Friends through shared grief

This morning I pulled up one of my favorite blogs The Chronicles of Munchkinland which is written by another birthmother.  Jenna is real with her words.  She has a great open adoption relationship with her daughter and her daughter's adoptive mother.  Even so, she is like so many of us and often debilitated by grief.  I appreciate that she shares how her adoption relationship impacts not only her, but also her children and husband.

Today she was posting about her reaction to an episode of GL.E.E. Click here for the full blog post.

I don't watch the show, but I understand it is currently dealing with a teen birthmother who has been very erratic with her behavior about her child (another hot topic here in blogosphere).  You probably know the storyline better than me, so I will just leave it at that.

Jenna's comments today about this fictional birthmother resonated to my soul. Tears streamed down my face as I read them.  I would like to think these are not universal truths about all birthmothers, but I must say that from the ones I have interacted with, these statements are so very true.

In her post, Jenna is referring to the birthmother character in the show, and she says...

"Yes, she’s hurting. Yes, she’s a freaking mess. You don’t relinquish your child without some kind of freaking mess. The best of us are able to talk it out with unbiased counselors who have experience with birth parent grief and loss. The worst of us… they don’t make it. The ones in between, the majority of us, try to find ways to piece it all together, to make it work, to enjoy the good, to grieve the bad, to somehow make some sense of the hurt, the pain and the fear. Some of us hide the freaking mess better than others.

Sometimes even those who are masters of disguise fall apart in public sometimes when we’re poked or prodded or put on display as some kind of role model — for the good or the bad.

And I can assure you that not one of us wants to be a freaking mess.

I don’t enjoy the hole in my heart. I don’t like how, as her* birthday draws near (*note, her daughter), my first instinct is to hole up within myself, curl into a ball and hold very still until it all passes. I don’t wish this pain, this hurt, this emptiness on even my worst of enemies.

I understand those who lash out in anger. I understand those who put on the happy face. I understand those who turn to alcohol or drugs. I understand those who put on the ambivalent face of disinterest."

Jenna continues with the lament of my heart. She encapsulates the loneliness and longing that I have for someone to help me live through the pain of a child lost.

 "I understand that all of that comes back to the hurt, the ache and wanting someone, anyone — just one damn person — to understand how it feels. To ask you if you’re okay. To sit in silence with you as you stare at her picture on her birthday."

Her words cut to my soul.  She said out loud the things that my heart screams.

I am thankful that I have connected with a friend here in blog land that fits the bill as that person who understands.  I know I can call or text her on those dark days and she will not tell me that it will all be OK, because we know it is not OK.

I am one of the lucky few.  If you can consider it lucky at all.

And if you asked either one of us, we would both tell you that we wish that we never had this common reason to become friends.  We are over 1,000 miles apart, but bound at heart by a grief that thankfully few others can understand.

So in the spirit of thankfulness, I will say, I am thankful for my friend W's Birthmom.  And the other blog friends I have met here.

There are many of you.  Some birthmothers, some adoptive mothers.  Others are just people who have found my blog and prayed for my heart and encouraged me, simply because they were touched by my story.

But today, my heart is heavy for all of us who have relinquished a child and are now living with the consquences of that decision. I wish I could sit in silence next to each one of you as we all hold the pictures of our children and we greive their loss.