[bromanchik]

Peachy is right. The loss is much more ambiguous and open ended. It is a harder loss to grieve in a way because there are no rituals, little support and the possibility that someday there may be contact... then again, maybe not.

In other ways it is similar to a death. The child is no longer ours. We wonder, even in fully open adoptions, who our child would be had we raised them. Those who have lost a child wonder who they would have become had they lived. At every stage... we wonder. The child, the teen, the adult...they are all lost to us.