A few years back my sons and I attended a Birth Mother’s Day Dinner with about 19 brave birth moms, women who’d chosen to place their babies for adoption.

They lit candles.

Some held treasured ear-marked photographs.

There was talk about their love and support of all moms everywhere who have made the powerful choice of adoption.

All were deeply contemplative – for a few, memories from hard choices made 50-plus years ago were revisited.

A few women remained silent, holding tightly to affirmed, supported anonymity.

Mothers who have chosen adoption for their babies are often ignored on Mothers Day.

And, how their hearts must surely ache.

May 12, 2024, several nations, including South Africa, will celebrate Mothers Day and an unseen army of brave women will quietly witness other families rightfully celebrating Mothers Day and find no place at the tables with the children whom they generously offered to families eager to love their babies.

I admit, my awareness of birth mothers is acute.

These women, often shamed, labeled as irresponsible, hard, or uncaring, have radically shifted my life. Each of my boys’ mothers fought untold difficulties – unknown to me – while carrying her child to full term, in full knowledge other options existed.

Despite abandonment, derision from family members, financial difficulties, and who knows what other pressures, each delivered a beautiful baby and made the hard choice to forever enrich my life by allowing me, a single man, to adopt her infant son.

I know you are not forgotten – not on Mothers Day weekend or any other day.

You are so deeply etched into their individual psyches and into our family experience that you are regularly part of our awareness and conversation.

So deep is their desire for you, so deep is the urge for a mother that my boys sometimes called me “mom”.

I have never stopped them. I let it go because I think I know what it’s about.

It’s a primal urge.

It expresses a heartfelt longing.

To stop them, when each was learning to talk, seemed unwise, as if I were stopping something deep, powerful within each.

“Mama” or “mom” and even “mother” seemed to come as easily as rolling over, as cooing, as first steps, and as all those things that come with early development – and so I let it go.

It was as if “mother” and all forms of Her names were buried within each boy to emerge and be attached to the nearest, warmest person no matter what his or her gender.

Yes, the woman waiting your table at your Mothers Day lunch, the teacher whom your child adores, the woman co-worker who goes silent for no identifiable reason or who appears to be sometimes lost in another world when the conversation turns to babies or showers or Mother’s Day, just may be a member of that unseen army of birth-mothers. She may be one of the gracious, brave women who have made Mother’s Day complete for countless women around the world and given a man like me the unique pleasure of sometimes being called “mom.”

I ache for the millions of women whose Mothers Day is tainted with shame, loneliness, disconnection, for having made the tough choice for adoption.

If that’s you or almost you, and are in KZN, and your adoption was recent or decades ago, I have an invitation for you.

Please join me for lunch or an early dinner on May 11, 2024 – yes, the day before Mothers Day is referred to as Birth Mothers Day.

Come alone or bring a friend. I shall speak briefly, simply to thank you and honor your bravery.

Expenses for your lunch will be fully covered – I have already received several financial gifts to cover costs.

The venue will be beautiful and private and safe —- details are unfolding.

Please email Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za so we can get you — and a friend — onto the list and get details to you as they unfold.

Generous readers, restaurateurs, sponsors, gift bag creators, please email Shirley you’d like to pay for a meal or sponsor a table or assist in any manner.

Closing note.

I know this is a tough invitation, Birth Mom.

But, you have already demonstrated your strength.

Join me, please.

[if you’re in the USA and want to give, all gifts are tax deductible— contact me and I’ll guide you through the easy process of giving to OpenHand International, a 501C3 corporation]