When your arms can’t hold him, so your heart does instead.

My son, who turns 5 next month, has just about the biggest heart you’ll ever see.

As he’s getting older, he’s starting to ask me questions that i just…don’t know how to answer.

Today I’m sending out the box with all my birth sons Christmas presents. (Which, due to the mail delivering my stuff to the wrong address, took an an extra 3 days to get to me 😡).

My birth son is 7. We have closed adoption on paper (which I wholeheartedly disagree with), but it’s more like semi open. I’m friends with his parents on social media, we get pictures, and communicate with each other when we need/want to. I’ll leave the….complications…of adoption in general out of this post, but trust me. It’s complicated. I think every adoption situation is.

My sons that I parent (5 and 3) know about their brother. They know he lives with a different family, they know I’m his mom, and they know he is their brother.

But my 5 year old has been having more and more questions and feelings about the situation, and I’m running out of things to say. To be honest, be probably deserves a few more answers than I’ve given him, but I struggle with keeping it age appropriate, and also the need to protect myself. I don’t want to talk about it or answer his questions, because it is so hard to revisit those wounds.

He doesn’t understand why his brother “won’t come visit him”. Or why he can’t talk to him. My son doesn’t understand why he can’t hug his brother, why he can’t know him. And he doesn’t hesitate to tell me that he loves and misses him.

But I think this is the toughest situation I’ve had to deal with so far.

My son sees me wrapping gifts and packing up the box for my birth son, his brother. And he wants to send him something too. He’s asking me to “wrap it for him, put a bow on it, and then write a note that says ‘I miss you, I love you, please come visit me’”.

Ironically, the gift he chose is a book that my therapist gave me to give to my kids around Halloween time. The book has been…well loved. And it looks like it. It had stickers in it at one point, which have all now been removed.

Now. don’t get me wrong. I think the idea is beautiful and so loving and there’s nothing wrong with it at all. I love that he cares and that he thought of it himself.

But…here’s the issue. My birth son has a rather…big city, a lot of money, and fancy parents kind of life. And while I do absolutely love the idea of my son sending him a book that he really loves…. I’m just not sure how well received it would be from the adoptive parents for them to get a used, slightly torn book.

The last thing I want to do is discourage kindness and empathy in my son, so I really don’t want to tell him no. I also don’t want to go through the motions of wrapping it and writing his note and all that, only not to send it.

It’s another situation I never thought I’d have to navigate…but that’s what life is, I guess.

Whatever happens…I just hope my birth son knows how loved he is.

By all of us.

We love him, and we miss him, and this only seems to get harder. All my son wants to do is hug his brother. And damn…if that isn’t a feeling I know all too well. I hate this.

((We miss you always, but today we missed you extra))