Narrative Description

PART IV Narrative Description

Birth Mom Missions provides a much needed (and often overlooked) service to women who have placed their child for adoption. We offer guidance before, after and during the adoption process to all women who ask, regardless of their choices made. Much of this is done through phone conversations, emails, letters, and social networking correspondence. We are dedicated to providing nonjudgmental assistance to any woman facing an unplanned pregnancy and guidance for those who choose to become birth mothers. We will offer local supportive l groups (nationwide) made up of women who have been through the same thing. We wish to provide other women in the future with the knowledge and support that we wish we could have had from a birth mother. Someone who knew what it was like and was totally unbiased. Someone to talk to us, inform us, guide us, emphasize with us, and answer all our silly questions. One goal of the mission is to someday see every pregnant woman considering adoption, have at least one birth mother mentor. The mission touches the lives of those adopted, adoptive parents, hopeful adoptive parents, pregnant woman at risk, the unborn, and other parts of society in ways yet to be seen. Some background: It seems that the grief which results from adoption loss more often follows a pattern which is the exact opposite of what one might expect in the case of other losses. I have reached certain conclusions on the grief associated with adoption loss, based on my own experience, the experiences of the women I have encountered and the books on grief and grief counselling which I have read. It became obvious to me that the common models of grief counselling would not work with mothers who had lost children through adoption. I concluded that the grief resulting from the loss of a child through adoption was fundamentally different from other types of grief. I explored grief associated with abortion, with stillbirth and neo-natal death and with loss of custody. Although there were some similarities, it seemed that adoption grief was unique. The disenfranchised grief is when the grief is connected with a loss which cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned or socially supported. In many cases of disenfranchised grief, the relationship is not recognised, the loss is not recognised or

the griever is not recognised. The loss of a child through adoption is usually a loss which cannot be openly acknowledged, which is why mothers often suffer in silence...people who have experienced any type of loss often feel anger, guilt, sadness, depression, hopelessness and numbness and that in cases of disenfranchised grief, these feelings can persist for a very long time. The lack of recognition of their grief often results in them holding on to it more tenaciously than they might otherwise have done. CONCLUSIONS: The relinquishing mother is at risk for long-term physical, psychological, and social repercussions. Although interventions have been proposed, little is known about their effectiveness in preventing or alleviating these repercussions." Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug. pp.395-400. We hope to help this by raising the consciousness among the community and create services for her recovery. -Many different groups of people fear birth parent grief for many reasons. The old adage goes that people fear what they don't know. So, we would like to shed a little light on why birth parent grief isn't meant to be scary to adoptive parents, adoptees or the general public. Another goal of Birth Mom Missions is to increase media awareness of Birth Mother's day (set in 1990 as the day before mother's day each year) While the organization may express a point of view or set forth recommendations on an issue, all publications will be written with a view toward exploring the broad range of approaches and solutions to complex public policy issues in order to ensure a full and open-minded presentation of the facts. We stress the birth mother aspect because we feel it is what makes us a unique organization and allows us to truly "tell it like it is" to women just like ourselves. Unfortunately we missed out on an older birth mom mentor, but we want to provide help to women in the future that experience an unexpected or crisis pregnancy and choose life. Some of our services/member websites: