Healing

Today is my eighth year anniversary blogging on WordPress. It is also National Pi Day.

A lot has happened in those eight years. Especially over the last year, where we have seen much destruction of life in a literal sense and in the ways we have treated each other and ourselves.

Today, as I was listening to a song, “When Angels Rise” by Helen Jane Long, it made me wonder.

How are our angels coping with all the deaths, destruction, hate, injustice, sadness, grief, and depression in humanity on earth? This last year has been a difficult time for so many, even those who have not experienced mental health issues in the past. For some of us, it only increases our need and ability to cope with an already challenging past.

I belong to a select group of birth mothers, mothers of loss, or sisters of circumstance, who either relinquished our parental rights by choice, coercion, or force because of a strict, condescending society.  

Each year, during Women’s History Month, I reflect on how this life changing event still permeates into modern day culture; resurfacing, reshaping, oftentimes masking the hidden lifelong trauma to those directly impacted.

The path to healing varies for each of us.

Most of us have a grid that spikes up and down in an erratic diagram, charting upward and downward, never fully reaching our full potential of healing. However, hitting rock bottom seems to be an easy feat. It is not because we don’t wish to heal.

I can only speak for myself.

My son and I had a talk yesterday. He asked me if I felt that maybe my choice to relinquish has kept me from dating, marrying, buying a home, subconciouisly feeling these events will make me feel as if I am “moving on” with life? He made a great point. I am sure there is validity to the concept.

Does life stop for some mothers after relinquishment?

I want so much to fully heal from that moment, that choice that changed my life forever and altered my course in a most profound way. I have mourned and suffered, been angry and wounded, felt ashamed and outcast. But I don’t want to remain angry and bitter for the rest of my life.

While I have received immeasurable support from other mothers, even from mothers who have not shared this experience, I have also seen other mothers in this unique group express condescending tones to some mothers, depending on what generation our loss occurred, or whether we had an open or closed adoption.

Open adoption has also created yet another social deviation of mothers who try to critique, diminish or rate open adoption to another person’s experience or challenge whose adoption is more open or valid. It is another form of valuing females and assigning them into good or bad girls categories again. Good girls have lifelong open adoptions with their children. Bad girls don’t. It is another façade that only continues to minimize the worth and significance of females.

We have society judging us, social workers judging us, our families judging us, other mothers judging us, adoptive parents judging us, and sometimes even adoptees judging us. We get painted with a broad brush. And the burden can be too heavy to bear at times. But I continue to advocate for truth, for the mothers, and for the adoptees. 

I refuse to allow the ghost of my past to continue to haunt me in my future.  There have been times when I had to fight for my life. I wake up each day and fight like hell. I am still here, still standing. I refuse to allow this life changing event to keep me bitter for the rest of my life. I refuse to allow others to keep me from healing. Because deep within, as a child of God, I know I deserve healing.

We may have been abandoned in our time of need, but we can still rise and heal.

We may have been labeled with a scarlet letter, but we can still rise and heal.

We may have been tossed away like a piece of trash, but we can still rise and heal.

We may have been reduced to a mindless child, but we can still rise and heal.

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. – Carlos Castaneda

I chose to accept that this experience has given me the unique ability to empathize with others, especially those who grieve.

One of the wonderful things about support groups, like AA, is we each have this shared experience. And while we can never fully understand someone’s path, whether they had one moment that change their course in life, or whether there were many experiences that changed their course, causing them to wander like a lost soul, we can still support them in their path to recovery and healing.

Our angels are with us.  When we hurt, they hurt, when we cry, they cry, when we feel hopeless and alone, they are with us holding us until we can once again see our worth and value, until we can feel wholesome, until our light within can shine, if only just a glimmer, knowing that as long as we still have a spark within, there is still hope, and hope brings healing.