The Sisterhood of Maternity Home Mothers

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

“In the smoking room, I learned a lot about the culture of unwed, pregnant teenagers. There were girls who were in daily contact with the fathers of their babies. There were girls who disguised the identity of the birth fathers in order to protect their ongoing relationships with them. There were girls who took their babies home and married the babies’ fathers. There were girls whose boyfriends immediately broke off the relationship when they learned their girlfriends were pregnant. There were girls who were going to take their babies home to be raised as a sibling. Whatever the circumstances in this intimate community room, the shame lifted and the emotional healing began. The contrast between the home environment I had left behind and my new home environment was notable. There was laughter where there had been tears. There was chatter where there had been silence. And where there had been judgment, there was total acceptance.”

Yes! In 1970 there was a smoking room where pregnant girls chain-smoked, knitted, crocheted, played board games and became friends. (Sorry, Children! There was a world of ignorance around fetal health in those days!)

From the perch of maturity, I look back on the the experience of being “sent away” with sadness and regret. But, at the time, the Booth Memorial Home for Unwed Mothers was a respite from the storm that raged through my family home following the news of my pregnancy. Sworn to secrecy by my parents, I had no one to talk to about the emotional and physical changes ravishing my 17-year-old body.

But, in the home, surrounded by other pregnant teens, there was little else on our collective minds. We talked about it all. We laughed. We cried. We comforted each other.

I am grateful to each and everyone of those girls, some of whom are my friends today. A huge thank you to the growing numbers of women in my life who have walked a similar path at the same time in history. The older I get, the more aware I become of the traumatic impact of adoption. I would be lost in guilty remorse without the sisterhood that has opened up to me since my memoir was published.

Mothers. Sisters. Survivors.

Salvation Army Booth Memorial Hospital, Wauwatosa, WI