DEAR ABBY: I'm writing in response to "Very Unhappy," who felt that giving her baby up for adoption was the best thing to do at this stage of her life when she couldn't properly provide for a child and complete her education, too.
You supported her decision to put her child up for adoption, which was excellent advice.
I was adopted when I was 5 days old. My birth mother had made her decision ahead of time to give me up. (That was 41 years ago.) I want to tell "Very Unhappy" that some very grateful couple will be overjoyed to adopt her child for reasons too numerous to list. It takes special people, who desperately want a child, to raise him/her as their own. I am grateful daily for my adoptive parents.
Being a mother myself, I know that admitting you can't properly care for a child is a tremendous decision to make and to live with. It should not be made lightly, but if it's best for the child -- as well as the mother -- then it is the right decision. She is making the ultimate sacrifice of loving her child more than herself.
I wish her the very best and hope she took your advice. -- TRACY L. HOUSTON, NEWPORT NEWS, VA.
DEAR TRACY: So do I. I'll keep you posted if I hear from her again. And I hope I do.