Six Years On: A Living Ghost

Tomorrow marks six years since I gave birth. It almost seems too surreal to be true, but it is. There are two things I want to write about here: my experiences, and the experience of my husband.

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.

Fifth

          

On Saturday I was attending a national history conference, enjoying myself as I was immersed in new knowledge from people far smarter than myself, when suddenly, like a punch to the gut, there she was. Smiling excitedly as she looked at her cake while her friends surrounded her, all full of a kind of joy and wonder that exists only in children, she was just about to blow out her candles.

         My girl’s fifth birthday party. It caught me entirely off-guard, it was three days before her actual birthday, and it slammed into me like a freight train. The fact that, somehow, this girl had aged five years in a span of what really felt like an instant.

I still recall the night I went into labor with sharp clarity. The searing pain, the overwhelming fear, the anticipation. I will never forget her mother, her mother, holding my hands in the dark as the contractions grew stronger and she helped me breathe through them, whispering encouragement, prayers, and gratitude into my ear as we held on to one another. The sadness in her voice, apologies for the pain I was going through, and my rushed response, telling her how happy I was to do it for her. For her. Totally, entirely worth the pain, the fear, the loss. This was her daughter, whom she had waited so long to meet. She was just my girl.

When you go through the process of paperwork, they give you literature and stress how hard the absence is. They say especially the big years can be challenging, but every birthday will bring the pain. The memory of those months is attached permanently to the calendar and every year the pot is stirred with the swirling fall leaves and the memories become fresh again. Last week there was a dinner for birth mothers held in several cities that my adoption agent invited me to partake in, but unfortunately, my hectic schedule and my fear got the better of me. I’ve never spoken at length to other women like me, just read their letters, and I couldn’t bring myself to start at a time of year when I am always a little emotionally raw.

I couldn’t help but put myself there at a fifth birthday party, a mother to a five-year-old girl, and immediately, I recoiled. How much less happy, well groomed, fed, cared for, she would be. What a different, worse, lesser life, I could have given her. No bachelor’s degree on my wall, no master’s degree almost complete, no Ph.D. applications, no international travel or research for me. No swimming lessons, gymnastics’, singing, trips to the beach, to Disney, to family all over, no older brother, and constant want for her. She wants for nothing with the family I chose for her. She would have wanted for everything if I had kept her, having a childhood dangerously similar to my own, and me continuing the cycle rather than breaking it.

The reactions I get from people about my decision to give her up are a mixed bag. Most see it as the most selfless act, so noble, so graceful. A small few see it as entirely selfish- that I was a lazy mother, and rather than struggle on through the years without a decent job and depending on welfare and family, I took the easy way out and threw her away. In reality, my decision was for both selfish and unselfish reasons. Above all else, when I am being honest, I knew I would have resented her for preventing me from finishing school right away, for taking the life I wanted for myself and delaying it at least six years until she started school, and for being this obligation before I was ready to even care for myself. I also did it for her family. Getting to know them you can’t help but see how they were destined to have the children they do, and irresistible is the love and warmth that radiates from them. They were destined to have this girl. I was destined to give her to them.

Some women may shy away from this experience. Bury it deep inside and never discuss it, try to forget it happened and just move on. That is how they cope. But that is not how I ever could. Instead, I channeled my pain into work. I slog through the archives to uncover letters written by other women like me, who made this choice, who ask the same questions I do. “Is my child healthy?” “Please sir, tell me, is she walking yet?” “How is he getting on? I hope he is not a nuisance to anyone” “Please may I see her soon?” These women, long dead, left in existence only by the words scrawled upon whatever paper they could find, are brought to me, flesh and blood, in a rush of color and sound as I decipher their scrawled pleas for news. Locked into strict rules and expectations, they strove to do whatever they could to be worthy of the official response about their baby, who they loved just as I love mine. They would often increase their writings around the fifth birthday when they knew the child would be moved back from the countryside into town and it was possible to catch a glance of them if they could get into good enough graces with the administration. I, on the other hand, stay painfully silent. Far away and so happy, I hate to bother that family I helped to create. My role is technically complete, and I never feel as though they deserve to have this awkward piece, this dead weight, bother their peace. Pictures are regularly sent, and that’s more than the women I study ever got and much more than I feel I deserve at times. I wish the ghost women I work with could have communicated with the ease I often ignore and take for granted, and on their behalf, I sometimes feel guilty for shying away from this family that I know would be happy to talk to me because of my own issues of self-worth.

The last time I saw them was over a year ago. They were driving through my hometown and stopped for lunch to catch up a little. It was challenging if I am honest. This foreign creature who I unmistakably helped create (a near-exact miniature), did not know me at all, and was interested in others she was surrounded by because they were better with children. I have no experience, expertise, or ease around children at all, I have never been around them, and I am too withdrawn to put myself out there, grab the child, and be maternal when there are other, more qualified and comfortable people around. I felt more comfortable watching her than interacting with her. A neutral observer, rather than the person irrevocably attached to her entrance to this world. I have not seen her nearly as much as I have wanted, but whether that is because I am too afraid to ask, or if they don’t want to be bothered, the answer is clear. I am so incredibly afraid of ruining my relationship with her family, to disappoint, disgust, to make them send me from them forever, that I would rather wait for them to reach out first, with the gift of pictures and occasional updates, than to put myself in their way or bother them.

So, on Saturday, as the images of her fifth birthday party were sent, a punch to the gut, I could not help but have my annual imagining of being her mother, of keeping her, and as always, I came to the same conclusion. I have never been more sure of a decision in my life, and yearly, I know I made the right choice for all parties involved. To see her pigtailed smile, her ecstatic friends surrounding her, her brother’s arm around her, her parents’ glee at how she’s grown and bloomed in their lives, I can live in the absolute certainty that I gave her the gift of a family, a childhood, and a life far better than what I could have given her, and if I am honest, one I am a little jealous of. Instead of a birthday party, I sat in conference rooms in a hotel in Denver, taking copious notes, and trying to work up the courage to speak to someone who could be my advising professor for the Ph.D. I hope to embark on soon. I unfortunately never worked up said courage. I am far more afraid of trying to get accepted to the program I want to be in and starting on these enormous goals I set for myself than I ever was about the adoption. I am so unashamed of my experience. If you talk to me for longer than twenty minutes, it will probably come up in some way or another, which may make some people uncomfortable, but those aren’t the people I want to be around anyway. This choice I made, the path I chose, drastically altered my life and if I pretend it didn’t, then what was the point of it all? No, it is not the only thing that defines who I am, and if I am honest I can go entire days without even thinking of her once. But this chapter in my book mattered a lot. And I am proud of it, truthfully. I love that little family so very much and it gives me so much joy to see them all together.

The thing about being a birthmother is there is just a lot of happy/sad. Or rather sad/happy, to be more accurate. A lot of times I am initially upset about something, a knee-jerk reaction that my brain corrects when I stop to really think about it. At first, tears stung my eyes at her donut party and how big she had gotten, just as they had done when her first day of school pictures had when they reached me through the magic of technology. But the more I thought about it, the more I tried on the mantle of her mother, the more I wanted to rip it off, give it back to the woman I had so joyfully presented it to five years ago, and return to the title of birth mother, the unmother, the biologic life-giver, but not the caregiver she depended on, because I knew in my bones that it wasn’t who I was supposed to be to that girl, and I could not have done nearly the job the woman who kisses her goodnight does. So today, I am going to be a little sad at the absence, and then I am going to incredibly joyful over the village that loves that girl, and the family she belongs to. And then I am going to treat myself to some birthday cake.  

Moving On

It's been over a year since I have written here. So much has changed. So many wonderful things have happened.

I graduated from college and have started full time at a museum I interned at for my degree. It's a local historical society, but it is exactly where I need to be. I am planning to start my master's in January. My trip to London started that goal. I learned so much more than I expected, and was changed so much by what I found. I am now hoping to get at least a master's degree in Women's History and devote a serious portion of my life writing the histories that went forgotten because of gender.

Ethan and I got married in May. Finally. It rained and flooded, people were trapped, I had to get married inside, and it was perfect. Totally perfect.

Well, almost perfect. The adoptive family decided not to come. I begged them to come and celebrate with us, and I mis-stepped and scared them off. I made the mistake of asking them to be in the wedding as flower girl and ring bearer. It was too far, I see that now, but at the time I was determined to surround myself by the people I loved most on such a big occasion. We chose to not have a flower girl or ring bearer because I didn't want to imagine anyone else. I felt their absence dearly.

I couldn't even talk about it for a few months-them not wanting to come. It really hurt my feelings. And not because she is my daughter or anything like that, but because I suddenly realized that I value that family a lot more than they value me. The kids are young, it's a tender age, and their lives are easier without someone with a complicated relationship like mine and my husband's confusing them along the way. And our families would have been hard on them; all saying the wrong things and making them feel awkward. Even still, I just wanted to see them that day merely because I got to see all my other favorite people that day. At this point I feel more like an old baby sitter who is just excited to see a family I care about rather than a birth mother.

The tough thing about such a relationship is this: it is so so easy to mess up. Sometimes I find myself holding back from reaching out to say 'hi' just because I'm scared I'll do something wrong. And it's not a conscious thing of the family, it's instinctive to be so careful with such a relationship. Unfortunately, I am human, and I say the wrong thing and come on too strong sometimes. She is so young and so easily influenced and so her family is careful. They've been hurt before by their relationship with their other birthmother. It's been about a year and half since we saw them last. She will be three in November. I've missed half of how much she's grown since I set her in her mother's arms.

But that's okay. There will be a day when we will get to be closer and I can tell that little girl just how special her and her brother are to me. Until then, the occasional care package to them and the photo nestled on my desk between pictures of other loved ones will have to do.

Mother's Day

 As I look around myself and begin to pack, I'm overwhelmed with the feeling of joy. Tomorrow I leave for London and will be gone three weeks. I've never left the country before, so this is just amazing for me. I keep feeling so blessed every time I settle down and breathe.

Although I feel bad for leaving on Mother's Day, and cannot properly honor the mothers in my life, I am also filled with relief. Mother's Day last year was a fiasco. I was so upset all day. I just did not feel like I deserved to be honored alongside all these amazing women who have raised some amazing people through incredible obstacles. Take Kevin Durant honoring his mom in his MVP acceptance speech. That woman went to bed hungry, got up early, sacrificed, and pushed her son to the limit so he could be the best. That is an amazing mom.

I guess if I am honest, I just do not feel like I deserve the title of 'mother.' All I did was give birth. In my own definition of the word, it is not a woman has a child, it is a woman who raises a child. Raising kids is so hard. I know I look forward to that chapter in my life, but I can honestly say I am not there yet. Nor do I want to be. I just chose to do what I thought was best. God chose us to bring her to her family, that much is obvious. I never really felt I was meant to be her mother.

However, I do find the poetic justice in my leaving on Mother's day. I'm going to research and write about other women, like myself, who chose what was best for their child. The Foundling Hospital was a place in Victorian England where women who were unwed and working class could petition to get their child in so it could be reared and raised by people equipped to do so. It was a chance for the child. I'll be looking at women between 1860 and 1870 who were Irish who tried to get their child into the Foundling, and make a personal snapshot of each woman. I will get to know these women and how they got to that point. Each of these mothers will be honored in my writing. So in a way, I'll be doing a two week long celebration of Mother's day. I cannot wait to uncover these forgotten women and their struggles.

If you are a birth mother, it is okay to be upset tomorrow. It's okay to be upset whenever you want. Being a mom is hard, but being a birth mother is painful, too. It's okay to celebrate what you've done and it's just as okay to ask that you not be included as a mother. It's a weird paradoxical thing and no one way is the right way. It's whatever makes you feel best. If you don't want to be honored, then just be sure to try and honor the other mothers in your life. You may not call them 'Mom' yourself, but they're there. Getting pregnant changes your life, no matter which path on the road you take. None of them are easy. But, if you try, all of them can change you for the better. You just have to make the choice. Happy Mother's Day.

Treat Yo' self

        As I enjoyed a lunch to myself this afternoon, I realized how afraid people are, especially of this generation, to be out in public alone. Or even in private on their own. I know that I am pretty introverted, so it's easier for me to be alone, but I really think everyone needs to know the value of treating yourself to some alone time. It's a nice chance to get to know your self, or even in my experience, let God treat you. I find that if I'm alone with him somewhere, the music playing on the radio gets infinitely better. And I find I am so much happier if I acknowledge His presence when I'm on my own. I get through traffic more easily. People are in better moods if He's with me. It's just pleasant. It's so fun to take myself to lunch and hear some of my favorite songs while getting awesome service and easy traffic to put up with.
       Now, I could easily be fooling myself. It could be a good CD the restaurant is playing, it could have been a good day for the people working, and I could have just been out at a good time, but I don't care. I like to give God credit, because in the long run, isn't He still responsible for my pleasant me-times?
   It is a good thing to have time alone. It can be rare if you are an extrovert, but it's still important. You need time to know yourself, your wants, your needs, and your shortcomings. If you haven't come to know, love and respect yourself, how are you supposed to expect others to know, love, or respect you?  Think about it. And, if you're into it, let God know you too. Your alone time doesn't have to be a big hours long ordeal where you sit in silence waiting for Him to grant you His messages. It can be in the car when you have a few minutes and are running late and you thank him for all the green lights, or when you are at lunch alone and recognize the awesome playlist He had ready for you. He's there. It's not hard to find Him. Just look, and be happy. He is not some scary Creator in the skies measuring your sins and faults. He's with you when you're bored to death in traffic and when you are too sleepy to get out of bed on time.
       Treat yo' self to some alone time. You'll like who you find.

The Energy Paradox

      As you grow older, or are pregnant, or experiencing grief, I have some advice. Get up, and do something. I have been so tired since I got pregnant. All the time I think about how I would like to nap and stay in bed all day. And from time to time, I'll indulge myself and just do it. Especially after the baby, I stayed in bed for weeks. I just didn't have the energy. It sounded too exhausting to get up and be a person. I know you have to allow yourself time to heal, but I was more interested in allowing myself time to assimilate as a new part of my bed.
    The kicker is I never ever ever feel refreshed or re-energized or invigorated. I just feel more exhausted. Always.
    However, on days when I am exercising, working, doing several things at once, I always have the energy for it. I get my stuff together and I manage to look like a real person for once. It's so strange. You would think the less I do, the more bored and energetic I would get, and the more I do, the more exhausted I would be.
       Herein lies the paradox of energy. You have to do things to feel energy. You have to get up, use your muscles and your mind to feel well. Lying around just makes you tired and sore. In fact, the fastest way I know to make myself feel better is to do something for someone else. They may not be grateful or whatever, but at least you got out of your own head and tiredness and age and did something nice. That is a really good thing. I think Ethan had gained weight (that he is losing) because I just kept making him food so I would could accomplish something for someone else.
   So get up. Run around. Dance. Tell a joke. Bake some cookies, and instead of eating them all, give them to someone who isn't expecting it. Lying around wallowing in dead skin cells and dust mites isn't going to make you feel better, but getting outside of yourself for a while just might. God made us this way. So use your muscles, your mind, and your heart while you can.
 

Dreams

     This post is a little weird, but bear with me. I am trying to go on a trip to London this May, and I am saving for it and fundraising and the whole bit. And I am worrying myself because I keep having dreams about it. I fear that if I fail to save enough and go, I have already gotten myself too attached to it, if only on a subconscious level.
       I really believe that the dreams of women can say a lot. I think that is why they get so vivid and intense during pregnancy. The hormones you are full of are just a cocktail of crazy town for dreams, but they're important. In your vulnerable dream state, you experience the fears and aspirations you think about while awake. I had CRAZY pregnancy dreams about the weirdest things, but they stemmed from thoughts I worried about while I was awake. It's an obvious occurrence, really. But I am curious why my dreams have stayed so vivid and consuming now that the pregnancy hormones have had over a year to escape my poor brain. And the other mothers I talk to also have crazy dreams from time to time. I think God had a reason for it.
      My dream about London really confronted me with the reality that I either need to calm down about this trip and keep my heart in check, or I need to go ahead and put all my eggs in that basket and deal with the chance of failure. It is dangerous to dream about your dreams.
      To all the pregnant women out there, especially the ones considering adoption, please allow me to give you a warning no one else gave me: your dreams are incredibly dangerous. Your pregnancy hormones wreak havoc on your logic in dreams. They play on your biggest fears about the baby, and they can really do a number on you. I had so many many many dreams about changing my mind, keeping the baby, and running off into the sunset away from the problems and fear of what would happen. These were so hard on me. It is hard to get your head back in the right area after your brain paints you vivid illusions of things that could never work out that way. I can't tell you how many times I woke up and just cried because I figured out it was not real, or it was just too hurtful to deal with.
     I still find myself having to pray right before bed sometimes for peace in my head, because if  I don't I'll just have a string of nightmares night after night. Once you are pregnant, your dreams will never be the same. They might become less frequent after the baby, but they'll never go back to the way they were before. Perhaps it's just me, though.
   I pray I will make it to London. I really pray my subconscious will calm down about it, but I am going all in on this opportunity. I know if I put my heart in it, the worst thing that can happen is a few nightmares and some disappointment. I'll never have a chance like this again, and I need to take that leap. I know God is always around to catch me, or help pick me up when I fall. Guard yourself from your dreams, or at least be careful about them. They're a dangerous place to lose yourself in.