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How Adoptees Celebrate Mother's Day
Happy Mother's Day to all the future, present and mother-figures out there!
For my international readers, Mother's Day is a day where you celebrate and show your appreciation for your Mom and women-figures who may have taken care of you as a Mother would. Modern Mother's Day originated from the USA in the early 20th century and is celebrated in the second week of May (date differs depending on country). Anna Jarvis pushed for Mother's Day to be a national holiday after her Mother, a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers in the American Civil War, died. She wanted to commemorate her Mother for her work and set aside a day to honour all Mothers. Mother's Day was first recognized in 1911, three years after Jarvis's Mother had passed. Today, Mother's Day or a form of it, is celebrated in countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, South Korea (Parent's Day), many countries in Europe, Argentina (Dia de la Madre), Israel, China and many countries in south-east Asia. There are other holidays that celebrate family members such as Father's Day, Sibling Day and Grandparents Day.
As a Chinese adoptee (for my new readers, adoptee = someone who is adopted), I often get asked how I celebrate holidays that revolve around family members. Do I celebrate my birth family? Do I only celebrate those in my family now? How do my parents react on days like today when my very existence is based on my birth parents? Or do I celebrate it at all? For the sake of this post, I'll only answer pertaining to Mother's Day, but they are the same for all similar holidays.
Simple answer! I do celebrate it. Normally, my brother, Theo, and I would make my Mom a special Mother's Day breakfast of pancakes or waffles. Theo likes to cut a bouquet of flowers from our garden, place them in a vase and center it on the kitchen table during breakfast. We usually get her a small gift and card. Then we spend the day or half of the day doing something she likes to do such as hiking, bowling or just spending time together. Also in the recent years, I started texting my mother-figures thanking them for loving and supporting me like a daughter. Then during dinner, my Mother makes a toast about how much she loves us (all that mushy stuff that usually ends in a couple of tears) and thanking my birth Mother for giving birth to me because without her I wouldn't exist.
Today's celebration was a little different because my Mom is in the Netherlands visiting family. I called her last night (she's 9 hours ahead so technically it was Mother's Day for her) and wished her a happy Mother's Day. We talked about what she plans to do for the day and her trip. She ended the phone call with, "Don't forget to look at the moon tonight and thank your birth Mother". I promised her I would. That's one of my favourite parts about celebrating Mother's Day and Father's Day, my parents always recognize my birth parents and how important they are in my story.
I am very lucky. Not all parents of adoptees recognize or even discuss their child's birth family with them. It's not uncommon for the subject of finding the birth family or just their existence to never come up. Adoptees have expressed feeling belittled and deemed as 'ungrateful' by their families if they mention their birth parents. However, it is normal for an adoptee to think about their birth families, especially on holidays like these. How could we just shut out the people who created us? If you have adopted friends, please be aware that they may be feeling more emotionally fragile on holidays like these and offer a listening ear and support. I understand it's difficult to imagine how adoptees feel if you aren't one, however, just knowing a friend is willing to listen to your concerns and thoughts helps us tremendously.
I don't categorize my family and birth family on who is my 'real family'. They both are important: my birth family for creating me and my family for nurturing my genetic and non-genetic traits to help me become who I am today. Both are crucial to my story and I will always be grateful for that.
So yes Mom, I will thank my birth Mother as I stare at the moon tonight. I promise.
Thank you for reading! It's been so long since my last blog post, I know. However, I am a busy bee and wanted to post when I truly felt like it not because of a blog schedule. That way, I can give my 100% into the post. Feel free to subscribe if you want to stay updated when I post :) Here's a picture of when my Mom first held me in China.
