The Price Of Returning Empty Handed

One of my readers wrote to me that their family had just discovered, after a mother's passing, of a child she'd given up long ago. This, of course, tossed them into even more turmoil amidst their grief. 

I suggested that she get her hands on the book by Ann Fessler, entitled: "The Girls Who Went Away." It is the hidden history of women/teens who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade. And Ann Fessler's private account of her own adoption.

When I ordered this book a few years ago, I didn't know why I felt so compelled to do so. It was not my story. But I'd hoped, though my birth story was much different, that it might help me understand my mother, who is still a stranger to me.

Last night, I took the book to bed with me and opened it up again. It only took a few pages for me to be pulled in completely by the stories of these young girls and women who'd felt forced to give up their babies. Their words, years down the road, are heart-wrenching. Their pain, raw and festering.

You see, I had my own baby in my teens in the year just after Roe v. Wade was passed. I was offered the option of abortion in early 1974. I was told to go home and sleep on my decision. My dreams that night were frantic. I awoke thinking I'd already given my baby away. I called and told them I couldn't do it. 

But the years preceding Roe v. Wade was a much different era, although I too was made to feel shame for my "predicament."

This morning, upon awakening, something hit me. I don't know why I didn't think of it before now. 

I have only gone to a few funerals in my adult life. But I went to a relative's funeral when I was about six months pregnant. The stares from others I averted my eyes from, and looked at the ground instead of the faces.

What was even worse were the ones who wouldn't look at me at all. As though, by not meeting my eyes, they could pretend I did not exist. 

I was accustomed to this. I grew up with it. My mother had shamed the family in other ways, and I was her child. So I had spent my whole life knowing people did not look at me because they didn't want to acknowledge my existence. 

Except, sadly, back then I didn't know the reason. Or what sin I was paying for.

You carry this tiny being inside of you, knowing it is growing every day toward it's eventual separation from you. That it will be its own person. 

You feel it kick, move like a wave across your belly. You reach down and caress it through your tightened skin. 

After having become a mother, I can't imagine how these other young girls, forced to give up their babies, managed to go on. It must have tainted their souls forever. Going home empty handed. That was the cruelest part of all.

Back then, we lived in a world that was sharply divisive in regards to gender. The girl that got pregnant was a tramp. The boy that got her pregnant was, if anything, merely a scamp. A mischievous boy.

Boys' mothers turned on the girls. They told them they were trying to ruin their sons' lives. And then often shunned them. I guess the fact that that child was their grandchild didn't enter into their judgment of her. 

So the girl suffered the stares, the whispers, and could not stop the burgeoning belly that told everyone she was with child and had no ring on her finger. She felt alone and in isolation.

If she had an understanding and loving support system, she kept her child. And usually eventually married. 

If she did not, she became one of the "girls who went away" with that child in her body. And came home without it. She was told she would get over it. You will have more children and forget about this one, was the common refrain.

But you and I both, as human beings, know that that did not happen. We know that.

It was unfair, and quite literally, cruel.

She was given safe haven for the duration of her pregnancy, but at a bitter cost. With scars that would fade but never heal. 

And she went back to her life, feeling barren and misunderstood. Bereft of the child she might have been allowed to hold for just a bit. As she tried to memorize its features, its fingers and hands and feet and toes. Hoping those few moments would somehow last her a lifetime.

It is vastly different now. Girls have babies without marrying all the time. Movie stars do it. Famous singers do it. Girls can now walk around with tight shirts showing their growing bellies for all to see. And the judgment, I suppose, has somehow faded with the times. 

These girls, they don't know what it was like for "the girls who went away."

For they are now given far more choices with their own bodies. As I said, it was then, and is now, another era altogether.

If you are one of the women who gave their child up for adoption and have not found closure, or you know someone else who still suffers, I strongly urge you to read this book.

The personal accounts, in these girls' own words, is something that will stay with you for a very long time.