Thankful by Maressa Mortimer

Thankful

by Maressa Mortimer

Isn’t it amazing, the amount of special days and weeks we have. Mother’s Day, Book Day, and this week it’s National Adoption week in the UK, whilst November is National Adoption Awareness Month in the US. (Not sure why we only get a week!) For me, every week is adoption week, and has been for the last seven plus years. I love the idea of Adoption Month being the same one as Thanksgiving. Looking at my four precious children, I feel overwhelmingly thankful. We often joke, and explain that the reason our kids are so amazing is that we, unlike other parents, actually got to choose our children! I’m grateful for the way they have enriched our lives, as well as keep our washing baskets filled up permanently. I love to hear their chatter and laughter, making my quiet evenings very precious. My children are happy, content and lovely, but adoption is a story of grief and loss. It is proof of the resilience of our children that they can thrive, in spite of losing everything. During the Lockdown we all experienced a slither of what fostered and adopted children have gone

through. It’s losing what you have always taken for granted, helpless to prevent it from happening to you. Think about key areas in your life: family, friends, home, work, hobbies, possessions and food. If you were asked to give up one key area, which one would you choose, and feel you’d still have a good life? Familiar foods, or maybe your hobby? During the Lockdown we found certain foods couldn’t be had, so we ate a wider range of foods. Hobbies had to stop for a while, as they involved going places. It wasn’t pleasant, but life was still fine. We went for extra long walks each day, to reduce stress levels and help us all to smile. Now pick another area. Would you move away from your home, and the neighbourhood you’re familiar with? Or would you rather do without friends? And lose another key area... Would life become too stressful? We have all felt the effect in recent months, where we were unable to see family and friends, and many people shared how their mental health had

suffered under this loss. We knew that the Lockdown would end at some stage though, so we were making promises to friends, to “soon catch up” or, “When this is all over, we’ll...”. When children are adopted they might lose all those key areas overnight. Suddenly they have lost friends, their (foster) family, most of their possessions, people around them sound different, the house and neighbourhood are different... They have literally lost their lives. My daughter, who was five when she came to us, hadn’t realised the scope of her move. She had been prepared by the foster carer, but hadn’t understood the words. Until she suddenly found herself in a strange house, with people she’d only met everyday for the last two weeks, with different toys, different food (we did try to cook familiar foods, but you all know what cooking is like...), and everything she knew was gone. So we are thankful, grateful beyond words. But I cringe when people say to my children, “You must be so happy that you’re in a new family!” Or they tell me that surely my kids are grateful ‘for what we have done’. Losing your life is horrendous, and the emotional scars will probably be life-long. Even now, meeting the same friends a few times within a short time makes my daughter nervous, “Are they coming round so often because they’re our new parents?”. Incidentally, my children are thankful, they love us, and they know that ultimately, it was for the best. But they still grieve the life they didn’t have; they still feel a great loss when thinking about their birth family. We loved our long walks during the Lockdown, but still missed our hobbies, friends and family. As it’s Adoption Awareness Month in November, when you feel thankful for what you have, spare a moment to pray for those children who have lost so much, and for their fraught parents who have gained so much at the same time!

I live in the beautiful Cotswolds, England with my husband and four (adopted) children. My debut novel, Sapphire Beach, was published December 2019. I’m

a homeschool mum, so my writing has to be done in the evening, when peace and quiet descends on our house once more. I’m Dutch, so English isn’t my first language, so I’m using that as an excuse for any typos or grammatical mistakes.