I have an amazing life. I am in the eighth grade at a private Christian school where I play basketball and take flute lessons. Almost every year, I get to experience new places on vacations with my wonderful family. This life was a gift to me from my birth mother. You see, I was adopted.
I have always known I was adopted. It was just a common thing in my family. My parents have always been very open about my adoption, and they answer any questions I ask. My birth dad was gone before I was born, but I can see my birth mother pretty much whenever I want – we go to a lot of football games together in the fall. She’s not a mother figure, and I don’t call her “Mom.” My adopted mother is my mom. My birth mother is more like a friend. I love them both.
When I was young, I didn’t really think much about the fact that I was adopted. As I grew older, however, I started to have more questions about the huge decisions that my birth mother and adopted parents had made for me before I was even born. For instance, my older half-sister and younger half-brother live with my birth mother – why did she choose to parent them and plan an adoption for me? Why does my family have to be so much more complicated than my friends’ families? Between the ages of ten and eleven, I felt confused and angry as I grappled with my identity as an adopted child.
My parents were patient and loving toward me through this hard time, and they helped me to see that God had placed me in this situation for a purpose. I still don’t know the full purpose, but I do know that otherwise my mom would never have been able to have a daughter of her own, for medical reasons, and she had always wanted a daughter. Also, life would have been much harder for my birth mother if she had kept me, and she would not have had the time or resources to give me the life she wanted for me. I still have questions sometimes, but I see now that my birth mother definitely made the right decision.
I would encourage anyone considering adoption to look into an open adoption. In open adoption, the birth mother is not involved in raising her child, but she can see her child on a regular basis. Every person and every situation is different, though, so you should pray about it and make the decision that you think will give your child the best life possible. I know my birth mother did.