My birth mom passed away. It’s been a week now. It’s lead to an indescribable type of grief that I feel very alone in if I’m honest. And I feel compelled to just release some of the things that I’m feeling at the moment.
My aunt (my birth mom’s sister) texted me last Wednesday telling me that she had passed. I had never met her. That wasn’t my choice. I’ve been wanting to meet her my whole life and I actually almost did last spring but it just didn’t happen because she had somewhere to be apparently. Who knows what the full truth is. I can feel I’m not being told everything. I know she was mentally unstable. Suffered from schizophrenia. But how she died seems to be unknown. She checked into the hospital for something, was there for a few weeks, and passed “with family by her side”.
I was really upset at first, clearly I still am. My birth mom was in the hospital for a few weeks and my aunt didn’t tell me? The opportunity to meet the woman who birthed me is gone and it breaks my heart.
All of this pain as being an adoptee has resurfaced I don’t even know how to handle it. I just keep crying. I never knew any biological family until I turned 29. I always felt so completely alone growing up.
I haven’t even told my adoptive parents that my birth mom has passed because it’s just going to make them uncomfortable and they’ll probably say I’m sorry and that’s about it.
When I told them I had found biological family on ancestry there was no happiness for me. There was fear. Never have they ever really talked to me about how I felt being adopted. But they didn’t know, I know that. I was just a grateful child who hid the wounds very very well.
Having adopted two children (my niece and nephew on my husband’s side) I will be a different parent. Their wounds will get the oxygen they need. And I will help them find answers.
I’m just sad right now. I’m just really really sad and another adoptee told that I’m experiencing disenfranchised grief. Basically it’s a grief that’s not understood or validated.
It’s lonely. It’s lonely to want to share this with more people in my life but they won’t get it but also I think…I don’t want to share because I’m not ready to fully reveal how much I’ve been holding in and for so long. Plus I can’t talk about this without crying.
I think that’s why I love this blog world so much. I can be so raw and just let it out. And no one close is going to read this because hardly anyone I know reads my stuff, and if they even do they never say anything.
And if you just read this, wow, thank you. Thank you for hearing me for a moment. Thank you for letting me cry and share.
To be a grown up and still this lost at times and here I am raising children…..
How do you guide children when you aren’t even sure of the way,
Ps – I do have a picture now of my birth mom when she was probably about 18. My youngest daughter has her eyes. They’re so beautiful.
The Wild Gems 