I Relinquished then I Kept... The Truth of Choosing
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The empty arms have stayed with me for ten years, that moment I left the hospital without my firstborn son changed me forever. The yellow taxicab that waited while I held my newborn daughter, just two years later, still rides on in my mind. Two choices. I relinquished in 1992, and I kept in 1994.
At fifteen I lived with my father in a huge house we'd built ourselves. My grades were better than ever as a ninth grader in a school made just for girls like me. I had friends for the first time in years, and my father supplied my material needs. The basement of our house, complete with three bedrooms, an enormous bathroom, a small kitchen, and a walk out patio was mine. After running away from my mother just a year before I was finally finding some joy. For nine months I never gave thought to any choice. Just like the other eighteen girls at school, I would keep my baby too. After all, we planned walks in the park and trips to the mall with our strollers and babies in toll. We were like family.
So why, on the eve of my son's birth did I pick up the phone and call an adoption agency? Why, when my family had said to me that they would support me? And why, just hours after his birth did I agree to see the caseworker waiting in the lobby? With my family there, beside me, taking turns holding my brand new 8 pound 1 ounce baby boy did I walk out of that hospital without him?
Fear and Need. Fear because despite the enormous basement I lived in there was not a single baby item bought. Not a crib, not a car seat, not even a package of diapers. Had I been expected to buy it all on my own without even being of age to work? Fear. My family said they would support me, I assumed that meant in every aspect of the choice. But I realized this was not true. I could not take my baby home to sleep on the floor or in my own bed, without diapers, or clothes, or even a bottle to feed him with. Panic and fear. Need because the attention I received, as well as my deep desire to finally do something right. Being the "black sheep" of my family was hard. I wanted to be praised, I wanted to make them proud. I pushed my desire to parent my baby far inside and attempted to deny it. My need to do the right thing, the right thing being what everyone thought, was greater than my confidence and ability to be strong on my own. But fear and need are temporary motivators based on the reaction of outside influences, and the history we have within ourselves. My insecurity was fed by my family's attention, the agency's attention, and my desire to "be" something better than myself. Once the attention faded and I tunneled back into reality ... the insecurity still existed. It had only been muted by illusion. And there, as raw as ever was what I had pushed within me ... my desire to keep and raise my son.
So based on that fear and that need I crumbled. I dropped out of school, became promiscuous for attention, and eventually ran away from my father. I ached for validation and security. And I found that in a relationship with a young man. He housed me, fed me, clothed me, and loved me. I escaped from the world and lived in his arms, in his truck, and within his family. I tried to forget who I was before him.
But the pain of loosing my son became a filter for all things I did. I had agreed to a semi-open adoption but soon after it was final, I found out that there would be no pictures, no letters, no way of knowing. The agency wrote, "We are truly sorry for your loss but there is nothing we can do." It was like loosing my son all over again.
So at the age of 17 I became pregnant. At the time I was living in a studio apartment with my boyfriend, the father of my child. I stayed inside every day, alone. e went to work, had his friends, had his family and did his best to meet my needs. But I had no one. My family was outraged at my pregnancy and my father even told me, "If you have an abortion you can come home." I was stuck, and alone. Eventually my boyfriend was suffocated by my overwhelming history of insecurity and desperate need, and he enlisted in the Air Force and was quickly gone. For the duration of my pregnancy I first lived with a friend I'd had at JCAPPP, the school I attended while pregnant with my son. But watching her son, born just two weeks before mine, proved painful. I lived then on the streets, or with strangers.
When my daughter was born I had even less than I did with my son. I had no home, no family, and nothing to provide. On the day I was to leave the hospital, my grandmother came with several bags filled with supplies from Kmart I would need for my baby. A local church had found someone willing to let me live with them.
The only thing I cared about was walking out of that hospital with a baby in my arms. I would not leave alone again. And that I did. I had a little room in a little house in the middle of nowhere. I had a mattress, and a dresser nailed to the floor. And I had my baby girl.
I also still had the pain of loosing my son and the guilt and shame of my choices. Both made for selfish reasons. To meet my own needs. This story is the most difficult story I have ever written. Facing my own truths about my choices and my children has taken years. Denial is an amazing pain killer.
Those choices were not made in the best interest of my children but rather for self-serving needs. I look back and I realize that I was actually better off at fifteen than I was at seventeen. The guilt was killing me. I had nightmares of seeing my son again, and him meeting my daughter, and the hate in his voice for what I chose for him. How to explain that I loved him as I loved her ... and how to explain the choices I made for each of them?
I wake in the morning to the sound of my daughter's whisper, "Mommy, can we turn cartoons on?" Her face is a mirror in which my reflection is at its most honest moment. In image, she is my twin. We wake before anyone else in the family and snuggle under her light pink blanket to watch her favorite cartoon. I breathe in her scent just as I once did in the last moments I had with my son. Her skin, still so baby soft, under my touch. She loves when I caress her face, "I love you mommy," she whispers to me.
I now have a husband, a home, and three children. I am twenty-five years old. We say often to young girls considering their options, "You're not ready to be a parent." As I look at my youngest, just two years old I ask myself if in fact, I was ready to parent her any more than I was ready to parent my first born son. And the answer lies in the eyes of my two-year-old daughter, as I look at her and ask myself... would I have given her up if that were true, that I was not ready? Or is it easier to pretend we are "ready" when we are older than younger? Just ten years ago I laid in a hospital bed and relinquished my first-born son. I continue to ask myself if it was a choice I should have made. By God's grace, one day, my son, by the life he's had and the man he became, will be able to answer that.
Two choices, both with different outcomes. Two decisions made for the same reasons. Both choices led to the lives of beautiful children. While I do not know for sure that my son is loved and cared for completely, I have to believe that he is. I know my daughter is.
I tell this painful, truthful story for two reasons. The first being my own accountability for the choices I've made. Admitting my own truths is healing and frees me to parent and love without the burden of my denial. Children are smarter than we give them credit for, and my truth enables forgiveness for those mistakes I've made; forgiveness for myself and from my children as well. The second being that through my journey I hope for others this freedom I've been graced with.
To act, re-act, and make choices based on our own dysfunctional needs causes unforeseen damage. While we believe we are making choices out of love and selflessness, we are often acting in a haze of need. Need for love, need to love, need for attention, wholeness, completion, and validation. In adoption, un-like on a daily basis, this can cause trauma and pain.
My needs were not met after I relinquished. In fact, they festered and grew. I expected my family and friends and those I knew to rally around my most selfless act in validation and support and pride. To feed that need I had within me meant constant attention. For the first three years of my daughter's life I was thrown into a world where I was given nothing, but had to give much. Those first years of parenting taught me the true meaning of selflessness.
Selflessness. Truly this is what both adoption and parenting are about. Without our own needs and fears and insecurities, the ability to love becomes real. There is freedom that comes with knowing ourselves and our own truths; the things we need, those things we operate in, and why and how we make our choices. I wish I had the answer for young expecting mothers, perhaps something miraculous I could say that would clear their heads and hearts and pave the way for the choice right for them. I wish I had that for myself. The closest thing I have to that is the promise of God's grace, that He calls us to be who He created us to be and that He will make up what we lack in. I pray often that God will continue to change my heart and make me into the mother my children need. I also pray that despite my mistakes, faults, and human needs, that He will protect my children, all of them, supernaturally and provide them with the knowledge that my love is pure and everlasting.
So which choice was easier? Relinquishing, or keeping ... I can honestly say that neither have been easy nor will continue to be. The loss and pain of relinquishing my son lives within me every single day. My actions affect my daughter each and every day as well, and I am responsible for a life that depends on my every ability. But I can say this, every day at 3:05 p.m when my daughter runs out of her classroom in her bright yellow coat, racing towards the van with a smile as large as an ocean wave, excited to tell me about her day, I can't help but let the tears form as a part of me rejoices for the daily gift I am given. And when I lie in bed at night, un-able to sleep with the memory of my son, I can't help but hear my heart hope for that moment I am able to hold him in my arms and tell him face to face that I have loved him almost more than I could bear.
I am a mother, four times over. Am I a good mother? Better than I was yesterday, and not as good as I'll be tomorrow. But I'm honest. I have the ability to love without being motivated by need or fear. I now truly understand what it means to do what is best for your children. And each day I try the best I can to do just that.
I've also been putting aside money ... at least if nothing else, I'll pay for their therapy.
That joke aside, let us remember that ultimately, our children will grow up and be evidence of each and every choice we've made. That I can live with my choices doesn't matter as much as if my children can.
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