mardi 2 mai 2017
The Gut-Wrenching Reason This Mom Buys 2 Extra Mother's Day Cards
Jill Robbins has a secret: she buys two extra Mother's Day cards every year, one for each of her sons' birth mothers. Although Jill has three children, she jokes that only her daughter "came into the family the regular way," as her sons were both adopted from China. Every year Jill buys a Mother's Day card for each boy's biological mother, but unfortunately, they never get to those moms halfway across the world - they make it into a shoe box.
"I've done this every year that we've had them. I write little snippets of what they've done and accomplished every year, what their challenges and accomplishments have been," Jill wrote in a post to her blog's Facebook page, Ripped Jeans and Bifocals. "I write these notes during my quiet time, after everyone else is in bed. I re-read my words and then I seal the cards. And then I put them away in a shoe box that sits on my closet shelf because I don't know what else to do with them. I don't have any place to mail these cards, you see."
The mom continues, explaining that there's sadly no such thing as an open adoption in China as there are laws "that prohibit a mother from making an adoption plan, aka giving a baby up for adoption." Because of this, children are abandoned and entered into the social welfare system, which is when they're able to go up for adoption. After someone becomes their parent, there's no paper trail to follow back to their past, to their birth mamas.
I know my boys' birth mothers waited and watched until their babies were taken to safety. I KNOW. I just do. I know they loved these children and I know their actions were something they deemed necessary. I don't need to know the reasons. Their motives don't need to pass any sort of litmus test with me. I have a pretty happy life. I don't want for much, but if I could have one wish I would want my boys' birth mothers to know the babies they carried are safe and loved. Cherished. Thriving. Part of a family. So, I buy those cards every year. I write in them. Somewhere on the other side of the world there are two women who would probably give anything to get them.
Jill says that she continues to write these cards that will never be sent mostly for herself, as a form of gratitude toward the women who gave her gifts in the forms of her sweet boys. Because adoption is so complicated and emotional, Jill is sharing her "secret" with the world in the hope that someone struggling on either end of an adoption can find some peace in the process. She added, "Maybe another mama like me will realize that she's not alone in those reflective moments she had about her kids' birth mothers."
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