“…today, the idea of faith returns to me. Faith defies logic and propels us beyond hope because it is not attached to our desires. Faith is the centerpiece of a connected life. It allows us to live by the grace of invisible strands. It is a belief in a wisdom superior to our own. Faith becomes a teacher in the absence of fact.” (Terry Tempest Williams, 1991. Refuge, pp. 198).

Propels us beyond hope. Yes, that is exactly what I need. To be propelled beyond the hope of having you in my life again, beyond the longing that causes my bones to ache in their marrow.

Faith.

Such an easy word to say. Such a difficult word to live. But live it I must, or something vital  in me will die.

M.

The malaise that settled over me a week or so ago is still here and I can’t seem to shake it. All my normal tricks aren’t working. If I am not exceptionally vigilant, I burst into tears at inopportune times and spend a lot of time weeping. After holding it together for nearly 19 years, I can’t do it any more. I want you back, even more now than when I signed that damn paperwork. And this wanting leaves me absolutely crushed because I know it cannot be so.

Yes, I have learned to live with it most of the time, but sometimes I can’t live with it. This is one of those times.

M.

Do you ever have one of those days when you just wish adoption and all its attendant garbage would just crawl back into whatever cesspool from which it sprung forth? You know, one of those days when you are struggling to find anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report about the institution? The kind of day you feel like broken glass is pumping through your veins and arteries?

Well, I am having one of those kinds of days.

Love,

M.

P.S. It’s afternoon now. I did some baking (Meyer lemon yogurt pound cake for a party tonight and oatmeal bread for lunches). I did some cleaning. I did some crying, just a bit. And now I feel better. I know that not ALL adoption is bad, sometimes children really do need  a home. I was just getting lost in the fact that you are one of those who didn’t need a home. You had one. With me.

"Found: A Memoir" by Jennifer Lauck

Welcome to this leg of the Found: A Memoir book tour.  If this is your first time dropping by Letters to Ms. Feverfew, it may be helpful to know it is not like a typical blog. Rather, it is series of letters I have written to my daughter, relinquished for adoption in 1993. I decided to stay with this convention when I wrote my book review and answered the questions posed by other book tour participants. You can read more about me here and why I write these letters here.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you find something worthwhile during your stay. ~ M.

_________________________________________________________

Dear Ms. Feverfew -

This is going to be long so grab a cup of tea, make sure your laptop is fully charged, and find a comfy cozy corner in which to curl up. Be certain you are well situated before diving in.

~

It was the peak of summer season and I was between homes, neither here nor there. Rootless and wandering between where I had been and where I was headed. All of our household effects were stored somewhere in a warehouse in northern Virginia and we were living in temporary housing that butted up against the York River. I had just graduated with my Ph.D. and my life was stripped bare of all the trappings of domesticity and academic study. And so I read. A lot.

I read Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search For Self. I read Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience. I read The Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness. I read Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief. I read 20 Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew. I read The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. I read Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption.  I read The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption. I read Adoption Healing: A Path to Recovery. I read Coming Home To Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up.

And I spent a lot of time crying.

Immersed in the literature of adoption recovery, I was awash in a river of grief. What had I done to you? I was drowning, choking on the question, “Dear God, what have I done to my daughter?”  The literature was confirming what I already knew at a cellular level: adoption, at least for us, was wrong. Completely and totally wrong. Utterly and absolutely wrong. It was my culture’s permanent and brutal answer for the temporary crisis in which I found myself.

Then I read Found: A Memoir by Jennifer Lauck and I stopped crying as much.

In her tale I found a way forward. I found hope. It isn’t so much of what she said, but how she said it. Found: A Memoir is a profoundly moving story of an adoptee’s journey to find her first family and ultimately, to discover herself.  What makes her story different is that Found: A Memoir is infused with a level of generosity and self-awareness rarely found in adoptee memoirs.

This generosity is like the finely aged Tahitian vanilla I have secreted in my kitchen pantry. Sweet, warm, floral, and delicate but never cloying. When used in spicy or acidic savory dishes, vanilla cuts the heat and acidity by half while imparting the warmth only vanilla possesses. In savory dishes, it is harder for the pallet to distinguish the vanilla, but it is still there, lifting and lightening the dish. This is the quality infused throughout the majority of Ms. Lauck’s book, rendering an otherwise acidic and difficult story more edible.

And edible it was. I devoured it both times I read it. The first time through I didn’t even stop to sleep or eat. I just read, like a mother newly delivered of her babe and starving for something of substance, some thing more than the ice chips that had been parsed out by Attila the Nurse during labor. I was hungry and it was hope that wafted up from the pages of the book. It was vanilla scented hope that allowed me to digest the difficult and dangerous passages where Ms. Lauck spoke plainly of hard truths, truths that only adoptess can know and tell.  It was vanilla scented hope that tasted of forgiveness and healing. It was a flavor, which, for the first time, helped me understand that perhaps you – my own daughter – might forgive me for what I had done to us.

~

This last fall, a call was sent out by Lori at The Open Adoption Examiner for participants in an online book tour for Found: A Memoir.  I eagerly offered to participate. As I reread the book in preparation for the tour, I was taken at how many of her words could be my own as I made way towards healing and wholeness. I didn’t remember them from before, but now they stood out like a bas relief to my own journey. For example, Ms. Lauck writes:

“In the way that Spencer’s birth began my awakening process, Jo’s birth continued to unfold my psyche and reveal the many dimensions of truth….My first mother felt very important to me in light of Josephine Catherine. Jo was a link in the lineage of woman that connected me to my mother and my mother to her mother and on back through the generations. I wanted to tell my mystery mother, that troubled young girl from so long ago, that Josephine was here—a granddaughter. I wanted to say, “Come look!” (p. 41)

As I read that passage for the second time, I saw my own experiences in her’s:

In the way that Luke’s birth began my awakening process, Penelope’s pregnancy and birth continued to unfold my psyche and reveal the many dimensions of truth…My first daughter felt even more important to me in light of Penelope Rose. Penny was another link in the lineage of women that connected me to my mother and my mother to her mother and on back through the generations. I wanted to tell my mystery daughter, that eight month, 27 day old baby now grown into a woman, that Penelope was here—a sister. I wanted to say, “Come look!”

And so with wonderment at the synchronicity of an adoptee’s experience with my own as a mother who relinquished a child for adoption, I answer three questions asked by other tour members.

I know what I write will make some adoptive parents extremely uncomfortable and perhaps even angry.  And also I know by writing these things, I run the risk of being labeled “bitter” and “anti-adoption” even though I am neither of those things.  But the truth calls me out; I have the luxury of writing with the freedom of one already marginalized by the dominant culture, of one who can risk everything because she has already lost everything.

Q1: On pp 17-18, Jennifer talks about a baby searching for her mother after being born. How did this sensory-rich passage strike you? What thoughts did it trigger about the role you play in adoption?

Trigger would be the right word. One of the hardest things for me has been to come to terms to with how adoption may have affected you from a life-long developmental point of view. I first became cognizant of the potential negative affects when I was in a human development class and we were studying attachment theory across the life span. Disrupted attachment bonds can profoundly affect a person’s willingness to explore their environment, thus reducing exploration and help seeking behaviors and ultimately impacting learning. Reading the original writings of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth convicted me and set me on a path to seeking a deeper understanding of what loss, particularly early parental loss, can do to a person.

It happened again when I took a human physiology class and the professor talked about the experiments he was running about newborns recognizing the scent of their mother’s milk and even more importantly, preferring it above all others. They also prefer the taste of things that the mother ate when she was pregnant with them. And yet more awareness came when I started pulling primary research articles from medical journals detailing how a newborn’s language center in their brain lights up and their heart rate quickens when they hear their mother speak – not the nurse, not the doctor, not their father – but their mother. And articles about how babies in utero prefer their mother’s voice to any other voice or sound. And articles about fetal-maternal microchimerism, where your cells crossed the placental barrier and now reside in my bone marrow, liver, and blood. And articles about mitochondrial DNA – the stuff that powers life and how it is passed only through the mother to her child. And yet more awareness came when I learned of the specificity of a mother’s milk for the individual child and how it changes across the nursing relationship.  And yet more awareness when I read primary research detailing the impact a mother’s touch and voice on infants in the NICU.*

And on it went.

Taken alone, each puzzle piece is interesting but when examined as a composite…dear God, how could I have been so foolish to believe you didn’t need me? And how can this culture go on thinking that somehow, magically, an adopted infant’s brain and body are exempt from these same physiological responses?

But back to us: I wasn’t a crack whore. I wasn’t abusive. I wasn’t neglectful. I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I wasn’t sleeping around.  I was simply single mother, going to school, trying to build a life for our little family. How and why did I buy into the NCFA’s glossy literature that you deserved more than me? That you would be better off being raised by people who didn’t smell, sound, or move the right way? Yes, you adapted, but at what cost to your psyche and your soul?

So as you can see, trigger was the right word to use in that question about how those pages affected me.

The next question was a bit more involved, so I broke it apart into sections:

Q2, part 1: Jennifer writes a lot about the first moms biological bond with her child. She writes of this bond as primal, almost as if adoptive moms will never be able to completely bond with their children… Adoptive mothers have to be honest with themselves: they will never have the same deep biological connection with their adopted child their child’s first mother. Irrespective of the depth of her love for this child,  her mitochondrial DNA does not power every cellular process in her adopted child’s body. Her heart does not beat to the same rhythm within a second of locking eyes with her adopted newborn, her voice will not cause the language recognition centers in her adopted newborn baby’s brain to light up like the Milky Way.  She will not smell right or taste right or move right to a tiny babe. They will never share the bone-marrow deep connection that a first mother has with her child. This primal bond is a gift the first mother is given.

These are hard truths for some adoptive mothers to accept, but that doesn’t make them any less true. However, in spite of these hard truths, adoptive mothers can bond with their children. With love, time, and consistent responsive care-giving, a mother can forge powerful bonds with her adopted child, bonds that can be just as strong as the primal ones. This is the gift that adoptive mothers are given.

Q2, part 2: “…and I wonder what advice she would give to  adoptive parents, particularly, women who want to be honest with their children about their birth stories.”   I can’t speak for Ms. Lauck, but here is my take on it: Start by setting aside any me-I-tis or I-deserve-its and read the letter linked at the top of this page, “An Open Letter to APs and PAPs.”

One can only surmise what Lillie writes is equally hard for some adoptive mothers to read as it was for me but still…but still these are the testimonies of those who adoption is supposed to be helping. We cannot continue to dismiss them and marginalize their voices while paying lip service to adoption “reform”. We must listen to them. We must learn from them.

An adoptive mother can begin to honor and respect their child’s need to mourn the loss of their first family by doing the same for now-adult adoptees.  Learning how to listen and honor adult adoptees’ voices now may be one of the best things an adoptive mother can do for her child in the future. After all, her adopted child is going to grow up in a few short years into an adopted adult. If anything, it will give them a lot of practice in letting others tell their truth and not taking it personally. As the adopted child grows and matures, she can help them find ways to honor and respect their original family (even though this can be very hard in situations where a child was available for adoption due to abuse or neglect – I know this first hand, but I also know it can be done). She can tell them the truth, with love and compassion for their hearts. Respect their humanity. It’s all any parent can do for their child, adopted or not.

Q3: What did you believe was the take-away message of this memoir?  Did that idea change for you when you read the afterward?

Adoption is hard. Reunion is hard. But there is hope for healing and eventually the ability to move through the experience.

I believe things will not and cannot improve until we start listening carefully to what adult adoptees are saying  – even the difficult, upsetting parts – and extracting lessons from what they can teach us. This idea did not change upon reading the afterward. In fact, if any thing, I believe Ms. Lauck lays out a fairly humane and comprehensive agenda for reform when she says, “Adoptive parents must be better informed. Birth mothers must be better informed. Adoptees must be better informed” (p. 264).  The only way we can become better informed is to listen – truly listen – to others stories. Especially adult adoptees.

“Adult adoptees are a primary source for knowledge about adoption as an institution. Their perceptions are unique, for adult adoptees are actually the only persons who can tell us what it is like to live adoption in a society in which most people are not adopted.” –Child Welfare League of America [emphasis mine]

~

After reading Found: A Memoir last summer, I had to walk around for a few days and let it ruminate in my belly.   I was satiated and couldn’t read anything else for about a week. No adoption related books. No academic articles about learning theory, attachment, or problem-based learning environments. No memoirs, no classics, no slim volumes of poetry, no micro-histories about the color of mauve or the writing of the Oxford English dictionary, no books about pre-War II Germany, no histories of our founding fathers.

It was just me and Ms. Lauck during those final days of our stay in the temporary housing.

The high summer heat broke our last day in the Tidewater. Early that evening, before the sun had slipped entirely behind the treeline, I laced up my pink and grey New Balance shoes and took myself for a walk in the opposite direction along the river. As I rounded the last curve before the beaver pond, I saw a pregnant full moon beginning to bloom over the Atlantic. She moved carefully and slowly around the corner of the horizon, taking her time to not upset the balance of the gravitational forces tethering her in her fixed path. I audibly gasped at her sheer beauty when she finally broke free from the curvature of the earth. She slowly cleared the span of the Gloucester Bridge, releasing me from her spell, and then I turned for home.

When I got closer to the temporary housing, I could see your youngest brother dashing home from the pool behind his father. I hurried to catch up to them, my feet falling on the wet footprints left by my husband on the warm sidewalk. Did you see that moon rise!? It was – it was breathtaking! I mean, it almost made me cry!

“Gorgeous,  a lot of things make you cry lately.” My husband’s caterpillar eyebrow wiggled knowingly above his eyes.  “So that isn’t surprising but no, I didn’t see it from here. The trees were in the way.”

“I missed it too, Mom. I was too busy playing to see what happened.”

Oh man, you guys really missed out on one of the most spectacular things I have ever witnessed.

~

Much like my husband and son missing the moonrise, I realize readers’ reaction to this book may be the same. It will affect each person differently, dependent on their position in the adoption constellation and whether they are paying attention or just hanging out in the pool we call life. And you know what? That is OK. We are all at different points on this journey and sometimes it is nice to just float on our backs and enjoy the warm water. But I’ll be honest, it sure was nice to have witnessed something so beautiful.

Much love and belief -

M.

*All research claims will be addressed in subsequent letters, providing references and a brief discussion of how the study findings might impact an adoptee.

To continue to the next stop of this book tour, please visit the main list at The Open Adoption Examiner.

To learn more about Ms. Lauck and her writing, please visit http://www.jenniferlauck.com/

Jennifer Lauck, author of "Found: A Memoir"

I have started about eight different letters in the past week but not finished one of them.  I am not sure why, but I am disconnected and out of joint. Perhaps it is because my husband left for an 11 week business trip on Wednesday. Perhaps it is because March is swiftly headed my way. Perhaps it is because I turn 40 years old later this year. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. I don’t know the reason but I do know that the words are stuck somewhere between the seat of my soul and my fingertips and I can’t seem to shake them loose. My silence isn’t because you are forgotten (for you never are far from my thoughts as you reside in that same mansion in my heart with my other children), it is for reasons yet undiscovered.

This last summer as I was floating on my back in the pool one evening at around 11:00 p.m. The water in my ears muffled the night sounds as I picked out the constellations and planets one by one from the inky darkness spreading above. And I thought of you and wondered, do you ever think of me when you are out watching the heavens? Are you as fascinated with them as I? Do you ever see your name written in the cosmic dust of the Milky Way? If you do, that is me. I wrote it there for you so you will always know how loved and how important you are to me.

So I give you this on this starry January night, a poem.

We only part to meet again
Though mighty boundless waves may sever
Remembrance oft shall bring thee near
And I will with thee go forever
And oft at midnights silent hour
When brilliant planets shall guide the ocean
Thy name shall rise to heaven’s highest star
And mingle with my soul’s devotion

[Often attributed to Edgar Allen Poe but actually translated from the Arabic by Tani Jantsang]

Much love,

M.

There are none.

At least not if one is looking for scriptural justification to take another woman’s child, lie about that child’s parentage on a falsified birth certificate, and then raise that child as their own. Ain’t. Gonna. Find. It.

Don’t believe me? Go read this forthcoming article by David M. Smolin, Professor of Law titled “Of Orphans And Adoption, Parents And The Poor, Exploitation And Rescue:  A Scriptural And Theological Critique Of The Evangelical Christian Adoption And Orphan Care Movement.” It will be published in the Regent International Law Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, in Spring 2012. Full document can be downloaded from this link as well : adoption.christian.regent.smolindraft1.2.12-1.

He makes so many cogent points in this article, but there are two that have really stuck with me since I first read the article. The first one is about Joseph and his treatment of a young unwed mother.

“…what Joseph did in helping an otherwise “single mother” to keep and raise her own child was consistent with the ministries of Jesus and Elijah in assisting single women and their children in staying together. Honoring the “birth” mother—honoring the motherhood of Mary—is exactly contrary to the kinds of adoptions advocated by the modern Christian adoption movement, which typically takes children from living mothers and gives them to non-related people as their adoptive children.  If Joseph had acted in a way typical of the Christian adoption movement, Mary would have lost Jesus at birth.” (Emphasis mine).

The next deals with “pro-adoption” scriptures in the New Testament.

“Despite the claims of the Christian adoption and orphan care movement of a fundamental New Testament call to horizontal adoption—and specifically to the adoption of orphan children—-the New Testament does not record a single such event.  If Jesus and the apostles were calling the New Testament church to practice horizontal adoption of orphans, it seems to have escaped the notice of the writers of the New Testament entirely.   Despite clear New Testament admonishments to assist the poor and widows, and despite a clear New Testament record of the early church in fact engaging in organized efforts to assist the poor and widows, there is no parallel New Testament record of anyone being urged to adopt an orphan, or of anyone doing so….Hence, we have the mysterious gap of a Bible supposedly urging horizontal adoption as a fundamental practice of the church, without any Biblical record of anyone actually encouraging Christians to adopt, and without any record of Christians actually adopting orphan children. “ (Emphasis mine).

So put on your pointy-headed thinking cap, pull out a red pencil and go read Smolin’s article and then get back with me about “pro-adoption scriptures.”

Sincerely,

M.

Just wishing you a Merry Christmas. I hope it was full of laughter, good friends, and family.

Much love,

M/

About two months ago, Princess P. was snoozing upstairs in her bedroom and I was down here in my office doing whatever it is that I do. From the garage, I heard a loud sound, like a door slamming shut. It startled me, as Mr. Amazing Man was away at work and the pool lady wasn’t scheduled to come until the next day. However, I didn’t think much of it until a loud banging came from the laundry room.

Then I thought something of it.

While our neighborhood is normally an extremely safe place (like one of the safest in the state), there had been a spate of unsolved home invasions over the previous three weeks where the yokels would break in, tie up the people that were home and then proceed to rob them of all valuables. I was fairly certain I had locked all the doors leading to the outside, but I wasn’t absolutely certain.  Then I heard some more banging from the laundry room and I sprang into action.

For a split second, I thought, “Go grab Princess P. and then run for it!” But then I realized that to get upstairs to get her and then get out of the house would alert whomever was in my laundry room (if there was anyone). Essentially, there was no safe way to get to her and get out of the house. Immediately, my next thought was, “Then Melynda, you had better get the handgun and stand your ground.”

And so I did. As I dashed by the kitchen,  I grabbed the phone, dialed 911, and put it on speaker phone so my hands would be free. Then I pulled the handgun out of its safe location, chambered a round, and cautiously made my way to the base of the stairs that led to Princess P’s room. And there I waited, all the time talking with dispatch.

911, what’s your emergency? “I live in BWB and I think I heard someone in my garage and laundry room.”

BWB? What’s your address? I gave it to him, along with my name. Have you been out there to check, ma’am? “No sir. I didn’t want to open the door to the laundry room on the chance that someone might be in there.”

That’s understandable with what’s been going on recently over there in BWB. You did the right thing by calling us. Where are you now? “In my living room at the base of the stairs that lead to my daughter’s room.”

Is she home? “Yes, she’s 17 months old and sleeping right now.”

Do you have a weapon in the house, ma’am? “Yes sir, I have a hand gun with me.”

Is it loaded? “I believe I chambered a round, sir, and the safety is off with a full magazine.”

OK – I will let the responding officers know you are armed. “Thank you.” And then we waited with him periodically letting me know where the officers were.

Within a few minutes, I could see them out the front window. “Sir, I just saw them pull up. What do you want me to do?” Just stay put until they have made sure everything is clear. If you want, you can put the safety back on your weapon now. “OK.”

Through the sliding glass doors, I could watch them circle around back of the house, past the lanai that encloses our pool, and over to the gardenia bushes by my bedroom window. They made their way back around then came in through the garage door and into the laundry room. Nothing looked amiss to them, even though none of us could explain the noises. They checked everything thoroughly and assured me I had done the right thing by calling and by being prepared to defend myself and my daughter in our home.

Strangely, I was calm through this entire ordeal – like preternaturally calm. When Mr. Amazing Man got home from work later that evening and I told him about my day, he asked me, “Were you scared?” I told him I was when I first heard the sounds in the laundry room, but not once I made the decision to stand my ground and protect Princess P. with lethal force if necessary. “Do you think you would have actually shot an intruder?” he asked. “Absolutely, without at doubt,” I responded. “I have already lost one daughter. I am not willing to risk losing another one.”  My mind was perfectly clear and perfectly decided that morning: No one was going to get past those stairs to reach my daughter, and I mean no one.

In the weeks since this incident, I have had a lot of time to replay the scenario in my mind and digest its meaning. I have come to see this event is one of the things that woke the tiger in me and unleashed a fierceness with the Truth in my life. It came 19 years to late for you and I, but that morning I finally found the courage to stand up for myself and my children in a way I never thought I possibly could. I didn’t run and hide in a closet. I didn’t duck underneath my desk. I didn’t allow other people to make decisions for me. I made a decision to protect my daughter and I acted on it.  And ever since then, something has shifted in me. I think this is why, after all these years I was finally able to “out” myself on Facebook, why I finally have done the hard work to find a therapist who is at least trying to “get” what adoption means to me, why I am willing to stand up for myself to my mother.

I don’t know why exactly I am telling you this story. What I do know is that I owe you an apology for not being that kind of mother for you, for not fighting for you, for trusting other people’s advice and opinions even when it didn’t feel right to me. I should have chambered a proverbial round and stood my ground for you, too. I hope you are able to find that resivor of courage in your own life before you have to suffer too much heartache and sorrow. It is somewhere inside of you, I promise – just keep looking for it.

Much love,

M.

P.S. Looks like a young mother did just what I was ready to do: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57352344-504083/okla-teen-mom-asks-911-for-permission-fatally-shoots-intruder-on-new-years-eve/ (Edited to add this on 01-12-12)

When I finally came fully out of the “birth mother closet” I had been living in for the past 19+ years, I knew there would be a cost for my clear and forthright honesty. Yes, I have lost friends on Facebook and some relationships have become strained, nearly to the breaking point, but…

…but I didn’t count on losing you, too. Or at least what little bits of you I had through the parts of your Facebook profile that were public. At least I could message you. That’s one small crumb I have feasted on these last 18 months. In my darkest times, I would always say, “At least I have that.”

But now I don’t.

Is it because what I wrote on my Facebook page about how adoption has affected me? Or was it sending you that message last week, wishing you a Merry Christmas and letting you know about your original birth certificate? Or is it something else entirely?

I know what I posted over on Facebook was pretty intense. I can only imagine it must have been difficult for you to read about the pain that has entered my life because of adoption (assuming you read it, which is highly likely since my profile is entirely open). I know that it might be tempting to think that you are the cause of that pain. I fear this is what may have happened.

If this is the case, I want to make some things perfectly clear. Ms. Feverfew, you are not the cause of the pain of which I wrote. You have always been a blessing in my life. You have always been a joy and a delight to your mother’s heart. If there is one bright point of light in all of this, it is you, a lodestar shimmering and dancing in the ink-black sky of this pain. Ms. Feverfew, it is adoption that is broken, not you.  It is this culture that is broken, not you. This world is a far better place because you are in it, Ms. Feverfew, and something exquisitely vital and important would be missing if you had never been created.

I wish I could tell you these things. I wish I could hold your face in my hands, just like I do your siblings, and look deeply into your dark eyes and tell you, “I love you, I adore you. I think you are the most magnificent Ms. Feverfew that has ever graced the earth. I love being your mother and am so proud to call you mine.”

Because I am your mother and you are my daughter. Regardless of what the LDS culture or some piece of papers says because the eternal bonds of motherhood can never be broken.

But I can’t do that now. All I can do is write this letter and send it out into the universe and pray that it somehow finds you and that you somehow come to understand how important you are, how loved you are, and how much joy you have brought into so many people’s lives, including mine.

Much love,

M.