“I placed my baby for adoption years ago and I still think about her every day”
Birth parents often describe thinking of the child every day for years: on her birthday, when a girl her age walks past, when a form asks about children. The grief may have been hidden from family, partners and later children, and in a closed adoption there may be no news at all. In an Australian study of past adoption practices (Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2012), covering mostly closed adoptions from the 1960s and early 1970s, the 505 mothers who took part most often named family pressure or a lack of family support as the reason, and largely felt it had not been their own choice. Over half had symptoms suggesting post-traumatic stress, though the mothers chose to take part and the study could not show what caused it.
What to check first
It helps to check what kind of adoption it was, open or closed, chosen or pressured, and what the person knows about where the child is now. The child's birthday and the day of parting are worth knowing as hard dates. It also helps to notice whether anyone in the person's life now knows.
What could be going on
Birth parent grief after adoption (relinquishment): Fits if you have grieved her for years, often in secret, while she lives a life without you.
Ambiguous loss (Boss): Check whether not knowing where she is, or how she is, keeps the loss open.
Shame: Fits if you have kept it hidden, or still feel judged for it, even decades on.
Anniversary reactions: Check whether her birthday, or the day you parted, brings the grief back each year.
Telling them apart
Birth parent grief after adoption (relinquishment): The grief may have lasted decades, often in secret, and may be heavier when the adoption was closed or pressured. The child is alive and elsewhere, which makes it hard to mourn in any usual way. New waves may come at her birthday, at a later pregnancy, at news stories about adoption.
Ambiguous loss (Boss): Not knowing where she is, whether she is well, or whether she knows about her birth parent can keep the loss open. There is no ending to mourn. Hope of contact and fear of it may swing back and forth.
Shame: The parent may have been told to forget, to move on, to keep it secret, and may still hide it from a spouse or later children. The shame may be about the self as a parent who let a child go. It can make the grief hard to speak at all.
Anniversary reactions: The grief may spike around her birthday, the day of parting, or Mother's Day, sometimes before the person notices the date. Low mood, restlessness or poor sleep may come in those weeks. The body may keep the calendar.
Questions to carry
- The last time she came into my mind today, what had I just seen or heard?
- Who have I told the whole story to, and what has kept me from telling others?
Also said as
- gave my baby up for adoption and still grieve
- birth mother grief
- i think about the son i placed for adoption
- her birthday is the hardest day every year
- regret giving my baby up
- closed adoption and i don't know if she's alive