Two mothers came to King Solomon. They wanted him to decide which of them should keep the little baby that they had brought with them, and they both gave the same account of what had happened.
They said that they lived in the same house, and they had both recently given birth to a tiny baby boy.
One night, soon after the birth of their respective children, one of the women woke to find that she had accidentally smothered her own baby in her sleep. In her anguish, she took her dead son and exchanged it with the other's child. The following morning, when that woman woke up and discovered the dead baby, she realised at once that it was not her own son, and a dreadful quarrel ensued. They went to King Solomon and gave him identical accounts of what happened, each claiming that the living child was her own.
And so the King gave the child back to its mother – the one who would have given it away rather than have it harmed.
Many of us had mothers who gave us away rather than have us come to harm. In our society there is no wise King Solomon to determine that a child belongs with its own mother: in fact our society is often the cause of harm to mother and child, because it deprives mothers of the emotional and financial support that they need in order to care for their baby. And so the baby gets given away to the other mother - the one who has no living child of her own.
It is my belief that when this happens adopted people often get to feel that they have been cut in half anyway. Half remains with their own family, where they belong but are not known, and half goes to a new family, where they may be known, but do not feel they belong.
Reconciling the two halves, and becoming the whole person that you should have been, can be the work of a lifetime.
