As the adoptive sister of seven siblings who came to our family through transracial international adoption, I've spent a lot of time in the past few decades thinking about the birth mothers who gave their children up for adoption. While I can't speak for my brothers and sisters, I know I'll always be curious about their biological parents.

Dawn Friedman of This Woman's Work has a daughter who joined her family through adoption, but little Madison's questions about her biological parents will be a lot easier to answer, since Dawn and her husband chose to commit to an open adoption. Read Dawn's Salon.com essay here.