The Choice You Think I Made

An excerpt from my memoir - Choiceless: A Birthmother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Reunion

My new sweetheart has taken me into the woods, backpacking and camping in some of the most beautiful vistas of the Pacific Northwest mountains. I love the serenity I feel in the wilderness, and it has given Ryanne and me an unexpected spiritual connection. When I called her for advice on supplies and appropriate clothing prior to my first time out on a backpacking trip, we realized we have this shared interest in common too. And then Ryanne said, “When you go out into the woods, find the largest , oldest tree, and place your hand and forehead upon it. Feel the energy of all of the people who have passed it and know that all trees are energetically connected, and all of that energy connects you and me. We are never separate from one another when we are on some path in some woods.”

It has been more than a year since Ryanne and I have spoken or communicated in any way. We shared twenty-five years of stumbling along the awkward and unknown path of our first mother/first daughter journey. She was a young woman of 23, and I was 40 when we reunited in 1994. We did what we could do to bridge the gap caused by our painful separation just days after her birth.

I believed I was doing my best…..but, now I am left to wonder what that would even look like. Phone calls? Letters? Photos? E-mails and text messages? Occasional visits from across the continent? Shared stories? Tears? Laughter?

The estrangement is not my choice, but it is my reality. Just as my daughter did not choose to be surrendered to adoption. She did not choose to be mixed race. By all appearances, those decisions were mine. She was told she should be grateful for having been a “chosen child.” Over and over she was told her mother loved her and wanted her to have every opportunity for a good life; a life her own mother could not provide.

No, she has told me — she did not feel chosen — she felt rejected — by me. Yes, she was raised and nurtured in a big, loving family — one of the best I have had the pleasure to know — but, the lingering question remained — why didn’t my mother want me?

How can she feel or relate to the pressures put upon unmarried mothers during the years of forced and coerced adoption — when innocent children were labeled as illegitimate? How could she know the racial tension that existed just years after the passing of the Civil Rights Bill? (Please….I am not minimizing the reality of the ongoing and ever-present bigotry of our culture). There is no way she can feel the shame I believed I would carry and place on her innocent head. She can’t hear the voices of family members, social workers, doctors and religious advisers repeatedly saying…

….Do the right thing. Don’t be selfish. Let her go.

So for now, she has surrendered me. In 1994 I steeled myself to the possibility she would want nothing to do with me. I was as prepared as I could be before reaching out to her mother that first day. Over the years I became comfortable in the belief that we would continue to build our relationship — whatever it was — however we could.

I was not prepared to lose her again.

So, I connect where I can — where I did the 22-plus years before our reunion — in my heart. And, now — in the woods. My dear daughter — I love you forever.