Today is not my day

Some are celebrating what's called Birth Mother Day today. This is not to take anything away from the women who find comfort in that kind of celebration. If you are a natural mother of adoption loss and you feel this helps you to deal with whatever feelings Mother's Day conjures up for you then so be it. It's not for me to stand in your way and I'm not judging. However, for me, I am a mother. I'm not that term. My motherhood is not going to be relegated to a separate day from other mothers. I am not less than. That's what the Saturday before Mother's Day means to me. It means I'm not worthy of being included with the other mothers who didn't walk this road and they got to raise all of their children.

The three beautiful people in the above photo are all mine. I birthed all of them. This photo was taken 10 years ago, the day they met for the very first time ever! Liz is the one on the left. She's the one I did not get to raise. I raised the other two but I'm still the mother of all three. I treasure this photo because it was a dream come true for me. I dreamed for years of the day when all my children would be in one place at the same time. I dreamed of what it would be like to see them studying each other's faces, recognizing each other in their features. I dreamed of seeing their 3 faces lined up and searching for the similarities. 

Here we are some years later. I'm in the middle with my girls on either side - my oldest and my youngest. There is no secondary label that I can put on my feelings about my children depending on who I raised and who I didn't so I won't accept a secondary holiday. Happy Mother's Day to me and all the other mothers out there whether you were blessed with the opportunity of raising your children or not.