Memories

Lately I've been thinking of putting my birth/adoption story to paper (or computer!).  Kinda freaks me out a bit.  I've told it pretty often, most of the time in bits and pieces, to friends, during liquid courage cocktails at home.  The nice thing about telling it is that you can edit all the really deep, crappy stuff and just stick to the facts.  Writing it down, with no one listening intently, gives me way too much time to ponder all the feelings and emotions attached to that year.  It also gives me a chance to chicken out and do my favorite avoidance dance.

Just thinking about it recently has brought up all these visceral memories. There are times when visceral memories are really great.  Like smelling the hot fudge when you walk into the ice cream store in the small resort town your family went to on vacation when you were a kid.  Or for me, watching major dance companies or musical theater.  I used to be a professional dancer and when I see great dancers, my body remembers and feels what it is like to move that way, to feel the emotion you're projecting through your movements, feel the energy from the audience, etc.

The emotions I've been feeling lately have not been that pleasant.  As I've started to think about where to even begin telling my story, all these vignettes keep popping into my head.  Like the panic I felt every time I went to the bathroom and discovered that there was something clearly wrong.  My cat, Thomas O'Malley Found in the Alley, becoming my best friend and comforter.  My water breaking at school and taking the train home.  Walking back and forth between my bedroom and the bathroom, trying to find a place to be comfortable during full blown labor while trying to be quiet and not wake anyone up.  The fear of going to see him while I was in the hospital; the complete incompetency I felt inside completely overwhelming the intense love I felt for him.  Going to sign the papers...well, that's a whole can of worms in and of itself.

The one good memory I have is when they put my son in my arms for the first (and only) time.  I was shocked at how beautiful he was, saw the clef in his chin that he got from his father and remember telling him not to suck his thumb because there was no way I could afford braces.  I wish I had more memories like that.

How I feel about his A mom

I was reading one of my favorite blogs the other day and saw a post about how your child's adoptive parents make you feel.  I was writing this as a response to her question, but it got so long I decided to use it as a blog post instead.

When I signed the paper's for my son's adoption, his aparent's attorney said that his clients were willing to share their contact info with us if we wanted it.  I was so shell shocked by the whole experience and that offer, that I turned them down.  I was too afraid.  It was 1979 and no one was talking about open adoption then.  I was terrified that I would turn into a stalker and show up at their home wanting my child back, that I would secretly park in front of their home just to catch a glimpse of him.  As time went by I became so grateful for that offer (I did take them up on knowing their last name) and rather disappointed for not taking them up on it.    I used that offer to console myself over the years.  I figured they had to be kind, open-hearted people to make that offer and that my son would be well loved and well cared for.

I sent my son a letter about 6 months ago and haven't heard anything from him yet.  I was fooling around on Google the other day and found a posting from his amom regarding a child she gave up in the '60's.  Explains a lot.  Maybe she understood the loss I was going to suffer and wanted me to have a way to find them when  I was ready.  It might sound odd, but I feel a strong kinship with this woman, even though I've never met her.  I have had a lot of grief over my son's adoption, have shed millions of tears over it.  Somehow over the years, the thought of someone raising my son who was compassionate enough to tell me who she was at a time when that wasn't done, has comforted me and helped ease the worry that adoption loss causes.

I have no idea what she feels about me, if we'll ever get to meet.  There are things I want to say to her, that I hope to get the opportunity to say.  I hate that I gave my son up for adoption, I don't hate her because she adopted him.  I hope she loved him and that he filled a little of that gaping hole we all feel when we've lost a child to this crazy adoption thing.  I hope that if she spoke of me, that she spoke well of me.

How I feel about her is complicated.  There is a part of me that wants her to hold me and heal me, that offer of knowing her identity felt so nurturing to me, somehow I want the task to be completed by her (I'm sory if that sounds weird.)  Part of me is grateful to her; that she gave that nurturing and love to my son when I wasn't there.  There is also a part of me that wishes she didn't exist.  The part of me that longs to have kept my son and raised him.  She needn't have existed if I had been strong enough to keep him in the first place.  Maybe she wouldn't have needed to exist if she had been allowed to keep her child in the first place.  Who knows?  this adoption thing is so complicated.  Seems the further you dig the more elusive the clarity gets.

To Share or Not to Share

It's been about a month since I started blogging and one of the most nagging questions I ask myself is whether or not to share this blog.  On the one hand, I want to be able to write what I'm really feeling and thinking about and not have to be concerned about other people's feelings. Also, I'm not really sure I'm ready to have haters people commenting here yet.  I posted something on one of the forums I check into now and then and had  my comment turn into this long discussion on birth mother rights.  It was an interesting discussion, but left me feeling pretty beat up when I all was looking for was some support around the fact that my son had not replied to my letter of first contact.  Don't really want to repeat that experience, especially on my own blog.

On the other hand, there are a lot of really supportive and positive people whose opinions I value and honestly, I'm starting to wonder if all this writing to myself is actually healthy!  So, I think I might be sending out some invites to people whose opinions I respect and others that have been in my life for years and love very much.

If you are seeing this post, I guess you'll have the answer to my decision!

Seventeen

There's this weird thing about the number 17 between my son and I .  His mother is 17 years older than me, I'm 17 years older than him, he is 17 years older than his sister and on Saturday, he will get married 17 years and one day after I married my first husband.  Weird, right?  Must remember to include 17 in all lottery numbers I play...

Trying to find a name

For the last six months or so I've been reading a lot of blogs and forums from most sides of the adoption triad.  I've learned a lot and have been grateful for the sharing of both the joy and heartbreak that people have put forth.  Oddly, the one thing I have been stuck on is the name of the part of the triad I fit into.

Technically, I'm a birthmom.  We also call ourselves first moms, bio-moms, natural moms.  I keep trying these on for size, trying to see which one best suits me.  I think where I'm getting stuck is in the mom part.  Yes, I gave birth to him.  Yes, I was first in his life.  Yes he's mine naturally and yes, he's biologically my son.  What I've never gotten to do (and will never get to do) is be his mom.

To me, he's my son.  No question that I love him the same way I love his sister who I've had the great blessing of being able to raise.  I love him in that innate, soulful way that a mother loves her child.  But I've never been able to nurture him, comfort him, tease him, scold him, tickle him or any of the other myriad of things that everyday moms get to do.  Even worse, I don't even know him.  I don't know what makes him laugh or smile, what makes him angry, what his temperament is, what his favorite food is, what he likes to do for fun, what he likes to do on his birthday, etc.  I don't know what he thinks about adoption, about me, about his heritage and his nature.  In a nutshell, I don't know ay of the things a mom should know.  So, what do I call myself, this non-mom, mom?

Happy 32nd!

I'm off for the rest of the week to SOS Girl's Weekend Away.  Tomorrow is my son's 32nd birthday.  I hope it is full of joy and love.

Oh the shame of it!

I was talking to my Aunt on Easter and shared with her that I have found out who my son is.  We had a great, lengthy conversation about my pregnancy, and all the circumstances surrounding it.  Finally, someone in my family had the guts to say what I've known all along.  My parents, particularly my mother, was ashamed of me.  She still is ashamed over this issue and I'm pretty certain that she hasn't forgiven me.  Unfortunately, I don't think she realizes the impact that has had on our relationship over the years.

In an odd way, my aunt's vocalization of this fact has released something in me.  Maybe a better word to use is eased.  It's eased the pressure of feeling like I was, and continue to be, the screw-up in the family.  For years I've felt I've been fighting an uphill battle to get my family to see me, and embrace me, for who I am, not for the 17 year old problem child who brought shame to the family.  The more I've come to know myself and realize that there is a lot here that comes together to make a really good person, the more I have slowly distanced myself from my family.  I learned along time ago that family is not where I go to get support.  During the biggest, most difficult, most tragic time in my life my family was nowhere to be found.  It saddens me to no end that this is the case, but it's what they taught me.

I was so alone during my pregnancy (I guess at some point relatively soon here, I'll have to tell my story).  I was so afraid of my parents that I hid it from everyone.  I think my family definitely wins the "Head in the Sand Award" I can't understand how they could look at me day after day and month after month and not insist on doing something about it.  They'd ask me and I'd deny, deny, deny.  They ignored the problem until it was too late.  After all was said and done, they watched me suffer the loss of my son and did nothing again.  Nothing except tell me that we would never speak of it again.  We never did.  In 31 years, neither of my parents ever approached the subject of my son with me.  Never a question about if I ever think about him, or do I think of finding him, or that they're sorry that they handled it so badly.  Just swept it all under the rug, like it never happened.  They made me the shamed, bad girl of the family and left me there.  There are a lot of things that I own in this.  The innocent mistake that created a life, the final decision to not raise my son and the consequences of that decision are mine.  But the shame of it is not mine.  I will not take responsibility for that any longer.