With many of my kids, in order to understand their loss, I must know as much as possible about it. With most of them, I must come to accept their birth parents as well. In a previous blog, I talked about accepting the birth parents of a couple who have voluntarily chosen adoption for their baby. But, what about accepting abusive birth parents of a child? What if their parents harmed them?? What if we have anger toward their birth parents for doing this to the child? Surely the child doesn’t want us to accept those parents also.

Instead, the child does need us to accept those parents. I was only able to start on this path for my child when I realized that acceptance did not mean that I condoned the harmful choices of this birth parent. If nothing else, I can be grateful that these parents gave birth to my child instead of other options; be grateful that the birth parents are the reason my child is on earth and in my family.

Even when I sometimes can not understand WHY my children have such loyalty to abusive birth parents, I can allow myself to understand THAT my children have loyalty to their abusive birth parents. In some cases, this allows my child to finally settle in and accept us as the new parents. There is no loyalty issue (or much less at least) if your new parents accept your old parents. Don’t choose between sets of parents; accept each set of parents as a “part” of who you are and allow all of the parts to come together to form the whole. (Yeah, so none of my kids puts these exact words to their feelings. But, their words and actions seem to match the “bigger idea”, even so.)

This part of loss and acceptance is certainly not the only issue that many children face. However, it seems to be a common one. Making an attempt to push ourselves into embracing and accepting birth parents for our children (and for ourselves) is another amazing gift that we, as parents, can offer to our adopted children. It’s a gift that will help them to find peace and success as they grow.

Family Tree Chart