My Thoughts on Being Adopted by Mary Ellis

Turn on a made-for-TV movie or one of those “reality” shows about adoption and you’ll find adult children in serious angst over being given up. Everyone seems to be frantically searching for natural mothers and birth siblings. Invariably during the program’s second segment, after the commercial break, the viewer meets the long-suffering mother. Apparently she never stopped loving, worrying about, and searching for the baby taken from her or surrendered during a momentary lapse of judgment. These stories have always rung false for me, or at least overly “Hollywood” dramatic.

Do I believe such situations exist in real life? Yes, indeed. But are they the norm as the producers would have us believe? Not by a long shot, in my opinion. I’ve known too many adopted friends and siblings who suffered disappointments or faced disaster after discovering their “roots.” Personally, I hold no grudge or latent hostility for the woman who gave me up, but I also possess no buried affection either. She is a stranger. Throughout my life I’ve been offended by the predictable question: Don’t you want to know who your real mom is? I’ve always replied, “No, because I know who my real mother is—she’s the one who wiped my runny nose, fixed my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and put up with my sassy mouth as a teenager.

As a writer who was adopted from Children's Services as an infant, I chose to explore this issue from a different viewpoint…as the woman who gave up her child. In Always in my Heart, my novella from An Amish Miracle, Hope Bowman believes God punished her for giving up her firstborn son and because she hid this secret from her husband. Although Hope is thankful for three daughters, she still prays for a son. But instead of a new baby, God sends her the fifteen-year-old boy she had abandoned.

Writing that novella several years ago turned out to be therapeutic for me. But in my upcoming release, Hiding in Plain Sight, I chose to tackle this sensitive issue from a different viewpoint, as a biological sibling in need of an organ transplant. I thank God that I haven’t needed a transplant thus far, but this situation happens every day. Although my adoptive parents were the only ones I ever knew and as "real" as birth parents to me, other adoptees might choose a different path. I hope you'll enjoy my Amish novella or my next book, Hiding in Plain Sight, about two young women brought together to save one life.

The award-winning Always in My Heart (novella) is available in Kindle from Amazon, or in the paperback anthology, An Amish Miracle from Harper Collins Christian Publishing.

Hiding in Plain Sight will release on August 1^st from Severn House Publishers in hardback and electronic editions. 

Please leave me a comment for a chance to win the An Amish Miracle anthology. Sorry, US readers only.