[Birth] Parents

I don't really talk a lot about Mason's birth parents here, and I do that for a couple reasons. First of all, privacy. This is a public forum and it's not fair for me to air their dirty laundry, so to speak. Their story is not my story to tell. Also, I really have very little information about them, so even if I wanted to talk about them a lot and give you all the dirt I couldn't. I don't have all the dirt. I barely have all the dust bunnies.

I'm sure all foster/adoptive parents have different thoughts and feelings about their child's birth parents, but what has surprised me most is how much I think about Mason's birth parents. Their names and faces are not just a fleeting thought before I send Mason off to a visit. I think about them - both of them - all. the. time. It's strange to spend so much time thinking about people I don't actually know, but regardless, these people are inextricably embedded into my soul. That sounds super intense, I know, but I'm not exaggerating. They're a part of me because Mason is a part of me. They're actions have already deeply affected me and their actions will dictate the outcome of my life.

For this reason I want to figure them out, understand them. Yet, even with my super active imagination, I cannot figure out what it would be like to be them. To arrive at the point they're at and know how to deal with it. To have a child taken from me because of something I did. I don't know what it's like to wake up the morning after my child was removed and know that my baby is living with people I don't know, and that it's my fault. I don't know what it's like to bump into someone at the grocery store, have them ask where my child is, and have to figure out what to say in response. To lay awake at night and remember what it was like to carry him in my body and know that his life may never cross paths with mine again. To look in the mirror and see the remnants of the pregnancy and know that child may never be mine. I don't know what it's like see the  children around me growing older and wonder how my child has aged. To search the faces of strangers' and wonder if they are the ones raising my baby. I don't know what it's like to get pregnant again and again hoping that each baby will be the one. The one who stays. The one I get to keep forever. And I don't know what it's like when child welfare comes again and again, proving that not matter how hard I try I can't seem to get it right.

I don't know, but I can't stop thinking about it.