Tag: Difficult Decisions

Entrustment Ceremony

Not the best image but it gets the point across.

From the LINK>Lifetime Adoption website – For many birth parents, trusting a new couple with their precious baby can feel almost impossible. Additionally, both birth parents and adoptive parents often want to feel a sense of closure with their respective adoption journeys. For these reasons, many families like to celebrate adoption with a special entrustment ceremony.

Many find commemorating their child’s transition from birth family to adoptive family to be a powerful experience. In the past, some adoptive parents would welcome a new child into their home with a “welcome home” party or baby shower. Some would hold a naming ceremony or baptism. But the entrustment ceremony carries special meaning, because it involves both of the child’s families.

The ceremony can look however those involved want it to. If both families live in the same area, they might hold an entrustment ceremony at a local chapel or park. Some families hold the ceremony at a church. Usually, the ceremony begins with the birth parents talking about how they chose the adoptive parents and why they trust them with the care of their child. Then, the adoptive parents talk about the love they will have for the baby. They may also make promises for the future in the form of vows. You can talk about anything you’d like, including your feelings of trust and respect for each other.

Many will add a reading or song to the ceremony. The text is often religious, such as a passage from the Bible. Or, it could even be from a favorite book. The intention is to express their hope, happiness, and love in a poetic and meaningful way. Christian families may pray over the child and for each of the families. Some ceremonies involve lighting candles similar to the lighting of a unity candle in a wedding ceremony. Each parent or set of parents uses a lit candle to light a larger candle together. The ritual is a metaphor for the joining of two families in a unique way.

For birth parents, the ceremony allows them to have closure for what may have been a very difficult decision. The service provides a positive ending instead of a sad one. It allows each person the chance to say their piece. It will enable the participants to feel like the process is final, and they have said everything they wanted to say. Nobody will end up feeling like they have unfinished business. One fact stays the same: everyone participating loves the child and wants the best for him or her.

Absentee Motherhood

I understand how it feels for a mother to live each day without their child.  Though I never legally relinquished custody of my daughter, financial pressures forced me to look for another way to support us.  I understand how my maternal grandmother felt when she was desperately seeking a way to support herself and my mom and how her best efforts failed in the end.

It is interesting how familial patterns can pass down through the generations.  In my case, I took a leap of faith that I could drive an 18-wheel truck.  I didn’t know whether or not I would succeed and so, took my daughter to her paternal grandmother for care.  Though the court granted me custody in the uncontested divorce from her father, he also refused to pay me any child support.  I was not about to spend my life in court fighting him for it and so, I looked for another way.

What I thought was temporary, just as my grandmother had thought she was only leaving my mom temporarily, turned out to be permanent for both of us.  My grandmother lost my mom due to pressures from Georgia Tann to surrender her.  Miss Tann had a repeat, paying customer who was growing impatient to have her specifications for a baby sister fulfilled.

In my case, I was able to drive that 18-wheel truck.  My ex-husband remarried a woman with a child and together they had another child, a yours-mine-and-ours family.  So that when my time on the road ended, it made no sense to take my daughter from a family life as I would have still been a struggling single mom.  Fortunately, my daughter and I remain close at heart, though not long ago she admitted to me there were times that being separated were not happy ones for her.

In the mid-1970s, there were no role models for absentee mothers.  I have resolved some of my difficult feelings of having failed my daughter but not all of them.  At least, I was able to have sporadic contact with her growing up and continue to have a relationship with her in adulthood.  Mothers who have lost their children to adoption do not always have as good of an outcome.  Even so, I have empathy for the difficult decisions each of them had to make.