Dear Mother,
I have written you this letter so many times that it comes easily now to paper. I even know the first time I actually had it finished beginning to end.
It was lying in the hospital holding your first born granddaughter and realizing that I wouldn’t have had the courage you did when you gave me up for adoption.
My parents love me so much and have given me the life I’m sure that you always prayed that I was having. Did you know that I was born on their wedding anniversary? I was their greatest gift and they have always said so.
I can’t imagine how hard that period of your life must have been. I had always assumed that you had your reasons and that you had probably moved on with your life and put me behind you. Then I gave birth to a child of my own.
I suddenly understood how amazing a person you must be and I hoped that one day I would get the opportunity to tell you – Thank You!
Thank you for the family you gave me, for the parents that love me and for the two younger brothers I have. Thank you for the life I have lived, for the man I met, for the children I have and for the grandchildren they will give me.
Because of you, I had the honor of sharing the wonder of adoption with a friend when she got pregnant with a child she could not keep. She had an affair with a married man while married to someone else and I told them all that the baby didn’t deserve the baggage they were going to put on an innocent child. I told them that there was a couple out there desperately waiting for a child of their own and that adoption was the only direction for them to take. I became their poster child for happily adopted children. I was her birth coach and watched in tears as my friend gave birth to another mother’s child. There aren’t words to describe that moment or the look on the adopting mother’s face when she saw her baby boy come into this world. And I knew, I knew that I had to find you, that I had to tell you thank you, thank you.
Your gift, your courage, your love have changed the face of the world in ways that you can’t imagine.
I hope that when all of this has sunk in, that we have the opportunity to talk, to meet if you would like (I know that I would). I can think of nothing more wonderful than hugging you in person and you being able to see that I grew up to be a woman who I think would make you proud.
With all my love,
Caroline