I’ve heard this. It’s interesting when people say to me ” you experience sounds like it was negative, but that’s not the norm, you must be anti adoption” and…I laugh. I laugh because the whole time I was in the ” open adoption” looking in you would think I was the picture of happiness. I was smiling in all the pics of me and my son, you would never guess just how much pain was hidden behind that smile. That’s the way you have to be, because if you are honest about your continued grief, adoptive parents get uncomfortable. They withhold visits. They stop sending updates. They threaten to close the adoption. Open adoption relationships are fake. On both sides. And adoption, is never a ” pleasant” experience.

Out of the First Mom Closet

In what I like to call my everyday interweb adventures, I usually stop by the reddit subforum, birthparents.  Recently, an expectant mother posted there asking for advice regarding the adoption option.  Of course, in stark contrast to most of the advice she received, I posted some truthful answers about adoption in the vein of what I wished I had known before relinquishment.  In response to my reply, I was asked, “you sound like your adoption experience wasn’t pleasant. May I ask why?”

Upon reading this, my immediate response was to chuckle to myself.  What exactly does a pleasant adoption experience look like?  No matter the circumstance, how can giving away one’s child EVER be considered pleasant? My experience wasn’t the horror show that happens to so many other women, to be sure, but I would never categorize it as something on the pleasant part of the adoption experience spectrum.  I’m…

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