Grief sucks

I said it and I mean it. Grief REALLY sucks. So here's why... the pain permeates into every aspect of my life so that I am overly sensitive (wait, was i that way to begin with?), it numbs me, and it incapacitates me.

Uncomfortably numb!

I think Pink Floyd might have been thinking of birth parents when they wrote "Comfortably Numb." Yea, probably not but they sure describe my experience well. Although as the title of this post suggests, I am not comfortable being numb. For almost eleven years now I have moved through so many unsettling emotions that rise to the surface then go back down somewhere deep in my body, or soul, or whatever. All I know is that they are unresolved. These emotions are stagnant so in a way I am living in a muddled pool of putrid water. That sounds terrible, but it is the truth! I have come to the realization that I have been reliving the same experiences again and again. Now it has come to a point where I am intolerant of the emotions, which means I move through life as an anger-bomb. At any moment I could explode and spew anger any which way. These trapped emotions are intolerable.

I have recently started a support group for local birth mothers because I find the lack of resources available to us abhorable. This is a big step that I have been thinking for sometime. I just hope that the members do not expect me to be a pillar of emotional stability. I'm simply providing the comfortable place for us to meet and organizing the meetups. From what I have read, community is an integral part of healing. 12-step programs are, in my opinion, so popular because they provide connection with other people who know what you're going through. It's been easier just to gloss over my pain because trying to get someone who hasn't experienced it is really hard. Of course people are well meaning, but I often just feel more alone after I talk about my hurt with someone who is not a birth parent.

Although I am petrified to feel, I am ready to. I need to. I must process these emotions. There is no way I can continue living my life like the bull in the china shop... bumping into and often rupturing unsuspecting friends. I am unable to have healthy attachments as I am so easily rattled. This has to stop. It must.

My new life...

Well, I sure haven't written in what seems like forever... real time? I guess it has been almost nine months. I got disheartened by the process and forgot why I was writing. Also, my son was born in June and it has been a very busy endeavor being his mama while keeping up with my graduate program.

So I think I should admit that I believed mothering my son would fix the pain I feel around the adoption. That was not a productive belief and what a let down that expectation was. I am certainly not fixed. I am still the imperfect person trying to manage my life as best as I know how to. My patterns have not changed much and this "new life" feels pretty similar to the old life. Wait, there is a HUGE exception. My son is such a delight. There is this little man who coaxes smiles out of me the way no other person can. I really cannot stop myself from smiling at him. We delight each other.

That is the bright side. Yes, there is a shadow side. The stress of being his nearly sole caregiver weathers on me. And I cannot deny that I feel the loss of my daughter regularly because I am triggered daily. I am really embarrassed to admit that. Shouldn't I feel fulfilled being a mother? The selfless act of being a mother is supposed to be enough to heal me, right?

I guess Betty Friedan might have been one of the first women to publicly admit that mothering is not the sole desire of every woman and that the act itself is not enough to satiate the personal desires of womankind. Yet, I had the expectation for myself that it would be enough. I consider myself a staunch feminist, but I thought that the pain associated with my adoption experience outweighed any ideology that I am inclined towards. So I unconsciously believed that my son would heal that particular pain. The unexplained depression, lethargy, sensitivity, attachment problems, and codependency would disappear. Okay, I see how this was an unrealistic expectation.

My son is such a joy and I love attending to his needs, but the stress of being a new parent is much harder than I expected. I imagined that I would be talented at handling the stress. I am not, especially as the same problems that existed for me before his birth are still there.

Increasingly hard

I have not been able to write lately because I have not been able to feel. That's not exactly true. I cry quite easily these days. I'm 37 weeks and 2 days pregnant and am very emotional. I have been avoiding feelings about Leslie again though, that's what I mean by I haven't been able to feel. The feelings are just below the surface I don't know how to access them nor do I really want to. I go through many phases like this. During these times I simply want to avoid my feelings. I often think that they're easier to manage if I avoid them. Logically, I know that this isn't true. I understand that this is maladaptive behavior that does not help the healing process. I wonder though, will I ever really heal? My therapist believes that the pain will never subside. I will always experience grief and I need to get to a place where I accept the feelings that come up. I need to be able to "sit with" the feelings rather than suppress them, avoid them, and pretend that they do not exist.

I know that a major reason why I am having such a hard time waiting for my son to arrive is somehow related to the loss I feel. I have been waiting ten years to be a mother. What's a couple more weeks, right? Oh it's hard alright. I can't move around much because I have such bad pelvic girdle and round ligament pain so I'm stuck at home much of the time. The minutes feel like hours. The hours feel like days. I want my son to be born so badly. Now if I was living in ignorance of my feelings the way I have for much of the time since I relinquished Leslie, then I would not see the connection between the almost desperate desire for my son to be born and the loss associated with the adoption. Well, I'm aware now so I know that the waiting is extra hard for me. People try to cheer me up by reminding me that I am so close to having my son in my arms. Really though, that just irritates me. I guess they don't know how long I have been really waiting. I have been waiting ten years, but once my son is in my arms the waiting does not end. I have to continue to remind myself and accept that I will always be waiting. My son who is about to be born will never be a replacement for the daughter I gave away. I am sure in many ways I will grow as I give love unconditionally to my son. I think that that love might also help me to heal in some ways. However, that love will never replace the love and the loss I feel about my daughter.

Today I absentmindedly took Leslie's pictures off of the fridge. I did it without thought, without understanding the meaning. The meaning is that right now it's too hard to see a picture of her face each time I open that appliance. It hurts too much. That's okay. I have to have compassion for where I'm at because judging my process never helps. Right now, I see a picture of her face and I feel sad. I also feel anger. I wish someone who was in a position to help me, namely my social worker, would have told me that most birthmothers feel deep pain at many times throughout their life because of the loss. It angers me that the social worker is an adoptive mother. How could she be unbiased? How could she be the support that I needed? I'm angry that I hurt. It's not that I would have made a different decision if I had known about the future pain. The choice I made was best for Leslie and me. I deserved to have all of the facts and possibilities presented to me. This is why I'm angry that I hurt. Right now I blame the adoption agency and I blame the system for letting me live my life without the knowledge about how I would be impacted. Here I am, ten years later, and now really starting to deal with the pain. I'm finally facing it. Well, I'm facing it as well as I can at this time.

Writing this blog is one way that I am attempting to confront the loss. I think it's important for birthmothers to share their experience. I hope that at some point a woman who is considering relinquishment reads what I write. I want her to know my experience. Although I have read many psychological studies that state the loss will permeate the birthmother's life, I am not presuming that my experience is the "norm." The reason why I would like another woman considering relinquishment to read about my experience is that I would hope that me sharing my true feelings would impact her in the way she needs it to. I was literally blind going into the decision. I never spoke with another birthmother. I never read anything written by a birthmother. I had no idea what any birhtmother experienced. I made my choice out of desperation. In retrospect, it would have benefited how I handled the grief if I heard/read about other birthmother's experiences.

Well, I have rambled on and I am not sure what else I can say about anything right now. I will sign out with an honest check it. I'm hurting. I am trying not to think about Leslie because I do not want the grief to overwhelm me, especially since I'm already third trimester hormonal and emotional right now.

Maladaptive coping strategies

There are many ways I attempt to deal with my pain that are incredibly unhealthy. I think this stems from the fact that so much of what I feel is unconscious. Frequently, I feel depressed, irritated, anxious, and/or agitated and I have no idea why. As I stated in my last post, it really wasn't until about a year ago that I made the connection. The source of much of my pain is from the choice I made to relinquish Leslie. It's sort of like walking around blind. Since I couldn't see I would bump into people constantly. Well, that's putting it mildly. I was blinded by my pain, but I didn't just bump into people. I have caused real wreckage. A couple of days ago I was reading an article in The Counseling Psychologist titled "Birth Parents in Adoption: Research, Practice, and Counseling Psychology" (2005). Authors Wiley and Baden stated that birthmothers experience grief in a myriad of ways, one of which being trouble in relationships. This stems from an inability to trust. In intimate relationships jealously and problems with commitment are common. Well, that explained a lot for me. I'm not blaming my pain or the adoption for the many severed relationships. I caused those, and there have been many. But the correlation makes sense.

I often say that hurt people hurt people. Now imagine living your life not knowing why you're hurt and often not even knowing that you are in pain. Over the years I have repeatedly felt betrayed by my friends, family, and significant others, but how often was that their fault. I propose that very little of the blame rests on them. After losing a large number of friends and significant others there comes a point where you have to stop and consider what the connection between all of that loss is. I can tell you now what the connection is. Me. I am incredibly sensitive so I can get hurt easily. I mentioned before that I am easily agitated and quick to get angry. Have I always been like this? Was I an angry child? In many ways I was. My parents mindlessly neglected my needs and did not give me the love and support I needed. I think the way I grew up predisposed me to be receptive to pain. I have to include that context because I do not believe that pain happens in isolation. There are many contributing factors.

But here's the catch. I have worked through much of that childhood pain yet I still experience the same symptoms. Remember them? I do. I'm overly sensitive, quick to blame others for my pain, and easily agitated. Oh and here's another one. I have such a hard time experiencing joy. This realization is really difficult to admit because I gravitate towards a victim mentality, unconsciously of course. What other explanation fits? I blame others for the hurt, frustration, and irritation that I feel. That means that I believe it is their fault, not mine. I am the victim. So much of what upsets me is insignificant. That doesn't mean that I have legitimately been hurt. I have in my own mind. And that doesn't mean that the people in my life are without fault. Sometimes they are. Sometimes my husband says things that really trigger me. The important question is why the words trigger me. I think that all of this unresolved grief has left me in a state of frequent volatility. Figuratively, I am a walking time bomb and the trouble is that I have no idea when I will detonate. At any given moment something could trigger me.

I think this is a good time to share one of my maladaptive coping strategies. If you're a woman who is ready this, you might relate to what I have to share. Body image is a HUGE trigger for me. In high school I thought I looked great. I thought that I was pretty good looking. I even dabbled in vanity because a Cosmo magazine article stated that acting extra confident is sexy. A year after Leslie was born I started to obsess about my body. I used to blame a friend of mine for this. I had this gorgeous friend who was about five years older than me who would obsess about her weight. She pretty obsessively watched what she ate and barely a day went by without some comment from her about how fat she was getting. At that time I still ate like a typical high school kid. I ate what I wanted when I wanted. Since I was a waitress at an Italian restaurant, I ate a lot of pasta. I would eat pasta for lunch, bread for snacks, then more pasta for dinner. My friend would comment on how lucky I was that I could eat like that without gaining weight.

When I first started examining how I became body obsessive, an exercise addict, and practiced disordered eating my mind drifted back to those memories. I remembered that friend and I thought it was her fault. Upon closer examination of the time line, I realize now that the negative self-image began after the adoption became finalized (one year after Leslie was born). That was when I let the cultural messages of inadequacy filter in. I compared myself to other women. I decided I wasn't pretty enough or thin enough. Simultaneously, my body began to change. The pasta I was eating regularly began to stick to my thighs and hips and arms. I looked in the mirror and began to hate what I saw. I never learned about healthy eating from my family. I did not see the connection between the quality of food I was putting in my body and health. I did know that if I wanted to loose the weight I would need to restrict what I ate.

For years I would binge then restrict my eating. Sometimes I would purge, but I never developed a ritual of it. It was a monthly kind of habit. Initially I tried exercise. I got a gym membership. At first I would go regularly, but within months I tired of the practice. There was no passion in that solitary, indoor activity for me. I resigned to my miserable existence. I watched television excessively. I immersed
myself in the lives of the fictional characters. I jumped from relationship to relationship thinking that the next guy would be the solution. Love is all we need, right? Well, what I needed was some self-love. It never came. Instead, I moved into disordered eating. I restricted my daily calorie intake to between 700 and 1000 calories. The closer to 700, the better I felt about myself. I was in control. It was a scary place to be in because of the roller coaster emotions. When I was able to restrict the way I planned I felt fabulous like I was the director in my own life. When I made a "mistake" and went for the treat I plummeted to failure status. The highs and lows were really hard. What was my solution? Pharmaceuticals.

Wellbutrin was the solution for me it promotes weight loss and because I thought it would treat the depression. Well, weight loss happened. I whittled myself down to 103 pounds. I'm 5'6. I was thrilled if I fit into a size 0, but life was okay if a size 2 fit my body. The depression didn't go away though. It persisted. Why though? It should have worked! I am chemically imbalanced! That's what the advertisements contended. I had been seeing a therapist regularly for over two years. She helped me a lot. We worked through much of those old childhood wounds, yet I was still a depressive. She encouraged me to stay on the meds. Why wouldn't she encourage that? The simplest explanation is that I am chemically imbalanced. That might be so, but I do not think it is the whole story. In fact, I would argue that a chemical imbalance is the least likely explanation.

I do not blame any of the therapists I have seen for missing the source of my malaise. Actually, maybe they knew I was not ready to deal with the crux so they waited. I do know that access to literature on the birthmother experience is challenging. Because I am a UC Berkeley Alumni I still have access to their libraries and online journals. I have tirelessly searched the Cal article databases for data on birthmothers. There is not a lot and it is hard to find. The number of participants in the studies are small. In fact, the largest study I read was a survey of 300 birthmothers. The standard though, in every study, is that relinquishment grief runs deep. It permeates every aspect of the birthmother's life. Often she has huge gaps in her memory. The events leading up to the adoption, the pregnancy, the birth, and the first year before the adoption was finalized are often a blur for the birthmother. Birthmothers frequently experience PTSD. They have trouble in relationships. I knew none of this until recently. The first I heard about PTSD was a year ago from a social worker. When I read "The Girls Who Went Away" I was surprised that every single woman who relinquished her child experienced grief long after the birth. In fact, it impacted their lives irrevocably.

No one at the adoption agency told me that my choice could create such havoc in my life. That doesn't mean that I would have made a different choice. I think that I could have coped in healthier ways if I was warned. I needed support. It NEVER came. This is the reason I write this blog. I write in case there is another birthmother out there struggling. I write for women/girls thinking about relinquishing their children. I want them to be prepared. I write so that I can heal my wounds. I hope for connection. I don't have another birthmother to talk to because I don't know any. In my experience, when we open up to someone who has experienced the same kind of pain as us we relate and start to heal. So here I am, making myself available to other women. Here I am attempting to heal because avoiding the pain is a coping strategy that has not functioned for me.

Missing memories

Yesterday I met with my therapist in order to continue processing the grief that has manifested as a result of my choice to relinquish Leslie. I have been seeing this therapist now for a little over one year. I sought her out because I finally came to realize that my way of treating the loss was maladaptive, namely avoidance. I have seen other therapists over the past ten years, but I never went into details about the adoption. I would give the therapist a rough overview of the circumstances then insist that the adoption did not effect me. Until recently, I never saw a correlation between the pain in my life and my choice to relinquish.

I am beginning to understand why I would not have made the connection. It's not that I lack the capability to be introspective. Believe me, I am very introspective. Honestly, sometimes I am a little too introspective. I freely admit that I can be quite self-obsessed at times. Okay, we got it. No problems with introspection. So why was I unable to see that this HUGE decision impacted my life? This is where the title of this piece comes in: missing memories. Have you ever been through something traumatic and when you try to reflect back on the event, the memories preceding the event, or shortly after your memory is suddenly impaired? Large chunks of my memory from the time I was sixteen to twenty-one are missing. The biggest missing pieces are from the time I was seventeen to twenty. I relinquished Leslie when I was seventeen.

I was just reading "Birth Parents in Adoption: Research, Practice, and Counseling Psychology" (2005) written by Wiley and Baden when I came across a passage about memory loss being common among birth mothers. I learned a bit about PTSD last year and how memory loss around the traumatic event is common for those experiencing the disorder. A year ago I sought help from the adoption agency I placed Leslie through. I had never done that before. I spoke with a fabulous social worker new to the agency who assured me that she could help and reminded me that the agency offers life-time counseling to birthmothers. I made an appointment with her and felt a bit of relief because I believed I would finally get the help I needed. I met with the social worker and towards the end of an almost two hour appointment she told me she thought that I have PTSD. She suggested that I seek out a therapist who is trained in EMDR therapy so that I can process through some of the trauma.

Why is it that memory lapses are so common among women who have relinquished a child? Is that we all experience PTSD? I understand that how the missing memories act as a defense mechanism, shielding me from pain. The problem though is that I have not been protected from these painful memories. Instead, I live my life not knowing why I feel things so deeply. Have I always been this way? Was I a sensitive child? Or, is can I source my emotional sensitivity to a traumatic event that happened over ten years ago? That could be. From what I have read, the grief associated with relinquishing a child will never fully subside. Instead, I have to learn to accept the feelings as they come and work with them until they pass. But how can I do this when much of the time I have no idea that what I am feeling is so closely related to this unresolved trauma? I do not have an answer to this question. I will continue to think about it and write about it here so that I can process these confusing feelings.

The grateful mother

This is the first Mother's Day in ten years that I feel happy. The last ten of them I would spend the whole day wondering who would acknowledge that I am a mother of sorts, a birthmother. Some years one or two friends would call. Other years no one would call. The feeling that was always persistent regardless of any acknowledgment was pain. I would do my best to suppress and distract myself from that pain. Any thoughts about what my life would be like if I had made the choice to mother Leslie were quickly pushed as far away as possible. A motherhood fantasy could happen at any time during the year, but I was particularly vulnerable to one on Mother's Day. It's logical that I would think about that, isn't it? Nevertheless, I tried my hardest to ignore those thoughts and the feelings that were triggered by the fantasies. For many of those ten years I worked as a food server. As you might imagine, I avoided working Mother's Day whenever possible. If I had to work I would have a painful reminder of my loss as I approached the table I was servicing. The happy mothers with their children would remind me of my pain.

My solution was to do my best to forget that it was Mother's Day. I tried my hardest to ignore the thoughts about who would remember that I am a birthmother. I rarely called my mom to wish her a happy Mother's Day. Yesterday, she called me to wish me a happy Mother's Day for the first time. At first I felt hurt that she had never done that before. Sometimes, when I am in my pain, I forget that it must be hard to deal with. Even my husband has a really hard time helping me through my grief when I allow it to surface (or when I have no control and am triggered by something that reminds me of my pain). He has admitted to not knowing what to say or how to help me. What do you say to someone who is hurting? How do you support someone who is experiencing pain that you do not understand? Some friends have told me that they thought about me on Mother's Day but chose not to acknowledge my experience on that day because they figured I would rather not be triggered. If you have a friend who is a birthmother and are assuming that she would rather forget her pain, I suggest that you ask her. Maybe she does not want to live in it alone. Maybe a call from someone she cares about might be just what she needs. Maybe not, but I always appreciate it when friends and other loved ones ask me what I need.

I have a lot more to say about this and I want to share more about how happy I am today. I am so grateful that I finally get to be a mother. I will give birth to my son sometime in the next three to six weeks and I am thrilled. I can't wait to hold him, kiss him, snuggle him, and nurse him. I'm excited about the sleepless nights, the dirty cloth diapers I will have to wash, and soothing his cries. This leads me to the other rant that is on my mind today. I absolutely hate it when people instruct me to enjoy the quiet nights before the baby is born because they will end soon. When I am asked how the pregnancy is going I answer honestly. It sucks. I have never been in more physical discomfort in my life (for some reason my pregnancy with Leslie was really easy). I cannot exercise. I can only walk for a few minutes before I experience pain somewhere in my body. Even standing hurts. When I share some part of this small physical misery the standard response is that I should enjoy my freedom from baby while it lasts. Now I am not a violent person, but every single time I hear that I want to punch the person who said it. Perhaps a little over the top? Well, I don't actually do it so I think not.

Here is what I think... Would you remind a cancer survivor that life is really hard? Would you say to him/her,"Enjoy the rest while you recover because you will have to go back to work soon." I probably shouldn't be comparing myself to a cancer survivor because they experience such deep emotional and physical pain. The past ten years I have pretty much only experienced emotional pain. There was some physical pain, most of which I caused (e.g. disordered eating and exercise addiction that I practiced so that I would not have a physical reminder of the pregnancy on my body). What I am trying to get at is the feeling that we have a new lease on life. I hear about that feeling a lot in my studies when I am learning about the treatment of chronic disease. These people who recover from cardiovascular disease, cancer, et cetera often feel incredibly grateful for their lives. Many are even grateful that they got sick because they learned to love, experience, and feel gratitude for life in a way that they never felt before. Through their pain something beautiful was born: a new perspective, a new paradigm. In this way I relate to those survivors. I have a "new lease on life."

For ten years I ignored motherhood. I now allow myself to embrace it and let me tell you... I'm thrilled. I am so unbelievably grateful. I get to care for another human being in an incredibly special way. What an honor it is. I am responsible for meeting his needs. I am so lucky that I get to experience this part of life. I am especially grateful because for ten years I ignored the nurturing motherhood feelings that resided within me. I fought hard to suppress them. I now allow myself to think about motherhood. I keep preparing for it like it is the most important piece of research in my thesis. I read about different parenting practices: Attachment Parenting, Diaper-Free parenting and Elimination Communication, infant care, vaccinations, childhood nutrition, the problems associated with Behaviorism as it approaches parenting ("Punished by Rewards" by Kohn), et cetera. I work with my therapist around my fears about being a good mother. I'm starting to toot my own horn so I had better stop there. The come away point is that I am so incredibly grateful.