Shame
Guest author Sandra Falconer Pace is an educator and Director of the Canadian Council of Natural Mothers. Her son searched for and found her, and they have been reunited since 1995.
Shame... It's amazing how strong a hold it can have.
I remember being 16, pregnant, and ashamed. Also scared - especially scared. Even now, it's easier to write this story knowing my parents will never read it.
My son's father supported me during my pregnancy, but staying together to raise our child didn't happen, and so there I was, 16, unmarried, without paying work, and therefore unable to raise my son. I lost him to adoption - a common story for the times.
Fast-forward 26 years, and there was the message: I was found. There was my son, now named Tony. It was that moment when I realized that now I needed control, some control over this situation. Why control? Because I had lived all those 26 years in denial. I had thrown myself into my career, and worked hard enough to not think about the son I had lost at 16. If you don't think about it, it doesn't hurt you. And now, faced with a 6 foot, 1 inch reality, I could no longer not think.
I knew my life would change completely, and I needed time to think, so I waited two weeks to return his call, and it took another two and a half weeks to make contact with my son. It was shame that made me need control. In talking with him that time later, I was amazed at the intensity of my desire to know, even to hold, my beautiful son.
Meeting Tony two weeks later, I was concerned that people in my small town not know that I had this grown son. Shame still gripped me from all those years ago. I was a matron really - a person with some professional position, an old 'married lady,' known to have only one daughter, Lexi. How could I admit that all those years ago, I had been one of those loose girls, pregnant at 16? What would people think of me? Would I be able to get that promotion I wanted? Would people shun me? Would they talk to me? What would they think of my daughter? All these thoughts were still there from decades ago, waiting to trap me, and colour the relationship with my son.
I was luckier than some - my stretch marks were clear enough that I'd told my husband years ago, so my son's arrival was no surprise to him. My daughter accepted rather well the news that the brother she's always wanted existed, but was older rather than younger. Few, very few and only very close friends had known about him, though. I couldn't tell anyone he'd found me. For almost three months my son and I visited back and forth, with me introducing him only by name, and never by relationship. It was a sweet secret to me; I knew him to be my son when I introduced him to friends and acquaintances. They knew only that I was walking or visiting with Tony.
One day, Tony confessed that he didn't like being the skeleton in someone's closet. He didn't like being the object of shame. With this, I was faced by a choice: I could, in essence, lose my son a second time to shame and society's approbation, or I could choose differently this time, claiming my son and his place in my life. I knew that I might not get that promotion, might not be viewed the same way by the people, the friends I knew. I feared that, it's true. Shame gave me pause. I had to look deep inside myself, and decide for myself what was more important to me now, as the woman I had become.
In the balance hung my relationship with my son, and I could not face losing him again. I knew that for me, and for his sake, no job, no friend, no position in society was worth losing my child again. Avoiding the shame hadn't really been worth losing him the first time, when I thought it through. The years of denial and pain, the constant hole in my life that was his absence, wasn't really worth repeating.
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