Tag Archives: depression and post adoption trauma in birthmothers

A New Essay in Under the Sun

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I have a new essay in Under the Sun about losing my first child to adoption.

A writing accident

I never meant to write about any of this. For decades I was a reader, not a writer. Then a terrible thing happened. And I began writing a story about it. One morning my husband went to work and left a legal pad on the kitchen table. I filled most of it that morning, making the terrible thing into sort of a fiction. Over the next weeks, I kept writing, even though I hadn’t done any creative writing since high school. I was processing the terrible thing by making it into a story.

At some point I stopped into one of my favorite coffee shops before picking my kids up from school and saw a stack of flyers about a writing workshop that was going to be held in their backroom on Saturdays. Cool, I thought. Because I think the thing I’ve been writing could be a novel. I folded the flyer in half and put it on my bulletin board in the kitchen.

Without ever unfolding the flyer and reading the bottom half of it with the description of the workshop, I showed up. That’s when I found out it was a memoir workshop. The story of my secret teen-age pregnancy poured onto the page. At the end of this weeks- long workshop there was a reader’s theater type performance. It made me brave. And I found out people wanted to hear the story about the son I had lost.

Writing on purpose

I took the workshop again. And again. At every performance there was always a birthmother or an adoptee in the audience. Even though starting to write memoir had been an accident, the telling of the story became more and more important to me. And it seemed important to other people too.

I also kept writing the story that was a fictionalized version of the terrible thing. When I was 54-year-old empty nester/new divorceé I got into an MFA program, and the novel about the terrible thing became a my master’s thesis. But all the while I was sending out personal essays about adoption and they were getting published. I thought my essays and the other essays I was reading about adoption might change the adoption industry.

Time has passed. I’ll be 70 this year. I am marching forward while the world marches backwards. A new Baby Scoop Era is coming. Amy Coney Barrett as much as told us so when she touted adoption as an alternative to abortion during her confirmation hearing. The recently leaked Supreme Court draft opinion has confirmed it.

I wrote about the loss of reproductive rights on this blog way back in 2012. And here’s a weird and creepy thought. Has the Hulu version of the Handmaid’s Tale been desensitizing us to our dystopian future? I was obsessed with the Handmaid’s Tale for the first few seasons and its parallels to the adoption and the Baby Scoop. You can read about that here and here.

A Birthmother on Mother’s Day

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One dozen ways to be with a birthmother on Mother’s Day

Here’s the thing. It’s not easy to be a birthmother on Mother’s Day.

Try this. Google birthmother. The search results will lead you to sites promoting adoption. This is how the world is. It is pro-adoption. Not pro-family preservation. And certainly not pro-birthmother. Unless you’re planning on handing over a baby. Let’s say someone who’s recently relinquished a child goes to the internet seeking support this Mother’s Day. Well, she’s going to be gaslighted.

If you know a birthmother/first mother, reach out to her in the next few days. Don’t let her sit alone staring into a screen, reading stuff that makes her feel sad and crazy.

A list

I’ve published this list of things to talk about with a birthmother before, but here it is again, with a couple of additions.

  1. I know you’re a mother, so I want you to know I’m thinking of you.
  2. Is there a way I can bring some comfort to you today?
  3. Do you feel like telling me your story? I might not know all of it.
  4. Would you like to go out for some coffee, or a walk, or maybe a movie?
  5. Have you searched for your child? or How is your reunion going? Tell me about that if you feel like talking about it.
  6. How do you think your life would be different if you’d raised your child?
  7. What would you do if your son/ daughter contacted you?
  8. What’s the hardest thing about Mother’s Day for you?
  9. Do you like the term birthmother? Or is there another word you prefer?
  10. I really appreciate your friendship, and I want you to know I’m here for you.
  11. Do you know about the support group Concerned United Birthparents? And that they have a Zoom support group meeting coming up? It’s on May 21st.
  12. I’d like to know more about adoption and its history. What can you tell me about it? Or can you suggest some books or information I can read?

Birthmothers and Witches

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Scotland’s Witches

King James VI of Scotland and subsequent rulers vilified people believed to be witches with great fervor during the 16th and 18th centuries. They tortured and executed over 2500 during two centuries of Satanic panic. The witches have recently received a formal apology. This apology, delivered by first minister Nicola Sturgeon in early March, was a very long time coming. It’s been hundreds of years since the witches of Scotland, most of them women, suffered their terrible fates.

“I am choosing to acknowledge that egregious historic injustice and extend a formal, posthumous apology to all of those accused, convicted, vilified, or executed under the Witchcraft Act of 1563,” Ms. Sturgeon said. The apology was the result of an activist campaign. The campaign asked for three things. A pardon. An apology. And a national memorial. Discussions regarding the memorial are in progress.

Scotland’s birthmothers

Between 1950 and 1980 over 60,000 Scottish women gave up their children for adoption. A group of activist birthmothers began asking for a formal apology for these forced adoptions around a decade ago. In 2015 Scotland decided against issuing that apology. But the struggle continued. By the end of 2021 the Scottish parliament was reconsidering. Australia had apologized to its birthmothers. And Ireland apologized. And England’s families minister, Vicky Ford, apologized. Way back in 2013 the Catholic Church in England and Wales apologized. At long last, the government of Scotland is now seriously considering an apology. But as of yet, Nicola Sturgeon has not made a formal speech.

It is easier to apologize to the dead. There are no surviving witches from Scotland’s execution heyday. Officials do not have to look into their eyes. The dead witches will not sit at the table to discuss the details of the memorial. They cannot shake anyone’s hand or say thank you. Or stand there weeping inconsolably while a politician awkwardly ponders what to do. Modern day witches will, no doubt, participate in discussions about the memorial. But their ancestor’s fates are long-ago history.

Movement for adoption apology

Thousands of Scottish birthmothers are still alive. The Movement for Adoption Apology is asking for mental health support for these birthmothers. They want changes in the management of adoption records, which currently are closed for 100 years. And they want an adoption reunion registry. And a memorial. They also want a formal apology.

Will they get it? I don’t know. But it seems Scotland finds birthmothers more frightening than witches.

Ireland’s Last Magdalene Laundry

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A Magdalene laundry memorial

According to the New York Times, a new memorial will be developed in the last remaining “Magdalene laundry” in Dublin. The compound with its convent and laundry buildings is the only facility of its type in Ireland that has not been demolished. Narrowly escaping development as a hotel, the memorial will become an education center and a museum know as the National Center for Research and Remembrance. There is an awful lot to research and remember.

Fallen women and girls in trouble

Ireland turned its “fallen women,” its “girls in trouble” into slaves. According to most sources, from the 18th century to the late 20th century some 30,000 women were confined in these institutions. But there are no official statistics. Secrets are by nature resistant to statistics. Imagine a family desperate to rid themselves of the shame of having a pregnant unmarried daughter. There may have been tears and regret when she was delivered to the gates of one of these places. But I’ll bet you your firstborn child there was also an immense sigh of relief by the parents who left her. By some estimates, in Ireland alone there were 41 of these facilities and perhaps as many as 300 in England.

My own troubles

I lived in a small Catholic town in Iowa when I got pregnant in 1970. I was in my final year at a Catholic school–the only high school in my home town. It seems like a miracle, but I kept my pregnancy a secret throughout my senior year. I went to prom. I graduated. When my parents found out I was pregnant I was due to give birth in six weeks. Plans were made very quickly.

After I confessed my plight to my mother she went downstairs to the phone. She called my father and asked him to come home early for lunch, and then she called the home for unwed mothers in Dubuque, a city of approximately 30,000 a half hour’s drive down the highway. I figured a place like this would be my fate. I imagined girls who smoked and wore too much mascara. Girls who were mean, perhaps, and way wilder than I was. I needn’t have worried. There was no room at the inn. Imagine, there I was feeling completely alone, and there was so many girls like me that there was not enough room to house us.

I went to stay with a foster family in the deep Iowa countryside. I helped the mom, Sarah, take care of her four kids while her husband was away on National Guard duty. There’s a lot more to this story, but here’s the thing–I was treated with love and kindness.

A Magdalene baby in Iowa

If you want a personal story about the Magdalene laundries, watch this movie. And believe it or not, my family had a connection to the real-life son of Philomena. You can read about him here. My mind was pretty much blown to find out he was adopted into the family of my brother-in-law. A Magdalene laundry baby in Iowa.

What I Spent to Give My Child Up

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What I Spent
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What I Spent to Give My Child Up for Adoption is on Medium.com today.

It’s my response to a piece in the New York Times about the high price tag of adoptions.

And here are a couple more thoughts on the price of giving up a child.

The Birthmother Myth

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Preconceived notions

The birthmother myth. What myth? You already know plenty about birthmothers, right? Or you think you do. But these women and girls who have given up their children might not be quite what you think they are.

Myth busting

I have another piece that was featured on Medium yesterday in their publication called Human Parts. It might surprise you.

Birthmother Myth: A girl can't go to her prom secretly seven and a half months pregnant.
Birthmother Myth:
A girl can’t go to her prom secretly seven and a half months pregnant.

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The Handmaid’s Tale: Episode 2

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A scene from “The Handmaid’s Tale”

Dystopian future/dystopian past

Probably you’ve at least heard of it–“The Handmaid’s Tale.” It seems like everyone is talking about the Hulu series set in the dystopian future. Women with two good ovaries are fated to be surrogates for wives of societal stature who are infertile. For birthmothers this is where the dystopian future meets the dystopia past. Birthmothers have already lived in this world during the Baby Scoop Era and handed over our children to those that society deemed worthy.

I felt this when I read the book in 1989 (while nursing my youngest child,) but watching it come alive on the screen brought a bitterness that I have not tasted for some time.

In the story it’s customary for all the handmaids in the neighborhood to attend a birth. While the adoptive mother in waiting lies on a white sheet in a stylish living room, moaning though fake labor pains with the other wives coaching her, upstairs the real labor progresses with the handmaid who is lucky enough to have conceived a child in this toxic future world. When the birth is imminent, the handmaid leaves the luxurious marriage  bed  for a birthing chair, the privileged wife sitting behind her as if she too is pushing through the labor pains. When the baby is out, it’s the wife who situates herself in bed and receives the baby. The handmaid, (birthmother) is just a few feet away, empty-handed and anguished, longing to hold her child. A sister handmaid gently guides guides the birthmother’s face away from the baby and its new mother. Then the entire room of handmaids converge on her, hovering over her, murmuring their comfort. It’s a wrenching scene, but for those of us who were handmaids of the 60s and 70s, we had no compatriots.

Reality was worse

At the moment of my son’s birth, the intern in the delivery room joyfully asked me if this was my first child. Before I had a chance to utter a syllable, the doctor in charge guffawed. “She’s an unwed mother,” he said. My son was wrapped is a blanket and whisked away.

I suspect most of us gave birth that way. No family present. The baby’s father not allowed anywhere near. No murmured comforts anywhere.

Senior Citizen Birthmother

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Keeping a big secret is as heavy and precarious as this boulder in this installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Senior Citizen Birthmother might seem like a contradiction in terms, but as the linked article points out, women who lost children during the Baby Scoop Era from 1945-1975 are now senior citizens.

I am senior citizen. I am a birthmother. And a grandmother. But, unlike the women most likely to attend this meeting, I am a birthmother who is reunited with her child. I imagine this meeting will probably draw mostly birthmothers (and maybe some birthfathers) who are not reunited.

Senior Citizen Birthmother! Imagine it. You lost your child 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 (!) years ago. You are still carrying this grief. Dragging the long tail of it with you decade after decade. You are lost. Lost to this baby that hasn’t been a baby for decades. And that “baby” is lost to you.

Keeping that in mind, I think this is a good perspective from which to frame a question about adoption. Let’s ask young women who are considering relinquishing children this question. Forty years from now, do you think you will still long for your child? How about in 50 years? In 60 years? 70? And how do you imagine this might impact your life?

10 Things to Say to a Birthmother

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Mother’s Day is a difficult day to be a birthmother. Here are 10 things to say to a birthmother on Mother’s Day.

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The comfort of shared experience is a good gift for a birthmother on Mother’s Day—Available on Amazon .

1. I know you’re a mother, so I’m thinking of you.

2. Is there a way I can bring some comfort to you today?

3. Wanna talk about it?

4. Would you like to go for a walk, or out for some coffee, or maybe see a movie?

5 .Do you ever think of searching for your child? or  How is your reunion going?

6. How do you think your life would be different if you’d kept your baby?

7. What would you do if your son/daughter contacted you?

8. What’s the hardest thing about Mother’s Day for you?

9. What do you think of Birth Mother’s Day? It seems kind of hard to celebrate, right? And do you even like the term birthmother? Do you prefer natural mother, bio mom, or what?

10. I really appreciate your friendship, and I want you to know I’m here for you.

Sunday is Mother’s Day. And there’s also the controversial Birthmother’s Day, “celebrated” the Saturday before Mother’s Day. This addition to the holiday calendar was initiated by a group of Birthmothers in 1990. Even though its heart is in the right place, it does not inspire balloons, flowers, cakes, or presents. If you know a woman who lost a child to adoption, reach out to her on Mother’s Day or the day before. Don’t let her spend the weekend unacknowledged.

Postpartum Depression

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The anthology, “Mothering Through the Darkness”

Postpartum depression afflicts more than 3 million mothers per year.

I have an essay in this anthology, “Mothering Through the Darkness.” The book in general is about the darker side of the postpartum experience. It’s just out from She Writes Press. Postpartum depression was my personal sequel to adoption loss–and was mostly caused by the unresolved grief over losing my son to adoption.

If you know someone who has recently had a baby and things don’t seem quite right, help that person get help. You’ll be helping a mother and a baby. You’ll be helping a whole family. Talk about it. Then do something. The book  would be a great conversation starter and a fine resource.