Instead for the child whose mother gives her up for adoption, the child suffers the psychological death of her mother. But she is told that she is special and chosen and lucky. She is supposed to forget that there was another mother. Make believe this is your only family, make believe that all is well. As IF it is your own. The message is that it is a good thing your mother is not there for you, is dead for you. You are not allowed to be sad about it, acknowledge the pain, anger or sadness, perhaps even to yourself. You are not allowed to mourn the loss of your own mother. The grief gets stuck in your body and keeping in pain is destructive. (So is keeping in anger and sadness) The child has to go into a kind of shock and to numb. You can’t really live that way, but you can pretend. And we adoptees are great pretenders. This child gets no respect.
Summer, 1972
Maudie, at four years old, felt very small and the 1950's kitchen very metallic. She loved the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy yoke dress with angel sleeves and rickrack that Mother made her. She loved her Disney record, her Fisher Price Little People bus and school. Immediately after lunch - peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread with a glass of milk -- she would quietly tiptoe to her Little People and hope that Mother didn't notice that it was naptime, trundle her off to bed, and close the door of the bedroom she shared with her little brother. Naptime was a must with Mother, Maudie would lie in her bed, pillow over her head, listening to what sounded like "The edge of MIPE!," the hourglass and tinkling of the theme song on the large television in the living room. Carefully, silently, she focused on the little dog, the girl with red hair, the yellow bus. She would become one of the Little People, the girl with the blonde hair and blue dress.
A knock on the door rudely interrupted Mother's routine. It was Aunt Carol, from next door. Maudie adored Aunt Carol, her gentleness, how she looked with Maudie with kindness and adoration in her eyes. The only one who did, thought Maudie.
Eagerly, Aunt Carol came through the door and spoke in hushed tones to Mother. The Little Person with blonde hair and the blue dress spoke to the Little Dog. "That's wonderful!" She heard Mother exclaim.
"Well, I have to go share the news with Grandmother, it looks like she is back from her errand," Aunt Carol said as the screen door hissed and closed with a bang on her way out.
What would happen if one of your mother’s (sic) died today and you were told you couldn’t cry, you couldn’t go to the funeral and to make believe she never existed. What would happen to you.
Mother cast a sideways glance at Maudie. "Maudie, you know what it is time for." Maudie carelessly tossed each Little Person -- the gray haired lady, the mean looking boy, the boys, the girls, and the dog into their yellow, two-story house prior to closing the house with a satisfying clatch.
"What did Aunt Carol say?"
"Oh, Aunt Carol's sister has a baby growing in her tummy and she is going to become a mother, and the whole family is so happy. Now, time for nap," Mother resolved.
Maudie persisted. "So babies come from mothers' tummies. I came from your tummy?" Something, somewhere deep inside Maudie knew the truth.
"Oh, no. You were special. We went to the adoption agency and chose you" Doris beamed, but it was a fake smile and Maudie knew it. "There was another woman, called your biological mother, and you grew in her tummy. She was young and poor and couldn't keep you. She loved you so much that she gave you to the adoption agency and asked the adoption agency to find you a Mommy and a Daddy." There. Doris said it. The speech that she had rehearsed in her head a hundred times and had used those words... special. Chosen... it was finished. If she was to admit the truth, Doris never wanted a baby who was special and chosen; in her heart of hearts, she wanted her baby, but she played the hand she was dealt. It was a speech she wished she never had to give, but she was progressive and progressive parents told their children that they were adopted. That's what the agency in Virginia said, anyway. Anyway, she was a saint for giving the poor child a home, right?
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who wrote Women Who Run with the Wolves, has said that those who have been “abandoned” and face it and work it through can become the strongest people on the face of the earth. Don’t doubt it for a second, Only the Brave do this work...
Something about being loved "so much" that she was given away felt unsettling to Maudie. She put the thought out of her mind, and settled for her nap, but that day she couldn't sleep and was cranky at suppertime.
-
words in italics from
The Respect We Never Got
by Joe Soll, CSW
Adoption Connection Annual Conference,
September 18, 1999, Andover, MA
(Chapter 26 of "Adoption Healing ... A Path to Recovery)
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