"The Strings of Life"

I stumbled onto the writing of Dabeshim a couple of days ago.  One of his poems caught me from the very first stanza.  I again am amazed at how the words of someone adopted can be so meaningful to me as a mother of adoption loss.  Below is the poem, interspersed with my own rambling thoughts brought to mind as I read the words. 

There once was a day

The winds were cold, darkness creped as far

As the inside, It had its say

We did as others wished

Serving them on a golden dish.

We knew no other way.

Like marionettes we lived,

Upon the Strings of Life.

Giving no thought at all.

The Florence Crittenton building was a big, old brick building. Dark. Cold. Always. Not the temperature, it was the atmosphere in that building…

I did only as they wished. As society expected of me. I made sure to let them all know that I wasn’t “one of those girls”. I really was a good girl, not a crack-whore. I really did love my baby, I really only wanted the best for him ~ It wasn’t at all that I didn’t want to be a mom, it wasn’t that I wanted to have a life full of fun instead of responsibility. I proved that I really did love my baby, loved him even more than I loved myself. I served my son up to the adoption industry on a golden dish…

What a good marionette I was, right in line being the good birthmother without any further convincing necessary. I already knew that there was no way I would raise a child in the way I was living. I knew that the only way I would be able to raise my child would be to move out of the house, and that would have been impossible on my own. I gave no thought towards the future, only to finishing what I had started by becoming pregnant while unmarried and young. No thought was given to what it would actually be like to give birth to my child, much less live without him. No thought was given to the fact that I couldn’t really ensure that my child would have a better life. No thought was given to what an adoptees life was like, how their life was affected by adoption. I was just following along with what was expected of me, like a marionette I lived…

I returned to school that fall unable to really be myself. I was sure that any classmates who knew of my pregnancy thought of me as either the classic whore or as a heartless person who gave her child away. I never breathed a word of my son to anyone afterwards, losing the freedom to be myself. Always fearful that someone would find out the truth. In addition, without even realizing it, my heart was locked up tight in order to not fully feel the loss of my son. How heavy was the weight of that prison I imposed on myself…

For our own freedom, our own call.

Now after so many years

I awoke to see that the power to live is

In you and in me.

We could be

Light as the air

With the wind through your hair

Free to move, here and there.

There and here, everywhere.

Now that we are no longer tied to the loom.

We can go from room to room.

We are Free at last,

no more strings of life to hold us down,

making us like clowns

In the moment of reading the first emails telling me that my son was looking for me, I awoke. I awoke from 30 years of denial and felt the power, the freedom, of living in my truth. I felt as light as air ~ the weight of that self-imposed prison was lifted. Once I had the chance to bask in the joy and treasure this new life that now included my first born son, I wanted to share the news with everyone. Christopher himself told me that I could go stand on the sandhills of Nebraska and yell the news out to the world. I was no longer tied to the loom that was labeled birthmother. The loom of shame. Shame that wasn’t mine to take on, but that I willingly accepted from the judgment of our society. The loom of despair and grief from the loss of my son ~ loss that I wasn’t even allowed to speak of. Loss that nobody in society sees, much less understands to have any empathy for. (Except for the others who live with the loss of adoption that is)

In talking to the search angel who matched our profiles, I felt as though I had beaten the system. Even though deep down I knew it wasn't true, the remnants of former beliefs were still there. I had believed the social worker when she told me it would be against the law to ever look for my son. Taking on that lie, it tied me further to the loom of adoption loss. Now here I was, being told by an angel named Kim that my son had been searching for me for a while, was very excited and waiting to finally hear from me. Just as I had been tied to the loom of adoption, so had he. In the finding, we were both freed from the looms, we were free to go from the room of secrecy into the room of truth.

The past is the in the past

None of that matter anymore

Yesterday is out the door

Let’s make the most of now

Since time doesn’t last

We made our own many mistakes

Sacrificed the best of ourselves at the stake

Yet we are free now to move every which way

To say what we want to say

no more strings of life to tie us down

making us look just  like clowns

Yes ~ the past is in the past. I can’t get back those lost years with Christopher. I made my mistakes. Many mistakes were made in the years after I lost Christopher to adoption. My biggest wish is that I had been strong enough to live my truth, instead of hiding from it.  For I wasn't really hiding from it.  It was always there, just under the surface, just out of reach of my conscious being.  I not only sacrificed my son, I sacrificed my authentic self. Being silent after the loss of my son to adoption only allowed the myths to continue. Being silent gave the impression that losing my son to adoption was ok. Being silent kept the tremendous loss and grief hidden. Did another mother go on to choose adoption because she saw that my life did seem to go on as before after losing my son to adoption? I will never know. But I do feel that I fed the adoption industry with my silence. The strings tying me down are gone, I am free now to speak of my experience. I am free to speak of the child, now a grown man, forever lost to adoption. There are no self or society imposed strings keeping me silent now. I speak out of the truth of adoption loss on my life. I speak out not because it can change anything for us ~ but maybe I can change something for another mother, for the children of that mother. I speak out now to help another living with the loss of adoption to free themselves from their own loom, to no longer be a marionette of the adoption industry.

We are as light as the air

With the wind through your hair

We have no more cares

That will hold us and keep us,

From ourselves,

like marionettes up on the shelves.

Oh you must believe me!

Oh can you see me?

Can you hear this song I sing?

It brings me here to you!

The strings of life have all disappeared

The strife we lived, sheared and blown away

We are free now to move every which way

To say what we want to say

no more strings of life to tie us down

lifting us high above the ground

We are free now to just be. The strings of adoption no longer control us as though we are only marionettes. I am his mother, he is my son. I love Christopher no less than the children I raised. The strings of adoption could take away my legal rights, but could never take away my love for him.

Oh come with me

And Fly! You will see

The music is playing, the choir is saying

We are Light as the air

The wind through your hair

Free to move, here and there.

There and here, everywhere.

With no more ties

Gone are The Strings of Life.

………………………………

© 2012 Dabeshim

Thank you for sharing these beautiful, yet haunting, words Dabeshim. Thank you for allowing me to ramble on and write of how the words touched my heart.

"The Strings of Life" by Dabeshim at http://anunrequitedlife.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/the-strings-of-life/ 

Letting Go

From this quote at the very beginning of the blog post on Metta Drum, I was intrigued...

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Jean-Paul Sartre

The following is my rambling brain trying to talk my way through the meaning of Daniel's post (which is in the brown all-caps text) in regards to my life.   This post is just a rambling mess, as are my thoughts...

Lately I've been exploring this idea of transformation as letting go. Letting go of what I no longer resonate with, and nurturing the deeper "me" underneath all that, instead of trying to patch myself up in an attempt to become something new and improved. 

I did let go of that confused, scared, all-alone-in-the-world 15 year old girl who had to give her son up for adoption.

Now I want to let go the wanting more.  I know that there IS no more to be had.  In order to have the more that my heart and soul search for, I would have had to raised my son. In order to have more, my son would also want to have more.

I want to let go of the hurt.  Is there a way to heal the hurts of losing a child to adoption?  Not to just accept it, but to heal it?

I feel that I am a new and improved version of myself ~ having come out of the adoption closet, out of the denial, I've gotten rid of the false beliefs.  But is there more than that?  Can I get to the deeper “me” underneath all of that?

Scraping the layers of paint and dirt off of the mirror, so to speak.

I think we lose sight of who we are when we find ourselves identifying with the paint and the dirt. We think all those layers of "stuff" define us, and then we feel defective. So we try to become less of this, and more of that.

In this way, we continually create a distorted, unsatisfying sense of Self.

You won't find any long-term solutions in the less of this, more of that approach. Instead, consider the idea that the You you've been searching for is already present within you, just waiting for conscious connection. Let go of the idea that you need fixing, because deep down, you aren't really broken. 

Am I really not broken?  I'm Christopher's mother ~ I gave birth to him.  Yet I didn't raise him.  Yet my heart and soul feel him as my son.  Yet...  It's an endless circle.

The truth of the matter is that I gave birth to a son who is not in my life as my soul yearns for him to be.  Is the conscious connection that needs to be made just the "knowing" that I am indeed a mother to my firstborn child?  That I'm not just a "birthmother"  (God, I HATE that word!)  I think I have scraped some of the layers off ~ I no longer look at myself as a "birthmother", I now know that I was always much more than the egg donor and incubator I believed I was.

Is it that the me I've been searching for is already present in me ~ just the knowledge and belief that I am and was always his mother, despite signing those damn papers?

Is the idea that  I need Christopher to truly be a part of my life in order to be "fixed" a false idea?  In writing out all of my pondering here, the answer to that is yes.  In the creating and giving birth to him I am his mother.  No, not in the way that I wish with all of my heart that I could have been, but signing a piece of paper didn't unbirth him from me.  It didn't take away my motherhood, it took away my parenthood.

You've only taken on layers of concepts, habits and dogmas that aren't serving you, and certain basic needs have gone unmet for awhile.

So begin to strip away those layers that you've built up over the course of your lifetime and discover the truth of who you are.

While I know I am so much more than a mother who lost her son to adoption, it is the biggest part of me.  Isn’t it?  I feel that it is.  It effects everything I do, everything I think, everything I am…

For example: Instead of trying to be less argumentative and more understanding of the viewpoints of others, simply let go of the need to always be right, the need to win. Underneath that, you may discover a fear that you aren't being heard, a fear of being invisible and unimportant. This fear may reveal the need for a very specific type of self-love — and once you understand where nurturing and healing are needed, you can begin your work of letting go at the source.

In being less argumentative and more understanding of the viewpoints of others in adoption, should I let go of the need to speak out of the truth of adoption loss for the mothers and adoptees?  To me it doesn’t feel like a need to always be right, it feels as though it’s a truth that needs to be told and understood.

I DO fear that I’m not being heard.  I do have the fear of being invisible and unimportant.  It’s not really a fear though...  I feel that it’s just the truth.  As far as being a mother of adoption loss, we are not listened to.  The loss that I live with every minute of every day is unimportant to anyone who believes or needs to believe in the institution of adoption.  The rainbows and sunshine of adoption are so prevalent, so deeply engrained in everything/everyone.  Except those who live with the loss of adoption.

I will admit that I do have a fear of being invisible and unimportant ~ To Christopher.  So what does that fear reveal?  What kind of self-love is even possible to overcome that?  Where do I let in the nurturing and healing for that?  What is the source of that?  How do I begin the work of letting go at the source if the source is the very soul of me, of my motherhood?

That's just one example, but it illustrates the process of letting go of the outermost layers of "stuff" and revealing the deeper issues underneath, where you can discover your root needs and begin to nurture them. This is where true healing and transformation take place. This is where your higher Self is waiting to emerge.

My root needs...  to have my son in my life.  Which he is.  Kinda.  I know where he is.  I know of his life.  And I am so very thankful for that.

The problem there is that my heart, soul, and every cell of my body feels for him as a son.  No differently than the sons I raised.  I didn't raise Christopher though...  so our relationship is...  less than?  Less than I want it to be, less than I need it to be.  Maybe that's what I have to finally accept?  That it will never, can never be, what I want/need it to be? To be completely honest with myself, right now I don't even know if what we have now is a relationship at all...

This will not be a comfortable process. You may stir up some scary, negative stuff. You may experience some very unpleasant awakenings that shake you to your core. But on the other side of this discomfort and this work, enlightenment and healing are possible. 

I have never really grieved the loss of my son.  I live with the grief, but I haven't experienced the grief.  I'm scared to allow myself to face it.  That deep, dark hole of despair.  As I referred to in another post, I'm scared of facing it because I'm scared that I won't be able to come out of it.  I fear that it's going to envelope me completely instead of just chewing me up and spitting me out. 

It won't be easy, no. But it will be worth it.

Begin the process of letting go of what you are not, and uncovering your neglected/abandoned needs. Nurture and clarify your true Self in this way. The process of transformation is really a process of discovery and refinement of who you truly are.

Today, you are not asked to change in order to become a better version of yourself. You are free to simply let go of what isn’t You. Free to let go of what isn’t magnificent and beautiful. Free to delight in the nakedness of You. The beauty and excellence of You. The fullness of You. 

Let go of what isn't me...  Let go of what isn't magnificent and beautiful...  Writing and contemplating on this entire post, I come up with two things that I need to let go of. 

The grief and loss that are trapped inside of me, unable to be expressed. 

The expectations of having "more" with Christopher. 

What if in finally allowing myself to acknowledge, feel, and express the deeply buried grief I sink into the despair, never to find my way out of the depths?
How do I let go of Christopher?  Again?  This silence is killing me.  Because I am wanting more.  So, do I just accept that there is nothing more to have, walk away and hope that one day he will again come into my life?  Do I just let go and let God?  Just as before when I went back to my life before I gave birth and gave away my first born son?  Shall I now just try to go back to my life before reading those emails on January 16th 3 years ago?  Walking away from my son again?  Is it walking away if he doesn't want me to be a part of his life? 

I thought that working through this post of Daniel's, it could help me work through some of my confusion.  I'm still confused...  Do I write Christopher a letter asking him what he wants out of this relationship?  Do I force a visit on him to discuss it in person?  Do I just go into silence as he has? 

Do I walk away from all things adoption?  The forum, the blogs...   In order to try to get back to life before reunion, I would have to.  To accept my life without keeping that adoption wound open, I would have to.  Or not?  Even if I don't keep picking at that scab, will it ever heal? 

Limbo? Acceptance? Or Something Else?

I feel as though I'm in a limbo of sorts lately. 

Christopher is a part of my life now, yet he's not.  I am a part of his life, but yet I'm not. 

Maybe the feeling of being in limbo is because this "reunion" has become so one-sided. 

I have felt a big shift in my emotions towards reunion since his surgery.  Once the fear of losing Christopher in surgery was gone, I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my heart.  The love is still there, bigger than ever.  But the fear, the worry?  Gone.

It was more than just the fear of losing him during the surgery though.  It's as though the fear of losing him in any way was gone.  Is this finally acceptance that he will never fully be a part of my life?  Is it finally enough to just know that he's alive, healthy, and happy? Did the fear of his death allow me to finally be at peace with him just "being out there somewhere"?  Even if that meant that he wasn't going to fully be a part of my life?  I no longer worry about sending him emails too often, or obsess over every word I write in worry that I will say something to drive him away.  I am following my heart ~ if I read or hear something I want to share with him, I do it.  When it's in my heart to let him know I'm thinking about him, hoping he's feeling better, I follow my heart now instead of worrying that it's wrong in some way.



These last few weeks have just been so strange to me.  For the first time since Jan. 16, 2009, upon finding those first emails from the search angel and Christopher, he hasn't been on my mind 24/7. He is not always the first thing I think of when I wake up, nor always the last thing I think of before falling asleep.

This feeling of... limbo is very unsettling for some reason.  There's a little voice in my head that fears it is not really acceptance ~ maybe I have instead buried my emotions regarding Christopher again.  And don't even know it... 

 Maybe it's not following my heart so much as subconsciously I don't care anymore about pushing him away?  Does a person even realize it when they are pushing someone away before they themselves can be pushed away? 

*sigh* 

This rambling is exactly why I haven't written many posts lately.  None of this probably makes any sense.  It doesn't even make sense to me!  All of my thoughts are going in circles, winding around on themselves, making it even more confusing than when I first started writing all of this out in an attempt to figure out what in the world I am or am not feeling.  If this blog post was an Excel spreadsheet, I would be getting a circular error warning!

Thank God that November is Over!

This month has been a tough one. 

I started out the month thinking I would post every day for the Adoption BeAwareness Month.  It was too draining to try to get the words out of my head every day. 

A month of inescapable stories about the wonders of adoption.  The stories that began to feel like stabs straight to the heart.  Adoption ~ the loving option.  Yeah.  Loving.  That's EXACTLY what has been brought into my life because of adoption.  Adoption brought anything but love into my life.  Loss of my son, grief, denial, self-doubt, self-hatred.  Those are just a few of the things adoption brought into my life.

I have come to hate November.  The fact that Thanksgiving is in the month makes it even worse.  Thanksgiving used to be one of my favorite holidays.  But thankful and adoption do not belong in the same sentence, much less month.  Don't get me wrong, I am so very thankful for the blessings my son has had with his adoptive family, I am thankful we have been reunited.  But there is nothing thankful about the fact that adoption is a part of my life 

When Others Want You To Stay In The Closet

  From a blog post I read recently:

Additionally, and slightly more profound for me, is that I actually married a man that kept me closeted as well. I was not conscious of this of course but it became painfully obvious when I started to tip toe out of the birthmother closet and he rushed to put me back in. This too was my own doing. I did not want to deal openly with my own horrors so I sought loved ones who helped me keep the door closed.

That's me.  Exactly.  I didn't even know it until I read these words.  

When I read the above blog post comment, it was a HUGE ah-ha moment for me.  I am scared to death to fully come out of that closet in real life.  I am scared about my relationships that are built on the lies of denial.  Scared to open my heart, only to be hurt.  I am allowing the people in my life who are not comfortable with my coming out of the closet to keep me there. 

For the last year or so, I have been slowly creeping back into that closet.  Slowly closing my heart off again.  Scared to completely open up my heart to my son because I worry that he doesn't want or need it.  Scared to open up to my family (specifically my husband and in-laws ~ who are more like parents to me than my own) because I fear that they won't understand it, or worse ~ that they don't care to understand. 

When my son and I first reunited 20 months ago, I wanted to stand on the highest hills and scream to the world that my son was alive and well.  That I had four, not three children.  It felt so freeing to be able to talk about him, to acknowledge my true identity, not the lies I had been living for almost 30  years.  

Then I started getting the mixed reactions from people.  People that said they were happy for me, yet uncomfortable talking about my son.  The people that told me what a wonderful thing I had done.  The people that responded to my deep desire to meet Christopher in person by telling me that I had to remember that I gave him up, that I had to honor that.  The people that were confused by me calling him my son, since I didn't raise him.  

I hate the lies adoption is based on.  I hate that I am 47 years old, yet in so many ways I am still that stupid 15 year old.  I hate that I am scared to do what I know I must do in order to claim my sanity.  In order to heal from all that adoption has brought into my life.  From all that adoption has taken from my life. 

The Hospital

I don't really remember being in labor.  I remember being alone in a tiny room that was no bigger than a closet.  A bed against the wall, room to walk alongside the bed & that's it.  Alone.  I do not remember going into the delivery room, the birth of my son, or recovery after the birth of my son.  I don't remember the days, weeks, or months following my son's birth.  I remember bits & pieces, but not everything.  I don't think I really want to remember what my brain has chosen to forget in order to stay sane.

The few bits & pieces of my time in the hospital that I do remember are in the two days following his birth.  I remember the nurse that snuck into my room to give me a little piece of paper with my son's foot prints on it, with her written notes of the date, time, height & weight of Christopher at birth.  I wish I knew her name to tell her thank you.  To tell her that she was my one saving grace while in the hospital.  The one person that treated me with any respect, that treated me as the mother to my child. 

I remember carefully filling out the form for the birth certificate.  How I carefully printed the name I gave my son, the one and only thing I could truly give him.  When I received court papers regarding the relinquishment of Christopher, his name is Baby Boy.  I don't know if they even put my name on the birth certificate.  The one thing I had to give him ~ did they take it away??

I remember walking down to the nursery, praying to get a glimpse of my son.  I think I found him on the second day.  I remember standing in the window, for what seemed like hours.  It may have been.  But it may have also been only 5 minutes.  I really don't know.

I remember the day I was going to go home.  I walked down to the nursery hoping to get one last glimpse of my son.  I didn't find him.  On the way back to my room, I passed a small room, no bigger than a closet.  There was a changing table in the middle of the room.  There was a lady, dressing a newborn.  I wondered if it was my son.  When the lady looked up & saw me, she got a horrified look on her face & quickly walked over to the door & shut it.  That was my answer.  It was my son.  Who was not my son.  Who was being dressed to leave the hospital without me.  I will never forget that moment.  I will never forget the look on her face.  Like I was a monster of some sort, that might take the baby and run.  I will never forget the door being closed.  It was like a door was closing on a part of my soul.  Closing on my heart.

The doors stayed closed for a long time after that.  It took me almost 30 years to realize that the doors had been closed as tightly as they were.  It took reunion for me to realize how I had kept my heart closed since that day.  I had to keep it closed ~ from fear that I would fall into the gaping hole & disappear forever.

Queen of Denial

I worry that one day my son may find this blog.  I don't want to hurt him, and some of my story could very well do that.  I don't want to burden him with my garbage.  I worry that some of what I want to say, when read by him (or any adoptee for that matter), could seem heartless.  I am sickened myself by some of the things I felt & did.  It was hard to forgive myself, but I realize that the way I dealt with the loss of my son, I did out of self preservation.  I was so young, coping with something an adult would find difficult, all by myself.  My choice for adoption was truly to save my son.  To save him from the life I was living.  I knew that the choice for adoption was not the right choice for me, I was making the choice for him.  What I believed at the time was the only choice ~ and nobody bothered to tell me any different.

I knew, as soon as I found out I was pregnant, that I would have to give my baby up.  I knew I would never be his mother.  So, I never allowed myself to think of myself as his mom, as I was not going to be parenting him.  I was only an egg donor & incubator.  I don't think I even fully thought of him as my son, even though he was created & grown safely and healthy in me.  He was the baby I gave up.


I still remember the horror I felt when I recently realized that I disassociated myself from my son while I was pregnant.  I kinda realized it at the time, but I thought it was something I was doing only to myself.  I didn't know I was doing it to my son.  Now that I do, it about kills me.  That I was denying myself to truly love my child, to fully know and share the strongest love & bond there is ~ of mother & child.  I knew that if I thought of him as my child, I would not be able to give him up.  I knew that if I allowed myself to fully feel the love I had for my child, I could not stand him to be raised by another.  It never entered my mind that I could be harming Christopher because of this.  It truly sickens me that I did that ~ to him & to me.  I was so horrified & adamant that my son not be raised in a hateful home as I was.  In that, I denied him the most precious home he already had ~ in his mother's heart.