[julie23]

dpenn and amanda.... both your first posts on this thread brought tears to my eyes.... you are both very eloquent and well spoken... and i so very much appreciate the thoughts that you have shared... on such a complicated topic...

my youngest daughter is playing at my feet as i type.... my middle girls are off at elementary school.... my college student is probably sleeping in as she enjoys her first apartment.... and the the first daughter i gave birth to... well, i don't know where she is... or what she is doing...

for 23 years i have tried to make sense of "who" i am with this child i relinquished... for many years... i felt like her mother... i felt like she was still mine.... for other years, i felt like i was simply the woman who gave birth to her... and had no right to the word mother... and then, i spent some years believing she had two mothers.... me, and the one who raised her...

when my baby was born, not through my own body... and i cut the cord... and held her for the first time... i looked in her eyes and promised to raise her knowing she had two mothers... that we both had equal rights to that word...

but in the last fourteen months.... well, my little izzy has taught me so much.

no matter what was in my own heart regarding her two mothers.... in izzy's heart there is only one mommy....

her birthmother has never chosen to take participate in the fully open adoption that we have... and izzy does not know who she is...

she is a one year old baby... her first mom is a stranger to her.... her first mom is not real to her... (by her own choice).... a baby cannot understand such a thing....

as she grows... and begins to understand her life circumstances... i suspect her birthmother will still be something of a mystery... i do not forsee her changing her attitude towards the open adoption... but have hope that someday she will make herself real to this beautiful child... if not, i will certainly do the best i can to offer that to her...

i make myself real to izzy every day... every morning... every night... with every hug... every nose wipe... all those things, that i wasn't allowed to do for my first child...

i wasn't allowed to be real to her... that is simply how adoption works for many of us....

i was a fantasy to her... some fuzzy distorted image of some woman who gave birth to her....

my baby was born to a distant first cousin... and when she is old enough... i can force the realness... i think....

"real".... it's something tangible... i think. it's something we can get our hands around... we don't view "real" as being something abstract.... and birthmothers are abstract when they are not present in the lives of their child... i have three kiddos under the age of 9.... i've raised one up to 18... it takes years... and maturity to understand the abstract... to understand that something you cannot touch or see can be just as "real" as something you see every day of your life....

well... this very real baby of mine.... is now in my lap pulling at papers and trying to type...