A Hole in Her Heart
(A personal story)
It was a cool spring morning and two women were both anxiously waiting for a life changing event. One waiting for the phone call that would inform her that her baby had been born, the other waiting to give birth to the child that she would be forbidden to keep. The first woman, full of hope as she looked forward at last to becoming a mother while the other mother sank into deep despair knowing that she would soon loose her baby. Strangers, with only one phone call and a promise between them, their lives would become intricately intertwined forever more.
It was 7:52 a.m. on a foggy May morning when Maryellen gave birth to her baby. Only 15 years old and in 9th grade she had the womb of an adult, the experience of birth and motherhood. “It’s a girl” she heard the doctor say. Then just that quickly, before she could even hold her baby or count her toes, her baby girl was swept out of the room.
Shrouded in shame and secrecy, “Baby Girl B” was born. In a flash her whole world disrupted, separated from her mother, her provider, her protector everything that she knew up until that moment, she laid quietly in the hospital bassinette alone without the familiarity of her mother’s sound and feel, quietly she waited to see what would happen next. Too well accustomed to the unexpected, Baby Girl B already knew a world of hunger and homelessness, of the harsh realities of the world of random sex for love, of not being wanted and of being a mistake. She already knew that survival required taking what you could, when it was there to take, but not expecting it to be there again.
Maryellen and her baby girl had been through a lot in their nine months together, each surviving a terrible ordeal. At 14, Maryellen was only a little girl who looked and acted more like a grown woman than a child. Late at night, she would sneak out her bedroom window to get away from the chaos of her abusive alcoholic home. She and her girlfriends would travel by bus to the USO on Main Street and the docks in Long Beach to visit the sailors. Attractive and maturely built, the sailors paid a lot of attention to her making her feel special, wanted and loved. She needed to be loved and she found love in the arms of the young sailors.
It was soon after her 15th birthday that Maryellen realized that she was pregnant. Fearing her father’s reaction, she decided to run away from home. She choose, Tanya an unsuspecting girlfriend to go along. First they would disguise their appearance; in the bathroom of the local gas station they dyed their hair black. Then set off to the bowling alley where they met a couple of men who were about to drive up North and agreed to take the girls along. Once the men tired of them, they left them in Washington where the girls found work in an apple orchard. During the days they would pick bushels of apples for a few cents. In the evening they would use their earnings to buy cans of tuna and bottles of beer and find a cozy tree to sleep beneath.
Months went by and the authorities found Maryellen and her unborn child and brought them back to L.A. where we were taken to Juvenile Hall. Visibly pregnant by this time, Maryellen’s mother fainted when she laid eyes upon her pregnant daughter. Her father became enraged as he looked at her swollen belly. Fear filled Maryellen as she was taken home and held hostage, confined to the home for the duration of her pregnancy. On occasion she was allowed in the backyard between the sheets that were washed and hung on the close line. She would walk between the hanging sheets and talk to the baby that she was told she would not be able to keep. Maryellen and her unborn baby spent several more months like this and although not an ideal environment, they were together. Baby safe within her womb she was nurtured and growing within.
My Birth and Delivery
On the eve of my delivery, there was no family in the hospital waiting room to greet me, no one looking forward to my arrival, no one to support and congratulate the new mother. Maryellen’s father had already warned her of what he would do to her if she tried to bring the baby home. Her mother had wanted to give the baby to Maryellen’s Aunt and Uncle. But at 15, Maryellen’s maternal instincts were strong and she knew that she would do anything to protect her baby from the abuse that she suffered from that Uncle and so she choose to give her baby to strangers.
Maryellen secretly named her baby Marcella, but that was a secret that she would carry alone. For the rest of her life Baby Girl B’s original identity would be shrouded in secrecy and her birth certificate sealed in shame. Not with her first mother long enough to officially be given a name, she would only be known as “Baby Girl B”.
Across town, Dorian the 23 year old expectant adoptive mother, picked up the phone and heard her attorney say, “The baby’s been born. It’s a girl… but she’s been born with a hole in her heart.” Dorian hung up and waited by the telephoned for her husband Harold to call. At hearing the news, he rushed home to be with his wife. They had been trying to conceive for the five years that they had been married. Dorian desperately wanted to have a baby but was never able to conceive and so in a desperate attempt to become parents, they turned to adoption.
Dorian and Harold decided that they would take the baby, even with a hole in her heart. knowing that they would do whatever was medically possible to fix the baby girl’s heart. They did not understand that they could not fix the hole that would be left in her heart for the rest of her life, for that hole was the symbol of the profound loss that she suffered at birth from the separation from the mother that carried her and birthed her, and there was no way to make that hole disappear.
Late that night, Maryellen laid in her hospital bed, womb and arms empty, alone with no one to comfort her, no one to hold her. She cried and cried and cried, longing for her baby was worse than any pain she had known. A kindly nurse befriended her and brought the baby to her. She held her baby’s sweet little body close, kissed her little neck, smelled her sweet baby smell and whispered in her ear. Secret words between mother and baby. A message was sent; she would love her always, they would be together someday.
That night across town, Dorian and Harold lay in their bed, anticipating picking up their baby in the morning. They were happy, thrilled but also frightened and apprehensive. Would the teenage girl really give them her baby? How would they live with the anxiety until the adoption was finalized? What if the teenager changed her mind and wanted the baby back?
They decided to name the baby Tracy Lynn. It was a name to honor Dorian’s Great-Grandmother and Harold’s beloved Grandmother. They joyously told the family how they were honoring the name of family members, but Dorian’s Grandmother did not approve of the name. She said that that name should be reserved for a child who was born into the family. Dorian and Harold had just had their first experience of feeling like, “only adoptive parents”.
Separation
In the morning they left for the hospital, Dorian, Harold and Dorian’s mother. In and out of the hospital as quickly as they could, they felt more like baby snatchers than new parents. Reeling from the experience, Dorian handed the baby to her mother in the back seat of the car for the ride home. After experiencing Dorian’s anxiety, Baby Girl B relaxed in the arms of her new grandmother. A grandmother who she would share a deep and cherished relationship with for all of their years together.
Maryellen spend that night in the hospital, all alone. Watching other mothers’ nurse their babies, her breasts hurt for her baby. The following day she went home. At 16, unable to tolerate her loss or her home life anymore, she ran away to the streets of Hollywood where she found others who shared her history of abuse and neglect. She found friends there. Sympathetic ears to listen to her story of the loss of her baby. Her new friends were determined to help her find her baby and bring her home, but it would take Maryellen several years to find the strength to begin to look for the baby she secretly named Marcella.
Searching and Longing
Married at age 20, at the insistence of her mother, Maryellen married Ron, a man that she had known for less than a year. Her mother hoped that it would get her daughter off the streets and help her settle down. She did not budge when Maryellen came crying and pleading on her wedding day not to be made to marry.
One night shortly after their marriage, Maryellen began hysterical and uncontrollably crying. In her pain and despair, she told her new husband of her secret and her longing to reclaim her baby. He did not understand and therefore could not offer support to her. He did only what he knew to do, he forbade her and opposed her, and so began the end of their marriage as Maryellen faced her demons alone. Soon thereafter, she left her husband of less than one year and again took to the familiar streets of Hollywood, where people shared her pain and listened to her sorrow.
The search for her baby took off on a regular enough day when she went with her mother and grandmother to the doctor for their annual exams. It had been the family ob-gyn who had arranged the baby’s adoption. Knowing that there was information on the identity of the adoptive parents in her medical file, she waited for the right minute. The doctor had gone into an exam room to see another patient, the nurse left the front desk, no one remained in the waiting room and Maryellen went behind the counter and pulled out her file. Quickly she scanned the pages and there in black and white, were the names of the “prospective adopting couple.” She memorized it. Not a second more, the nurse came back and started to yell at her. The doctor emerged and became irate. Her mother and grandmother began yelling at her. The office was on fire with emotion. Maryellen left with the information imprinted on her mind but she needed more and so late one night, her friends from the streets were able to get into the office and took her file. Now she had all of the information that she needed, she knew where to go to find her baby.
Five years after her baby was born, Maryellen was doing the very thing that Dorian feared; she had come to take her baby. Sitting in a parked car just outside the cul-de-sac on which they lived, Maryellen watched her daughter play on her street with the other children in the neighborhood. To Maryellen, she looked so happy, so well. She had no idea that the little girl was quietly grieving for the mother that she lost or that she secretly feared that it could happen again and worried that she could lose her new family too. She was unaware until many years later that somehow the little girl felt Maryellen watching her and began having a reoccurring nightmare that would follow her well into adulthood. In the dream she’d be playing outside with her friends when approached by a stranger who would try to take her away. In the dream, the little girl was so frightened that she would fly up into the sky to get away from the snatcher. High up above the danger she could watch the children still playing, she could see her house but she did not know how to come down and get back home. Waking from the nightmare she felt frightened still as she quietly lay in her bed.
Maryellen sought help from her grandmother who told her that if she really loved the child, she would not disrupt her life. She told her to leave the past behind and get on with her life. And so she tried once again. Although Maryellen stopped going to the street that her daughter lived on, the little girl’s reoccurring nightmare would follow her well into her childhood.
The Consequences of Profound Loss-How Adoption Has Affected All of Our Lives
Maryellen never did get over the loss. Years of low self esteem, self punishment and unhappiness plagued her and infiltrated into her new family. She suffered secondary infertility (infertility not caused by medical explanation) for the first five years of her marriage from the psychological scarring of her womb. Her emotional reaction to the thought of being pregnant again, prevented her from being able to conceive. She and her husband began adoption proceedings. They were about to have a child placed with them when Maryellen became pregnant. She went on to have two boys and another girl.
The daughter that Maryellen kept, Karen Lynn, was also born in May and she looked very much like me. The birth of another girl and the resemblance between us was far too overwhelming for Maryellen and she avoided handling and caring for her new baby girl. Feeling rejection from her mother throughout her childhood, it was not until I reunited with the family and they learned of my existence that allowed Karen to finally make sense of the relationship that she had with her mother. Much of the damage from those years was too deep to heal as Karen had given up on wanting her mother and was most closely attached to her primary caretaker, her father.
Thoughts & Reflections
Would I have been better off staying with my first mother? Probably not, but the wounds that I suffered as a result of that separation were deep and painful. I now realize that it was not only the separation from my first mother that created my wounds, but it was experiencing them alone, without the help and understanding of my family that seared the depth of the wound. As a clinician, I know that grief that is shared with another human leads to a bonding experience whereas grief that is buried and experienced alone leads to a sense of isolation and being alone in the world.
A poem that I use in my practice that really speaks to me and to many of those whose lives have been touched by adoption is:
The Loss That Is Forever
By Maxine Harris
When a tree is struck by lightning
If it survives, it’s growth is altered
A knot may form where the lighting hit.
The growth on one side of the tree may be more vigorous than on another side,
The shape of the tree may change.
An interesting twist or curious split
has replaced what might have otherwise been a straight line.
The tree flourishes;
It bears fruit,
Provides shade,
becomes a home to birds and squirrels.
It is not the same tree it would have been had there not been a lightning storm,
But some say it is more interesting this way.
Few, can even remember,
the event that changed its shape forever.
I love this poem because it says to me that had I not been relinquished and adopted at birth, had I been raised by my birthmother, I would have been a different person. Perhaps less wounded, perhaps not, but different. I am who I am and what I am today as a result of my earliest experiences. Over the years I have learned to embrace those differences and my vulnerabilities. I am no longer ashamed of my being adopted and of the sensitivities that resulted. I now surround myself with the kind of love and understanding that help me feel more loveable and worthy and makes me feel more whole and complete.
I was adopted in the “closed adoption system," which means that at the time of my adoption social workers were teaching parents to tell their children early on that they were adopted. This thinking came out of earlier years where professionals didn’t believe that parents had to tell their children at all. They thought that if a child was adopted at birth that they would not remember the event and therefore there was no reason to tell them.
As a profession, we have discovered that it was not in the “telling” that makes the impact, but the actually experience of being separated from one’s mothers and being handed over to strangers. We now know that this experience and not the telling of the experience is where the wounding occurred and that the memory of that event is stored in a somatic, a cellular level.
As a profession, we have also learned that family secrets have a way of coming out and destroying relationships and that inevitably a person discovers that they were adopted, only to feel betrayed by the very people, parents, who they trusted.
In my family, we never talked about adoption. I knew that the discussion hurt my mother. I didn’t want to hurt her and I feared that if I did she too wouldn’t love me anymore, and then maybe she too wouldn’t want me anymore. Even though I didn’t talk about what was going on inside of me, I was suffering, and I was doing it alone. Grieving, confused, feeling abandoned, unworthy and unlovable, trashed and left behind, I felt all alone in the world. The only place to let out those feelings was alone in the shower as the sound of the water drowned out the sound of my tears or with my dog, my best friend and my safest emotional connection.
As an adult I worked hard to figure out and understand those feelings. I began to understand that what happened to me at birth, being taken from my mother and never having an opportunity to grieve that loss, or understand the loss, had a tremendous impact on my sense of worth, lovability, security and trust.
Today, I am able to embrace all of who I am because I have the information to do so. My parents are my parents and nothing can or will ever change that. My first mother and my half siblings and their children are important connections that allow me to feel whole and complete.
I still suffer from the years that I was separated from my first mother and from the years of wondering if she was real or alive, if she ever thought of me, or if I might be passing her on the streets. Despite being reunited with my birth family, I have no lineage. My lineage stops at my birthmother. I do not want to be related to the people who abused my birthmother and who were the ones who forced her to leave me. I do not carry their legacy. My legal lineage (if there is such a thing) stops at my adoptive grandparents. I do not own their lineage. I do not feel connected to it. It is not mine yet they talked about it as though it was, causing me to feel like an imposter in my family.
A Family Legacy Of Adoption
My birthmother’s suffered a five year period of infertility which was a direct result of the trauma she sustained as a result of relinquishing me. It’s called secondary infertility. It can be pervasive and lifelong for many women. Fortunately my birthmother was able to finally conceive and give birth to three more children. Sadly in 2004, she lost her first born son. At 40 years of age, his once athletic body betrayed him after being confined to a wheelchair for nearly 20 years following a spinal injury. He passed away on the 16th anniversary of the day that I found my birthmother. For me the loss of Keith was completely intertwined with my deep grief for my birthmother who had already known and grieved the loss of one child and now had lost the precious first child that she was allowed to keep.
My birthmother’s older brother was 17 years old when my birthmother was pregnant with me. He enlisted in the service around the time of my relinquishment. Soon thereafter he impregnated a girl he was dating. He did not want to marry her. She put the child up for adoption and he never saw the baby, a boy. He is still missing from our family.
My birth mother’s youngest sister was 9 years old at the time of my relinquishment. Although she was never told of my birth and relinquishment, she somehow learned that adoption was an option for an unplanned pregnancy and when she and her husband of twelve years and three children split up their marriage, she became pregnant and relinquished the baby. That child, a boy is also still missing from our family.
My birthmother’s middle sister suffered from infertility and is the adoptive mother of two children. Sadly her oldest child died of a heart attack at the age of 39. His birthmother does not know.
My birth sister Karen, became pregnant and an unwed mother at the age of 20. At the time she still did not know of me or of the secret that her mother was keeping. I often wonder what it was like for my birthmother, who was her birthing coach, to be helping her daughter keep her baby when her own secret was still so buried. Karen kept her baby and raised her as single mother. Her daughter has grown up never knowing her natural father.
Thirteen years earlier, I too became pregnant and an unwed mother at the age of 20. My son’s father also left me when I was pregnant. He said that he was not prepared to become a father and so he took no responsibility for the pregnancy or for his son. I was determined not to let happen to my child what had happened to me. I would undo my history by giving birth to my son and taking care of him by myself. I did not realize at the time that I would be inflicting the same losses upon my son as he and I would never know our biological fathers.
For me though, mere words cannot describe the joy and the healing that the birth of my son brought to me. My pregnancy was filled with joy and love and connection. His birth brought me the first biological relative that I had ever seen. He was a joy to raise and a joy to watch grown into a beautiful man, husband and father. Today I am the proud doting grandmother of two biologically related grandsons. My birth and adoptive families live on in these precious children as they are products of both aspects of who I am.
Mothers and Their Adopted Daughters
Several years ago I lost my adoptive mother. She was only 74 years old, young for many people, but unfortunately too many of her years were spent not properly taking care of herself. In the spring of 2004 she became bedridden. I cared for her along with a village of people that helped us to keep her at home and to make her days as rich and comfortable as they could be.
The last months that my mother and I had together helped us heal the wounds of adoption that had been ever present in our relationship. Sadly she had always been terribly insecure about the fact that another woman gave birth to me. Despite the fact that I was always a loyal, loving and devoted daughter, she remained hopelessly angry, jealous and worried about my connection to another mother. My adoptive status created secrecy and shame for us which adversely impacted our relationship.
Then a turning point happened, she was dying. During the last months of her life, I had the opportunity to feel and to tell my mother, and she could hear and take in, what she meant to me, how much I loved her, my family and my life. I had the opportunity to share with her how important she was to me and how I blossomed and became the woman that I am by being raised by her and my father. Taking this in brought great comfort and peace to her and to me.
My mother’s passing brought us closer together. It allowed me to put down the wall that I had erected between us. It allowed her to put down the sword that she used when she felt threatened. It also brought new understanding of the importance we had in one another lives and how we impacted one another. Days after her passing I looked in the mirror and for the first time I saw my mother in me. It wasn’t in my features or my coloring or my height, but it was there. My mother was there in my style, my taste in things, my flair for fashion, the way I put on my makeup… I loved being able to see her in me. I loved feeling the connection between us.
I found the experience of caring for and losing my mother incredibly intense and full of emotion. A huge transformational experience occurred and I was left forever changed. Even though I was losing my mother, I was able to have her in a whole new way. I felt resolved with the issues that I struggled against with for so many years. I emerged from the experience feeling complete and at peace. I am grateful for this.
Despite the fact that it had been many years since my mother took care of me and many more that I took care of her, I miss her. I think that I will grieve her for a very long time and probably differently though the years as life brings me events that I want to share with her. It is an adulation of just how much she meant to me.
I have come to understand, in a new way, that deep and powerful emotional experiences have the power to “move us” and to change us. I share my personal experience with you because I believe that as a community of adoption, we are all still learning from one another. My hope is that sharing this inspires you all to work toward this type of resolve, not through loss, but though love, understanding and the deep and sometimes tough emotional experiences inherent in being a family brought together by adoption. I hope that this will be beneficial for your personal growth.
When your heart speaks, take good notes.
Judith Campbel
copywrite 2010