Support after placing a child is so important. I had a pretty supportive family and supportive friends but nothing can replace the support of someone who has actually been there and walked in your shoes – another birthmother. Not long after I entrusted Charlie to his adoptive parents, I realized to make it through this I was going to the need support of someone who really understood what I was thinking and feeling. That is when I began to seek out another birthmother. That is when I found another birthmother, Lani.

This is an exert of an article I wrote not too long after meeting Lani.

“About a week after relinquishment I awoke from a dream of Charlie feeling helpless and sleepless in the middle of the night. I stared at my computer screen thinking that the internet was massive, there has to be someone out there who understood what I was going through, someone I could talk to the heartache about. I began typing in adoption related words into my search engine. Somehow I stumbled across an "Is anyone out there?" post by a woman named Lani. Tears filled my eyes as I read what she had to say. Her daughter, Kinsey, had been placed in an open adoption agreement just 4 days before Charlie's birth. I immediately e-mailed her introducing myself and explaining my situation. I anxiously checked my e-mail waiting for her response.

Days later, I received an email from Lani. "Finally, someone out there really does understand!" I thought as I read her words. "I understand how you feel," she wrote as she explained that she was close with the family she had placed her daughter, Kinsey with. She explained that she had a very open adoption with Kinsey's family as well. Yet she felt the same emptiness gnawing at her heart, knowing life would never be the same.

Lani and I began chatting via e-mails daily. I would read her words of understanding and instantly feel better. She was the only person who could really relate to what I was saying and feeling. There was an immediate bond between us. As we got to know each other, we began to notice some amazing coincidences and we felt like God had intended for us to meet and help each other through this. We lived pretty close to each other, only about 3 hours away. She lived in Georgia, in the same city as my grandmother and aunt. We were both parenting sons who were the same age and each of our sons had major complications at birth. Lani's daughter was born just 4 days before Charlie's birth, which just so happened to be my birthday as well!

Soon e-mails turned into phone calls. We would chat late into the night, about the hurt of going on with life while someone else raised our babies. We discussed the ignorance of society in general towards birth moms and swapped rude encounters with people who knew we were birth moms. We cried on each other's shoulders as we mourned the loss of our babies and made it through them turning one month, two months old, and so on. We did all this together. “

At first, all Lani and I talked about, was adoption. But as time wore on and our adoption wounds weren’t so fresh, we began to share in each other’s every day lives. Now, five years later, we really are best friends sharing in the important moments in each others’ lives. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding, I threw her a baby shower when she went on to have a baby and then she named him after me. We’ve taken trips together. Our friendship is now more than just adoption. At times, she feels like more than just a friend, she’s more like a sister.