I need to warn you: get tissues. I also need to warn you: it's a simply happy adoption story. Some of you like that and some of you don't. The story doesn't "dig deeper" or call for reforms. It hits the main points and leaves you with a simultaneous broken heart and hope for this child's future.

It's from the Chicago Tribune. Link here.

Both a sacrifice and a gift
In 1987, Tracey Conner gave up her baby girl. In 2006, after a long separation, she was there as her daughter weighed the same choice.

By John Keilman
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 3, 2006

Tracey Conner hopped a plane from the East Coast two weeks ago and made it to a Downers Grove delivery room in time to help her 19-year-old daughter, Robyn Dunne, bring a blue-eyed boy into the world.

But their moment of joy was shaded with melancholy: Four days later Dunne would have to make a final decision on whether to keep her child or allow another family to adopt him.


Conner had been her daughter's main counselor about the difficult choice, a role for which she was uniquely suited. In 1987, when she was an emotionally scarred 18-year-old from Barrington, she had given Dunne up for adoption.

They reunited only last year, and two months later Dunne became pregnant. It was a ripple of fate that allowed Conner to see purpose in the painful experiences in her youth and to open the second act of a motherhood interrupted.

"The things I went through I thought would destroy me, but they made me stronger so I can be there for [Dunne]," she said. "She's not alone, and she knows it. I know what it's like to be her."

Conner had staggered on the edge of sanity when she was a teenager. The product of a fractured family, she bore the inner wounds of childhood trauma and found a salve in drinking and drugs.

She was drifting through Harper College when she learned she was pregnant. All at once, her aimless life had a focus. She turned away from her vices and dedicated herself to delivering a healthy infant.

Ultimately, though, she decided she could not keep the child. Her future was too unsettled, her bank account too empty, her unhappiness too profound.

So she chose a couple to raise her baby. They agreed to tell the child about her birth mother and to keep Conner informed about the child's life, but all correspondence would go through the adoption agency--neither side was to know the other's last name or hometown.

On Aug. 15, 1987, Conner gave birth to a 6-pound, 12-ounce girl. Worn out by the delivery, she spent only fleeting, sporadic moments with her baby until it was time to say goodbye.

There in her hospital bed, her heart in tatters, she composed the first of a series of letters to her daughter.

"I cried over you for the three days I held you in my arms, my tears on your little forehead," she wrote, the ink blurring on the dampening paper. "But I knew that what I was doing was the best for you."

Discovering her roots

In August 2005, just before Dunne's 18th birthday, her parents gave her that letter and about 10 more.

They had always been open about the adoption as they raised Dunne in the western suburbs, but they withheld the letters Conner sent over the years. The notes made for grim reading, and they didn't want Dunne to be burdened with despair or to think badly of her birth mother.

Dunne, though, had long felt different from her adoptive family. Her parents, who asked not to be identified, were safe and conservative. She was passionate and rebellious, a social tornado with a try-anything attitude.

Conner's letters were a revelation to her daughter. They described stormy teenage years and the rough times following Dunne's birth, when Conner, lonely and depressed, had briefly considered trying to reclaim her.

At last, in her 20s, Conner emerged from the darkness. She went to Southern Illinois University, earned a degree and met Mike Conner, the man who became her husband.

They went on to have a son named Anthony, now 12, and moved from Downstate to northeast Pennsylvania. Conner worked in computers, trained show dogs, savored the joy that had eluded her in her youth.

Dunne devoured the stories. She soon set out to find her birth mother and discovered it was an easy job.

Conner had salted her letters with clues--the name of her college, the city close to her husband's job--and Dunne latched onto one: Payton, Conner's Belgian sheepdog.

She ran the dog's name and breed through a search engine. Seconds later she was looking at her birth mother's Web site.

"Dear Tracey," read the e-mail Dunne soon sent. "You have no idea how hard this is for me to do, but I've decided that it's about time for me to take some sort of action ... Ummmmm, yeah, :oops: definitely have no idea what to say ... so I guess I'll leave it up to you. And I have to apologize if this has made anything weird, uncomfortable or rough for you. I hope you can see that I've been dying to talk to you for so many years."

For one nervous day, Dunne waited, fretting publicly on her blog that she had scared Conner away. Then came an instant message:

"A day doesn't go by that I don't think about you, not one," Conner wrote. "And a day's not gone by that I didn't worry about you, and wonder what you're doing, and who you've grown up to be.... I'd love to know more about you, and am here for anything that you'd like to know. My question to you is ... what next?"

What came next was a flurry of electronic messages and phone calls, and a few weeks later, a personal reunion.

At a gas station in Shickshinny, Pa., Dunne leaped from her boyfriend's car and threw herself into her mother's arms, holding on with all her strength.

How alike they were, from their toothy smiles to their manic energy to their matching taste in Christian rock bands. Even their hand gestures, the shape of their eyes, betrayed their shared blood.

Disturbing parallels

With a mother's penetrating vision, Conner also detected subtler, more disturbing parallels.

"I saw her going down the same path I had gone down," she said. "I didn't want to be parental with her, because I'm not her parent. I'm not the one who raised her.... I just wanted to be supportive and encourage her in the directions I hoped were right."

In the spring, though, she received the message she had sensed might come. Dunne was pregnant.

"Oh honey, I'm so glad you called," Conner said. "I know how you feel."

They talked for hours, the first of many conversations about the baby. Conner spoke of an abortion she had before Dunne's birth, and how it had been her life's most bitter regret.

Conner also warned, though, that raising a child would be a titanic struggle. And conversely, if Dunne chose adoption, she would have to work through feelings of loss she could not begin to fathom.

Dunne thought, prayed, wavered, then announced her intention. She would place her baby with another family.

"I had a really good experience," she later said. "I wanted to give the same experience to [the child]."

Working with the Bethany Christian Services adoption agency in Chicago, Dunne sorted through 20 portfolios of potential families before choosing Jim and Karen Oselka of New Buffalo, Mich., who already had a 4-year-old adopted daughter.

Following what has become an increasingly common practice, the couple agreed to allow Dunne to visit regularly.

"Being adopted myself, I understand the importance [of that contact]," said Karen Oselka, 39, who has searched without success for her birth mother. "When you're adopted and you don't look like your parents, I think there's just a void in your life. You don't understand what's missing."

On the morning of Nov. 20, doctors at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital induced Dunne's labor. Conner held her hand while Conner's sister, Stephanie Kostitchkov, fed her ice chips between contractions.

The next generation

After more than 12 hours and a final, ferocious push, Dunne gave birth to Jared Conner Oselka, a 7-pound, 4-ounce boy with a crown of thick, dark hair. Even scrunched in sleep, his tiny face bore an unmistakable resemblance to his mother and grandmother.

The next day, with Conner seated on one side of her bed and the Oselkas on the other, Dunne appeared serene and confident in her choice.

"I know it's going to be hard, but I came to grips with that a few months ago, with how crazy it would be," she said as Jared dozed in her arms. "It was actually harder before than it is now, because before I was so negative, like, `I don't want to be doing this, this is so hard.'

"Now," she said, gazing at her son, "it just seems like it's so the right thing for you, and that makes it so much better."

Dunne's decision would not be official until she signed the papers relinquishing her legal rights to her son. When that moment arrived Nov. 24, she paused. As the documents stated, it would be final and irrevocable.

She thought for a moment, then said, "It's for him," and signed her name.

Dunne plans to begin a new life in North Carolina, chasing a dream of becoming a Christian singer and recording artist. Though many difficult days undoubtedly lie ahead, she knows just where to look for an infusion of hope.

"In 18 years this will be you and your son," Conner has told her. "He'll look at you and see that you're strong. It'll just keep going around."

Also, on the linked article (you have to register to read the article on the site but it is free to register) you can find a picture of Dunne with her baby boy.

I don't have much to say. All I can do is pray for this new birth mother. Obviously, as it wasn't integral to the story, we don't know the level of counseling that she was provided by the agency. I've heard both good and bad regarding that topic from this particular agency. I can only hope that her own birth mother will be there for her and honest in her stories and expectations for Dunne's healing. At the same time, each and every birth mother is different. I hope Dunne allows herself to differ from her own birth mother without feeling wrong or guilty in doing so.

I've got tears falling so I've just got to quit writing. I thought we all could use to read this story for many, many different and personal reasons on this Monday afternoon.