I was a young mother. My mother was a young mother. We chose two very different paths to a very similar story.
My birth mom was 17 when she got pregnant with me in 1977. It was a time when closed adoptions were common and not many young mothers kept their children. There are a variety of reasons why they gave up their babies to adoption, coercion, pressure, lack of support and resources.
During the time my mother was pregnant with me her mother divorced her dad and moved out of the state. If ever my mother thought that she migt be able to keep me with the support of her parents that option no longer existed for the young expectant mother. My father, who was considerably older than my mother, was working construction and in this area of the counrty is pretty seasonable, so to be able to support a child and mother was not a likely scenario. Since her mother had left them my mother and her sisters were left to help raise each other and take care of the farm. What choice was my mother left with to be able to raise me?
She made a difficult decision...one that inadvertintly was not really a decision at all. Choice was not much of a luxury. She gave me up to adoption.
My story was much the same but completely different. I was 18 when I got pregnant, a senior in high school. I was making plans for after graduation. Who I was going to room with at college, what was my major going to be, oh the plans we made! The day I found out I was pregnant was on my then boyfriend's birthday, March 28 1996. That was also the day I told him. It was the day he turned 15, yes your eyes saw it right....15! I cried and cried and cried, wondering how I was going to tell my adoptive parents. I screwed up! After the shock of it all wore off and my parents knew I started thinking about what I was going to do. The options were all thrown out there....abortion (which I believe a woman should be able to choose but I would never chose it), adoption, or keep the baby. I just knew I could not give the baby up and I felt I had the necessary support to keep the baby, something my mother did not have. I decided to keep her. Although back then the baby's dad being 15 was a big deal today we are still together and married and have another child.
I tell this story for a couple reasons. First, when I was pregnant and even to this day I felt like my mother was trying to give me an opportunity and by getting pregnant I still to this day felt like I let her down. Repeating her story somewhat but choosing a different path. It is hard to get past that feeling some days. I love my children and I don't regret them but sometimes I feel like I have done all the wrong things with opportunities given to me.
The other reason I tell this story is because I have struggled to figure out how to tell my birth mother the story. I do not want to make her feel worse about the choice (or lack of choice) she made when I was born by saying, "look, I was in a similar situation and I kept my baby" because that is not it at all. I just want her to see I have a wonderful family even though we went about things a bit backwards. I am proud of my kids and what their dad and I have accomplished during a time that was incredibly challenging but I don't want it to feel like I am rubbing it in her face.
It is so strange how alike my birth mother and I are. Our lives have sort of parelleled each others in all the years of not knowing each other.
I leave this post with this quote:
No comments:
Post a Comment