I have some very unbecoming thoughts tonight. I am not proud of myself, but it is what it is.
Tonight I hate being me. I absolutely HATE it. I feel so guilty for saying that. I am sitting in a very comfortable home with a gorgeous Christmas tree softly lighting the living room. It is exactly how I had hoped it would look this year. My kids are asleep in their beds in their comfy pajamas and my husband is alseep as well... recharging for another shift at work that will begin in a few hours. I will get up tomorrow and get to be with my two precious girls all day long. I don't have to leave them at a daycare or with someone else in order to go to work. We will buy some Christmas ribbon and do some more decorating... run a few errands and stay busy with laundry and cleaning... smell chili as it cooks in the crock pot all afternoon. We all have our health and each other, and our every need is met beyond all that we could ask. I know that some of that will last for eternity, and most of it will burn. I would forfeit any of my comforts just to know my daughter. They are like dust. She is priceless.
But I hate being me right now. There is this giant hole right through the middle of me... like a cannon ball passed through. It is strange because I cover it up with the "right stuff" on the outside. I have learned how to do that over the years. I go about my days with no one really knowing that it is there. But if you really get to know me... if I really trust you... I might divulge my secret to you. This hole is bleeding and searing with pain. The wound still feels fresh on many days.
It is a God-sized hole blown through me by the loss of my daughter, the grief of her absence, the possibility of what her emotions may be, and the way that the rest of the world views me because of my status as a "birthmother".
I don't want to be a birthmother anymore. I don't want to feel this much pain. I don't want to love someone so deeply that I will probably never see again. I don't want to have to hide how much I love and miss her. I want to stop feeling like I have to make my life perfect on the outside in order to prove that I am a good and fit mother. I don't want people to think I was brave or selfless. Nor do I want them to think I was just a loose, irresponsible loser. I wasn't any of those things. I don't want to live in the prison of other people's opinions about adoption - good or bad.
If I am being honest with myself, I know that I am extremely sensitive right now to anything adoption-related. I am not in a good place with any of it. I won't give specifics lest I be here all night. But I can tell you that I think one of the most unhealthy things for me right now is being in an environment that is heavy with waiting adoptive parents. It is all just too much for me. I'm not speaking of my friends who know both the joys and the sorrows of adoption; I am speaking of the people who still need for adoption to be the light at the end of their tunnel... The people who need for it to be a happily ever after for everyone. The people who need for me, a natural mother, to be in the mold that helps them feel good about raising someone else's child. The people who can only imagine that I am in pain because I am just not mature enough or spiritual enough to be at peace. Afterall, in their mind I am not their same age with a husband and children and a home and a life. I am some young screw-up who had a moment of clarity and gave my daughter to a better family.
As long as Bethany keeps feeding the beast with their Dear Birthparent letters (they are ALL pretty much STILL the same and say something about giving the gift of life or choosing life), doing early matches (several currently on the boards), calling pregnant women birthmothers, and billing adoption as THE loving, "good mother" option with no acknowledgment of real grief and loss ... how can that environment be healthy for me??? Ultimately, what is on that site right now is just representative of what most people in general think about adoption. And it is off. Completely false. Skewed. Twisted. It exhausts me. It drives a knife through my heart. It reduces me to feeling like a kid again. It is a poison to me. I actually had a woman tell me to my face this week that she has never considered that her children's bio mothers have ever felt loss or grief over them. This woman has three adopted children in their young teens. She literally said to me, "I was just so tired of dealing with my infertility and so happy to just finally be getting babies that I never thought about the women who gave birth to them. I guess I will have to sit and think on that sometime." WOW. I cried myself to sleep that night. My husband didn't understand why I could not accept that her view is normal. Not correct, just normal. I say it should be instinct as a human being. He says, "I never would have considered it until I met you." Nice. The hole in my gut just got larger.
I need to shut out adoption and the general population. I need to focus on my own life and what is broken inside me. Again. How many times in my life do I have to travel this same piece of road? I have been here before. How do I be a Joseph and not a Jacob? How do I live WITH my grief and honor God with it, rather than being crippled by it my whole life? I cry out to God and I feel His presence. He is not distant. I FEEL Him right there with me. And yet I cannot still my cries and groans even when I know He is there. I think of Joseph grieving so loudly in private that it disturbed his servants. I pour out my heart to the God of Joseph. He answers me. He brings me moments of rest and sleep. He speaks to me through His Word. He calls to mind Scripture that I don't remember ever reading. I go to my Bible and there it is. He communes with me. This is what I cling to.
I don't really hate being me. I hate being the birthmother that people think I am. But I love being the person for whom Christ died. I love being in the depths with my Saviour who knows more than anyone what it was to be misunderstood and hated. I love that I serve the same God today who comforted Joseph. I love that I can pray the Psalms and be heard and answered by the same God who originally received those prayers from the heavy heart of David.
I found all the correspondence between Ellen's parents and me. I couldn't find it for a long time, and there it was all of a sudden last night. I am going to take some time to pour through it. There isn't much there, but I want to re-familiarize myself with it. I am going to pray over it as I continue to write to Ellen's parents. I am going to distance myself from the stabs of adoption tripe and work on healing my wound a bit. It will always be reopened, as anyone in my shoes can tell you, and it will never heal completely; but I'll bring it to the Great Physician to bind it for now.
"I trust in the LORD. I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place. Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak... But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, 'You are my God.' My times are in your hands. Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love. How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you. Praise be to the LORD, for he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city. Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. Love the LORD, all his saints! The Lord preserves the faithful... Be strong and take heart all you who hope in the LORD." Psalm 31... Selections from verses 7-24
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Oh Jenni, I just don't know what to say. As always, you speak so strongly through your writing, and saying, "thanks for sharing that" seems woefully inadequate. Please know I "mourn with those who mourn" when I read of your deep grief in all this.
ReplyDeleteOh, this is busymama. You might not have realized that.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I want you to know that you are the one person who has pushed me to think beyond my own adoption and general life perceptions more than almost anyone. You LIVE a true life of faith, Jenni, and your honesty, included in this post, DOES make a difference to people---spiritually and with adoption. I am sorry you are aching and that this hole in your heart just continues to haunt you. I honestly don't know how it cannot because you lost your daughter. I pray that someone God opens the door you've been waiting and praying for, and if and until that happens, that God gives you peace upon peace in your soul.
ReplyDeleteI understand. I feel this way too. I don't want to be a "birth"mother anymore either.
ReplyDeleteThinking of you.
I think we all have these days and some days that hole in our heart feels bigger than on other days.
ReplyDeleteMy husband surprised me as well because we recently had a conversation about me "finding" my son who was placed for adoption. I could tell it was bugging him that I was spending so much time on this and asked him what the deal was and he actually told me that he thought once I had placed my son for adoption that it would just be over and done with and that I would never think about him again much less go searching for him?????
That hurt my heart to think he thought of me that way, but you know what? Men just experience things differently than we do and often times just can not relate.
That is why we need each other as women and birth mothers because you so eloquently put into words the feelings of my heart that are buried deep where no one else will find out about them and don't want to hear them anyway, but so badly need to come out.
Thank you for sharing.