To the woman who gave birth to me,

You weren’t ready to have me. Even you could say that’s true. And if you didn’t realize that the moment you found out you would be having me, then you must have realized it when my little brother and I were taken from you. I hope the pain, hurt, and abandonment I felt growing up was worth the realization.

I got over it, though. I got over you. Luckily I was able to become adopted, a fate that some children in the foster care system don’t ever get to experience.

I was adopted at the age of nine, although the two that adopted me had become my parents from the moment they saw me at age four.

Yes, you are the woman who gave birth to me, but the woman who adopted me is my mother.

You’re lucky that my mother has taught me forgiveness from the first day I walked into her home, a small pack of my belongings dragging behind me. I’ve forgotten everything about you so I can remember the exact moment they saved me. I was welcomed with hugs, kisses and a new teddy bear, almost as though I had been reborn.

You’re lucky that my mother taught me who God is - what forgiveness means. What it means to try and understand something what someone has done to you and tell them that you forgive them.

I understand, however, that being forgiven is different than thinking what you did was okay.

It wasn’t okay. It isn’t okay.

Growing up, I thought that if I ever had to meet you again, if I had no choice, I would ask you why you did what you did. Now I don’t care. I know why you did it, but I don’t completely understand.

What I’m confused about is how a mother can think only of herself, even when she has given birth to something that is her own flesh and blood. And how you could carry a life in you for nine months, just to bring it into a world that is twisted and painful, solely because of you.

What I’m confused about is how my mother right now can love me infinity amount of times more than you seemed to.

I used to wonder what it would be like if you had become more a mother to me than simply ‘the woman who raised me’. Now I don’t care.

I don’t care!

You wouldn’t have pushed me like my mother does now. You wouldn’t have made sure I knew right from wrong, made the right friends, took the path that I deserved to take.

The mother I have now is my mom. You are simply the woman who brought me into this world.

Maybe I can thank you for not being ready, because now I have a mother that loves me selflessly.

My mom is the one who brought me to all of my first days of school, and who watched me graduate on my very last.

My mom is the one who helped me through heartache, taught me how to let go of people that hurt me so that I can be happy.

My mother is the one who pushed her personal time away to make sure I could succeed and she is the one who taught me what a mother really is.

To the woman who gave birth to me:

It’s taken me years to get the nerve to write this. It’s taken me years to realize that what you did to me, what happened in my childhood because you were unprepared, does not make me who I am and will not shape what I do with my future in a negative way. So . . .

I forgive you.

But it’s not okay.