Adoption Awareness Day 9: Boundaries between the triad

Open adoption. Closed adoption. Domestic adoption. International adoption. It matters not, you can not escape the adoption triad. The triad is not bad and for some in fact it is a great blessing to have the birth mother be a part of their lives. For some the triad is bad, for what happened before this family was not good. For some the triad is a big unknown with questions that may never have an honest answer.
There is woman some 7000 miles away that I share a bond with every day. There is a woman who I ache to know, but if I am honest am scared to know as well. There is a woman who I work to honor everyday. A woman whose legacy I raise. There is a woman who I know so little about, who I could not pick out of a crowd, but who I see glimpses of everyday in my son. Little Man calls her his Tummy Mommy and knows that she is far away. 

I have held him and told him the story of how he came to be mine and I came to be his. I have rocked him as he cried for her, as an infant mourning a loss he didn't understand and couldn't verbalize, as a toddler when he was first told by a stranger that he didn't look like me, as a child who is beginning to understand more about adoption. I have stopped my car and rocked a child who wanted his brith parents so badly he was sobbing in his car seat. I have reassured a little boy that I am here, that this is family, that we are "stuck together" forever. I have wiped away tears when he asks why I can't bring her here. And I have cried silent tears as he questions "she would have kept me if she could have, right?" She is a part of us. She is the missing hands that complete our circle. 

This is a short excerpt from a longer piece I wrote a long time ago: One woman’s journey to her child begins with the heartbreak of a mother and the cries of a baby who does not understand. He is placed in the arms of the nanny and his story begins, a story of heartache and of love surpassing understanding, a love that oddly, starts with letting go. 

When I wrote that I was thinking only of her having to "let go," I have realize it involves my letting go so he can have both of us in his heart. I am the mother that he sees everyday, who hugs and kisses and smiles and laughs and grows with him everyday, but she is the mother who gave him to me.
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