I always find it slightly funny but mostly sad when people take to Facebook to scream hateful and ignorant opinions about the lives of others. Their opinions go rebounding around the dense walls of their tiny echo-chamber worlds, where their words are either reinforced by other small-minded individuals or manage to hit their intended target in a passive-aggressive but no less cutting manner.
This is what happened to this particular intended target, who goes by u/vietnamazinggg on Reddit. A woman on Facebook attacked her, saying she wasn’t a “real parent” because she hadn’t physically given birth to her son. Conception would’ve proven a difficult task for u/vietnamazinggg, considering neither her nor her partner have penises. Instead, they trudged through an arduous adoption process and after a lot of time, effort and probably money, finally became caretakers to a little boy. She put it a lot more eloquently in her Reddit response, though;
My response to her:
I did not give birth to my child. I did not get to feel him growing within me, or hold him against my skin when he was born. Perhaps by your definition, my child is not a part of me – he does not resemble me or my wife.
Let me tell you what being a parent is to me.
I didn’t labor for hours for this child, I labored for YEARS. I waited for years to be told that we had been chosen, that we were finally going to be allowed to be parents.
I didn’t feel labor pains. I felt the incredible pain of emptiness in my heart and home as my wife and I yearned to begin our family through adoption.
I didn’t get to wake up in the middle of the night and nurse my sweet child. I did, though, spend many nights lying awake and praying to whomever might be listening to let us be next. Asking myself why we hadn’t been chosen yet. Poring over adoption profiles and sending endless e-mail inquiries on children available for adoption and being told no, no, no over and over again. And like you said, “you can’t possibly understand that feeling.” I feel certain you have absolutely no idea.
A child lives to depend on me – you’re right. My child has been let down by everyone else in his life. You think I am not losing sleep? He may not wake me up to feed him every couple hours, but he screams out in his sleep – no doubt reliving past traumas from the life he led before being adopted.
Not every experience is your experience. Not every mother is a mother because she gave birth. Not every child is yours or a “part of you” because you grew it inside of you.
My child will always be a part of me, because we’re fighting for this life together.
TLDR: Fuck you. I’m a mom.