A quote from the book I’m reading (The Secret Life of Bees):
That was the absolute way of things. Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.
I have a blog already written and set to publish over at the Birth/First Parent blog on the subject. I’m referring to how overwhelming adoption loss can be at times for birth parents. I know others have felt that loss, however it is present in your life, eating away at your life and soul from time to time. I’m feeling some loss issues right now and, frankly, I just need to know that I’m not alone. So, hit me with your stories. Blog it yourself. Do something.
I’ve got another quote coming from the book as well. I’m not even out of the first sixty pages and this book is giving me material to write on left and write. Good book!
9 Responses to “Chew On This”
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Guh. For once I have to actually think about this. I do agree its in everything I do. Not really conscious of its effects. Its just always there. Like a ghostly apparition I carry around with me. I always feel it. Hear it. Smell it. Breathe it. It can bring on panic attacks at the oddest moments, tears at others. It can make me sick. Want to stay in bed for days. It can make me withdrawn and angry or it can make me clean the house in a fury just to run from it.
It it an unwanted frenemie. Always with me.
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Oh, I love that book! It just kind of took hold of me, and I just about cried when I finished it.
One loss that hit me so much more than I expected was the death of my school’s principal when she was only 46, from a sudden heart attack. We weren’t really close, but her spirit so infused our school, that a light really went out of us all when she died. I remember getting in my car that night and just driving and yelling and crying. I didn’t know where to go and I was really agitated about it. I ended up at a friend’s house, a teacher who also worked at the school. I couldn’t settle down, just paced back and forth declaring how unfair it was. It was a long time before I could think of her without tears. They will be opening a school named in her honor this fall. I hope it will live up to her spirit.
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My loss issues aren’t from relinquishing, but from miscarriage, so I don’t know if they are appropriate here, but they come up in a BIG way when we are dealing with some of the adoption issues on our end.
My loss issues came up in a big way when we were waiting on the bee to be born. I missed my babies. Those six little souls that I miscarried. My body knew it was carrying children, it prepared, my stomach grew, my excitement mounted, I had food cravings, and then it stopped. Then the babies died.
When Punky decided to parent her daughter last year I felt consumed with the loss. And it was much more for my babies, than for her daughter.
I laid in bed for days and pictured my children, what they looked like. The oldest would have been five at that time. Starting school, reading, singing silly songs, telling silly jokes. But he wasn’t there. He was like a shadow, something I would turn my head to look at because I could almost see him. My chest physically hurt when I would think about him. I miss them, daily, and I was and am their mother.
When I would look at the queen, pregnant I would become sad for myself sometimes. It isn’t fair, I would think. She wants to be a mom, and can’t, I can’t be a mom and I want to. Nobody should have to go through this type of pain, on either end. She wanted me to go to her midwife appointments with her, and I did. It was awful for me to listen to the heartbeat.
Being a mom to the bee doesn’t take away or fix the pain of my lost babies. I miss them, I always will. I was a good mother to them, while God let me be. He only gave them to me for a short season, and I don’t understand why, but I know that he trusted me to take care of them the best I could while they were with me. I miss them.
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I read this one for my bookclub about five years ago. Needless to say, it’s one of the ones that remain on my “keeper” shelf.
There aren’t many books that affect me so deeply that I feel compelled to keep them close to me, but this one was one of them. Just wait until you’ve finished. Then re-read it. And see how it changes…like a kaleidoscope. It’s like grief and loss itself…many, many layers make up the final product. Once you think you’ve read it and you’ve got it down, you find another layer to the puzzle and it changes things.
It’s a very compelling book by a very talented author. It’s funny how everything ties to adoption when you look hard enough. And I’m not a first mom. I can’t imagine…Jenna, you amaze me sometimes. You just do.
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This is so true. SO true. You are NOT alone. Before I came by here (which I do every day just to check on you!) I blogged about the moments where curled up in grief is the only way I knew to go. These included the many losses ~ of dreams and hopes and of a child on this journey to our family. It includes the loss at least of proximity of my dear family… homesickness can be overwhelming and eat away. It includes the loss of my beloved Shawn now over 16 years ago, one that can still ~ although peace doies come often ~ puts me back in the fetal position especially in early March just missing him and the possibilities of life that would have been with him.
I don’t think though, at least from my experience, if we continue to face our loss and grieve whatever it is, no matter how hard, wrenching, re-forming that is, that it won’t eat away through everything. And if it does, maybe it leaves room for another, unrecognized something to come alongside and fill in the gap. Not that the loss is EVER, EVER over or gone or replaced… never, but sometimes, as I have seen in this journey of living with loss these years that sometimes there’s other stuff that would have never come to pass had I not embraced the loss head on and feel it and let that loss, even the hardness of it, become a part of the hopefully stronger, more compassionate, more thoughtful and thinking person that I have become.
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You are not alone. The weirdest things can bring it to the surface for me.
Sending you lots, and lots of hugs,
Kell
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[...] 17th, 2007 by taramayrn A post on Jenna’s blog has got me thinking about the loss in my life brought on by the adoption of [...]
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Jenna, I’ve written a post on the loss in my life, although not so well written….
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I can’t believe I haven’t read that book yet. I have simply got to get it!
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