Surely I am not the only one in this private hell.
Are my daughter’s parents good to her ? How is she ? Who does she look like ? Is she blonde like me ? Does she have my flat feet and her father’s blue eyes ?
~ some thoughts from A Hole in My Heart by Lorraine Dusky
When my mom tried and failed to learn about her own origins, since she was adopted as a very young child, she said to me once “As a mother, I would want to know what happened to my child.”
And that is a valid need in a mother who has relinquished her child for adoption.
Even if one didn’t do that but life changed the custody circumstances, I know myself, that when I would try to buy a birthday card for my daughter, so much of what it said simply wasn’t true of our experiences as a mother and a daughter who spent that childhood separated.
I didn’t have any role models for how to be an absentee mother during the years that was my involuntary experience.
Missing Mom 