Dunlap Family Adoption

I ran across this post written by Gwenn Mangine, an adoptive mom, a few days ago and thought I’d share.

Abandonment vs. Surrender

As and adoptive mother, sometimes I run into people who are pretty uneducated about adoption. I am not counting this as a fault, they are just uneducated. And if they’ve never been exposed to adoption, why WOULD they be educated about it? There are plenty of things in life that I am uneducated about. Lots actually. Sports for example. I don’t know anything about sports. I don’t know names of players or equipment or tournaments for really any sport. It doesn’t make me an idiot, it just makes me uninformed.

One uneducated thing I’ve heard (and continue to hear with startling regularity) is some variation of this sentiment, “I just don’t understand how a mother could give up her child.” I hear it usually from white, middle to upper class mothers. I want to be very careful not to paint a picture that I am not painting. I am not saying ALL white middle class mothers feel this way. I am a white, middle class mother. I’m just saying that in my experience, most of the people who have made these kinds of statements TO ME have fit into that category.

So, back to not getting how a mother could “give up” her child. I am a mother. I get the whole mother’s heart thing. I get the attachment that forms between mother and child. I get the mama bear thing. That’s me at times. And this might be a bit controversial of a statement, but, I don’t think that anyone who’s NOT a mother really gets that. They might think they do. But it’s my opinion that they do not. If you have another opinion, that’s fine.

The crucial piece that many people fail to realize is the absolute powerlessness that SO many mothers in this world face. One might pose a hypothetical question like, “Would you give up one child to save another?” And we (as mothers) say things like, “I could never choose between my children.” Well that’s awfully convenient to say when we are never PUT in a situation where we need to chose between children. Nor will we ever be. But what if you were? What if you were a single mother and you only had enough food to feed three children and you had four… what would you do? What would you do?

Some of you mama bears among us would say, “Well, I just wouldn’t eat so that my child could.” Noble. Sure. That’s only going to last you a few weeks. And then what? Then you die and leave 4 orphans or you start eating again. Let’s be real. There ARE people—hundreds of thousands of moms—who face THIS very situation all the time. But from our cozy Lazy Boy recliners, we look at the situation as if it were hypothetical.

If there truly are no options to parent, the MOST loving thing that a mother in that situation can do is surrender her mother’s heart to another mama. But that’s not how it’s viewed, is it? We call it abandonment. But it isn’t really abandoning. I prefer the term surrendering. Think about how badly it hurts, how much it COSTS emotionally to surrender in an argument. And usually, most arguments are about something stupid. Now multiply how difficult that is by the depth of a mother’s love.

Today I found myself trying to define “love” for my children. I explained that loving someone means you choose to do what’s best for THEM, not for you. I remember my mom spanking me as a kid and saying, “This hurts me more than this hurts you.” (Not sure I really feel the same way all the time to my discredit….) But my God, isn’t that what being a mother is? Choosing things that hurt us more than it hurts them? That’s why we set boundaries for our kids. That’s why we discipline our kids. That’s why it hurts so bad to let them pay the consequences for their actions. But it’s necessary.

I know there is such thing as a truly deadbeat mom. I hate that for kids. But I don’t think that is the majority of birthmom situations. I am so thankful for all of the birthmothers out there who LOVE their children enough to choose life for them even when it means a death in their own soul. They are the true mama bears.

Nico’s birthmother, or first mother as we often call her in our family, comes to my mind a lot. I wonder where she is. I wonder what she’s up to. I grieve that Nico doesn’t know her. I grieve that she doesn’t know Nico. And I grieve that she will never know how very much I admire her for surrendering Nico. She sent her son, my son, to live in an orphanage with nothing more than the hope of a better life for him. Greater love has no one than this…