[Robinsmom]

Julie,
It is awful that you feel you must leave again. I can relate, there was a time when I felt my bdaughter was reading my posts too. She always seemed to know what I had written here, and would send e-mails doing exactly what I talked about here. I would wonder if she was reading my mind, until I figured out what she was really up to. I felt like she was reading my personal diary. I used to stop posting, but now I just figure, if she wants to know stuff that badly, then she can go right ahead. She can not blame me, if she is hurt by what she reads. I still think it is sneaky though. You will be missed.
Jackie,
Once again your wise words have helped. I think that by looking back, we can uncover the roots of our feelings. It is all hiding back there, right where we buried it so long ago. We hid it well, didn't we. Fooled everyone, even ourselves into believeing it never happened. Until now, at least. Now there is nowhere to hide, and we are left with a huge hole in our lives. The missing years. We have to go back, to move forward. I just don't know that we are really ready to see what lies under all the junk we piled on top.
Colleen

[LindaSusansMom]

Wow...I started reading this thread last night, but had to save the rest for today as I was barely able to hold my eyes open. Then as I drifted off to sleep, I began to contemplate what I had read here and it affected my dreams all night.

The conclusion I came to is this...

I agree that giving up LS fundamentally and essentially changed me...

But giving her up was not the only life altering event in my life, there have sadly been too many to count and it is hard to determine which life altering events had what effects...

But reading these posts was like holding a mirror up to the past 16 years of raising my son and I see now how I struggled to be the exemplary mother.

Mostly, I think, it has benefitted him in that I have given him so much of my time and dedicated so much of myself to creating a fulfilling life for him. But I see now that I was so much harder on myself for every "failure" I perceived. Woe that I could have been taught the benefit of the "oh well" so long ago. The pain and anguish it would have saved...I see now the damage I created by taking each failure so hard. I was personally offended every time my son didn't exude gratitude for the life I had made for him...I was personally offended every time someone critisized my motives or actions as a mother. I was going to be the perfect mother if it killed me.

I remember when he was a baby thinking I had made a terrible mistake by keeping him and I remember being so anxious that at any point, THEY were going to realize what a mistake it was and come and take him...I'm not sure who I thought THEY were, but THEY were out there watching me, judging me, just waiting for me to make a devastating mistake.

It was years later that I finally seeked out therapy, but not for giving up LS. I don't think I ever discussed it. I don't think I could...I had sat on that piece of my heart where I had hidden all thoughts of her for so long that there was no feeling left in it. (oh, occasionally I thought about her, but I never let myself explore that bit of real estate)

I did work out the matter of many of the other life changing events that I had experienced. Also I began the process of learning to forgive...Not just myself, but others too. I learned how to forgive my grama for what I always considered her gross negligence as a mother. I learned to accept that people work within their abilities and mostly do the best they can with the tools they have. I learned to shop around for the tools that I needed and I began to heal. I just didn't realize that part of my heart was numb. I didn't even realize that much of the pain I was experiencing was phantom pain...if that makes any sense. I really thought I had resolved all of that years ago...silly me.

Only recently (we've been in reunion for 2 months now) have I started to feel the blood returning to that part of my heart. It's still tingly and not quite fully "awake" yet, kind of like when you sit on your foot for too long. Along with the absolute JOY I am experiencing at how happy and excited LS AND her family are to finally have me in their lives, I am feeling pangs of hurt and shame and guilt and loss...all those emotions I never dealt with...

I'm excited for what the future holds and I'm going to keep communicating my feelings with my family, LS, her family, my son, my friends...and if I see that I'm not getting the resolution to these old feeling that I think I should be getting, I will consider re-entering therapy. But for now, it is so inspiring to read your stories and to see that these are normal feelings and to realize that all of you incredible, strong, insightful women have/are experiencing these same things and have such encouraging, sound advice.

Thank You all for having the courage to openly discuss all of this...I just wish it had occurred to me to look for this a long time ago...I think it will be very important for my healing process to proactively seek out ways to share these resources with my community. If it helps just one person to be able to begin their healing process, it will all be worth it...

LSM

[Jackiejdajda]

Julie wrote

this may seem extreme, but considering the depth of pain she and her parents have caused me over the last 22 years.... i am finally refusing to take it anymore... i am so done being treated like dirt by her... and her parents... and my extended family that she and her parents have now allied themselves with... i hope they enjoy their football games... and telling people her "uncle" (who she is not related to at all!!) is an NFL player...

I honor your grief Julie.. and I know you and I will always be friends..

I come on here to watch out for the new ones coming into this.. its where I believe I belong.. I have told my bson about this place but I do not think he comes here..

Anger points the way.. anger is the energy we need to take care of ourselves..
And I am angry about the way you have been treated.. so again you are not alone..

Jackie

[Jackiejdajda]

Colleen wrote..

I think that by looking back, we can uncover the roots of our feelings. It is all hiding back there, right where we buried it so long ago. We hid it well, didn't we. Fooled everyone, even ourselves into believeing it never happened. Until now, at least. Now there is nowhere to hide, and we are left with a huge hole in our lives. The missing years. We have to go back, to move forward. I just don't know that we are really ready to see what lies under all the junk we piled on top.

Bradshaw (I think it was him) said that when we solve things as a child the child in us still sits on that solving.. so when something comes up we are triggered and right back in the original trauma or difficult time..
And we react and we (I sure do) see ourselves reacting and there is no sense in some of it..
A child or young adult does not have the life experience to actually deal with the trauma of giving a baby up for adoption or the loss of a loved one.. Like when I gave my bson up.. I did what I knew.. I just shut up about it.. and shut down the emotions..
Well it came out in funny ways through the years..

I remember a friend telling me I needed to go back and meditate on holding my son and then giving him up.. I never saw my son.. It helped.. it really helped.. I did the meditation and then wrote about it..

Its like when I share the hard stuff here.. or in other places.. I can go into them now with no fear.. I know I am going to come out the other side and I know the pain will be less.. it is proven this to me over and over..

When that therapist told me I had not grieved.. I grieved..and then the pain in my stomach went.. the low grade depression lifted..

It’s the work of our lives to me..

Jackie

[Jackiejdajda]

LindaSusansMom wrote..

It was years later that I finally seeked out therapy, but not for giving up LS. I don't think I ever discussed it. I don't think I could...I had sat on that piece of my heart where I had hidden all thoughts of her for so long that there was no feeling left in it. (oh, occasionally I thought about her, but I never let myself explore that bit of real estate)

The first time I went for therapy I did not tell her about the relinquishment.. I did not think it important..

I did work out the matter of many of the other life changing events that I had experienced. Also I began the process of learning to forgive...Not just myself, but others too. I learned how to forgive my grama for what I always considered her gross negligence as a mother. I learned to accept that people work within their abilities and mostly do the best they can with the tools they have. I learned to shop around for the tools that I needed and I began to heal. I just didn't realize that part of my heart was numb. I didn't even realize that much of the pain I was experiencing was phantom pain...if that makes any sense. I really thought I had resolved all of that years ago...silly me.

I think it lessons through the years.. I think we pick up the tools to finally process those emotions..
And I believe with all my heart that we can level this all out.. and become whole..

Only recently (we've been in reunion for 2 months now) have I started to feel the blood returning to that part of my heart. It's still tingly and not quite fully "awake" yet, kind of like when you sit on your foot for too long. Along with the absolute JOY I am experiencing at how happy and excited LS AND her family are to finally have me in their lives, I am feeling pangs of hurt and shame and guilt and loss...all those emotions I never dealt with...

Stand knee deep in the flow of life and pay attention.. The act of paying attention is the healing..

That is what Julia Cameron writes in The Artist Way..
And that is what helped and helps me..
Paying attention to our feelings and not pushing them back.. allowing them to come out and know they will change.. and we can work into and through them..
Paying attention to the beauty around us.. when the going is really hard..
My husband takes me for drives when I am down and out.. The last time we went I saw a bird house I love.. It is beautiful and hand made.. I said to hubby. “I want to take pictures of all the beautiful bird houses in the county and I want to do some paintings and needlepoint of them.”
That is me being in right now.. bringing me back.. from the dark places..

I embrace the grief now.. I almost like the feeling of it..
It takes me to depths of me..
And then I can really see the bird houses..

Jackie..

[kakuehl]

Julie, I'm sorry you are leaving again. I've missed you, my friend. I often wonder what D would think if he read what I wrote. It wouldn't be hard for him to figure out it's me, LOL! I would hope that he'd be willing to ask me about it rather than just freezing me out. It's always difficult to read the feelings of another as they apply to us and NOT take it personally. (I'd be so great, if I could only take my own advice, LOL!) I'll pm you.

[Jackiejdajda]

Julia Cameron wrote on page 54 of ‘The Artist Way’..
This below is what really helped me to heal..

My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

...................

In a year when a long and rewarding love affair was lurching gracelessly away from the center or her life, the writer May Sarton kept A Journal of a Solitude. In it, she records the coming home from a particularly painful weekend with her lover. Entering her empty house, “I was stopped by the threshold of my study by a ray on a Korean chrysanthemum, lighting it up like a spotlight, deep red petals and Chinese yellow center……
Seeing it was like getting a transfusion of autumn light. “

It’s no accident that May Sarton uses the word transfusion. The loss of her lover was a wound, and in her responses to that chrysanthemum, in the act of paying attention, Sarton’s healing began…

The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain – the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlines all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, “unutterably alone.” More than anything else, attention is an act of connection..

...................

Writing about attention, I see that I have written a good deal about pain. This is no coincidence. It may be different for others, but pain is what it took to teach me to pay attention. In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past is too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now, we are all, always, all right.



I have this saved in my computer files.. and I pull it up when I am down and out.. I think of that flower.. and May Sarton.

Jackie

[Jackiejdajda]

kakuehl wrote

I would hope that he'd be willing to ask me about it rather than just freezing me out.

I think that is one of the hardest things a birthmom has to face.. being frozen out.. Being told you were wrong to do this or that.. and not having her feelings validated or heck acknowledged..
Promises made and promises not kept..

Jackie

[LindaSusansMom]

Jackie, thanks for those posts...you really hit the nail on the head...

What I've noticed is that I have spent a good deal of my life being "strong enough to overcome" so many things in my life that it is a real struggle for me to open my self up and be vulnerable to the pain. But I've also learned that we need to share our weaknesses with others, name them, own them, and take away the sting of them in order to strengthen them...

When I find words that inspire me, I write them on the walls in my home so that I can have that reminder daily and make it a part of me...There are now 25 or more quotes scrawled in black sharpie going up and down my basement steps, my backdoor landing, my kitchen, dining room, hallway and bathroom. I'm going to have to branch into my bedroom soon! lol

My favorite is written next to the door so I see it going in or going out...it says, "We are each of us angels with only one wing, and only by embracing one another can we fly" Thanks for helping me to fly...

I've started a journal of all my journal entries and posts with replies...I'm definitely going to add this one to it...thank you...It'll be interesting to see how I grow thru this process

[Robinsmom]

Wonderful post again Jackie, you have such a huge amount of encouragement stored away. I am sure there are many out there who have grown under your hand. I being one of them.
Lsm,
Always nice to hear the words of somebody new. It's like seeing everything through a new set of eyes. So many emotions we have forgotten. I have come full circle, as many of us have, I lost the baby, I found the baby, I lost again. Along the way I found the parts of myself that I had lost, or thought I had lost. I now think that perhaps they were not lost at all, but just hidden away where I thought they could not hurt me. I often wonder if by looking closely at myself was the thing I feared the most. The one thing I have learned through all this is that I am so much stronger than I thought I was. Just to have survived my life, without going crazy or resorting to some mind numbing drug is testament to my strength. I just had to weed through all the junk to see it. I am so glad that I took the time to do it. I always thought I was being the best mother to my children, but what I was really doing was being a picture of the best mother. Never allowing anybody to get close enough to see the cracks, or to make new ones. My children, and husband think I am so strong, but they have no idea how hard it was to keep up that picture. I fought my emotions everyday. If I was hurt, they never knew, if I failed at something, I could cover it so well that it never showed. I was like a machine. It took me years to regain all that I had lost. I now can allow myself a few failures and not let it ruin my whole life. I can ask for help, that was a big one, and not feel like I am less than I should be. Its like being given a second chance to live my life, and I am taking it. A huge amount of the credit goes to the women of this forum who have listened to me struggle through this for years now, and have never given up. Like you, if I can help just one, I feel I will have done a wonderful thing, and will be able to payback at least some of what I have been given.
Colleen

[hunny0404]

Originally Posted by Robinsmom

Wonderful post again Jackie, you have such a huge amount of encouragement stored away. I am sure there are many out there who have grown under your hand. I being one of them.
Lsm,
Always nice to hear the words of somebody new. It's like seeing everything through a new set of eyes. So many emotions we have forgotten. I have come full circle, as many of us have, I lost the baby, I found the baby, I lost again. Along the way I found the parts of myself that I had lost, or thought I had lost. I now think that perhaps they were not lost at all, but just hidden away where I thought they could not hurt me. I often wonder if by looking closely at myself was the thing I feared the most. The one thing I have learned through all this is that I am so much stronger than I thought I was. Just to have survived my life, without going crazy or resorting to some mind numbing drug is testament to my strength. I just had to weed through all the junk to see it. I am so glad that I took the time to do it. I always thought I was being the best mother to my children, but what I was really doing was being a picture of the best mother. Never allowing anybody to get close enough to see the cracks, or to make new ones. My children, and husband think I am so strong, but they have no idea how hard it was to keep up that picture. I fought my emotions everyday. If I was hurt, they never knew, if I failed at something, I could cover it so well that it never showed. I was like a machine. It took me years to regain all that I had lost. I now can allow myself a few failures and not let it ruin my whole life. I can ask for help, that was a big one, and not feel like I am less than I should be. Its like being given a second chance to live my life, and I am taking it. A huge amount of the credit goes to the women of this forum who have listened to me struggle through this for years now, and have never given up. Like you, if I can help just one, I feel I will have done a wonderful thing, and will be able to payback at least some of what I have been given.
Colleen

Colleen,
Amen to all of it, including your comments to Jackie, as I'm one of them too...

Thanks!

Susanne

[Jackiejdajda]

LindaSusansMom wrote

What I've noticed is that I have spent a good deal of my life being "strong enough to overcome" so many things in my life that it is a real struggle for me to open my self up and be vulnerable to the pain. But I've also learned that we need to share our weaknesses with others, name them, own them, and take away the sting of them in order to strengthen them...

And share our weakness with ourselves.. that is what I found I could not do.. Together we are strong.. Ha.. together I am strong!

I use the term birthmom all the time.. I use the term with spades.. and the reason why is because of CUB.. Concerned United Birthparents.. and the women that started it in 1975. or around that time..

Amazing women.. who I knew nothing about and wish I had of known about.. I was having my daughter in 1975 and totally alone and unable to sort what I could have sorted..

Its such a unique experience this.. and my heart goes out to all of us..
heck to all the others that are affected by this..

I started learning and reading my quotes in the late eighties and early nineties.. I love that you read them and agree with me does my heart good..

Jackie.. who is going to McDonalds this morning for a sausage egg Mcmuffin and knows she will not get caught up..

[Jackiejdajda]

Colleen wrote..

I often wonder if by looking closely at myself was the thing I feared the most.

I never thought I was good enough.. and that is not loving the self.. and this is my quest..
Loving myself enough to learn how to not leave me behind..

My children, and husband think I am so strong, but they have no idea how hard it was to keep up that picture. I fought my emotions everyday. If I was hurt, they never knew, if I failed at something, I could cover it so well that it never showed. I was like a machine. It took me years to regain all that I had lost. I now can allow myself a few failures and not let it ruin my whole life. I can ask for help, that was a big one, and not feel like I am less than I should be. Its like being given a second chance to live my life, and I am taking it. A huge amount of the credit goes to the women of this forum who have listened to me struggle through this for years now, and have never given up. Like you, if I can help just one, I feel I will have done a wonderful thing, and will be able to payback at least some of what I have been given.

Amen to that.

Just to be happy on a daily basis.. comfortable in our lives..

Jackie

[Scarlet Moon 13]

Originally Posted by Jackiejdajda

LindaSusansMom wrote


And share our weakness with ourselves.. that is what I found I could not do.. Together we are strong.. Ha.. together I am strong!

I use the term birthmom all the time.. I use the term with spades.. and the reason why is because of CUB.. Concerned United Birthparents.. and the women that started it in 1975. or around that time..

Amazing women.. who I knew nothing about and wish I had of known about.. I was having my daughter in 1975 and totally alone and unable to sort what I could have sorted..

Its such a unique experience this.. and my heart goes out to all of us..
heck to all the others that are affected by this..

I started learning and reading my quotes in the late eighties and early nineties.. I love that you read them and agree with me does my heart good..

Jackie.. who is going to McDonalds this morning for a sausage egg Mcmuffin and knows she will not get caught up..

When cub invented a name to classify us, I still thought of myself as a mother, who just didn't have her first child.
Until the day I started looking for my son, I didn't know there was a name for women who relinquished. He was 33 when I started looking.

That was also when I found out it was alright to say I was his mother, just not the mother who raised him.

I don't mind being called a birth mother. But my son doesn't like hearing it anymore. He may not call me mom, but I am his mother, he told me that.

He has two mothers. I am one of them.

I love him so much.