With Mother’s Day right around the corner, many of us are ordering flowers and preparing to pamper the most important woman in our lives, but for the thousands of women who have had to deal with the painful process of adoption, the day weighs heavy in their hearts.
National Birth Mother’s Day, which is celebrated on the day before Mother’s Day, is a day to recognize biological mothers of adopted children. Originating in Seattle in 1990, Birth Mother’s Day was established by birth mothers to educate, to remember, and to cope with the adoption process.
This year National Birth Mother’s Day is Saturday. A local adoption agency, The Adoption Authority, is hosting a luncheon to honor and celebrate birth mothers they have worked with. The event will take place at 4131 University Blvd. South, at 12:30 p.m.
Linda Vorwerk of the Adoption Authority spoke with Melissa Ross on Friday’s segment of First Coast Connect.
“There is not any woman that I have ever worked with that chose this lightly,” Vorwerk said. “They all want to keep their child but their lives are in crisis of some kind, either emotional or financial, or both, and they chose the needs of their child over the want of their heart.”
Vorwerk says that women who have placed their children up for adoption are so often surrounded with negative words and harsh generalizations.
“They care so much, and it’s hard for them,” Vorwerk said. “So we want to take a day for those women who have placed their child up for adoption.”
The event, which is a very first for Jacksonville, will an afternoon of support for the women. While the luncheon is intended for the women the Adoption Authority has worked with, Vorwerk said she encourages other women to attend as well.
“It’s a time to really honor them and tell them they are special and that they are still at mother,” Vorwerk said, “and that they should be looked up to."