Tag: Siblings

Withholding Sibling Contact

Though this happens all too often, it is generally believed that sibling relationships matter and that they are very important when a family has been fractured. So, today’s story is heart concerning.

I am an adoptive parent of 2 former foster care youths. They are not related to one another. The youngest just turned 5. When we were in the process of adopting her, the social worker told us she had other (half) siblings that were also in the system and about to be adopted with another sibling of theirs. We asked about any visits they had and the social worker said “Oh, they don’t even know about her. We never did any visits or anything, it doesn’t matter, they are going to be adopted to another family with their other younger half brother.” I’m not in agreement about them not needing to know.

Eventually, I was able to get their first names and the name of their other sibling. I did some internet digging, their names aren’t super common, so I literally googled their first names. This led me to an obituary that had them listed as grandchildren. Then, I jumped on social media and looked up the names of the children listed and came across a public Instagram account belonging to the adoptive father. He had some photos of the kids with their names, from when they first came into his home.

I sat on it for a bit but decided to reach out via direct message. I introduced myself and acknowledged this may come across as a strange message and mentioned that I wasn’t sure if they were aware of their sister’s existence (there’s an additional sibling now too). I said I’d like to connect the kids, if possible. I got a response that was just “please call me” with the phone number. I was in the middle of bedtime, so I said I’d message when I was done and if it wasn’t too late for them (different time zones), I’d call.

So I call, it’s a bit late, but they insisted. It was an odd call for a number of reasons. He did most of the talking. It was a 90 minute call. He did make a point of telling me that it’s not that he doesn’t think their other siblings aren’t important but that they continuously emphasize that the siblings they now live with are their “real” siblings and the only ones that really matter. I was a bit surprised at the amount of negative things he shared about them (these poor kids have been through a lot). As this was a first meeting, it felt awkward having him kind of airing their dirty laundry so-to-speak.

He kept saying he had to take back the reigns from the oldest, she had always acted like a mother hen, but he’s the parent and he’s in charge now. He also said they had some contact with another sibling (unrelated to our daughter), but they cut it off because it seemed like any time they had any reminder of anyone from their past, they would “all just act like stupid little jerks.”…Wow.

One thing I did find out was, they had almost zero information on the dad or any photos. I don’t have a ton of info, but the basics, name, birthday, home town and I do have some photos, so I agreed to share them and sent them over after the call.

It was pretty obvious from the conversation that he didn’t think it was a good idea for any contact now between the kids. What caught me off guard was the message I received the next morning…I realize I may be reading into this. But this is the response I got – Right now is not the right time for my kids to see or even interact with their younger sister. Pleases respect our privacy. The siblings still need to get on track and work through their own trauma. We can revisit this in 5 years (or more) when I think they are ready.

I agree his kids need to be his number one priority. But I wonder if denying any contact between the siblings for 5 or more years will have negative impact. In 5 years, my daughter will be 10, his kids will be 14 and 16. I’m also wondering how to best approach this with my daughter, as our older child does have a relationship with her brothers. She knows their names, she knows they exist, she’s seen like the 2 pictures I got from his social media, but it sounds like that’s going to be the end of the road for a while.

(We are supposed to start working with a trauma informed adoption competent therapist in the next few months but haven’t started yet as we’ve been on the wait list. We had someone else lined up but we didn’t continue with that one due to her stating how lucky they were to be adopted into our family.)

I’m curious about the experiences from both angles. Both if your adoptive parent withheld sibling contact and family information and from those that wanted it but were blocked by your sibling’s adoptive parents. The man has since either deleted his Instagram or has blocked me.

An adoptee that is also a former foster care youth responded – Reading this has made me so mad. I find it disgusting that people think it’s acceptable to adopt children and play god with their lives and determine what they have a right to know ABOUT THEMSELVES.

I would be honest and open with your little one from the get go. She has siblings, they live X with X, unfortunately, she can’t have contact right now due to circumstances beyond your control but you are trying to establish contact.

I would look to contact the adoption agency that placed them, try and contact them and have a formal attempt at establishing contact via those channels.

I’d also be looking at getting damages/compensation from Child Protective Services for not considering/proper management of placement. Not establishing sibling relationships and creating additional trauma.

I had 7 sibling who went in to care with me, and was only allowed contact with one. By the time I was 16, I had messaged them all on Facebook and went through a horrible and traumatic time.

I also discovered in my twenties I have a further 3 siblings who were in care that I don’t know the names or details about, and it makes me angry and sick everyday that there are people walking around and I don’t get to know them because of someone else’s selfish decisions.

That man is going to cause those children UNTOLD damage and based on the things you’ve shared, it’ll be a miracle if they’re still even with him, by the time they are 16.

Secrets No Longer

You won’t be able to access this story by LINK>Mindy Stern if you are not some level of “member” at Medium. I no longer have a paid membership but they allow me a few stories per month and I am careful not to use them all. You can still read what Mindy writes about adoption at her website linked above. I will simply excerpt some of the LINK>Medium – story “I Found My Father On The Internet” here.

It begins with her revealing – Two days earlier, I found my biological father and two half-sisters on the internet: pictures, addresses, phone numbers, Facebook profiles. My cell phone vibrated. Holy shit. It was the number I called two days earlier.

“Oh my god, its him,” I said to my daughter relaxing on my bed. “Pick it up!” I picked up my phone and my daughter picked up hers and opened her camera to video, aimed it at me and hit record. I found some words to say out loud.

“Hi yes, thanks so much for calling me back. So, you knew my mother, Gloria Gerwin?”

“Yes, of course I remember Gloria,” said this stranger on the other end. I covered my mouth and fell to my knees.

It’s him. I know it’s him.

Two weeks later in Madrid, she notes –  let me tell you, until you have spent 26 fucking years searching for your father and he says, “I would have raised you if I knew,” you do not know your capacity to be moved.

She writes about viewing – The Garden Of Earthly Delights (in Madrid, which) tells the story of human’s struggle with morality. It admonishes the sin of lust and celebrates the joy of pleasure. It is fear and abandon; seeking and finding; risk and failure; creation and destruction. It is humanity in all its flawed magnificence and it is the story of life. In its complex beauty, I saw myself and my long, painful search for healing.

And back to how she found her father – I hadn’t checked my Ancestry account in months. My DNA had been there for a decade, and for a decade I got nothing more than distant cousins. No one who could help me find my father so I stopped checking it. But for some reason, that Sunday morning, I decided to check my account.

I had a 1st-to-2nd cousin match. Henry Minis. He had been there for six months. With trembling hands, I Googled his name, then searched his Facebook friends for someone who looked like me. I didn’t find that face or blue eyes or brown hair like mine, but I discovered everyone with the last name Minis lived in Savannah so I Googled “Minis family Savannah” and then, well.

The Minis family were the first settlers of Savannah, Jews like me, and the world wide web had a lot of information about them. Two hours after I began sleuthing, I found him. My first father. My God, I have younger sisters who look just like me.

I spent the day anxiously scouring the web, texting friends, asking what to do. Call? Write a letter? Reach out to my sisters first? My birthmother died before I found her, I didn’t have to contend with these questions or anxieties, didn’t have to strategize my introduction like it was the war plan of a conquering army. But now there were real live humans who might tell me to fuck off or might tell me hello, welcome to the family. So now, every choice felt like life or death, war or peace.

Late that afternoon — evening on his east coast — I impulsively called him. I left a duplicitous message on his voice mail. “Hi, this is Mindy Stern, my mother was Gloria Gerwin, she passed away, I found your name in her papers. I’m writing a book about her and wondering if you remember her, you might share your memories.”

The following day, I reached out to my sisters, messaged them on Facebook. I told them I believed their father was mine too, that I didn’t think he knew. My mother died not telling anyone about me, I wanted nothing more than health information and to know where and who I came from. I made all my social media public so they could see I was not a serial killer. I was a respectable human being any right-minded person would want to know.

Adoptees have to explain, qualify, reassure and beg for mercy from strangers we hope will understand our need and want and treat us with dignity.

That night, my sisters responded. They said they were shocked but thrilled, and open to a relationship. We corresponded for hours, exchanging family photos and life stories. Their kindness filled my soul like a prayer sung loud in a crowded church. We all agreed that Hal would never respond to the bananas message I left him.

And then he did. He denied having sex with my mother. Then, I said – DNA.

He remembered their nights together and said yes, I must be your father. He asked what I wanted. I assured him nothing more than information. He was so kind. I then told him I made contact with his daughters. He then said mean and angry words. He told me because I did that, I may never hear from him again.

My daughter stopped recording when she saw my face shift to despair. I hung up and sobbed. I then composed myself, got my shit together. I reminded myself I am an imperfect human and maybe I made a mistake. Or maybe I didn’t. But I was okay either way. I had a loving family and fulfilling life and fuck, I hated having to do this. This reaching out. This risking and falling.

Two hours later, as I pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store and blue skies shone through my windshield, my phone vibrated again and with it my body. I answered his call on the first ring and he said he was sorry. He told me he was just shocked. “If I knew, I would have raised you.” Three hours later we hung up.

My story is one of hope and perseverance. My story is also one of great grief, profound emptiness, and the struggle to reconcile with what could have been. Who would I be if I grew up knowing who I looked like or why I love writing or have fat toes and a genetic predisposition to psoriasis and anxiety? Who would I be if my life was defined by answers rather than questions? I don’t know — can’t know — all I know is this:

We are here, in this Garden of Earthly Delights, to find a way to embrace the contradiction, to embrace our contrasting parts, to accept our beauty and ugliness and the beauty and ugliness of humankind.

We are not here to compartmentalize, although we do that so well. We are here to overcome. To thrive, grow and flourish. To love and to mourn. To stick it out as best we can, having some fun and debauchery along the way.

blogger’s note – I share her story because I’ve had similar experiences hunting down my own genetic relations. It can be fearful and exciting – all at the same time.

You Can Go Slow

Today’s story/question –

I just learned in the past couple months that I have an older sibling that was placed for adoption a decade before I was born. My mom was assaulted as a teenager and decided on adoption. My sibling reached out to our mom earlier this year and they have been in touch since. I’ve recently started emailing them as well and we are all planning to meet in person at the end of the summer.

My heart breaks for my mom going through an assault and loss of her child, my older sibling, and selfishly for myself that I missed out on having an older sibling all of these years.

I am curious if anyone who has gone through a reunion 40+ years after an adoption and specifically a sibling reunion has any recommendations on how to proceed. I want to treat carefully as I realize this experience is likely extremely emotional for my mom and sibling.

Blogger’s note – because both of my parents were adoptees, who died knowing next to nothing about their origins, I have been (in effect) on my own kind of “reunion” journey, as I was able to learn who my original grandparents were, with genetic cousins and one aunt.

I found this response useful –

I reunited with my siblings before my biological parents, my brother specifically who was kept by my biological mom and my biological sister through my biological dad who was also adopted out. Just go slow and don’t force it. I talk to my brother through text on holidays but I talk to my sister all the time. She become a friend and an actual sibling. And I’m 32 and this happened recently. Just don’t push and find small things to connect on. My sister and I both connect over our left leaning politics.

No Tummy Mummy Crap

One of the fastest ways to trigger adoptees as an adoptive parent is to refer to their first mother as a “tummy mommy” or some similar variation, as in the book cover image here. Today’s opening comment reads – “I have two children both adopted through foster care. My son is 4 1/2 and my daughter is 2. I’ve had conversations with my 4 1/2 yo about his tummy mommy and he’s seen pics of her.”

Not surprisingly the first comments were – “Please get rid of the phrase tummy mommy.” Followed by “Yes please leave off that crap. It’s so gross.” “It reduces his mother to nothing more than an incubator.” Or this, somewhat crude comparison but totally on point – “If you wouldn’t refer to your adopted children’s father as dong daddy, or penis papa, then don’t refer to their mother as a tummy mummy.” An adoptive mother answers the question – “What if the mother wants to be called tummy mommy?” with this – “I’d tell her that I want them to know that I see her as more than that and that I want her kids to as well.”

From the LINK>Lavender Luz Opinion Poll – Some don’t like the term – either because it is anatomically inaccurate or it is reductive of the first mom. Some like “first mother” because it honors the mothering that was done from conception until placement. I have personally struggled with “first mother” as opposed to “birth mother” but this explanation has won me over to “first mother” from now on.

Another person expressed her perspectives – I can’t think of a single woman who would appreciate being known as “tummy mummy”.

My objections are threefold:
1. It diminishes the woman’s motherhood. Like it or not, she is a mother, period, not just one in the tummy (see how ridiculous this sounds when you run with it).
2. It implies that the other woman carried the child for the adoptive parents. This is untrue unless it’s a surrogacy situation. Of course, pre-birth matching may encourage this view (witness people talking about “our birthmother”), but this only exposes the manipulation inherent in pre-birth matching. A woman’s child is her child, until she makes the decision to surrender – and even then, she is still a mother.
3. It could be potentially confusing to the adopted child’s understanding of his or her other family, heritage, siblings, and so forth. What is the important thing, that he grew in someone’s tummy or that he is genetically connected to the other family? How is this phrase actually used? “You grew in her tummy but we’re your parents”? Original family isn’t reflected in this phrase, which seems intent on removing all important connections and substituting them with a biological detail that isn’t even accurate. Who needs a phrase like this, anyway?

Heck, they used to claim that kids with two parents of the same sex would be totally confused as well, and it simply isn’t the case. Confusion tends to be tossed around when people don’t like the paradigm shift. In the phrase “tummy mummy” I can’t help but hear the adoptive parent hanging onto her status as real. No need to do that. Everyone is real, even when we’re absent or not perfect (which is all of us).

I Love Reunion Stories

From the LINK>BBC – Adoption: Son finally meets birth mum after 58 years.

Timothy Welch was only six weeks old when he was separated from his birth mother, June Mary Phelps, who was 18 at the time. He describes his adoptive parents reasons – “They couldn’t have their own children so they started the adoption process and when they were 36 they adopted me.” Timothy described his life with his adoptive parents as “really happy”, and never considered trying to find his birth mother until his adoptive parents died: Bill in 2018 and Eunicé in 2020.

As an adoptive child you always think about researching your birth family. A lot of it goes back to identity as a person over the years. He admits, “I wondered who I was, certain personality traits that were different from my adoptive family.”

Yately Haven in Hampshire was a mother and baby home run by the Baptist Church. It is where Timothy was born. The Haven was open from 1945 until 1970. Almost 1,800 babies were born there. Timothy was able to get a copy of his original birth certificate. It contained his birth mother’s full name, date and place of birth. A search angel was able to use voter registration rolls and with that information, Timothy was able to find his mother’s current husband, Michael Mortimer. Timothy gave Mr Mortimer his email, which he passed on to Timothy’s brothers and they arranged a day to meet up in London. Timothy says of his brothers, “They are both wonderful men – kind, thoughtful and reflective. I feel very fortunate to have met them at this stage of our lives and am going to enjoy getting to know them and their respective families very much.”

He says of then meeting his birth mother – “It was emotional but at the same time it felt natural. We spoke about a variety of things but the part I enjoyed the most was just looking at her and taking in the person that she is.” He was also able to learn about his birth father – Hedayat Mamagan Zardy, an Iranian Muslim. The couple had a fleeting romance and loved dancing in Oxford.

Some adoptees, like my dad, are afraid to know where they came from. My mom yearned to. Reading stories like this make me wonder how they would have felt, if they had the option to experience a reunion. Since they have both passed away, I can only choose to believe that reunion took place in heaven.

Putting A GenZ Adoptee in Congress

Maxwell was adopted as an infant by a special education teacher, who migrated to the United States in the Freedom Flights, and a musician. The Freedom Flights were the largest airborne refugee operation in American history and operated between 1965 and 1973 from Cuba to Miami, twice daily, 5 days per week.

He was born in Orlando, Florida. His original mother was caught in a cycle of drugs, crime, and violence – while pregnant. She didn’t have healthcare and wasn’t able to see a doctor. She put him up for adoption because she would not be able to raise him. He reconnected with his birth mother in June 2021.

He said, “What changed everything for me was connecting with my biological mother, learning about her story, learning about the things she had been through.” He learned he has multiple siblings (and she wasn’t able to raise another child).

His grandmother, Yeya, came to the USA in the 60s with only a few clothes and without any money. His grandmother had to work 70 hours per week under harsh conditions. He was close to her and only a few days ago, the family buried her.

Frost says to have a better democracy, there should be more poor and working-class candidates in the political system. He became politically active early in his life organizing with March for Our Lives and not surprisingly better gun control regulations are among his most heartfelt issues. He also cares about climate change and voting issues. He notes that “The biggest generational divide isn’t the issues – it’s the urgency.”

How To Answer What’s It Like

Though my mom talked to me about her being adopted, my dad never did. I didn’t have enough background foundation to ask more direct questions of my parents and since they are both deceased, that opportunity has been lost to me. Therefore, I am always interested in adoptee’s who share how it feels to have been adopted.

Some stories for a Sunday morning –

As an adoptee, I get a lot of questions about my experience and feelings toward my adoption. I have found great value in trying to understand and explain those experiences. Recently I was asked by a friend, “What is it like for you to be an adoptee during childhood ? What about as an adult, is it the same or is the experience different ?”

I have so many mixed feelings about it confusion, pain, anger, and loneliness are the primary feelings I have about it, especially when I was younger. I didn’t understand why I was so different from my family and from others. It was always a hot button for someone being a jerk to press – being unloved by my birth mother or disposable by her. I mean, the family I grew up in ? We don’t look alike, act alike or even communicate in the same ways. I was sent away during a four year period of my childhood to boarding schools and wilderness programs because they said I was “out of control.”

I just had so much anger when I was younger but now I truly believe that my adoptive parents had no idea how to handle me. I didn’t get to say things like “it’s because of my heritage,” or “it’s the Irish in me” because I really didn’t know my history. Those feeling are subsiding with age and time and my search for who I am increases yearly. I want to share those genetic connections that others share and see my quirks in another person, without seeming like I am ungrateful.

My adoptive parents are very supportive of this search but I know that it does hurt them. As a father myself, I am finally experiencing some of those things and kinds of similarities I always wanted, and it is a beautiful feeling. The feeling now is more longing, hope, and feeling lucky to be alive (I know this is not a popular thought with all adoptees but it’s how I feel), and an acceptance of my own reality as I create for my own self my life going forward. It still hurts, a lot. And it fills me with the constant fear regarding my other relationships that I might again experience being abandoned.

Blogger’s note – my father never did get that son he wanted. My parents had three daughters and so, maybe that is why my mom was more forthcoming with me, than my dad was.

Another one – I was fostered from birth and forced to become an adoptee at the age of 10 (it was a closed adoption during the Baby Scoop Era, a period in history starting after the end of World War II and ending in the early 1970s, my mother was coerced to relinquish her rights just before I turned 8 years old).

I still hold a deeply felt anger for the lies I was told and also the physical and mental abuse at the hands of the woman who was allowed to adopt me. I miss my natural mother daily – always have and always will. What I have found empowering as an adult adoptee (yes, it is part of who I am & always will be — I am an adoptee) is speaking out for others, advocating for current foster and adopted youth, so that there’s the opportunity for them to have a better childhood than the one I experienced.

I never would have thought so but doing the DNA tests and discovering living blood relatives (aside from my daughter and her family — who are descendants – and my estranged mother — I never knew of anyone) has been healing. Additionally, I’ve become very involved in building out both sides of my ancestral/heritage family tree. It has been an education in many ways, and although there is a bittersweet sadness to so much, there is also an identification of where I actually do belong within the life/death continuum and that has been an emotionally uplifting experience that has caught me off guard but in a mostly positive way. I am honoring their ancestral (genetic/genealogical) legacy, at the same time I am acknowledging my own place, while learning many things that even my mother (who hid my existence) never knew.

Blogger’s note – for my own self as well. Doing the DNA tests at Ancestry and 23 and Me have filled in the gaps that parents died never knowing. I still need to complete the “new” family trees I started for each of them with their birth identities and genetic relations at Ancestry. It just feels like the right thing to do for each of them. I now have family history. When one has grown up without that, it is difficult to describe how amazing that actually feels.

The next story – I was in the fog until I was about 20. I always knew I was adopted. And my adoptive parents did so much better than most. I always felt like the rug would be pulled out from under me. Always waiting for some big bad disaster. Always distrusting and always feeling like I was somehow “wrong.” As an adult, I have worked really hard to break the cycle of harm. But I still always feel like I have to prove something or I am not valid. And I don’t think I will ever feel like I fit in anywhere.

One last story – as a child I was very curious about my heritage, I always wondered if I had siblings. My adoptive parents gave me a good childhood, we did a lot of things and they were very loving. As I got older, I was also “out of control” and my parents didn’t know what to do. I ended up, moving out at 17 years old.

I had been living in the fog, up until last year. Now, as an adult, it’s like a rollercoaster. An unexplainable ride of emotions from good to bad and everything in between. I’ve been through my reunion. I have 4 half brothers, who I love dearly. I have no relationship with either biological parent. No romantic relationship in my life BUT it’s nice to know that I’ve consistently sabotaged most of them, due to my fear of abandonment (now I understand why). I’ve spent the last year or so really healing from my adoption trauma and it’s felt really good. I still have pain that will never go away. I struggle mostly with the desire to love my biological mother as I “should” and resenting her terribly for abandoning me (twice). She wants no relationship with me and I’m ok with that, it just makes me sad.

Ray Liotta and Adoption

I don’t remember him actually making any kind of strong impression on me but I did see the movie “GoodFellas” back in 2020 (thanks to Netflix keeping track of these things for me).

It is interesting how ideas for this blog come to me. This one was from a short acknowledgement in Time magazine about the man’s recent passing. Something about his adoptive mother dying during the filming.

I thought, so another adoption story. It never ceases to amaze me how many people in our society are somehow touched by adoption more broadly (meaning not necessarily adopted themselves but in their extended family). I went looking to learn more about this aspect of the man’s life.

The story I read was about how he found peace with his adoption. He said, “At first, I didn’t understand how a parent could give up a child. So, I had that kind of energy of just being like, that’s just f***** up.” His perspective changed after the birth of his own daughter in 1998, at which point he felt he had to trace and locate his birth mother.

Ray was born in 1954, the same year I was, in Newark New Jersey. He was adopted at the age of six months. He was in an orphanage at the time. His adoptive parents were Alfred and Mary. Liotta knew he wasn’t his adoptive parents biological child growing up. He also had an adopted sister, Linda.

His drama teacher in high school asked him if he wanted to appear in a play during his senior year. Liotta didn’t take it seriously at the time (he was into sports) but it led to him eventually studying acting at the University of Miami. After graduation, he got his first big break on the soap opera Another World.

In his 40s, he hired a private detective to locate his birth mother and younger siblings. He subsequently learned from her that he is mostly of Scottish descent (like I learned regarding my maternal grandmother’s family). He then met his birth mother and siblings – a half brother, five half sisters and a full sister. She explained to him that she had given him up for adoption because she was too young and couldn’t contend with the responsibility.

He said that then, “I realized that she did it for very valid reasons from her perspective and for 99% of the kids put up for adoption, the birth parent believes that it’s for the betterment of the kid… Often, the household, the situation, the age just dictate that’s the best thing to do for the child.” After the meeting her, Liotta honestly said that he was “disappointed” by his mother’s story. He reminds me of my own mom in saying that he was “really grateful that [he] was adopted.” When Larry King mentions there is a book for adoptees called “You Were Chosen,” Liotta admits that his was “I was given up.” Most adoptees hate the “chosen” narrative.

Liotta died in his sleep while filming Dangerous Waters in the Dominican Republic. Foul play is not suspected in his death. At the time of his death, he was engaged to fiancée, Jacy Nittolo. That had made him a happy man. He wrote, “Christmas wishes do come true. I asked the love of my life to marry me, and thank God she said yes!!!” Liotta is also survived by his 23-year-old daughter, Karsen, who he shares with ex-wife Michelle Grace.

Maternal Abandonment

I haven’t read the book, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, but now I want to. A movie based on the book is coming to theaters this summer. In looking into the book, I find that the mother abandoned her children. In 1952, six-year-old Catherine Danielle Clark (nicknamed “Kya”) watches her mother abandon her and her family. While Kya waits in vain for her mother’s return, she witnesses her older siblings, Missy, Murph, Mandy, and eventually Jodie, all leave as well, due to their father’s drinking and physical abuse.

The story follows two timelines that slowly intertwine. The first timeline describes the life and adventures of a young girl named Kya as she grows up isolated in the marsh of North Carolina from 1952 to 1969. The second timeline follows an investigation into the apparent murder of Chase Andrews, a local celebrity of Barkley Cove, a fictional coastal town of North Carolina. Stories of children raising themselves with wildlife for companions have always fascinated me.

This story touches a sensitive place in me. While it was never my intention to abandon my daughter, could it be perceived that way ? Could she have experienced my “disappearance” as abandonment ? She was only 3 years old at the time and the realities were not something I could easily explain to her. Her dad and I had divorced. He had informed me that he would never pay child support because I would just party with the money (as though child care and pediatrician bills and all the normal daily expenses didn’t add up, leaving nothing leftover to even think of doing something like that). Therefore, I didn’t ask the court for any child support during the divorce hearing (which my husband did not attend) but the judge awarded me $25 in case I wanted to come back and ask for more. I never did but I did look for “better” (ie male dominated) employment that would pay enough to support the two of us.

It was always my intention to come back for my daughter with a bit of money saved, earned from driving an 18-wheel truck with my romantic partner of that time. A financial foundation for our mutual support. I left her with my former mother-in-law, who eventually gave her back to her dad. He remarried a woman with a child and eventually they had a child together. Since I could not give her a stable family life as a single impoverished woman, I let it be. I stayed in contact with my daughter and had short visits with her during her summers out of school. Still, it has always troubled me . . .

I feel fortunate that she doesn’t hate me for it and that we do have a good relationship as mature women raising children (she gave me a grandson, then I had a son, then she gave me a granddaughter, and then I had another son). I’ll never fully get over my own shame at not having done “better” by her.