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Living Through the Impact: Choices
The impact of my choice. I have always been aware that placing my daughter for adoption could negatively affect other people's lives. For example: my parents would lose their first grandchild. I frequently said the choice I made was between God, my child and myself - and that was all.
That is just not true. How blind I have been. I realized for the first time, four years later, that my son, and my future children, are living through the impact of my decison as well.
On that chilly November day, I did not just separate Mother and Child--I separated choiceless children. One is now an adoptee living with another family. Another, my son, is left behind in a wake of unanswered questions and broken dreams. He is left to pick up where his sister left off--to be the firstborn of the family, but never of my heart.
My son: Living in the shadow of my choice. He will not see that I was too young. He will not know that I was left to fend for myself. He will not understand I did what I felt was best. He will only forever question if there is enough room for him in a heart torn by a choice.
My only excuse is: "I could see far enough to know that I wouldn't be able give my daughter what she needed, but I could not see far enough to know what I was doing to my future children."
I stood there, a fresh twenty years old, and signed the rights to my daughter to another. Barely breathing from the act of relinquishment, my yet conceived children were far from my mind. They had no voice, for they were only a glimmer in God's eye. I made the choice for them, just the same as I had for my daughter.
A choice. How seemingly insignificant one choice can be. Even when you take in consideration how a decision will affect your life ...there is always something waiting around the corner. I had severed the rights of my children. We have advocates for adoptees, thank God, but what about the other children? The children of Birthmothers yet to come? Who will be their voice when they cry out for their blood-bonded siblings?
I can hear my son softy cry upstairs as he settles down for a nap. Now, more than ever, am I aware of what I have chosen. I did what cannot be undone. In saying that, I have no regrets, but one: I wish I could have seen a bit further.
While helping to build a family, I broke my own.
Skye Hardwick © 2002
"Living Through the Impact" will be a series of articles written on my personal truths as a Birthmother. Only through truth, as painful and unpopular as it can be, shall we find healing and recovery. For the future. For our children. For ourselves.
*Thanks to an amazing Birthmother friend who through her open and honests words gave me the title to this series.
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