Birth Mother's Day is a day to honor and remember the motherhood experience of birth mothers, the
women who lost/placed their children in adoption. It is held on the second Saturday in May and observed
with a public ceremony.
Birth Mother's Day was created in 1990 by a group of Seattle Washington birth mothers who met each
other at a birth parent support group. It grew out of the shared recognition that Mother's Day is one of the
most painful days of the year- second only to the birthday of our missing children. Yet birth mothers have
been shut out of the traditional celebration and remembrances of the holiday. Most birth mothers are
neither named nor recognized among the mothers in our midst. For most birth mothers there are no cards
or flowers. Society treats the motherhood of the birth mother as a momentary event that fades quickly
from the collective memory. It often seems we are even forgotten by those who received the gift and the
privilege of parenthood through the birth mother's loss. This invisibility and silence gives adopted children
and adults the message they are forgotten by their birth mothers and that, they too, have no place for
expressing their feelings, thoughts or questions about the woman who gave the gift of life.
Most people are simply unaware that for the rest of their lives, many birth mothers feel sorrow, and love,
for the children they have lost through adoption. This is partly because there has never been place or a way
for birth mothers to tell their stories. Our pain has been made invisible by a society that tells us we can
forget. Without permission to grieve by those around us, we have lived in isolation and silence with a great
wound upon our hearts and souls. We have lived with the unspeakable sorrow of a mother's loss, a mother
who lives separated from her child.
Despite this invisibility, and denial, birth mothers are mothers. We are not egg donors, or baby making
machines. We have names and faces, hearts and stories. The process of pregnancy and the act of birth are
profound life-changing experiences. The birth experience impacts a woman for the rest of her life.
Connections of heart, spirit, and biology are forged. Eternal connections are made that cannot be dissolved
by ink and paper. When birth is followed by the abrupt loss/separation from one's child, a mother is
plunged into the most difficult of human experiences- grief, loss, despair, shame, and failure. This is the
traumatic aftermath of an adoption decision for a birth mother. It is with her the rest of her life. Some birth
mothers ultimately find peace with the adoption decision, but even more live with it as an open wound. It is
a wound for which little understanding or help has come from those who advocate, facilitate and profit
from adoption
Mother's Day brings a birth mother's feelings and memories rushing forward like the tide. Most of us
have endured this annual event in isolation, invisibility, silence and secret grief, acknowledging our
motherhood and our absent child only to ourselves. Birth Mother's Day was created to help birth mothers
move through this torrent of memory and feeling. It is a way to take back our rightful name of Mother and
to celebrate ourselves as birth givers- the ones who give life. It is a way to expand the celebration of
Mother's Day to make it inclusive of all the mothers in our communities. It is a day to remember and to
celebrate the birth of our children- an experience many of us were denied. In doing this we affirm our
connection and feeling for our children. We create a space to tell our stories and become fully human
again- with names, faces, voices and compassion for ourselves and our experiences.
Birth Mother's Day is held on the day before Mother's Day. There are several reasons for this. The first of
these recognizes our motherhood is one of loss and abrupt separation, as well as love and connection.
Many of us were denied as mothers, treated like criminals, abandoned by our families, our communities
and our children's fathers. These are not the traditional experiences or sentiments associated with the
Mother's Day observances, yet these remembrances are summoned forth each year at this time. A separate
day allows all of the feelings to be acknowledged, especially those that are painful and rooted in grief.
Birth mothers who have had other children expressed feeling torn between the Mother's Day celebrations
of the children they are raising and the memory of the child who is absent. A separate day allows for
observance and expression of both circumstances.
Secondly our motherhood comes first and makes possible the motherhood of another woman- the
adoptive mother. If we had not given birth, there would be no child for the adoptive mother (and father) to
parent. Observing Birth Mother's Day on the Saturday prior to Mother's day symbolically represents this
reality. Adopted children have two mothers. Our shared child links us one to one another. The intention is
not to detract from those who are parenting our children, but to make this annual observance inclusive of
all the mothers in the lives of our children and our communities. Observing Birth Mother's Day could also
create a time for families of adopted children to talk openly about birth families and the ways we are all
connected to one another through our children.
Mother's Day was originally founded by Julia Ward Howe, as a day for peace, in which the mothers of the
world would commit themselves to peace by not allowing their children to kill another mother's child in
war. This commitment was based on the shared understanding of a mother's love and the terrible grief of
losing a child. In recognizing the love and the sorrow of birth mothers, Birth Mother's Day can be seen as
an act of peace-making and healing. It stands in contrast to an adoption system that has been built upon
the destruction of the birth family relationship, destruction with consequences for the adoptive family as
well. Truth cannot be whole without all its parts. People cannot be whole without all the people who love
them. In our events in Seattle, birth mothers have attended with the adoptive mothers of their shared
children, and adoptive mothers and fathers have attended on behalf of their adopted children as well. By
honoring the humanity of the birth mother and acknowledging the relationships between all of us, Birth
Mother's day is a radical affirmation of the meaning of family and the way of peace making for our
communities.
"To Remember Is Painful To Forget Is Impossible."
~Maureen Connelly
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