We are molded and shaped, often for the better, by the things that are hardest in our lives. Although it is insensitive to say to survivors of the Holocaust or of a Japanese internment camp or of a rape, that they may be stronger, even better, because they survived the experience, it is true. By the same token, the men and women who have written for this issue, all of whom have endured the experience of placing a child for adoption and have come out the other side, are survivors in a way that makes them stronger and wiser. Their stories share a sense of growth without ever minimizing the arduous reality of the experience. They are survivors of the fires of life. While not everyone can become survivors in this way, those who do bring a message - both through their words and in their actions - that is worth listening to.

In the world of adoption, some professionals seem to have made a goal of minimizing birth parents' pain, handling them with kid gloves in deference to the difficulty of the choices they face. Unfortunately, this concern too often translates into patronizing and "protective" behavior that results in dis-empowerment for the birth parent. We get many calls from agency social workers and other professionals working with birth parents, requesting information about pre-adoptive families who might be interested in adopting a particular child. Often, they tell us they don't want to offer the birth parent(s) too many pre-adoptive families to choose from, for fear of overwhelming them. How can it possibly be appropriate to "protect" a birth parent from being confronted by too many options? Placing a child for adoption is inescapably an overwhelming and difficult choice. If that realization makes birth parents decide to parent their child themselves, what is wrong with that? To our minds, it seems that this "protection" may be motivated more by the desire to insure an adoption plan than by the desire to enable real choices for the birth parent(s).

By the same token, we hear professionals telling birth parents about how wonderful and heroic they are for making the choice to place a child for adoption. We hear them developing strategies for the birth parents to "protect" themselves from the pain and grief of their choice, offering them ways to feel "good" about what they are doing. But the true survivors of the complex experience of placing a child for adoption seem to be the ones who have visited in full the pain and difficulty of their choice, not those who have spent their lives trying to avoid it or to blame it on someone else. The truth is, the strong survive by traveling through the fire of their own personal hell and coming out affected but intact on the other side, often wounded but always with more compassion and greater understanding than when they began their journey. The truest testament to a person's character and strength is evident after the fire. As a community, we must ask ourselves whom and what we are protecting when we deny this passage to birth parents in the name of protecting their "best interests."

As Mother's Day and Father's Day approach, we invite the entire adoption community to honor those among us who, like each of our contributing writers, have walked through the fires of an incredibly painful choice and have survived with the grace to share their perspectives and insights. Thank you.

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