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ding dang dong- I just came across this thread and it's about my signature. I know for some it's a factual discussion and for others it's very personal and emotional.

It wasn't meant to be a statement about anyone else, just about me. That was honestly my journey. I'm an adoptive stepmom and when I "met" the boy who became my son, he was 8 and I was 24. When it became clear that I would be his mother, it was something I couldn't even fathom. I remember watching him play and splash around in a backyard pool and think "He's the most fantastic, adorable kid I've ever seen, but how do I love him as a mother loves a son? How do I walk into this life that's already in progress and become his Mother?" All I could do was pray that God would show me how to be a mother, and would put that mother-love that is so uniquely mother-love into my heart for this boy so that I love him not just as a great kid, but as my son. It wasn't long before my prayer was answered in spades to the point that even I cannot fathom the depth of my love for my son. Trying to be worthy of that name is something to which I hold myself. I hope I earn it every day of my life. I didn't conceive him, I didn't carry him in me, I didn't birth him, I didn't anything until he was halfway through his childhood, so I really did feel (and in some ways still do) that having really been "given" the name, the title, I wanted to be worthy of it. I still try to be worthy of it, though the shape of the task has entirely changed from guiding and protecting, to releasing and letting go.

My son, who recently opened contact with his biological mother, is free to call her anything he wishes- the spoken form of address for each other or what they consider each other's place in their lives is a matter that's entirely between them. But whatever anyone calls us, I think truth is truth and we are what we are no matter what anyone else has to say about it. If you are a mother, you are a mother. No one else can un-make you what you are. If my son stopped calling me his mother, I still would be his mother, because that's what I am. What you call someone and what they are are 2 totally different things. So even if he never addresses her as such, even if they never have a relationship that entails any kind of parental activity, even if they never spoke to each other again, she is still his mother-- not his only one, not the one who raised him, but his mother nonetheless- and no I don't think she has to "earn" the name. I think she already did.

But that doesn't mean that I will ever stop trying to be worthy of the name Mother. That's my task. That's my journey. And it always will be - even when I'm 105.