adoptee and reading this, and don't quite understand what we are so worked up over, think about getting your adoptive mother a Happy Adoptive Mother's Day card. It's doubtful she will appreciate the precision of your greeting.

And to those who won't be acknowledged by your children,  I have this one single piece of advice: Joy and happiness comes from within us. Yes, that is the zen idea of how to get through the day. Instead of waiting for the phone call that may not come, plan for yourself a treat: a comedy, shopping therapy, an afternoon treat yourself at a spa. Since my own mother died, I avoid restaurants because they are jammed and you will see...all those mothers being honored. If you have other children, enjoy them.

We may be unusually depressed on this day, but this comes from the external messages and we need to dig deep and slough them off. And then, remember, tomorrow will be another day. This too shall pass. The day after will not be "Mother's Day." Or "Birth Mother's Day." It will be Monday. All day.--lorraine
__________________________
 From FMF
Does Mother's Day make birth mothers blue? YES.

Suggested reading
I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Letters from the Korean Birth Mothers of Ae Ran Won to Their Children "Written in their own words-the book conveys the heart-wrenching decisions these birth mothers must face. As a Korean adoptee who is just beginning to search for my birth family this book not only opened my heart, but also my eyes to the social stigma in Korean and the reasons so many of these women relinquish their children. It does not offer all the answers to the many questions surrounding adoption, but it does offer a captivating look at adoption from the birth mother's perspective. I recommend this book to anyone touched by adoption whether international or domestic, especially couples contemplating adoption, adoptive parents and older adoptees. It is a powerful and compelling glimpse into a side of adoption often overlooked."--Melanie, an adoptee at Amazon