When someone you love is hurting, your first instinct is usually to try to make it better.
You want to say the right thing. You want to reassure them. You want to remind them why everything is going to be okay.
But sometimes a birth mother doesn’t need you to make it better.
Sometimes she just needs you to let it hurt.
After I placed my daughter, most people didn’t really talk about it. My parents were different. They were there. They listened to me, and they let me talk about what I was going through.
But they also kept trying to convince me that I had made the right choice.
I know why they did it. They loved me. They saw how much I was hurting, and they were trying to help me through something they couldn’t take away.
But I remember thinking:
How could this be the right choice if I feel this way about it?
At the time, I couldn’t separate those two things.
I couldn’t understand how something could possibly be the right decision and still hurt that badly. And being told that I had made the right choice didn’t make those feelings disappear.
That’s something I think support people need to understand.
When a birth mother is grieving, you don’t always have to give her an answer.
If she says, “I don’t know if I did the right thing,” you don’t immediately have to convince her that she did.
If she says she misses her child, you don’t have to remind her why she chose adoption.
If she’s angry, sad, confused, questioning things, or feeling several things at once, you don’t have to find the sentence that makes those feelings go away.
You can listen.
You can say, “I’m here.”
You can let her talk without deciding where the conversation needs to end.
Because trying to make someone feel better can sometimes accidentally send the message that the feeling they’re having needs to be fixed.
And grief doesn’t always need to be fixed.
Sometimes it needs somewhere safe to exist.
That doesn’t mean you can never reassure a birth mother. It doesn’t mean my parents were wrong for trying to reassure me either. They were doing what people naturally do when someone they love is hurting—they were trying to help.
And honestly, having parents who were willing to listen and stay beside me mattered enormously.
The difference is understanding that support and reassurance aren’t always the same thing.
Sometimes the most supportive thing you can do is resist the urge to give her an answer and stay with her while she works through her own questions.
You don’t have to decide what her grief means.
You don’t have to convince her that she should feel differently.
And you definitely don’t have to have the perfect words.
Just don’t disappear because you don’t know what to say.
Listen.
Let her feel what she’s feeling.
And remind her through your presence—not your answers—that she doesn’t have to navigate it alone.