THORNS CAME WITH THE ROSES MOTHER'S DAY PAINFUL FOR WOMEN WHO GAVE

Hillary Swallom, a 17-year-old Ferris junior, celebrated her first Mother's Day this year with candles, roses and tears.

She joined other Spokane birth mothers for a moving Mother's Day celebration at noon Friday at the Children's Home Society office on the South Hill. The event was sponsored by four local adoption agencies.

For birth mothers who have relinquished children for adoption, Mother's Day has traditionally been a painful holiday. They often feel acutely excluded from the festivities.

"To say, `I am a mother and I have a right to be at a Mother's Day celebration' is a new thing for many," said Kathy Seely of Spokane Consultants in Family Living, one of the event's sponsors.

"It's good to be recognized, that we have done a good thing," Swallom said. "But a lot of people don't think we have."

At Friday's event, birth mothers took turns lighting candles in honor of their children. Many of them wept as they recounted their baby's names and birth dates.

Each of them received a rose as Bette Midler's "The Rose" was played. Tears streamed down their faces.

Like many birth mothers, Swallom prefers the term "relinquish" to "give up."

"I look at it as I gave my child a better life, rather than I gave her up," she said, holding a white rose. "She needed a daddy."

This winter, Swallom, a former honors student, didn't tell anyone she was pregnant until 11 hours before she gave birth.

Her baby, Anna Nicole, lives in Boise now. Swallom chose an open adoption and continues to stay in touch. She already has mailed a Mother's Day card to her baby's adoptive mother.

Still, few friends know of the birth.

"It's not that I've kept a secret because I'm ashamed," she said. "It's because a lot of people think I'm the one who's not going to mess up."

Swallom attended the celebration with two other members of her birth mothers' support group, Melissa Hood, 21, a Spokane Falls Community College student, and Beth Talbot, 23, a health care worker at Pathology Associates.

Hood and Swallom are convinced that babies thrive with involved fathers. They joked that they call their adoption agency "the daddy store."

All three agreed they would not have gone through with adoption had they not been allowed to remain in contact with their children.

"If open adoption wasn't an option, I wouldn't have relinquished," Talbot said. "I would have begged, borrowed or stole to keep my baby."

She and her fiance look at adoption as a gift they've been able to give their infant son's adoptive parents.

"It really lightens the pain we feel to know we've made them so incredibly happy," she said.

The experiences of these three young birth mothers contrasted sharply with those of older birth mothers who relinquished babies in a harsher, more judgmental era.

Cherylee Bomstad, 47, began to search for her birth son last year. They were never reunited. Just last month, she learned he died in 1993 of AIDS. As she talked about her search for him, her eyes flooded with tears.

Bomstad's grief over her son's death has unleashed the pain she buried 28 years ago at the time of her son's adoption. These intense emotions are curiously freeing.

"There's so much freedom in being able to grieve and let go of the shame," she said.

In Bomstad's era, women gave birth in secrecy, turned over babies to closed adoption agencies and were expected to disappear. Many mourned silently for years.

Others have also experienced joy.

Cecille Smith, a black-haired 60-year-old with sparkling brown eyes, relinquished her son 45 years ago. Just this year they were finally reunited.

It turns out he lives in Seattle and he's handsome, delightful and gregarious, just like his birth mother.

"This has been the most wonderful thing that has happened to me and to him," Smith said. "I'm the happy ending."

Copyright 1996 Cowles Publishing Company
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