I got a fantastic e-mail over the weekend. It was from a birth mom (let’s call her Louise) who’d been reading my blogs. At one point in her life, she’d voluntarily agreed to termination of her parental rights so that her child could be adopted by his/her foster parents.
She told me just how difficult it was for her to make that decision. She told me how much she misses her child, even though she knows that allowing the foster (now adoptive) parents to raise him/her was the greatest gift she could give her child at that point. But what stopped me in my tracks was when she told me that one of the biggest things she struggled with was that, when all was said and done, the court records would state that she voluntarily gave up her child.
Now, I’ve done a lot of thinking about Amy and her choices re: her son. A lot.
And it would never, ever have occurred to me that CHOOSING to give up her child to a loving home might cause more shame for her than simply having her child taken away by the state.
But it makes perfect sense, and I think that that’s exactly what’s going on, at least in part.
If Amy agreed to TPR, her son could come back to her when he is 18 and say, “Why didn’t you want me? You GAVE ME AWAY!!” What a terrifying prospect – that your son wouldn’t understand that you’d acted out of love.
But if Amy hung on by her fingertips doing just enough to get by until social services or the judge had had enough and Chris was taken away, at least she could say that she’d done all she could do (whether she actually had or not) – that she would never, never have given him up if she'd had any choice at all. Perhaps she could even convince herself of that, in that way we all try to fool ourselves about certain things every now and then.
Thank you Louise. You have reminded me that as I sit here in frustration, waiting to discover what will ultimately happen, there is a girl in (another state) faced with the most difficult choice of her life.
Thanks for your generosity. I think you rock.
