Often, the adoptive parents who are writing these stories are genuinely upset and confused. They actually believe in the benefits of open adoption for their children. They want the mothers of their children to have contact with the children they relinquished and to know that the kids are doing well. They don’t understand why the mothers, and sometimes fathers, of their adopted children just disappear.
The Twin Towers could really have not fallen down. I could not have really given away my baby.
This isn’t real. It can’t be true. It didn’t really happen, right? With the same horror, my mind tells myself that both. are our sad reality.
And yeah, so I sit around at least once a year and cry. I still miss the World Trade Center. I still my son.I believe I always will.
Some deaths take us by surprise ( Davey Jones) and some we know are coming ( Steve Jobs). Some we should know are coming, like MCA as he was sick, but still we are surprised. At age 83, Maurice Sendak’s death should not come as a shocker, yet I was not, by any means, prepared.
I think I imaged that he would live forever.
I know his influence on my life will.
I don’t care about how you got by my side, who you are, color, creed, place in the triad, age or adoption era; all I care about is if you are at my side or not. We all need to work together, use our collective voice, and cry out to fix adoption. Face the facts about adoption, then you must demand ethical reformation.
The established stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, often don’t seem to help the grief experienced by birth mothers and adoption losses.
Unlike the grief felt from a death, the loss from adoption is often said to be a complicated grief or a continuous grief. As life for both parties carries on through the years, the separation continues to add more missed opportunities or milestones that are normally shared with one’s children.
To complicated matters even further, some mothers have had to bury their feelings and have never had the opportunity to express them. Others, refuse to acknowledge a loss from adoption separation, and cling to the fairy tale versions where the birthmother is some heroic figure. Still other mothers, find that it is not until an adoption reunion with their lost children, does the full spectrum of feelings, including grief.
One cannot avoid the feelings of grief and be able to live a relatively normal and productive life. While the grief process is not pretty, it is only by dealing with the grief and loss can one be able to experience emotions fully, both the positive and the negative feelings.
The best advice I can give anyone who needs help with the grieving process in adoption is to know that you are not alone in it. What you feel is normal.
How to Describe Life as BirthMother? I love it when someone else reaches inside and pulls out their heart to show us. This is a good read. Well done. This part: “…it was too hard for her to feel so much, and she has let go now. We know each other, but we pretend not to feel anything. She is there, but impenetrable.I have vowed to be different. To…
Last year, I was contacted to be interviewed for a documentary about birthmothers. It’s always hard to completely go back there and even with the emotional support provide, it’s not pleasant. Yet, sometimes you have to take the chance and do the hard stuff. I figure, no one will hear us if we sit in the shadows. Needless, to say, I went. Documenting the Adoption Story It was, as always,…
Over at Grown in My Heart it’s Adoption Carnival Time again! This time the topic is poetry. I ‘m not awful big on poetry, but I have a little something something I can recycle for today. *** I always say I am “First Generation MTV” which basically means that I was at the perfect age when MTV launched to be perfectly impressionable.. and MTV helped shape my life. I think it…
Back to “normal” life, but nothing would ever be the same normal again. That was always the bit of irony about adoption. You went through this experience, this incredible perceived “sacrifice” and certainly a heartache for the ultimate plan to not have your life changed, but no one tells you how unavoidable that is. You can’t have a baby and place it for adoption with the experience changing your very…
Maybe it was because I spent almost two hours on last Tuesday evening talking to a reporter about how my seemingly very progressive agency was using acceptable, but subtly coercive tactics to point me only relinquishment, and it weakened my inner stone wall. Maybe it is because it’s almost Mother’s Day as well and between having lost my own mother many years ago, plus being a mother who lost one…
I find motherhood to be very repetitious. As in; you repeat the same things over and over again: Did you brush your teeth? Say thank you. Don’t touch that. Close the door. I know you know exactly what I mean. Our ongoing “issues” with Garin were fairly repetitive as well. The same things that caused problems years ago, were still bones of contention. Nothing got solved, it just morphed. Like…
The post the other day about my broken humerus was a preamble of sorts. I wanted to talk about my arm, but you need to know the situation first. *** It’s almost Mother’s Day, I am PMSing, it’s raining, I just turned 40, and my arm is still busted. Oh, and it really bothered me to figure out that the quantity of time that I have spent with my own…
I have not broken my fingers or fallen into a well. For some weird reason..and looking abck this has happened every once in a while..I just lack the desire to be here. Part of me thinks that I am just scared. I have a lot on my plate and NIARA as the possible small potential to be huge..but it is huge and I have to put myself out there in…
Now I know she is asking for infertility and still born stories..and I don’t mean to smarf all over their chance to get heard. So nothing personal here ya’all. This isn’t a grief contest, just a chance too for us birthmothers.
Beleive it or not, this is not about adoption. I was at work tonight..and at one point I was standing behind, Nadia. I don’t know why, but I suddenly had the urge to just pat her shoulders..her back was to me. It’s a funny place, this resturant, and we all are pretty close to each other..lots of highjinks, teasing, jokes, so this was not any weirdo thing. I didn’t think…