I find Mother's Day especially difficult for different reasons. When I was younger, it was difficult because I wasn't married or have kids. During that time, my sister would send me cards on Mother's Day because I was an aunt. It was nice to be recognized for that. Thanks, Brenda.
After I got married at the ripe old age of 32, it took us 5 years before we had kids. We adopted Calsey and Seth at the ages of 11 and 8, respectively. We were blissfully unaware of the war that would culminate in 6 years. Adopting kids with Reactive Attachment Disorder means that Mother's Day and mom's birthday will not be reasons to celebrate. Many kids with RAD blame the mom figure for the loss of their birth mom. If I didn't like Mother's Day before this, I liked it even less now.
By the time of 11 years of marriage we were anticipating the birth of our only biological child. Someone who we would be able to form into a young lady that embraced our values and respected us as her parents. She would not know the trauma caused by abandonment, neglect and transiency. She will be attached. But during that same year of marriage we "lost" a son. Because of some false allegations we were forced to terminate our parental rights to him. So he will now age out of the system in less than a year at age 18 with no legal parents. And while our daughter is still legally ours, we don't see nearly as much of her or our grandson as we'd like.
There is so much for me to grieve over about Mother's Day and so it still fills me with dread. I grieve for the loss and abandonment Calsey and Seth had to suffer in their early years. I grieve that those feelings were transitioned to me and they were never really able to see me as the mom figure that they should have. I grieve for the hopes and dreams that I had before I had children of how the lives of those children would be. I grieve that I was not able to hold them as babies, meet their needs, and teach them how to trust. I grieve that Lilyana will probably never know her brother and sister like "normal" siblings know each other. She is, for all practical purposes, an only child. It grieves me that she will miss learning how to get along with others which is taught by having siblings.
But there is joy. There is joy in that Calsey and Seth's birth mom gave them life. She had another option and had she taken it, we would not have known them and been able to share in 6 years of their lives. Through adopting them I have learned books worth of knowledge about RAD, FASD, PTSD and other acronyms. And God, knowing we would need some serious joy, gave us that miracle baby we call Lilyana. Had we not had Lilyana, we would have sunk into deep depression and maybe never returned after the loss of our son.
But, now, as far as I'm concerned I have three children and one grandchild. The older two are doing their own thing but I am still their mom and will be there for me whenever they need me. The younger one, I hope, will allow me to be the mom I was meant to be and will allow me to guide her so that one day I can say about her "Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her."
Happy Mother's Day to my mother-in-law in heaven. I wished you could have met Lilyana. I know you would have loved her and she you. We miss you.
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