Saturday, May 10, 2008

A time without quotation marks...

I'm still thinking about the issue with the Non-Mom category. I'm suprised at this day in age that we still need to educate people about the facts that a mom is a mom, is a mom. How parenthood occurs is regardless. Whether adoption, foster care, grandparents or step parents - we are all parenting.

Yesterday I was trading email with Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. His first reaction when I emailed him on this was "you have friggen got to be kidding!" Unfortunately, I wasn't. The Adoption Institute does amazing work in educating policy makers, research, and outreach about adoption (and foster) related issues.

Thankfully, Adam's response was: "I'm on it." But why do we have to "be on it"? While the apology from Teleflora was good, especially considering tens of thousands of pissed off parents were tying up their phone lines two days before Mothers Day and not ordering flowers... But why, in the apology, when they tell us that the founders are adoptive parents do they call it out as "adoptive" parents? Are they really parents who have adopted? Why the quotation marks at all? Why can't be be just "parents"? What is it that someone wants to prove?

The days of some natural heirarchy of people who are somehow better than I am because they have reproduced, or have more children, is long gone. I actually consider myself a little higher on the evoluationary scale just for being smart enough to know that my children were waiting for me - without my womb and ovaries getting involved.

Sure, bio kids are fantastic. All kids are. But lets not discriminate based on which womb they were born to, how they joined their family.

Tomorrow is Mothers Day - a day that I look forward to all year. It blends (blessedly) into the rest of the year, with breakfast, getting dressed and enjoying our day - whether at church or weeding the yard. But in the 8 years since becoming a mom, I also take time to thank the first mother - the ones that each of my daughters were born to. They made a frightful decision in China, opted not to take the easy way out (or maybe they couldn't) - but thankfully they chose abandonment in a public location, which would lead to an orphanage and possibly adoption by a family that loves them. The alternative frightens me - with child trafficking and selling of children running unchecked in China, and ignored by authorities.

So - to all the moms, birth moms, first moms, second or third moms, adoptive moms, grandmoms, stepmoms and all others who fill the role of mom - THANK YOU! The world is better for your efforts, and our children will be too. Happy Moms Day.

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