Haunted by Loss: My friend's adoption story

My book reading at the Pequot Museum

At lunch with a friend, as we ate our enchiladas, our discussion veered to my collecting stories for the new anthology "Two Worlds."  I was just starting to say something about birth psychology and the impact trauma on a newborn when my friend started to tell me how she lost a baby to adoption when she was a young woman.  I never knew this; suddenly I could not stop my eyes from filling with tears.
Even with our friends, we might not realize what are or were their defining moments. As she spoke, I could see how her loss defined her entire 50+ years.  (I know every story has the power to heal the person who tells it and the one who hears it.)

I was so very glad she told me about an adoption conference in Boston she attended years ago and how the women broke off into groups. She chose the group discussing women who relinquished. The facilitator closed the door and asked the women to raise their hands if they had lost a child to adoption. All hands went up.  Some of the women had never told a living soul what had happened. (Shame can silence you this way.)
One woman in her 70s was so overcome with grief, she wept in my friend's arms.  One young woman, a college student who was truly stunning, described herself as useless and ugly; she shared her deep remorse over her decision to give up her baby. (She didn't see it was threatening her future.) 
It was like this group gave the women the chance to see how their loss was deeply affecting their self-esteem. They had been shamed and even isolated by their decision. (Many were forced by their family or society pressure.) This group offered each woman time to share her experience, which turned out to be very healing for my friend.  (Support groups are essential but sadly, not everyone knows this.)

I've heard adoptees describe their isolation, too. I know adoption is an isolating experience for both mother and child; adoption separates us from each other. (With sealed records, our isolation was meant to be permanent, made by laws and expected by the adoption industry.)
As my friend was recalling this experience, I felt I was in the room as these women told of their unspeakable pain. I imagined my own mother Helen not being able to share her loss with anyone. (I wish I had had the chance to tell her I forgave her years ago.)

Finally my friend shared with me how she'd found her daughter. I was expecting a happy ending and a good reunion story. Sadly this didn't happen for them. My friend wrote her daughter a letter and hoped she was doing well. Her daughter wrote back she was doing fine but didn't open any door for a reunion. It ended before it began. (My friend sent a few birthday cards over the years but there was no response.)
As stunned as I was to hear this, I do know some adoptees are still in fear of meeting their first mothers. It could be the adoptees don't see the point of meeting birth parents or they don't want to hurt or disappoint their adoptive parents. (I encourage everyone to have reunion, to meet as many family members as soon as it's possible.)
My friend told me she read my memoir One Small Sacrifice to get an understanding of what an adoptee goes through.  If she never meets her daughter, at least she knows its possible to get through it and she knows I survived my own low self-esteem, slowly over years.
Weeks later, I am still haunted by my friend's loss of her daughter and the loss of their reunion.
My friend never had another child. 
I still feel her pain.

Jennifer Lauck on how her birth mother's sexual history affected her own

This incredible interview with Jennifer Lauck, author of FOUND, struck a chord with me. Please read it:
http://www.examiner.com/open-adoption-in-national/jennifer-lauck-on-how-her-birth-mother-s-sexual-history-affected-her-own

Excerpt:
There has been a belief that the moment a child is taken from her original mother she ceases being that woman's child. This is one of the reasons many want to adopt a baby rather than an older child. They believe they are getting a "blank slate." Many people will go as far as to adopt from far away lands--as far away as possible -- so that they get the "blank slate" and as a bonus eliminate the chance that the original mother will reappear and take away what supposedly belongs to the adoptive parent -- the child, the relationship, the connection, the concept of family and so on. There is great ignorance in this thinking--similar to the thinking years ago that babies don't feel pain and thus were operated on without the mercy of anesthesia or pain blockers. Of course, science has now shown us otherwise. Babies feel pain. And you cannot stop a child from being connected to the original mother. Yes, you can take legal measures, you can take geographic measures, but you cannot change the fact of the biological link.
To further expand on this, consider this remarkable passage from Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map: "women carry fetal cells from all the babies they have carried. Crossing the defensive boundaries of our immune system and mixing with our own cells, the fetal cells circulate in the mother's bloodstream for decades after each birth. The body does not tolerate foreign cells, which trigger illness and rejection. But a mother's body incorporates into her own the cells of her children as if they recognize each other. This fantastic melding of two selves, mother and child is called microchimerism....the mother's cells are also carried in the child. During gestation, maternal cells slip through the barriers of defense and join her child's cells as they pulse through his veins...of course the implications are stunning. Mother and child do not fully separate at birth. We do not lose each other at that moment of severance."

As I wrote in my memoir One Small Sacrifice, the new science of birth psychology will forever change the way the world views adoption and its impact.
There are follow-up interviews with Jennifer at that website, a virtual blog tour - so please read them, too... Trace