dear birth mom

Dear Birth Mom,

You're young. So, so young. You're beautiful. You're brave.

I've seen you. I don't know if you know that I've seen you, but I have. You have these exquisite, high cheekbones that I honestly wish I had too. You smile, and you look happy, but I know that you are hurting and scared.

I've heard that you're smart. Everyone says you're cunning. You've been mistreated, and you've had to learn how to survive, so you know just the right things to say and do to protect yourself.

Today I thought I might see you. I thought I might get to know what your voice sounds like. I thought we might cry over the same things at the same time across a table from one another. On opposite sides of the struggles, opposite sides of the solution, but broken over this child who we both love in the only ways we know how. I thought we might feel awkward. I thought we might both be angry. We might both find that it's possible to love, and be grateful, and be full of fight all in the same moment.

I thought I might have to explain. I thought I might have to tell you that you are important to us, to this daughter that we share. That you'll be important to her for her whole life, and because you gave her life you'll always be important to us. You chose life. You chose her. You wept when they took her from you, and nobody helped you cope with that loss. They just told you to try harder. To prove yourself worthy. I hate that for you.

Here you were in the pit of agony that it must be to have a child, newborn and wrinkly, sleepy and warm, fully trusting and ready to love, with that sweet smell that's unlike anything else in the world… anything… yanked right out of your arms by people who told you that you'd failed again. Here's your checklist. Do better this time, and check those boxes faster-- or else.

But nobody ever checked their boxes for you. You weren't shown how. You were failed.

Today, I wanted to tell you that I can check those boxes for your baby, but I want you to check some too. I want to share that list with you because there are some things I can never be to her. I wanted to invite you into what could be a long, hard, but joy-filled road to healing. I wanted to invite you to help write a different story for your child. I wanted to empower you to choose what was never chosen for you. But that's not exactly how it happened. I didn't get to say anything. The lawyers did.

Your lawyer did a good job. She did her job well, and she should have. She stood strong for you and tried to say that it doesn't have to go this way. She tried to give you hope, to help you fight for one more chance. But I heard that hope got snatched right away from you.

People started listing all the times that you messed up. They just sat there and read your mistakes in your face, and I'm sorry. They had to. There wasn't a way around it, but I'm so sorry. 

I have made mistakes. We all have. We are ALL broken and just trying to do better. None of us is good. Not one. If my mistakes weren't forgiven, weren't erased, weren't forgotten, weren't let go of or dismissed, but they were tossed in my face and they cost me my children… I would crumble. I would absolutely come undone. I wouldn't believe that I could do anything. I wouldn't think I should. I wouldn't be able to try.

Who holds a record of wrongs? Not Love. Love doesn't do that. But the State does. They have to. You probably didn't experience or feel any love today. You probably felt shame. You were reminded that you failed, and you were reminded that everyone in your past failed you, too.

And when they reminded you of all the times you've failed… you picked up a pen.

I confess I wanted you to pick up that pen. I wanted you to sign those papers. But not like that. NOT LIKE THAT. I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so deeply sorry. With that pen in your hand you asked what you could get. What might still be yours. They told you that we love your daughter. That she has a good home, and that if she stays here we would still let you see her. They told you that some strangers would give you permission to see your own child. I'm sorry. I feel like screaming it. I'M SO SORRY. It wasn't what I imagined. It happened all wrong.

I've been imagining this all week. It's gone so many ways in my head and I've tried to think through every detail. I stood in my closet this morning and felt paralyzed. I told my husband that I didn't know how to dress. Do I dress like I would for court? Formal, professional, conveying a sense of respect for the building we're in and the honor it holds… or do I dress more casually because I don't want to seem haughty or sterile when I meet you? I don't want to distance myself from you in this moment. It was dumb, but I thought about how every detail about today could possibly make you feel and I felt awful in all of it.

I'd imagined a moment when you finally said we could come in. I imagined that maybe you'd want to see us, to meet us. You knew we were just down the hall. You knew we would come in if you wanted us to… but would we just be two more people to tell you that you'd failed? Wouldn't we just remind you that you made mistakes? I'm sure you thought so. But it's not what I wanted for you. You were hurting. You were broken. You were being broken by all of those people who were handing you back all of your wrong choices… as if those things hadn't hurt you enough already. Who wants to meet someone in that state? Who wants to be that vulnerable in front of new people?

But I didn't want to throw your mistakes at you. To tell the truth, I wanted to hug you. I would have been terrified. Probably would have broken into an embarrassing sweat, and cried all my makeup right off… but I wanted to be brave and offer you all of the tenderness I could, because Honey someone should have. Someone should have long ago. And I'm sorry.

I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry. I wanted to thank you for making this child. I wanted to tell you how crazy-super-impossibly-hugely important you will be to her for her whole life. I wanted to tell you that I think you're brave to show up today. To show up alone. Totally alone. I'm terrible at being alone, and terrified when I am. You looked so brave to me. I wanted to tell you that we want to give your child everything that you should have had. Everything that everyone deserves. I wanted to ask you to trust us, but to let you know that as a mother I know that sounds crazy. To trust someone else to raise your child? Insanity. A mind can't wrap around that kind of nonsense. That's unimaginable. But I wanted to ask you, to invite you to share a story that looks so different from your own, but so different from ours too.

Instead a woman with a very strong personality who does this stuff day-in and day-out with an unusually loud voice and high level of energy went back and forth between us. She pushed us both. She figured it out, and we both spoke through her to one another. I felt like I needed a minute. I bet you needed one, too.

You broke. The strain was too much. The cost of your mistakes far too high and nobody would let you forget it. You signed, you cried, and you left. You left before they gave you the picture I'd brought for you. You had to get out of there. I don't blame you.

We both cried. That loud lady caught me crying and asked if they were happy tears. I wanted to kick her in her knee. No, they're NOT happy tears. How could they be? This isn't at all what love looks like. This isn't how I want to handle anything with anyone, EVER. This feels just as dirty as the sin that got us all here because a young girl's choices were used as ammunition against her. That's evil… even if it's in the name of "best interest" for a helpless child.

I live every day in a place where I've been told that I'm smart, strong, capable, forgivable, worth helping, worth knowing, worth loving. My parents both loved me as best as they could. My childhood mistakes didn't follow me because my parents never let me make ones big enough to stick. They protected me. The same man who loved me as a girl loves me still. He's strong for me, he forgives me, he helps me, he's gentle with me and he still wants me. After all this time and all my mistakes my friends and family are still here. And, I'm safe. I'm a slave to nothing. I'm free.

I am not a slave to sin. I'm not a slave to the things that whisper in this world that they will satisfy. They won't. I remember them. I was young, but I remember those things trying to convince me that they would make me feel what I wanted to feel. Sometimes I still hear them whispering. But there's One who gives all, freely, and with full satisfaction. Real Love is all that will ever satisfy. Love keeps no record of wrongs and my record is clean. Not because I'm good, but because I'm loved. You are too, though. You have been bought at the highest price. You've been loved more deeply than you can imagine. You've been given the extent of all of the love in the world… but you've been lied to and told it's not for you. You've had demons whisper in your ear that the things they can offer will be better. There is nothing better. Nothing.

After I learned how things went in there today to convince you to pick up that pen, I wanted to go stuff my face with some tacos, lay in bed, cry, and hold that little brown baby that we both love while I read God's Word. I'm afraid for you, though. I'm afraid of what things you were longing to do to find relief from the depths of pain that you had to go through today. I pray that those lies don't entice you further. I pray that the weight of what you felt today doesn't crush you. I pray that somehow, in all of this, you feel the love that we have, that we want to have for you even in our own sin and fear, and ultimately the love that God has for you.

It's not over. We're all waiting. Nothing we signed is real today, and won't be for a few weeks or possibly longer.

But you picked up that pen today and you took a step toward what I believe is something that took an immeasurable amount of bravery to do. You aren't finished fighting, and no real mom would walk away without trying everything she could so I don't blame you, but for the steps you took today I want to say…

I'm grateful.
I'm proud.
I'm hurting.
I'm hopeful.
I'm scared.
I'm nervous.


Most of all though, I'm sorry. I wish you were still tiny. I wish you could start over. I wish I could help. I wish so many things for you, and even though I wish the best for your daughter, and I believe the best for her can be here… I wish it hadn't happened that way today. I'm sorry, and I love you. I hope you let me love you.



With deepest sincerity,
The Other Mom