A Snap Shot of a Hidden Pregnancy and Adoption Relinquishment
Perfectly capturing the relentless feelings of denial and willfulness that often accompanies an unplanned pregnancy, I read Denise Emanuel Clemen’s memoir “Birth Mother” with a familiarity that I wish I did know all so well.
She hid her pregnancy for 8 months, I hid mine for almost 6. I often say, now, that while I did it, I still cannot understand why; yet, reading Denise’s words, I am reminded again of the thought process that go into this action. The fear, the shame, the desire for anything else but this reality to be happening. The crazed planning, the thoughts of escape, the often not too delicately stumbling about in an attempt to avoid a truthful reality.
How can our stories be so different but so much the same? How can our stories be decades apart, but I know so precisely what she feels at the time?
Understanding a Birth Mother’s “How?”
Now, that is coming from the emotional part, the birthmother in me; what I also greatly appreciate is that Denise gives us this nine / ten month snapshot in a very understandable and often sympathetic way. Granted it is hard for me to separate the emotions of the experience, but I can image that a non-adoption affected person, especially another birthmother, could read this and “get it.” There is a hope for understanding in this, I feel. An ability to see Denise as a young girl, trying to navigate her way around this difficulty. The weight of not just her own well being and of her child’s, but also feeling the responsibility for her families well being, if not survival, of her boyfriend’s happiness and future.
It’s not a perfect adoption story as Denise is not, like us all, perfect. She made mistakes as we all do, yet there are no defensiveness, no excuses, the reality is that this is just the way it happened, as it often does. Did my heart break at certain moments, when I knew, with, that there was an opportunity that she should have taken, a time, when she could have ran from the a life as a birthmother, yes. But that is the vision that hindsight provides for us; the woulda, coulda, shoulda, that often can trap a mother like me, a mother like Denise. While perhaps another reader, or even an adoptee, might find fault with a certain sense of silly hopefulness or a victim like complacency, sadly that is also a very real reality of the birthmother experience; there are so many aspects of the situation, of adoption, of the risks, of the laws, of our rights that we just do not know at the time. While ignorance cannot be used as an excuse, there must be a certain pint of compassion where we can see that it is not so absurd to see that this CAN happen , that this DOES happen, again and again and again.
Like a Birth Mother; We are Left to Wonder
What I love the most about Denise’s story is that it is ONLY the pregnancy and immediate adoption experience that she tells. We get no glimpse of what her life is like afterwards, how she renegotiate the rest of her days without her child, how her child fared, nor any mention of a reunion. Now, a reader might find fault in that. In truth, the story ends very abruptly; Boom .. no more words and we are left hanging with so many questions, but THAT is the reality of the life as a birthmother. THAT is the power of this story, just as the reader only experiences this small portion of a mother’s life, a birthmother only has a small portion of her child’s life and the child only has a small portion of the mother’s life. Just as the reader is left desiring more, the birthmother wants more, the child desires more. Just as the reader has so many unanswered questions and wonders, the birthmother is left always wondering about her child and the child is left wondering about the mother. It is that complete separation that makes this story so powerful.
After I got over my disappointment and shock that there just wasn’t any more of her words to read, I realized the true power of the language used to end her tale: “They didn’t have a clue.”
Nope, none of us did, none of us do.
About the Author Denise Emanuel Clemen
Denise Emanuel Clemen’s fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Georgetown Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, the Rattling Wall, Fiction Fix, Knee-Jerk, and the Delmarva Review.
Clemen has worked as an art model, sold her own blood plasma, and worked on an assembly line in a factory where she became an expert at assembling toy manure spreaders. She’s received fellowships to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Ragdale Foundation and was an Auvillar fellow at Moulin à Nef in France in 2009. Clemen received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Nebraska and regularly walks the beaches of Ventura County, California, hunting for treasures to take home to her 89-year-old mother. Her household is home to three generations and an elderly cat. Her blogs include Leavingdivorceville.blogspot.com, Myfrenchunderpants.blogspot.com.
“Birth Mother” is a short e-book published by Shebooks–high quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women. It is available on Amazon; Birth Mother: A memoir (Kindle Single)
