Birth Stories – The World As I See It

Adoption Thoughts- A Hard Year

June 21, 2016

I wanted to do another post in my adoption thoughts series because I haven’t done one in awhile. If you want to read any of my past posts in this series, you can click here to check them out. This post is going to be about how hard this year has been since I

July 7th will mean that eleven years has gone by since I placed my daughter for adoption. I can’t believe it has been that long since I had her. I have found myself thinking more and more about her this year, and I think that is because I had to put Alley Cat to sleep earlier this year.

I have always said that Alley was my replacement baby, and now that she is gone I can’t stop being taken back eleven years. There are some days that it seems like it all just happened a few days ago. I can still remember all the feelings and how I felt the moment I handed her off to her parents.

I feel like I just can’t wait for this year just to be over so that I won’t have to think about it anymore. Even as I type that, I know that just because her birthday passes it won’t just go away. I know that only time will make it not hurt as much, and I hate waiting for time to pass because it seems to take forever.

There isn’t anything that I want to say other than that I am struggling with everything this year. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up until the middle of July. I know that it won’t make it better or make it hurt less, but I hope that by getting the thoughts out of my head and written down will help me deal with it all. That is all I have to say, and I am hoping to have another post about adoption up on her birthday.

*I did write a post earlier this year about saying goodbye to Alley so if you want to check that out, you can click here to read that post.

Hi My Name Is. . .

October 23, 2014

This week for the writers workshop I am going to write about number 2 : Hi, my name is ______ and I am a _______. There are so many ways that I could answer that question so I just put the first thing that came to my mind. I think this came to my mind the first because I have been really struggling with being a birth mom. I am sure the thing that triggered my feelings now has watched my nephew grow up over the past year. It has made me see first hand everything that I missed out on when it comes to my daughter. It has also made start to ask the what if type questions. I haven’t ever really asked myself those types of questions because I know it was the right choice and know that those questions never get you anywhere in the long run.

I feel like I always have to say that just because I am asking myself the what if’s that I don’t regret my choice. I know that I did the right thing for both of us but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still hurt from time to time. Just because I hurt doesn’t mean I regret my choice. I can’t help but wonder where I would be and what my life would be like had I made different choices.

I do now know without a doubt that I don’t want kids and I am 100% okay with that choice. People tell me I will change my mind when I meet the right person and I can honestly say that they are wrong. I know I don’t have the patience let alone the energy that it takes to raise kids. I am glad I know this before I had anymore kids because it isn’t fair to have kids and not be able to take care of them and be there for them.

I got a little bit off topic but that happens in my world. If you are new here and want to know about my story you can click here and check it out.

How would you answer this sentence?

Just a quick note: I was looking through my archives looking for another post and I saw that I had already done a post like this back in November of 2013 you can click here if you want to check out that post as well!

Adoption Thoughts: Mother’s Day

May 21, 2014

Mothers Day was a few weeks ago and because it is a hard time for me I couldn’t bring myself to write this post at that time. I still wanted to write this post in hopes that it may help a birth mom out there know that she isn’t alone when it comes to hating Mothers Day. I never have been a huge fan of holidays like Mothers Day before but now I hate Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day is hard for me because I am in a weird place in regards to being a mother in the eyes of people in the world. It is hard to know that you are a mother but to basically have everyone ignore the fact that you are. I try and make it a nice day for my Grandma but in the end I always end up just being sad. This is also one of days that I always wonder what it would have been like had I kept her and decided to parent. Now that being said I don’t regret my choices because I know I made the right choice for her but you can’t help but wonder sometimes.

I guess I just wish that people in the world we understand that there are different types of mothers and not every mother looks the same. Just like not all mothers become a mother the same way. It hurts me to see other mothers talk down to birth mom’s because of the choices we made for our children. It is also hard because if you don’t know a person placed their child then you have no idea. It is just a hard place to be and it makes Mother’s Day hard. It is also seemed from time to time on Mother’s Day that some people rub the fact that you placed your child for adoption in your face and think that he desire to be miserable and in pain on Mother’s Day.

Those are just a few thoughts that I have been having this year about Mother’s Day. I also wanted to share this video that I found last week. I knew I wanted to share it with everyone because it spoke to me and it was an amazing idea and it was an amazing video. I hope it also helps people see that there are different kinds of mothers in this world. Watch this video and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Stop Trying To Convince Me

April 15, 2014

I haven’t ever talked about today’s topic because I know there are people who are passionate about this topic and before now I have never been in a place where I would be able to handle any backlash that comes from this post. I finally am in a good spot emotionally that I know I can handle anything that comes from me posting this. Now before I get into the topic of this post I want to let everyone know that I am not writing this to anyone in particular I am just venting.

Anyway lets get on to the topic of this post. I want to write about people in the adoption world who believe that everyone who places their children for adoption was forced and/or coerced. I want to talk about this because I am not the type of person who can be forced to do anything let alone place my daughter for adoption.

Now I know that people were and probably still are forced to place their children for adoption. I also agree with the fact that girls need to know that this can happen but they don’t need to try and convince those of us that placed our children that we were forced to place them. While I agree people need to know I don’t agree with people trying to convince those of us who weren’t forced or tricked into placing our children like they were.

I am just tired of being told how I should feel and what I should believe when it comes to the adoption of my daughter. I knew what I was doing when I made the choice that I did. I wanted to give her everything that I didn’t know if I could ever give her. I wanted her to have a stable environment, two parents in the home, siblings, and things like that. My childhood wasn’t stable up until my grandparents got us full time and I didn’t want her to feel what it feels like to not know what was going to happen from day to day like I did.

I hope that this post made some sort of sense. If you have any thoughts about this please let me know because I am always open to talking about things and hearing other peoples opinions on things but like I said trying to convince me I was forced to placed her isn’t going to get any response from me.

Hi, My Name Is . . .

November 4, 2013

This was a prompt from last weeks writers workshop and I had to write about it because it was such a fun topic and there are tons of things that could complete the sentence. I think I am going to just list things that I am and then explain why on some of them.

Birth Mom-I placed my daughter for adoption when I was 20.
Blogger
Daughter
Mom to two crazy cats
Book lover
Introvert
Person who truly loves to be alone
Huge football fan-I will watch pretty much any game but I love the University of Utah & the Baltimore Ravens.
Suffer of an invisible illness-Multiple Sclerosis
College dropout
Blog Designer

Those are just the few things that came first to me. I know I could go on and on with a list but no one has time to read that.

How would you answer the sentence?

My Open Adoption Thoughts

June 13, 2012

I haven’t written anything about adoption in awhile so today I am going to talk about open adoption and why a totally open adoption isn’t for me. If you don’t already know open adoption is defined:

Open adoption is an adoption in which the biological mother or parents and adoptive family know the identity of each other. In open adoption, the parental rights of biological parents are terminated, as they are in “closed adoptions” and the adoptive parents become the legal parents, yet the parties elect to remain in contact. Open adoption has become the norm in most states in the adoption of newborns.

Source: Wikipedia

At this point I would consider the adoption of my daughter to be semi open or even almost closed. I get a card from them on Christmas and if during the year I want to an update I email them and ask for one and I am 100% okay with that. I know that some people won’t understand why I am okay with so I am going to try and explain it as best as I can.

For the first year I got letters and pictures pretty regularly and to be honest every time I got pictures and a letter it brought back all of the emotions. Once the letters and pictures stopped coming as regularly and now have pretty much stopped I have found been able to heal and stop living in the past.

Now that isn’t saying that I don’t think of her because I think of her every day but I feel that I am not stuck in the past. In order for me to heal and get at the place I where I can now talk about it to anyone with out getting depressed I had to put everything that reminded me of her away. I found that when I had her things out that I was dwelling on the pain and not living my life.

I am so glad that my adoption is how it is because it has allowed me to live my life and heal from the pain. Now there are still times that it is hard for me but those times are few and far between anymore.