Letter to Birth Mother (cont.)
But you did know her, didn’t you, dear birth mother?
The way a pregnant woman knows the soul growing inside of her—every kick, every hiccup. There is deep knowing like no other kind in this world. Maybe the deepest parts of her remember and know too.
You and I were pregnant at the same time. And I could never have wondered at the miracle of another daughter growing elsewhere at the same moment. You knew her then, this baby who would forever link us together. You know those things that I will never know: her first flutters of movement, her first breath, first cry.
Like two planets orbiting a sun, we have both felt her warmth in different seasons, and yet we have never intersected paths. We both know what it is to hold her and to love her enough to want the very best for her. For you, that love was far more costly.
You had the power to extinguish that radiant light…but you didn’t. You live in a culture that devalues the life of a female child, and from what little I know, your pregnancy was dangerous. It could have cost you your life. What made you push through and fight for her?
I choose to believe it was love. And this is the story I give to her.
Every September 14, I wake up thinking of you and the choice you had to make that day. Your baby left the safety of your body and was ushered into a broken world where mommies don’t always get to keep their babies and where brokenness sometimes seems to win the day. You did the hardest thing any mother could ever face—entrusting your child to the unknown…to the 8 billion. Like Moses in the basket that drifted from his mother’s view, God’s sovereignty was the reach in those years of her life where neither of us could go.
A part of her will always belong to you. Maybe that’s how it should be in a world with loose ends.
She is a happy little girl with the biggest heart you’ve ever seen. I believe that is a reflection of you, her birth mother. Some things we learn, but some things just are, because of who we are on the inside and what our parents pass down to us in the fibers of our being. She has not lost that piece of you.
I am eternally grateful for the gift of life you gave to her, and the gift of her you gave to me. You are—somewhere out there—still entrusting me with her, a stranger you will never meet. I pray every day that I am a suitable woman for the task and that you might somehow be thankful that God made a way, even when the way feels broken.
If this letter to birth mother somehow finds you, I want you to know…
We love you. We pray for you. And we miss you.
You are beautiful and brave. And she is beautiful and brave like you.
Thank you, dear birth mother, for the ways you loved her with all you had to give.
