In my last post, Semi-open Adoption: When Birthparents Walk Away, I shared that my son's birthmother, T, chose to close our adoption when my son was four years old. She did this passively by moving without leaving a forwarding address. Our agency will not try to track her down because she knows how to reach them if she chooses to start receiving pictures and letters of her birthchild again.

One issue I wrestled with was what to tell my son about this. I had envisioned continuing to send T pictures and letters twice a year throughout my son's childhood. As my son grew older, I imagined him including his own correspondence if he wanted. I would not insist that he do so, but that option would have been available to him. I also liked being able to respond to "Does my birthmother love me?" questions with telling him that she still receives updates about his life because of how much she loves him. And then, as my son approached adulthood, I saw these letters as a way to bridge a reunion if both T and my son wanted one. All of those plans went down the toilet when T moved away.

Fortunately, my son was only four, so he really did not have a concept of what I was doing when I sent T pictures and letters. I would tell him that I was writing a letter to his birthmother, but he did not really understand what that meant. How would he take it when he learned that she was now choosing not to hear about his life? How deeply would that rejection cut?

Once I calmed down, I realized that my son was young enough not to appreciate that she ever went from receiving to not receiving the packages. I could still put the packages together once a year and tell him that they would be waiting if and when T ever contacted the agency for them. In this way, my son would be spared from feeling a "rejection." For all my son knows, birthmothers do not receive packages until they contact the family later in life.

So, that is what I have done. I have a drawer in my house with several packages to T. They are dated, so T will know in what order to read the packages if she ever asks for them. My son knows that these packages were written in the past few years and that I sent others to the agency when he was younger. That's all the information he needs right now at the age of six.

Even if T never requests the packages, they have value because they show my son that I honored my promises to his birthmother. I never want him to feel like he must choose between the two of us, and I do not want him thinking that I misled or lied to his birthmother.

I am still hoping that T will contact the agency again one day in the future. She will probably suspect that I stopped preparing the packages when she moved, so what a pleasant surprise she will have in learning that packages are waiting for her. I also hope my follow through on my commitment to her will help her feel more comfortable in contacting us about a reunion in the future if that is her desire.

Related Topics:

• When It Feels Like your Open Adoption is Closing



• When Open Adoptions Close

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt