Madeline Jessica Ramsey was born on 15 January 1994 at Gosford Hospital, NSW, Australia. When she was seven months old, she was adopted by Michael and Carol Ramsey. Madeline has Down syndrome and lives with her family in Wollongong, NSW, Australia. Here is a letter that she wrote to her birth mother for Mother’s Day. Dear Lynda, I want to tell you about my life. I have two co....
I am a mother of three amazing kids. Their ages are: fourteen, twelve, and six. Two boys and one little girl; each delivered into my life in different ways. My eldest son was delivered “biologically,” his younger brother was delivered out of Russia, and my youngest — the girl — was delivered out of Ethiopia. It is true — the method by which each of my children was del....
Two years into our marriage I fell pregnant. My husband Robbert and I were a little shocked because I was still finishing up my university degree and we didn’t ‘plan’ for a pregnancy. But within days we got really excited about the idea of having a baby together. We started to dream about what he or she would look like, what we would be like as parents and sta....
Names are powerful. They define us, locate us and identify us. But what if you don’t know your name? Growing up I had no idea who my father was. I didn’t know anything about him so the only last name I had to use was either borrowed from my siblings or whomever my mom was married to at the time. My life was full of chaos and uncertainty and my mother’s drug and alcohol ad....
Dear Mum, Its 45 years since we last spent Mothers Day together. After you died I found Mothers Day really hard, not Christmas, or even your birthday but Mothers Day. This is the day where I feel your absence most painfully. I know others are able to call someone else mum, whether it’s a friend’s mother, or maybe a mother in law, but that is something that I just couldn’t....
