Conflicted feelings when I first learned I was pregnant

I gave birth to my baby and once the infant was born,

I became that child’s mother.

A mere signature on a surrender paper and

the adoption that followed can never undo that.

I had a baby and I gave that baby away
but I am a mother.

~ A Hole in my Heart by Lorraine Dusky

It is a very sad story and worth reading.

A lifetime of regrets, of unintended consequences that are channeled in an activism, so that others do not have to go through the same experience.

I have learned so much about the impacts of adoption on ALL parties to it.  Not one of the triad escapes some effect.  Not the adoptee who never had a say in what happened to them.  Not the original parents who will never be able to know their child in the intimate way most parents do.  Not the adoptive couple who may receive more than they originally bargained for – wounds they can’t see nor understand because they are foreign to any concept of parenting they may have entered in with.