Overwhelming Amounts of Information

A few weeks back I received a three page adoption summary in the mail from my adoption agency. I had previously read a one page summary years ago that was given to my parents from the case worker when I was adopted however this recent summary I received was so much longer with more details then I had available to me before. I've been sitting on this information for weeks because it brought up thoughts and feeling I just wasn't ready for and needed some time to process before sharing it with the world. If you been reading my earlier post you are up to date so lets add to the list of facts:

• My birth mother was born on July 11, 1953
• She's 5'6 and weighed 125 lbs back in 1982
• She was married, separated and then recently divorced around the time I was born
• I was her third child. Her first died at 3 months and the second was raise by her mother
• Her religious background was that of the Church of God
• She was an only child who's Father died when she was two and was raised by her mother
• Received her GED and graduated from a nursing assistance program
• Involved in drugs after separating from her husband
• Didn't report the rape but stated that she was raped by a large black man
• She couldn't afford an abortion
• During the 5 months I lived with her she seemed to genuinely cared for me but could never cuddle me
• In March 1983 she officially released her parental rights

To some these details might not seem like much but to me it was a lot to take in. It gave me some insight to her life before 1982.

The main things that I didn't know which really stood out to me was that I was her third child, that she was 125 lbs and that she couldn't cuddle me. I wonder if loosing her first child had a direct impact on her choices for the next two. I rock myself to sleep and have done so for as long as i can remember. I've been told that comes from not being held enough within the first year of my life so it was interesting to find out that she couldn't cuddle me. I can only imagine that it would be hard to cuddle a someone who reminds you of a horrible event or very hard phase in ones life. The fact that she was 125 lbs makes me think that I might not look a lot like her or maybe I just don't have her build because I'm NOT 125 and only have been once since maybe 5th grade.

When I was 17 I had moved to Nicaragua and was placed in a creative writing class at school. I was in a new country, didn't really speak the language and didn't know very many people. It was the first time in my life that I remember missing my birth mother. Of course I missed my whole family back in MI but it was a new feeling for me to miss someone i had no memory of. I reflected on what little information I knew about her at that time and wrote a poem called The Unborn Baby Cries. I wanted to tap into what a unborn child might be experiencing in the womb of a mother who was raped and trying to decide whether or not to give life to the fetus inside. I learned that an unborn baby can feel or experience love and neglect. I'd like to share that poem with you all in my next post!