You don’t wake up one day and think, “You know what? I think I’ll give my kids up today.” That’s not how this works. Giving your kids up for adoption isn’t a choice. It’s a reckoning.
I was 21 when I made the decision. My kids were 6, 4, and 2. Three little faces who looked at me like I hung the moon, even though I could barely hang onto myself. I had failed them more times than I could count—missed meals, missed birthdays, a home that was never stable, and nights when I was too high or too sick to tuck them in. I wasn’t evil. I was exhausted. Broken. Addicted. And I was out of time.
Their father was gone. He was toxic, abusive, and had been controlling me since I was a teenager. Pills had replaced the trauma temporarily, but they had hollowed me out. I wasn’t a mother. I was a ghost in their lives. I loved them more than anything—but love alone doesn’t feed a child. It doesn’t pay rent. It doesn’t protect them from the wreckage you are becoming.
When I finally made the decision, I didn’t feel brave. I felt like I was dying.
I had no family to fall back on. I had grown up in violence and neglect, bounced between homes, suffered unspeakable abuse, and hit the streets at thirteen. I learned early that survival sometimes comes with a cost. And when I became a mom at seventeen, I thought maybe, just maybe, love could save me. It didn’t. Not then.
By the time I gave my kids up, they’d already been in foster care. The state had taken them when I became homeless. I had gotten clean for a while—but then I lost my job, relapsed, and tried to end my life. Waking up in a hospital bed with the tubes down my throat and the weight of everything I’d destroyed sitting on my chest… that was the moment. Not of clarity—but of surrender.
They deserved better. Period.
There’s no heroism in what I did. There’s just truth. I wasn’t capable of being the mother they needed. I asked the only people I trusted—their former foster parents—to adopt them. And God bless them, they said yes.
Signing those papers was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t cry at the office. I walked out and screamed into a bathroom mirror. I looked myself in the eye and said, You do not get to die now. You do not get to vanish. You owe them your life.
And that’s when the long road back began.
I got clean. I stayed clean. I started therapy.
Three years into sobriety, I got to see them again. One visit turned into weekends. Weekends turned into holidays. Four months ago, I moved 20 minutes away. They call me “Momma.” Sometimes just “Mom.” We watch movies. We eat dinner together. We go on trips. I sit at their soccer games and cheer like a maniac. I make art with them, buy them silly gifts, and cry quietly when they fall asleep in my arms.
They live with their adoptive parents—my co-parents, really. Those two took them in and gave them what I couldn’t: stability, safety, routine. But they didn’t erase me. They made space for me to come back, healed and whole. They didn’t have to. They did anyway.
So what is it like to give your kids up for adoption?
It’s grief. It’s shame. It’s guilt that wakes you up at 2am even eight years later.
It’s therapy and sobriety meetings and learning how to adult at 33—how to pay bills, build credit, set boundaries, say no. It’s writing down their favorite colors in a notebook because you missed so many firsts, and you don’t want to miss anything else.
It’s watching your daughter come out as bisexual and knowing she feels safe telling you—not because you were always there, but because when you came back, you stayed. It’s knowing your middle child plans to move in with you at 18, and you’re finally in a place where you can say, “Okay, baby. I got you.”
It’s crying over missed birthdays but still showing up for the next one. It’s understanding that being their mother now doesn’t erase that you weren’t for a while—but it matters anyway. It counts.
It’s not easy. It’s not over. Recovery never ends. But neither does love.
If you’re reading this and thinking about whether you can come back from the worst thing you’ve ever done… you can.
You don’t need to be perfect. You need to be consistent. You need to show up. And you need to forgive yourself over and over until you believe it.
Because sometimes, the most radical, painful, beautiful thing you can do as a mother—is let go, so they can live. And then fight like hell to become someone they’re proud to know.
And maybe one day, like me, you’ll be lying on the couch with your kids, all grown and taller than you, arms wrapped around you—and you’ll realize you didn’t lose them.
You just took the long way home.