In which I use "profound" sixty-seven million times

When I tell people in my life that I'm a birthmother the same question usually comes up every time. "Do you think you did the right thing?"

The short answer is that I don't know, and there's no way to ever know for sure.

The long answer, the real answer, is something I'm afraid to explore too deeply. If I look back and decide that I did the "right" thing, I feel like I'd be invalidating years of grief and depression. It's hard for me to get my mind around it being right and being this painful anyway. If it was right, shouldn't that be of some comfort? If it was right, where does my anger go?

If I am faithful to my feelings at the time, I would have to say that it was the right choice to make. When I recreate the time in my mind, the overwhelming memory is the feeling I had of being in the hand of God, fate, destiny, karma, or what have you. Like Martha Beck in Expecting Adam, I felt like a spiritual portal had been opened during the pregnancy, and I was making choices with profound insight that I never has access to before, and never had access to again. I wasn't really a religious person, in fact I was very dissillusioned with all things spiritual at the time, which made the open portal feeling even more striking.

The Christmas season before E. was born in January was not the worst Christmas, like you would expect, it was the best Christmas I can remember. It's one of my dearest memories. So many people reached out to me, the kindness of strangers during that time was just staggering. Meeting the adoptive parents was also magical, profound, indescribable.

One of the (quite literally) soul-crushing things I experienced in the years after placing E. was the loss of this profound faith. In my mind, it became a symptom of my denial, something I wished someone had tried to puncture. It became a foolish refuge of a 19 year old who was terrified of growing up, a delusion. A psychological reaction to the guilt racked up by being a "troubled" teenager, a craving for redemption. A decision made not with profound insight, but with profound ignorance and blindness.

Was it right?

Yes, I think it was. Not just for the rational reasons. The flickering memory of E.'s hands in my life before she was born is what stands between me and atheism.

Why is this so hard for me to say? What is it about being wronged that is so attractive?

By accepting the experience as it occurred at the time, without all the knowledge and coloring I added later, there's no reason for me to be angry. Or sad. According to this story, I did a beautiful thing. I should be proud of myself.

I honestly don't know if I would have made a different choice if I knew how truly sucky it would be.

Part of what I'm afraid of is my experience being used as a stick to beat other birthmothers with. Just because my choice was right, it doesn't mean everyone's is right. It's certianly doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong with the way adoption works. I feel like admitting that my choice was right robs me of the right to criticize adoption and the way birthmothers are sometimes treated.

If it was right, how do I justify how I behaved afterwards, what with all the crying and failing out of things and dropping out of life? If it was right, what kind of person does that make me, one who bears a child she can't, or won't, care for? If it was right, and what I remember and believed was true, what does life have in store for me?

Since I don't believe that any living human can know the whole truth about anything, I have lately been making a conscious effort to believe what empowers me, instead of what defeats me. For nearly seven years I have believed all the worst things about my adoption, and where has it gotten me? I'm an angry, shameful person who is deathly afraid of people. If you knew me from before E. was born you would not recognize me.

There's one moment that sticks in my mind, that I return to again in again. When E. was born, her cord severed on its own. It just broke. There was no medical explanation, the cord was healthy, the placenta was tested and found healthy, the cord just broke. The could be a medical anomaly, or it could Mean Something. It's my choice to make.

Comments

[dawn]

This was such a beautiful, complex entry.

And whether or not you ultimately declare your decision right, you absolutely are empowered and justified in speaking out about the need to rework adoption. You have a right to all of your feelings.

When I was writing that article that I haven't re-edited yet (!), I spoke with Brenda Romanchik and she is so wonderfully great. She is in some ways the poster child for open adoption (her son's adoptive parents wrote up their story for "Adoption Without Fear") but she does all of this powerful advocacy and education about the moral obligations of adoptive parents and the adoption industry. She believes her decision was right but strongly thinks every woman considering adoption should have the space and support to NOT place her child. I think she straddles the dichotomies really well. I admire her so much and I think that for this year's first mother's day, I want to get J. her books about birth mothering in an open adoption and birth mother grief.

Anyway, thank you for writing this. As I said on my blog, birth mother stories are so important! Especially as they highlight the paradoxes and challenge our easy assumptions!!!!!

[getupgrrl]

I just wanted to say that I'm reading.

Every word.

[kristen]

wow. just - wow.

[Lisa]

wow, you are a truly amazing woman. Please dont ever tell yourself differently. I believe in my heart you did the right thing. Any normal human being would question that though. They would suffer with that choice. They would cry inconsolobly at the loss and never know if it was right. Thats normal. There is no right or wrong in this situation and I truly believe that the decision you made was right because you made it..does that make sense? You make me want to be a better person. You have such emotion it makes me feel again. Thank you I havent done that in such a long time. My dad commited suicide last Nov. and the tears had stopped. Thank you for giving them back to me. It helps me be a better mommy to my baby girl. Please dont ever stop writing because I feel real truth behind your posts...a realness that is beyond words and I would love to hear the whole story. If you cant post it I would be honored if you emailed it to me.

[sjusju]

I don't think you need to take on the god-like burden of re-writing the past with "what-if"s.

The fact that you have survived what you have gone through and that you wouldn't necessarily want to change that decision and the subsequent course of your life doesn't justify what happened, and doesn't wipe out the pain. It just means that you are a pretty strong person.

Relinquishment is really about 6 million decisions all rolled into one short moment - so it is understandable that you might feel that the decision was "right" in some aspects and "wrong" in others.

How could you have known at that moment how the ripples would spread, and how this decision would affect your life in any number of ways - good, bad and ugly? With all those ripples, no wonder it is hard to say whether that decision was completely "right" or "wrong".

Finally, you don't need to pass judgement on your own life in order to stick up for the rights of women to maintain connection with their children.

I think a decision made at birth is just that - and to try and extend that one decision in order to sever a lifetime's connection between mother and child is cruel and absurd.

Thanks for your writing & thoughts,

sjusju

[Lilian]

You know, I think I've read this post at least three or four times before, but each time I read it I'm more and more moved by it. I just can't express in words what it makes me feel, I just feel the tears.

[kim.kim]

I don't see it as right or wrong. It's like if you have a medical problem and the doctors say you have to have a limb amputated or you will die, nobody says after "do you think you did the right thing" it's accepted that there wasn't really a choice.

[Cookie]

Thought provoking, honest and real - that's how I see your writing and I thoroughly enjoy it! As for the commenter who said that she believed in her heart that you "did the right thing,".....how can anyone ever know for certain....and why does anyone presume that they do know?

[Me]

I found you via Barb's blog. I too got pregnant at 19. But I had an abortion. I then went into a severe depression and failed out and dropped out of my life for a while too. And as much as I thought about my choice during that time, you can bet your a$$ I've thought of it a lot more over the last 4 years as my husband and I have struggled (so far unsuccessfully to get pregnant.) My sister got pregnant at 18, had the child and kept it. Seven years later she is STILL reeling from the experience, a single mother (now of 2). She has often said that if she knew then what she knows now... I guess what I'm trying to say is that getting pregnant at a young age is often a cataclysmic event; a thing to big for our young hands to handle correctly. Just my $0.02.

This entry and your honesty are beautiful.