There are many reasons why a birth mother relinquishes her child (or children) for adoption.  These range wildly.  It could be that the birth mother has economic challenges.  She may have grown up in a dysfunctional family and therefore does not have a healthy model from which to parent on.  Perhaps she didn’t really have a relationship with the birth father, so there is nobody to raise the child with.  There are many more reasons.  I personally had all three of these reasons, but the bottom line of me choosing not to parent was a combination of wanting to hold on to my personal freedom, and feeling I would not make a suitable parent due to having bipolar disorder.  

Family for me is fraught with emotion.  However, during these Covid times, we have been made aware of everything that we had, because it has been taken away temporarily.  Family thus has become even more precious.  Our triad, this chosen family, is a delicate experiment in still fairly uncharted waters.  We are a three person village, committed to the wellbeing of our child, our one and only child.  The adoptive family is a unique form of alternative family, but we are similar to families everywhere. 

On April 7, I will be fully vaccinated from Covid-19.  Being an essential worker, and having had a mild case of Covid, I have been more concerned with getting others sick, than for myself.  After April 7, I can perhaps visit my “bio son”: the son I placed for adoption, with less worry of transmission.  As everyone has, we have tried to see family in limited and responsible ways, including outdoor visits, a “phone visit”’ which was my favorite, and when I had Covid, the adoptive family dropped off whatever I needed at the bottom of my stairs.  The “phone visit” was the first time my “bio son” and I really conversed, because he is ten going on eleven.  He read to me in Spanish and then we discussed how when he is a teenager, he wants to be the kind of kid who still hugs his parents in front of his friends.  This is the kind of child the adoptive parents are raising!  With the vaccination, and as the adoptive parents get vaccinated, we will all be able to resume in-person visits.  With vaccination, all of us will be reunited with extended family, or grandparents, or whichever chosen family we have.  All of us can resume the business of loving.

Nova Reeves
Writer