This week's topic is about thanking people, specifically: Make your "Oscar" speech. Thank someone (can be as many people as you feel necessary) for something special that has happened in your life.
Gratitude. All our lives are incredibly blessed. I find that it is easy to get caught up in the trivial unpleasantness that impacts us. To allow that unpleasantness to let us be negative. At the end of the day, most of us have a great deal to be thankful.
When I am getting caught up in the minor inconveniences of my life, I find it important to remember how things could have been. I spent my very young life in foster care. The first 6 weeks of my life were with a family that takes in unwanted infants. It is part of the process of adopting out babies. The plan was not for me to grow up in foster care, but rather to be adopted out to a family that wanted a baby. Which is what happened. But, things could have gone down differently.
My birth mother was 16 years old when she got pregnant with me. She could have chosen to keep me. It seems most 16 year olds these days keep their babies. It is a very massive amount of maturity to make the decision to give up you baby, most 16 year olds do not possess that. What if my birth mother did not possess that? What if the people around her did not encourage her to put her baby up for adoption?
It is those what ifs that I go back to when ever I am feeling like things are not going as well as I would like. If my mother had kept me it is very unlikely that I would have ended up outside of the welfare system. Perhaps I would have figured out how to get out of the system, but I am not sure I am exceptional enough to have done that. I am incredibly blessed that I was never put in the situation where I had to see if I could drive myself out of poverty.
So, while I have never met her, my birth mother made a decision at 16 years old that had a profound impact on my life (I imagine it had a profound impact on her life too). I appreciate that she had the maturity and strength to choose the life that was best for both of us, even if that meant we would not be together. I can not imagine that it was an easy choice. My only wish is that now, I could meet her and tell her thank you.
Here is the audience participation part, if you know an adult who gave their child up for adoption, thank them for me. I can not thank my mother, but I can try and thank all the other people who made the same choice. It was heroic. They are heroes.
For all the teens that are pregnant, consider before you abort, giving your child a chance with another family. You don't make a big change to your outcome, and you give that child opportunities. Consider before you keep the baby, that adoption might be the best choice for both you. That giving the child up might allow you opportunities and your child opportunities that the two of you cannot get together. (I am not pro-life, but that is a different discussion.)
Thanks mom, you made an amazingly difficult choice and every day I benefit from that.
Want to see who the other ladies want to thank? Check out them out at: Froggie, Momarock, and Merrylandgirl
Gratitude. All our lives are incredibly blessed. I find that it is easy to get caught up in the trivial unpleasantness that impacts us. To allow that unpleasantness to let us be negative. At the end of the day, most of us have a great deal to be thankful.
When I am getting caught up in the minor inconveniences of my life, I find it important to remember how things could have been. I spent my very young life in foster care. The first 6 weeks of my life were with a family that takes in unwanted infants. It is part of the process of adopting out babies. The plan was not for me to grow up in foster care, but rather to be adopted out to a family that wanted a baby. Which is what happened. But, things could have gone down differently.
My birth mother was 16 years old when she got pregnant with me. She could have chosen to keep me. It seems most 16 year olds these days keep their babies. It is a very massive amount of maturity to make the decision to give up you baby, most 16 year olds do not possess that. What if my birth mother did not possess that? What if the people around her did not encourage her to put her baby up for adoption?
It is those what ifs that I go back to when ever I am feeling like things are not going as well as I would like. If my mother had kept me it is very unlikely that I would have ended up outside of the welfare system. Perhaps I would have figured out how to get out of the system, but I am not sure I am exceptional enough to have done that. I am incredibly blessed that I was never put in the situation where I had to see if I could drive myself out of poverty.
So, while I have never met her, my birth mother made a decision at 16 years old that had a profound impact on my life (I imagine it had a profound impact on her life too). I appreciate that she had the maturity and strength to choose the life that was best for both of us, even if that meant we would not be together. I can not imagine that it was an easy choice. My only wish is that now, I could meet her and tell her thank you.
Here is the audience participation part, if you know an adult who gave their child up for adoption, thank them for me. I can not thank my mother, but I can try and thank all the other people who made the same choice. It was heroic. They are heroes.
For all the teens that are pregnant, consider before you abort, giving your child a chance with another family. You don't make a big change to your outcome, and you give that child opportunities. Consider before you keep the baby, that adoption might be the best choice for both you. That giving the child up might allow you opportunities and your child opportunities that the two of you cannot get together. (I am not pro-life, but that is a different discussion.)
Thanks mom, you made an amazingly difficult choice and every day I benefit from that.
Want to see who the other ladies want to thank? Check out them out at: Froggie, Momarock, and Merrylandgirl
Wow. I never knew that about you. It's definitely a hard choice for a woman to give up her child, no matter what age she is. I can't even imagine what that would be like. She made a huge sacrifice and you've been better off because of it.
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