The Ignorance of Adoption...

When I was a really young girl...maybe 8 or 9.. there were these two boys that lived down the street from me. Both of the boys were adopted. They were birth brothers who had been in the foster care system since they were babies...their birth mother was a drug addict who would not give them up until they were about 8 years old. So these poor guys lived their first years of life not knowing where they would be the next day... the next minute for that matter. When I was much older, I learned that both of the boys had been severely abused.. as a young kid myself in those days.. I had no idea what abuse was..
I would play with these two boys almost every day. We would build forts and play hide and seek...we were friends.. We would hang out at each others houses. We had a lot of fun..until the fight... I don't remember what started the fight but one of the boys said something nasty about my parents...and my family...Well, I attacked back with something to this day..makes me sick to my stomach.. I said "Well, at least my parents loved me and did not throw me away like yours did..." That awful statement came out of my own mouth when I was nine years old.... Today, I am 43 and I am still ashamed of the child (me) who said that... Both the boys ran home and I never played with them again... About a week after the incident their adoptive mother was out walking her dogs..she walked up to me in my front yard.. In a very shaky voice she asked to talk with me.... She said, "How dare you say those things to my sons... how dare you... you are an awful awful child...and your parents must be so ashamed of you" and then she walked away.. I did not say a word.. I hung my head in shame....
Today, I am the mother of two adopted daughters. Both of my daughters did not have to face the world of foster care.. They were both adopted at birth.... Nikki my oldest daughter came home from school a couple of years ago and told me that a friend of hers said that her 'real' mom did not want her and that I was her pretend mom.... I had a major flash back to my comment so many years ago to those little boys and I tried to find the words to explain to my daughter that she was special and loved by so many... I know that God taught me a lesson I needed to learn from what happened so many years ago..
I look at my beautiful girls everyday and thank God for blessing me with motherhood. My daughters will run across people who are ignorant about adoption and the major love it entails from the birth mother who made the decision to give her baby away to parents that adopted them and how their worlds came together to love a child...unconditionally....