by Destinyrae

Created on: November 12, 2008   Last Updated: January 27, 2009

I loved him enough to give him a life'

Flint will talk on Birthmother's Day about her choice to give up her son when she was 17

Robyn Flint, a realtor from Buchanan, will be speaking at a birthmother's convention May 10 in Charlotte, North Carolina to celebrate birthmother's day.

Originating in 1990 in Seattle, Washington, Birthmother's Day is a day to honor and remember the motherhood experience for women who have placed children for adoption. Held the second Saturday in May the day before Mother's Day it is a day to celebrate an otherwise sad day for many birthmothers.

Flint was invited to attend the convention by Coley Strickland, founder of birthmombuds.com and convention organizer.

Flint's own experience will be the basis of her speech. At age 17, she made the hardest decision of her life and placed her son for a closed adoption.

"I was forced to make a choice that no woman was designed to have to make," Flint says. It was a choice with no easy explanations, a dilemma with only painful options and no easy way out."

"I loved him enough to give him life," Flint said as she examined her decisions, "and I had to love him even more to give him a life."

Though young, she understood the multitudes of limitations she had to face in order to raise a child. She wanted to give him more than she had to offer, so she made the ultimate sacrifice to be a great mother by giving him a different one.

Though the adoption was closed, Flint kept tabs on her son the best she could through the adoption agency. She found out his name was Kevin. She found out he was doing well in school and continued into college at Virginia Tech.

When the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech occurred, she called to make sure he was okay. For Christmas of 2006, she wrote him a letter that his adoptive parents agreed to give him.

In July of last year, Flint remembers getting the call from the adoption agency that her son wanted to meet her. "My knees hit the ground and I was sobbing," she says. She was standing right outside of work. People coming out of the building thought something was horribly wrong and offered to call for an ambulance.

It took two months to file all the paperwork through the adoption agency. Then, the next call came. The agency gave Flint her son's phone number. Nerves and excitement made her feel physically ill.

It was time to meet her son.

When she finally worked up the courage to dial, the conversation carried on for an hour and a half. Many tears were shed between birthmother and son.

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