week 31 - beginning 6th July 2001
Taking the next step

to see previous entries first click here

Update - Emma's known where her birth mother lives for 6 months now and also found out she's not on the Adoption Contact Register which makes her more nervous about contacting her. She recently fell in love with her best friend, John, who jilted her for someone else, and now it looks like she might be getting involved with somebody else herself. She has decided to have her social worker be her intermediary, so it looks like she is about ready to take the next step in her search for her mother.

monday
As the day wore on got more and more depressed, until I felt like a sludge on top of a stagnant pond. My glands are up so I must be fighting some lurgy. Maybe that's why I'm depressed. I think the bottom line is I feel very vulnerable at the moment, getting closer to contacting my birth mother is a big thing. I'm seeing my social worker on friday. I need to arrange something for my soul.

tuesday
Felt better after some counselling time. I told my counsellor a few things about why I might be depressed. And then started crying when I told him about the other night with Andy. I'd been thinking about it on and off yesterday, although I couldn't see a connection with my depression I did wonder if it was at the root of it. I cried about loving my dad but not being connected to him. About maybe it not being okay to love Andy. Maybe there isn't a strong connection between us. Just a passionate sexual attraction that might go nowhere. He says he's very threatened by intimacy. We keep things light and I'm wondering if we have to, if that's the only way for him to relate. I don't feel safe to be vulnerable with him although he does with me. He makes me laugh and calls me sweet. I've always wanted someone to call me sweet he's the first person who ever has.

I kind of kid myself that I won't get involved with him, but notice that I'm always excited to see him. That's me being open. Calls to mind my Dad telling me the story of when he came to pick me from my Uncle and Aunts who I lived with for 3 months, away from him, after my adopted mum died. He tells of me running down the steps to meet him. He says I was so excited I was like a little dog and I jumped up at him. When he told me I felt two things. Humiliation at my love being compared to a dog's and a feeling that he didn't know how to receive my love. His own grief at loosing his wife was so big there was no space in his heart for me anymore. Of course I didn't think this then but I can see now how shut down he was while we were growing up. There was nowhere for him to take his grief and even if there was I don't think he was the type of person who would have gone. His generation were the ones who just had to to get on with it. Feelings what were they?!

Of course I get to wondering why I'm attracted to Andy. Is it me that's afraid of intimacy? Do I like him because he's not really there like my adoptive father or like my birth-mother? Is it just familiar or is it that I don't want to feel the grief that would come up if someone really loved me and let me love them?

friday
Saw Alison (my social worker) today. I really like her, there is something very sensitive about her. She asked me what I wanted to know if she only had one contact with my mother. I told her what I had been thinking, wanting to know about our life for those eight weeks that we had together.

She asked if I would like a photograph. I hadn't thought about that and would love one, well more than one actually! One of Mary when she was pregnant with me and one of her family at that time, one of my dad when he was young and when he was an adult, one of her children if there were any, when they were young and now. I joked with her then saying that I would like a whole album, we both laughed and Alison said 'so that I could choose which ones I wanted to keep'. It would be lovely to have some of her with her children as they grew up. I could look at them and think that would have been me! Oh yes and one of her and me when I was a baby. Alison thought it would be very unlikely that there was such a photo, they didn't think to do that sort of thing in those days - a picture for the baby to take with her so that when she was older she could piece together the story of her life. Not likely! And I guess my family wouldn't have been celebrating with camera and cake!

My birth would have been a subdued affair, a 'this is going to happen whether we like it not' kind of affair and because most people wouldn't have liked it and because my mother had either sinned or made a terrible mistake the whole thing would have had a very weird feeling. I wonder if her parents came to see her. If they saw me did they wonder what it would be like to have me in their family? Were they sorry for the decision they'd made but felt they must go ahead anyway to save Mary's from early motherhood?

She told me about a woman in her 70's who had been looking for 15 years for her son. She was delighted to find him and then a week later phoned Alison and said she didn't want to meet him, the guilt was too much for her. I hope given time her shame will lessen. It is amazing how powerful this guilt can be for mothers who give up their young, even for those who clearly had no choice in the matter. Is this natures way of keeping mother and child together, of ensuring the best start in life for the child? Is it the most likely way that a particular gene pool will survive? Or is it an accident, an accident of love that this shame and guilt take over when the bond is broken. Two broken hearts out there in the world both feeling the shame of not being good enough to be kept and the shame of not doing enough to keep your baby, not standing up to your parents and family enough.

We talked about how it might be hard for my mother to see me now, given the fact that she lives with her father, who would probably have been instrumental in having me adopted. What if they've never talked about it since? What if she won't see me until he's dead?

To be continued.......