Healing My Heart and My Family: A Birth Mother’s Journey
by Rubie Writes
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May 12, 2023

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Healing My Heart and My Family: A Birth Mother’s Journey

Imagery courtesy of Nappy.co

At the age of 20, five Mother’s Days had passed by me and no one said a word. There were those who didn’t know because I was sent away to give birth and then return home in a body that bore the marks of birth…Yet my son was not with me. He was being raised by a loving and nurturing family that at 14 I was told I could not offer the same. The family I resided in was riddled in addiction and dysfunction and after months in a Christian girls home I was told… “You’ll go home and be a kid, your son will be fine…even better without you”. So Mother’s day was silent and unspoken.

Six years later — almost to the day — I gave birth again and was finally able to hear and feel the blessing of “Mother.” Yet, at the same time, another desire awakened…where is my son? The countdown of return began to tick even the more…at 18 they’ll give him the letter I wrote him and gave to the adoption agency. OK, well maybe by 21 I’ll help him finish college, 25 maybe he’ll live with me until he’s married, 30 this is it…he’ll be back. Yet, nothing but overrun emotions dashed hopes, and joy that wasn’t full. I began to find ways to heal and to celebrate in order to heal this hurt, yet I struggled in a pre-social media world to find my tribe. I attended Birth Mother Celebrations (as the U.S. acknowledges Birth Mother’s Day annually the day before Mother’s Day), I made bracelets, every year I looked at his baby pictures, and because I thought he was in my tri-state area, I searched for him continuously. My searches were not merely by a pre-Google Internet, but primarily were in the face of the cashier, movie ticket-taker, at sports events, and in churches. If I saw a boy that I thought bared my likeness, I would talk to him or ask his name so I could search to see if he was mine. That was a ROUGH season as I was collecting this data and smiles and no one knew it. I remember one day my husband caught me in one of these fact-finding sessions and, as he knew of my son and hoped for him as well, he held my hand and said, “I understand.” My second child was adamant on her brother’s return; I shared with her as a pre-teen my truth that I was more than her mother, and from that day she lit candles, had cake, and as an adult, sipped wine to her brother’s return…and one day, he did. 

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Son with his mother
Imagery courtesy of iStock.com

He was more than anything I could imagine; he had my smile and held perfectly all of the DNA of his inheritance. Smart, funny, sometimes the life of the party, and sometimes totally solemn. He was here, and like any other mother with a baby I was enamored. I struggled to find out how to feed him, dress him, and would even watch him when he slept at 32-years-old. In our first weeks of reuniting, I dreamed of him as a baby, and when I described it to him he said that’s exactly who he was. I felt like that baby visited me to say, “Mom, I’m good.” It was then that I realized as much as I had planned and celebrated our reunion, I had to release the pain, guilt, imposed shame, and regret of my past to celebrate what I brought to the earth…my son.  

Many people have told me how blessed I am to have found my son, and I am. I recognize that it is by the grace of God that my son and I are reunited, and my family is healing. And I understand that everyone does not have a happy ending, but I want to encourage you all with this. If you’re a birth mother and you have just released your child, waiting for reunion, or post- reunion I want to encourage you to separate the circumstances of adoption from the vessel used to produce good. As Mothers, we are vessels that have been entrusted with life’s greatest treasure the ability to produce more life. As you privately or publicly celebrate this year, and if you’ve never celebrated, I pray you will. God allowed you through a myriad of things to produce a child that is in this earth; be gentle with yourself, speak healing words over yourself so the wounds of the past won’t block the love that God wants to flow in you and through you. Think good healing thoughts of your child, push that love into the earth, and believe it will bring a great harvest of confidence in your child. You didn’t raise that child but you did birth them… take honor in that this weekend and I wish you a Blessed Birth Mother’s Day. 

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