She sat across from me, a walking contradiction of motherhood, the embodiment of everything I had spent the last 10 years trying to repair. She represented the mother each of my children had lost when they entered the foster care system. The woman who I feared when we took the foster care training classes. This woman was the unseen spectre that hung like a mist within the minds of each of my kids, as they grew to understand the loss that craters their heart with adoption.
She sat across from me with her rounded and pregnant belly, the ‘other woman’ that I could not forgive.
I judged her and I felt anger and pain just looking at her.
Her story was a repeat of most every inmate sitting in their cell. Multiple arrests, drug charges, and parole violations; a repeat offender with a lengthy rap sheet. But unlike many inmates, she did not deny her guilt, she wore it on her face and carried it upon her shoulders. I wanted to hate her, I wanted a target to unload upon and I didn’t want her to sit and just take it. I wanted her outrage and denials, so that I could howl in my indignant and justified anger.
It was me that had walked the floor with her drug exposed baby. It was me who held her toddler when he was dropped at my house in a dirty onesie at 2am.
It was me that watched the first steps, the first gummy grin, the first kiss blown from a chubby palm; and it was me that caught that kiss, that fall and that broken hearted child. And this other woman was the one who did not.
I am ashamed that I sat across from her and felt she deserved the pain and anguish she was walking through. I looked at her and I saw the hours I spent trying to teach her child with the learning disability caused by her alcohol consumption during pregnancy. I saw the day I wiped tears from the 5 year-old’s eye because he finally understood the word termination; a big word that meant he was never going back home to his mommy. I looked and I calculated the minutes and hours dealing with behaviors steeped in trauma. And inside I struggled.
I felt like a toddler in that moment, screaming, “Mine”. My children were hard fought for. I had spent months loving a baby that might leave at any moment. I had spent nights watching her sleep tucked in and safe, hoping that judges, case managers, court officials wouldn’t move her on a whim. I supported reunification even though it scared the hell out of me, and I had given her child my whole heart knowing she would probably leave. And now sitting across from the other woman, I was slammed with the realization that my adopted children had never been fully “MINE”. And I didn’t know how to reconcile that and inside I was afraid.
I believe that all adoptive parents carry this unspoken fear of future rejection. Would my children one day stop loving me and start loving the biological mother more? Would I receive a metaphorical pink slip from my child with the words, “No longer needed,” written in red? I don’t want to have these thoughts. I have them anyway.
This other woman didn’t hand her child over to the surgeon and then wait hours walking the floor waiting to hear if the surgery was a success. This other woman didn’t kiss the boo boos, get up in the middle of the night to comfort during a bad dream, or catch puke in her hands in the back of the van on family vacation (why do mom’s try to catch puke in their hands?) She did not deserve my child’s love.
The ‘other woman’ could never be my enemy, she was a piece of my children. She was the piece that had chocolate brown eyes and thick hair that went on for miles. Her piece was the artistic drawings rendered by my 5th grader and my 6 year-old’s musical ability. She was the piece that was strong-will and had a deep love for all small creatures. I realized in that moment, that I could not pick and choose the pieces I deemed bad. No, I had to see all the pieces, and when I look at my children I see their incredible beauty and potential, and she is a piece of that.
As my children grow, I see that this ‘other woman’ cannot be hermetically sealed within my home. If I don’t bring her out into the open, my children will wonder what secrets that locked door might contain. What would happen if they opened the door and walked into that room? Would they discover something shameful? Would they discover something tragic? Would they discover a piece of themselves that was irredeemable? This ‘other woman’ cannot be hidden away, but must be fleshed out as my children grow. They are a piece of her, and she is a piece of them and it’s not tragic or shameful.
I drove from the jail free from the chains I wore when I walked in. Because I know God has forgiven the inexcusable in me, and He does not carry a file filled with all my crimes. He knows I’m not the bad things I’ve done, just like I’m not the good things I’ve done either. I’m just a mom trying to love the best I can with the pieces that I have. And this journey of forgiveness is every day. It is me giving up my hope for a better past, and it’s harder than I ever imagined.
