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I never ever dealt with my preganancy and relinquishing my son until he found me. He was the "deep dark family secret" that apparently my entire family knew about but nobody ever spoke of. I learned early on that I was not to speak of my pregnancy or ever having a baby. In 28 years, my mother spoke of my first son one time, and that was when I was pregnant with my 2nd child (who of course we all acted like she was my first) and my mom asked me if that preganancy was different than my first. I thought it was such a strange question, and in my head I was like, 'well, lets see, i'm not in high school, i'm not trying to hide this pregnancy, i'm married, i planned this, i'm having a baby shower, and oh, yeah, I'm keeping her and I can talk about her and not act like she never existed, so uh, yeah, it's like TOTALLY DIFFERENT", but instead I just said, 'yes, mom, this is completely different' and that was it, the one and only conversation we ever had about my son from the day I had him until 8 years later when I was preganant with my daughter, and we never ever spoke of him again. I will say the one thing I did right was talk to my husband about my son before we got married. And because I had been programmed by the "forget about him, forget about having a son" closed-era, I really felt damaged and felt like once I told my husband, because of course I was a horrible person, that he would leave me but of course he didn't, he actually understood but of course my programming was such that we rarely spoke of my son. Of course the occasional movie would come up and I would freak because it was about adoption, and my husband would always either turn the channel or do something to get my mind off of it. I just think that never speaking of my son kept me in a jail of sorts. Now that he found me, I am free from that jail. I don't know what I would do if I was still locked in that cell of denial. I have a good foundation, and my husband accepted my son as his own, and even though I went a bit crazy at first and thought I didn't want my husband around anymore, now I realize HE is the one person who really knows the true me, and let me be myself, the mom to 3 beautiful children.
And yes, still many women do not understand my teenage choices so it is not something I speak of in mixed company. It is kind of funny, though, to see people's reactions when I do tell them that yes, I have 3 children, but I only raised 2 of them, and that my oldest was adopted. As I have stated before, thank god for this forum, thank god for good therapists, and thank god for understanding husbands. I hope all of you find good partners that can help you, hold you when you cry, and understand when you act a bit 'crazy' because life is not always easy.
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