The thing about grief is there is a more biological component to it than people realize. This time of year, emotions and pain leak out me uncontrollably and I have to have an internal struggle with my logical senses and my biological sense memories. I know I did the right thing, I am so proud Ethan and I gave up that baby girl, but every November the memories come flooding back and I catch myself crying at the drop of a hat. This last Sunday there were baptisms during our church service and Ethan and I made eye contact, both crying involuntarily at the sight of those sweet babies and the pain we feel. I usually take her birthday off. I stay home. Last year I made the mistake of trying to be around people and ended up cracking like an egg, leaving class early and sobbing all the way home. I cannot help it. It is not a logical response. It is just grief and I have made my peace that it will never fully go away. My body went through an entire pregnancy and in November, it remembers. It's a ghost that follows me. The hard part is getting pictures of that ghost and remembering she is alive, growing, and thriving. An entire human being. Sometimes the pictures fill me with such joy and peace, seeing her with her brother and her amazing parents, growing up, learning, exploring, becoming. Other times the pictures go through me like a knife. She looks so much like me and it is overwhelming to see how much she changes between those pictures.
In March, I happened to have a conference near where they live, so Ethan and I drove down and we had dinner with the family. Her brother (as always) was elated to see us and could not stop chattering away, giving us hugs and telling us all about himself. She, on the other hand, was overwhelmed. I had never given thought to how scary it must be to meet people you are told you are so attached to but have no memory of. She kept her distance, spoke little, did not hug us, and spent a lot of dinner playing while the adults spoke. I admired it. She is under no obligation to myself or Ethan, and I hope that as she gets older, she feels free to cultivate whatever (or no) relationship with us she wants. She knows who we are, and why we made the choices we did, and she, in turn, may make her own choices about us.
When I found out I was pregnant all those years ago, I never thought I would be okay again. I thought that this would weigh on me forever like a millstone around my neck. I remember telling people about my now husband and I's decision to give up the baby for adoption and the wide-eyed skeptical responses I got. So many people thought I would change my mind when I had the baby. That does happen quite a bit (especially since you legally cannot sign the papers until 48 hours after the baby is born), but my mind was set and it did not waver. She weighed on my mind every day for years there. There was hardly a moment that was not filled with her and the grief I felt.
But now, dare I admit it, there are entire weeks that I do not think of her. Time moves on, scars fade, and although I may sound like a monster, she is out of sight, out of mind to me most times. I no longer worry about her. I no longer ache over decisions. I have other things going on in my life now and she has the best family I have ever met taking care of her. My work for her was done six years ago. She may be a ghost that follows me, but as time goes on, it just becomes easier to ignore. Like a piece of jewelry. When you first get it, it feels funny, you notice it all the time, and you're constantly aware of the new weight on you. But as time goes on, you forget it is even there, only noticing when you forget to put it on. After six years, the only time I get emotional about it is her birthday. It is simply psychological. It is the sense memory. So I take the day off, I cry, I let it out. And then I eat cake. Because after 21 hours of labor and an emergency C-Section, I am the one who deserves the cake every year.
In the past when I felt the grief, it was just the loss, the absence of her. Lately, and as we get older I am sure it will get worse, it is the desire. I want that. I want to start our own family and I want children. People are always surprised by that. That I want children of my own. I do. But going through the entire pregnancy was a great way to show Ethan and me how much it takes, how much it costs, and how we will both know when it is our turn. This taught us to be patient, to wait until we can afford a family, and to wait until we are both emotionally ready to trade in lazy Saturdays of sleeping in for diapers (which is still a while off). Before I got pregnant, I was not sure I even ever wanted children. After this experience, it taught me how much I want to be a mother, but not until I am ready and able to give a baby a much better childhood than I had.
In my husband's experience, I find I am more frustrated for him in the last few years than I am for me. People ask me how I am doing with post-surrender, they ask his mother how she is, but no one ever asks about how he is. This really irks me. He was there every step of the way with me. I could not have gone through this adoption without him by my side. He was absolutely my rock. And he absolutely feels the pain and the grief that I do. He also gave up his daughter for adoption. He also went through the grief cycle. He still feels the acute pain of leaving that hospital empty handed. And yet no one wants to know how he is. No one checks on him. And he is never part of the conversation. He is not allowed to publicly acknowledge his grief over the matter.
I know this is because men are not usually involved in the process of giving up a child, and men are considered weak for showing any kind of emotion (toxic masculinity hurts all of us). My husband feels as deeply and as passionately about things as I do, and I would not have married him if that had not been the case. Her ghost follows him as much as it follows me. She looks as much like him as she looks like me (well, she looks a lot more like me, but that's not the point). Half of her DNA is his. So tomorrow, he is going to spend time with me. We are going to eat our cake together, we are going to talk to one another, open the floodgates, and let our emotions flow. Because he is a birth father and he has just as much right to his pain and grief as I do and he should not be ashamed or feel obliged to hide it.
