Letterbox Connection

From day one I have been a massive advocate for contact, I believe in the importance of our children having some contact with their birth families. All children need to know their roots, what they choose to do with that information is for them to decide, although I pray that they will involve us, so that we can support them when the time comes.

At the very beginning of our adoption journey I thought that contact would be easy, just a couple of letters a year and child 4 would have a link to his roots. I didn't really think about the impact on me. For me, the writing of the letters was easy, I would write about child 4's favourite books, songs, TV programmes. I would share his achievements and milestones. I wrote about visits to the farm, his love of animals especially the ones we own. We would make pictures to share using his handprints and footprints so that they could see how he had grown. A chicken with a handprint for her crown, a dinosaur based on his hand prints. Child 4 would decorate the carefully hand written pages with crayon and I would feel like we had done a good job. But then we would wait for their response. The first couple of letters were full of anger, sorrow and loss and it was relatively easy for me to read them, the untidy, grammatically incorrect letters full of spelling mistakes, inappropriate language and confusion. those first letters supported the need for child 4 to be removed and then placed with us, in a way it gave me the higher ground on justifying the need for adoption. But, now the letters are more coherent, this couple are becoming more grounded and although in some ways I am pleased, I am not callous enough to want them to suffer more than they already have but, in all honesty I prefered those initial disconnected ramblings.

As child 4 grows, he will be able to read all these letters, I have copies of what we have sent and have kept all the responses, I feel that he would understand better that there was no choice but adoption when he reads those first letters but as he reads the later ones will he question why he was taken into care and then "placed" with us. In some ways I hope that they will stop responding or they will revert to anger and despondency.  I will continue to write but if they didn't write back or if their letters became full of Resentment I will once again take the higher ground.

I know I am being selfish, unjust and downright mean but he is now mine, I guess I don't really want to share him, although I really do understand that there is no choice, I have to take this on the chin, I kind of knew what we were getting into, I just had a rose tinted view of it. It is so important to put child 4's needs first, it is important for him to know that his birth parents love him and that he understands that they just couldn't keep him safe. But that doesn't stop me worrying. On one hand I worry that they may stop writing making him feel that they didn't care enough, on the other that they won't stop and he will ask why he had to be snatched away from them in the first place. I guess that I have just realised that no matter what he is the loser and I love him yet can't protect him from what has already happened I just have to hold his hand and be with him when the time comes for him to make sense of it all.