Torn Apart

I was really out of it when my daughter was born. Thankfully, though I had a c-section with each of my sons, I was at least awake from the very first moments they drew a breath.

The feeling of becoming a mother was amazing. I’m certain it was the same for both of my original grandmothers who had months with each of my parents before their first born child was taken from them. I’m certain my own mother experienced the same amazing effect – a kind of euphoria that comes with giving birth to a new human being.

Everything changes for a woman when she becomes a mother. Everything is taken away when she loses her child. I struggled for years to come to terms with not raising my daughter. I don’t know if I have fully overcome the feeling of not being there for her as she was growing up. For years, I could not find a commercial birthday card that could express what our actual relationship was like.

I continue to progress in tiny steps but I don’t think I will ever forgive myself, even if I know all the reasons why. So, I can only imagine the pain my grandmothers felt or my sister feels. It is like not feeling worthy of having one’s own child. It is horrible.

Stability Matters

In contemplating how myself and both of my sisters lost custody of our children in a variety of ways, I realize that the main factor was instability and a lack of financial resources.

Though our parents were technically “good” parents, there was this attitude that once we were mature and more especially, once we married and had children, even if our marriages collapsed – we were on our own. Our mother even counseled one of my sisters to give up her daughter rather than face an indefinite period of time when they might have to support the two of them. The other sister simply accepted adoption as a reasonable solution to an inconvenient conception since both of our parents were adoptees.

Of course, we had no idea at the time of the wounds that separating any child from their natural mother, by whatever means, causes in a child. I also realize that many single mothers somehow manage to survive parenting without losing their children. I admire their fierce determination.

Today, is my oldest son’s 18th birthday. I may have spent the rest of my life accepting that my self and my sisters were somehow defective if I hadn’t met my second husband 30 years ago.

My parents were quick to recognize the stability that living with him brought into my own life and were eager to “give me away” in marriage. They were relieved to no longer have to worry about me. My sisters have not been as fortunate.

I have been in my son’s life almost every minute of every day since he snuggled into my womb, then fed at my breast. I now know it was the lack of stability and not that I was inherently defective that kept me from raising my oldest child, my beautiful daughter.

What’s Love Got To Do With It

This may be a bit off topic but this morning I was contemplating that when I was yet younger than my son who will turn 18 at the end of this month, I had already married. Inconceivable to me now. Today I thought – what were my parents thinking ? We had all the trappings – church wedding, cake, reception – totally traditional.

So I thought – they were afraid I would end up pregnant like my mom ended pregnant with me before she married. They wanted to break the cycle. And I did. Then, I got pregnant by the end of the year I had married. It was intentional and neither myself nor my ex-husband regret having our daughter. As he said to me not all that long ago – “We got lucky.” Even though our marriage failed.

I cannot imagine my son being expected to support his family and be independent at the age he is now. But we were expected to do that very thing. My parents had been expected to do that as well – my dad 18 and my mom 16. Having grown up middle class, not privileged but not in abject poverty, fed on the illusions TV portrayed to me – I had unrealistic expectations and expected too much of us.

It’s no wonder the marriage failed. When I wanted a divorce, my ex-husband told me he would never pay a cent of child support to me. That proved to be true as well. What happened is – he ended up supporting her through most of her childhood, when as a single mom, I could not. I wasn’t going to fight with him in court to get support out of him for the rest of our lives as “parents”. But I paid a high price – as I wasn’t able to raise my own child, to be there for her everyday, and it was not without suffering on the part of my daughter as well.