- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Our daughter from a multi-race open adoption just started college; she's 19 and is going to school in the town where her birthmother and family live.
They are going through a rough time right now and our shared daughter is doing her wash there and learning what she can do, and what she can't do to help. It's a great lesson and it will do her at least as much good as her freshman courses.
A lot of our early experiences sound a great deal like Dawn's; I could dig out the story I wrote for Mothering (they rejected it for not being positive enough) and it would sound like hers. It's not ever going to be normal, this shared relationship, because we're breaking new ground. But it's good for us all.
The daughter calls me "Mom" and she calls her birthmom "Mom" and we both had to get used to it.
Open adoption is like getting married: you have one really important person to love and cherish, and a big family of relatives to get used to and to learn to love -- our joint family gathers several times a year for holidays and birthdays and recreation. We've gotten used to each other much as in-laws do.
Sharing Lin made me learn to be generous and kind, and to love without being jealous and possessive of her. It was often hard. I will be grateful my whole life that I had my daughter and her mother and family to teach me this.
Every parent needs to know how keep loving while letting go. I am just lucky enough to have an open adoption to put it in my face.
