Witnessing as Love's Core Expression

Central to Rabia's spiritual life was the practice of witnessing—being fully seen by God, and in turn, seeing God in all things. For adoptive parents, witnessing means truly seeing the child: their joys, fears, grief about adoption, confusion about identity, and all the complexity they carry. Many adoptive parents inadvertently minimize these dimensions, trying to reassure or fix them ("you're so lucky"; "your birth mother loved you"; "we chose you"). But what children need first is to be witnessed—acknowledged in the full truth of their experience. Witnessing practices might include: asking open questions about adoption and listening without interruption; acknowledging difficult emotions without trying to resolve them; recognizing and naming the child's courage in facing their own story; and bearing witness to their grief about birth family or origins without flinching. This is love's most profound expression: the willingness to look directly at another person's reality and say, "I see you. This matters. You matter." For children with adoption trauma, this witnessing presence is often reparative in ways that reassurance alone can never be.