Are you a Birth Mother? Do you honour a Birth Mother?

Birthmother's Day Ceremonies
Saturday, May 10, 2003
Ottawa

A Birthmother's Day Service is being held in recognition of women, who, with a very special love, placed their children for adoption.

First United Church, 397 Kent Street (corner of Kent & Florence), Ottawa, Ontario, 7.30 pm.

This event is open to birthmothers and anyone who wishes to pay tribute to birthmothers.

Please, out of respect for those women present who have recently placed children for adoption, do not bring very young children.

For further information, contact Robin, 613 730 5995

----------
Here is an aricle
----------
WHY I SUPPORT BIRTHMOTHERS DAY

I am an adoption social worker who has supported Birthmothers Day since it was first held at First United Church in Ottawa in 1995. I am also an adoptee and an adoptive mom.

The idea of having a special service to honour birthmothers was compelling. My work as a counsellor to young women who had given babies for adoption over the years had taught me that the love these women had for their children was not known or fully acknowledged, that secrecy heightened the pain and deepened feelings of shame, and the wound to their selfhood was difficult to heal. One teenage Catholic birthmother told of how she was unable to stand and be honoured with all of the other mothers at the traditional Mothers Day service in her church, yet how terrible it felt to sit silently in the pew.

Judgemental attitudes of church and society still prevailed. Those first birthmothers who decided to hold the honouring service in a church found that meeting in sacred space to honour each other by telling their stories; sharing their pain and expressing their love for their children resulted in powerful healing for themselves and for many who came. They were telling the world that they are also mothers. The experience of planning and leading the service that year and the years that followed was empowering for them. They invited adoptive parents, adopted children, birth grandmothers, friends, and adoption practitioners to honour birthmothers with poems and songs written and sung, prayer offered, and candles lit in honour of mothers and children. We learned about how adoption has changed over the years. We heard about ongoing connection between adoptive family, child, and birth family, instead of ties severed.

My own birth mother in her mid-eighties came one year from a far to be honoured publicly for the first time ever for her courage and generous love. It is never too late to experience healing. I found that the annual experience centred and grounded me as a woman who had been adopted in infancy. I listened in awe to my adoptive daughter find her strong, true voice as she sang from her soul and drummed an ancient aboriginal chant to honour her own birth mother. I heard a birth mother say, after telling her story, that it was the first time she had held her head high since placing her baby for adoption.

Healing, empowerment, support, …were taking place. What was also occurring for members of the adoption circle - adoptive parents, birth family, and adoptees - was a deeper understanding of adoption and of each other. We were learning what it really means to say than an adopted child has two sets of parents, and that adoption is founded on loss. The adoption circle felt inclusive and strong. A soon-to-be adoptive father who came to the service said it well, “I know why you asked us to come. You want us to understand adoption in our hearts.