An Open Letter to My Children
To my children,
I cleared space in my heart and made so much room in my life for you. I prepared as best as I could, with the fullest understanding I had, bringing so much energy, enthusiasm, openness and readiness to becoming your mum.
It has been 14 years since we met. Fourteen years since we became a family.
I am full of remorse, grief and loss. This is one of the tragedies of my life, and yours.
I wanted to be enough. I wanted to be your healer, the holder of your hurt, the mum who could hold you in her heart, her world and everything she had.
But it didn’t happen.
And the way I feel now, it is a wonder I manage to get through each day. My heart breaks a little more every morning when I wake up and feel the loss all over again.
In my thinking brain, I know this isn’t all on me. I didn’t hurt you. You were already so badly hurt, physically, emotionally and in ways that words cannot begin to describe. I know I didn’t cause your pain. I know you needed to be removed from the circumstances in which you were being hurt. I understand the loss and grief that adoption brings, and I know I didn’t create the circumstances that led you here. I didn’t choose to injure you, to hurt you beyond hurt, or to place you for adoption.
I know I couldn’t heal your pain alone. I couldn’t take away the things that had happened to you, or give you words for experiences that should never have been part of your lives.
I couldn’t take away the pain you couldn’t verbalise, the confusion you carried, or the uncertainty of the path ahead. I couldn’t make the world see you as you needed to be seen, hold space for your hurt, understand your experiences and give you everything you needed to heal.
But my emotions, my grief, don’t always listen to my thinking brain.
Instead, I feel like a condemned woman. A failure as a parent. Someone who should have done more, should have done better, should have somehow found a way.
I cannot hold this pain. It hurts too much.
The internal injuries you carry are invisible to the world, so often dismissed or misunderstood. And when things bubbled to the surface, when your pain spilled into our lives, I was seen as being at fault. But I couldn’t carry all of your hurt on my own. The weight was too much.
I question myself constantly. Did I let go too soon? Did I not ask for help in the right way? Could I have done something differently? If it had been simply about love, I had enough for all of you and more. My love was never the thing I lacked.
I don’t know if I will ever overcome this pain, this loss, this grief. It makes me weep. Sometimes it makes me want to die. But I keep going because I know that your loss and your grief are immense, too, and I cannot pretend that mine is the only pain that matters.
And maybe one day, you will reach out. Maybe you will let me take a little of that pain, let me hold space for your hurt, without needing to fix it or take it away. Maybe, together, we can begin to build a path towards healing.
I so wish I had been enough.
I am sorry, forever and always. I struggle to forgive myself for not being enough, for not finding the strength to continue, for not having the help I needed to carry your pain alongside you.
I am so, so very sorry, my sweet children. You will never know how much.
I wish my two brains could talk to each other. I wish the part of me that knows the truth could reach the part of me that feels responsible, and lay a little forgiveness at my feet. I wish I could make peace with what happened and with all the things I could not change.
But I carry this sharp, never-healing wound, and I am trying to turn it into something good.
I won’t give up. I hold on to the hope that one day we might come together again. That we might cry together, laugh together and love together. That perhaps, in time, we might find a way to understand each other and make space for all that has happened.
Because no matter where you are, no matter how far apart we may be, I will always love you. Forever and always, and always and forever.
You are in my heart and in my mind, each and every day.
Change is needed. I couldn’t push hard enough to secure the change you needed during your childhood. That is a truth I struggle to live with. But I can keep pushing for change in the childhoods of others. I can keep fighting for children to be seen, understood and supported in ways that recognise the hurt they carry, rather than blaming them or the families who love them.
And that is what keeps me hanging on to the raft for dear life.
One day, you may understand that you are the reason I push so hard. That behind every meeting, every conversation, every challenge and every call for change, there is a mum who knows what can happen when children are hurt beyond words and the world fails to understand them.
A mum who wishes, more than anything, that things had been different for you.
A mum who loves you, still, and always will.
Your loving mum,
Forever and always.