[blparent] Update on my daughter Ashlee

[Bernadetta]

Rebecca,
When someone is kidnapped, they are presumably in harm's way. 
Kidnapping is never done with any good intentions--Not as far as I know 
at least. So while you can argue that social services are  kidnapping a 
child, in a sense, when they take him or her away from biological 
parents, you can't say that the foster parents kidnapped the child. If 
a child is well cared for at a foster home, has been there since the 
earliest days, has had his or her needs met well by these foster 
parents, how is it ok for someone to interfere with that beyond a 
certain point just because they share the child's DNA. That biological 
parent knows little to nothing about the child's likes, dislikes, 
routines, upbringing until that point...Picture yourself as a little 
one or two year old. Would you want to leave the only home you've ever 
known and be told that the person you know as mommy is not your mommy 
anymore and a stranger is now your mommy? Wrap your head around that as 
an infant, if you will. Give it a shot--See how uncomfortable that must 
feel, how lost you must be, how much you must miss your family. Maybe 
you get over it, with time, but certainly repercussions are lifelong, 
from a Freudian standpoint.
The sad truth is that neither set of parents means the kid any harm in 
this type of situation. The foster parents take on the role of 
caregivers, providers of love and security, assuming they are good 
foster parents, never meaning to take anyone's child away from them. 
Not initially at least. The birth parents find themselves in a 
precarious situation where their hands might be tied, yet they don't 
intentionally give their child up. Still, bonds are formed, time 
passes, and past a certain point when a child is able to comprehend, to 
form a personality, to form strong attachments, it seems to me a cruel 
fate to have to be shuffled off to the waiting arms of a biological stranger.
The only person who gets any true satisfaction out of the matter if 
things conclude that way is the biological parent. On that note, I 
think Jess is a most unselfish, gracious person to make the choice she 
did. And furthermore, it's definitely not your place to question such a 
personal decision as that. She sent the update seeking support, not for 
someone to sway her from the choice that must have been so hard to 
make. Jess undoubtedly recognized that the people who have been raising 
her little girl have been doing right by her, and she has executed the 
single most unselfish act of love. She gave her child the chance of 
stability, of a family she has known her entire life. She gave her 
child a chance at a life where she won't be uprooted, dragged to courts 
and visitations, all that painful, confusing drama that comes with 
custody cases.
So with that said, I propose that we leave jess to her choice. It's not 
anyone's place to question it, not a major life choice such as this 
one. We should give her the support she needs and leave it at that. 
It's not our business how she came to make that choice or what 
circumstances she is willing or not willing to share. We're not the 
spanish inquisition, just a group of parents who are supposed to be 
there for each other through tough and joyous times.

Bernadetta