Surviving the holidays as a first mother or adoptee

Christmas lights 

Christmas can be the bluest time of the year for us in this strange sorority of adoption--first mothers and our lost children, the adopted and their missing mothers, and the fathers too who think of the children they do not know.

It can't be helped. The music of redemption and joy is in the air, and the constant barrage of ads reminds us of those we can't send presents to. We may had a joyous reunion with a lost daughter a few weeks ago, only to find that she won't respond to our texts or emails. Or a son's girlfriend has given away a grandchild, and it is triggering all the remembrance of that awful time

Does my (birth) mother think of me on Christmas?

My tabletop tree

Christmas, not April, is the cruelest time for many of us. All the gaiety, the awareness that families gather round together sharpen the reminder of who is missing: if you are a birth/first mother who has not been reunited, you are ever so aware of the presents you are not buying, the card not being sent, the phone call not made to the missing child. You wonder if he/she ever thinks of you at this time of the year. Question not. He is. My daughter said that she used to look at the moon on cold and clear winter nights, and think that somewhere I was under that same moon, wondering if I was thinking about her. I'll never know if our thoughts collided in space, but I like to think that they did.