I’ve written many times about searching for and finding our children’s birth mothers, and how, for our family, that connection remains vital. But not everyone feels the way I do, as evidenced by this article about the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kaerpernick, who was relinquished at six weeks, and his birth mother, who would like to establish a relationship with him as a grown man.
There are many 49ers fans who would love a moment of contact with quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
But the one with the deepest, yet most tortured connection is Heidi Russo, his biological mother who gave him up for adoption.
When she watches him from the stands, she hopes that one day, they can again meet.
“Then the other half of me calms me down and I just sit there and cheer like the rest of the people,” Russo told Yahoo’s Jason Cole. “I kept looking at him, thinking our eyes might meet. He might finally see me. I kept thinking it happened, but he never came to see me after the game.”
For his part, Kaepernick hasn’t sought out contact, and Russo said she respected his decision.
But she has also met with Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, the couple she turned her baby over to six weeks after he was born.
“I knew they were the right people immediately,” said Russo. “The first thing Teresa did when she met me was give me a hug. They were such giving, wonderful people from the moment I met them.”
They also set the stage for Kaepernick to grow up in a comfortable, two-parent home which the then-19-year-old Russo could not.
“I know I couldn’t have given Colin everything he needed growing up,” Russo said. “But I ask myself a lot of the time, ‘Would loving him have been enough?’ . . .
Be sure to read the comments following the article; they demonstrate the range and depth of emotion surrounding adoption, for people who are adopted and for the mothers who relinquished them. Once again I’m reminded that nothing about adoption is simple, or easy.
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