Two Women in China

At this time of each year, I think about two women in China. They gave birth to my daughters around this time two and four years ago. About a month ago, Brian Stuy posted about the myth of the mourning birthmother. In my comment to Brian’s post I stated that I do not and will not speculate about how my daughter’s birthmothers might be feeling now or what they were feeling then. But, I do think about them especially at this time of the year. I wonder if they are thinking about their daughters. I wonder about the circumstances that led to my daughters spending several months in an orphanage. While Brian’s article describes birthmothers having little or no emotion regarding their abandoned children and that they are resigned to their fate, I cannot imagine that a woman would carry a child for nine months, go through the physical and emotional act of childbirth and not carry some feeling for that child. I am not surprised that they did not show any emotion when being interviewed by a foreign man. And, while I find it hard to understand that a birthmother would not remember or feel for the child to whom she gave birth, I will not speculate for my daughters that their birthmother loved them so much that they left them to be found. That “fantasy” is not fair to my daughters or the memory of their birthmother. We do not know what they felt and we do not know why they did not to keep their daughters. We do not know if they secretly yearn for a reunion or are thankful that one is most certainly unlikely.

My older daughter and I have spent a good amount of time over the past three years looking at and discussing her lifebook. We talk about her being born in China, living in an orphanage and Mommy and Daddy coming to get her. She has no interest in the page with the clip art silhouette of the pregnant woman with long black hair because she “does not want to have another mommy in China.” I’m certain that this conversation will continue to evolve and we will eventually talk more about the woman in China who gave her life. And, the day that I will start to have reciprocal conversations about her life in China with my youngest daughter is just around the corner as her vocabulary grows every day!

My point is that I want to remember my daughters’ birthmothers. But, how to remember them is something that I ponder. I don’t want to glorify their actions because I don’t know if they were selfless. Of course they gave my husband and me a glorious gift, but that was likely not their intention. They carried a baby girl in their womb, they gave birth to that baby girl, and before their body had time to recover from childbirth the baby girl was being cared for in an orphanage. Abandoned – the word sounds ugly and I hate to use it, but it is the reality. Whether it was the mothers choice or not (and from my understanding there is often pressure from a husband or parents), someone made the choice to abandon this child.

I just reread the previous paragraph and it struck me that I sound angry. I decided to leave the paragraph as is and explain that my tone is not meant to be angry. I do not feel anger toward their birthmothers or their family. I feel confused that a mother could make the decision themselves or allow their child to be left on a street or at the gate of an orphanage when I longed for so long to be a mother. I feel sad that my daughters had this scary, unknown beginning to their lives. I feel a great responsibility to my daughters, to their birth family and their birth country. And, I feel a lot of pressure to “get it right” when it comes to remembering their birthmother, their beginning in life, and their birth country and to raise my girls to be independent, confident, thoughtful and compassionate Chinese American women.

Like any family, we are a work in progress and I will rely on God as my guide to try to get it right. I will continue to remember the women who gave birth to my daughters and will do my best to help my girls understand and accept the reality of a family in China who gave them life, but who we will never know.