A Complicated Grief
Maybe some sorrows are meant to hold onto…
Today is the anniversary of the day that I became a mother for the first time. Delivering my child into the arms of their adoptive parents.
This day brings up uncomfortable feelings for me to sit with. Shame, grief and vulnerability blend together creating its own concoction of misery. A brand of misery only felt by a mother whose arms are empty of her own making.
All I want to do is lie in bed, drain all of that misery into my pillow and forget. Forget the entire damn thing ever happened. Delete it from my memory forever. At least then I wouldn’t be haunted by the ghosts of yesterday.
The ghost of their warmth in my arms, the smell of them or the feeling of their head on my breast. These ghosts show up in the shadows of my life, when I least expect them to, when I think I have finally set them free.
Oftentimes birthmother grief is overlooked. It is complicated to grieve someone who is still alive.
Being able to maintain a presence in our children’s lives can feel like both a blessing and a curse. The pain we experience happens over and over, every birthday, every milestone and we re-live that same pain when we parent our own children.
The full picture comes slowly into focus and the magnitude of the decision we made is revealed. The joy we lost, the love we will never experience or just the little intimate moments between parent and child that will never be had.
My heart breaks for my teenage self navigating this decision. I don’t know if I will ever be fully healed from this experience. And perhaps that is how it should be. A broken bond that deep should be remembered. Maybe some sorrows are worth holding onto because they are the only thing left connecting us to those moments. Some ghosts are meant to have permanent residency in the dark corners of our memory.
So rather than wrestle these ghosts when the weight of grief settles on my chest, I lay down with it. Hold it in my arms and rock it to sleep. Until the next time my body remembers. Because in those moments, I am reminded that healing doesn’t always look pretty. Healing doesn’t mean that I won’t feel emotional about a traumatic moment in my life. Healing means that I know how to manage those moments, I know how to put them back to sleep when they come to visit.
Happy Birthday my sweet baby. We will meet again when my heart is pregnant with your memory and grief is delivered into my arms once more. I will embrace the sadness this time, sing it to sleep and dream of a sweetness that never was.
