Free B00AEDDPVE EBOK by Marie Osmond, Marcia Wilkie Page B

attached to pregnancy out of wedlock, my parents made room in their growing household a number of times to give shelter to young women who found out that they were unexpectedly pregnant. Each young woman would live with us for four or five months, helping my mother take care of her growing family and the household. At the same time, my mother would “mother” her, giving her encouragement, cooking, sewing,and budgeting skills and subtle lessons in self-esteem and finding their life path. Most of the young women left my parents’ home feeling that they had fulfilled a grand purpose by bringing a child into the world, some who would be adopted and raised by loving couples longing to be parents and some who would remain with the young mothers, now ready to love and embrace the babies as theirs. My mother would never support the thought of the young woman making a choice about her baby under any pressure from anyone. She would always encourage them to pray, listen to their intuition, and then follow it. She believed that was the way that a young woman could find peace with her decision, even when the decision was a tough one, or despite whatever challenges she would face in the future. Making a decision from fear will only lead to regret or sorrow. Peace of mind and heart will grow and then sustain a woman’s decision through the years.
    Once on the
Donny & Marie
talk show, we did a full hour on adoption, with special guests including both birth mothers who had given their babies at birth and the loving couples who had adopted their infants. (I prefer to not link the words “given up” even though that term is so generally accepted for the choice a birth mom makes. After all, this infant is such a gift to the mother waiting for him or her, and a gift is given, not “given up.”) The birth mothers on this show were in their late teens at the time of their pregnancies, and yet they seemed to have an old-soul wisdom about the best outcome of their pregnancies. Each reported feeling strongly that the babyhad real parents who were waiting for him or her, and that their part in this natural transition was to bring that child into the world for them. The obvious happiness of the adoptive parents holding their long-awaited children brought the audience to tears.
    The reality that some of my children were created from the zygotes of other women and men, most of whom I never knew, only increases my awe at the miracle of creation, especially since I knew that each child was mine even before he was born, and I felt the mother-child bond from the moment that baby was put into my arms. I know I’m not alone in this. Other adoptive mothers have told me the same thing, including Valerie Harper, Donna Mills, Teri Garr, and Sheryl Crow, along with many of my personal friends.
    In one of my mother’s early journals she describes the miracle of holding her firstborn in her arms for the first time: “
As they laid him in my arms, I continued to weep with joy, knowing that this dear little life was mine. I was actually his mother! How I loved him. I was the happiest person in the whole world. It was truly the most profound moment of my life
.”
    When my firstborn, Stephen, was put into my arms, only minutes old, the rest of my life faded into the background. In the same way that the ultrasound passes through the mother’s skin, muscle, and tissue to focus only on the baby, I felt that everything else in my life was only a structure that held a place for my divine purpose: motherhood.
    Along the way, I’ve met many women who embraced theconcept of “having it all.” Some have told me of how they plotted out their futures from the time they graduated from high school. First education, then career, then marriage while continuing a career, and then, sometime later, when they feel “in a good place financially” to have a child, they plan to be a mother. The reality is that there is no “having it all.” Our female bodies are designed to