I don’t know who Megan Devine is but her words seemed perfect for a Huffington Post personal essay I read today by Joanna Good – LINK>At 17, I Gave My Baby Up.

She was scrolling through her social media and came upon a mother asking for advice. She had just found out she was pregnant, and because she and her husband already had several children, he didn’t want any more. Though he was sure of his decision, she wasn’t, and wanted help figuring out what to do. She writes – “I was feeling so many emotions at once that I wasn’t sure I could even identify them all, but I definitely felt frustration, anger, and yearning swirling through my body.”

She goes on to note – “People who have never been touched by adoption always seem to think of it as easy, but as a mother who placed her child for adoption, struggled through the chaotic emotional aftermath of the separation, and then reconnected with my child later on, I know the truth. Even though it was the right choice for me at the time, adoption is anything but easy.”

She admits – “I had never stopped thinking about Hanna (blogger’s note – the adopted name of the baby girl she gave up to adoption) — never. But the adoption had forced me to grow up quickly, and I did. I had come out stronger. Sturdier. Wiser. I continued to feel so many emotions, but now I was able to handle most of them. The guilt was a different story.”

No one really talks about what follows you through life after adoption. There is no such thing as a clean break. She realized that “I knew my little girl might never know me, yet I saw her face everywhere — in the photographs her adoptive parents continued to send me, but also in other children’s faces at the grocery store, at library story time . . . I often wondered if Hanna ever thought she saw my face in a crowd.”

She saw her daughter again when the little girl turned 6. Joanna shares – that her daughter poked her in the stomach and said, “Mommy said God put me in your belly because she couldn’t have me in hers.” Then, when Hanna was 13, she got a message from Hanna that hit her like a train going full speed. They had begun chatting almost daily via Facebook messenger — something she always looked forward to — but she never expected to see these two words pop up on her screen – “I’m trans.” (A person whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth.)

Typical of an Evangelical Christian response – “Hanna’s adoptive parents offered no support and referred to his brave coming out as ‘a phase’. They refused to use any other name but the one they bestowed upon him and would not allow him to seek counseling or see a doctor for potential hormone blockers. Instead they looked to religion and prayed this phase would end.”

Joanna shares that she – “decided to become the solution. I would be there for my birth son no matter what and I promised to be the parent I couldn’t be at 17. . . . I was there every step of the way as Hanna slowly transitioned to Aarron.”

She concludes her essay – “Adoption. It might seem easy — the perfect solution for an unexpected child and an unprepared mom. But too often we don’t talk about the messiness. The trauma. The endless questioning. Or that there really is no such thing as a truly severed connection.”

What response could she possibly offer this pregnant woman in need of support when there is no one true answer? “Then I realized the one thing I most needed to hear when I was in her place all of those years ago. I typed, Hey, I understand. I’m here if you need to talk, and hit post.”