by Ann Fessler
My parents got together with my son’s father’s parents, to make the so-called problem go away, disappear. They decided the best thing for me and for everybody, I guess, would be to send me to a facility—they called it a home, but I called it a facility—to sort of warehouse me in Los Angeles for the duration of my pregnancy.
I just felt like I had done this horrific thing and I was not in any position to protest or say what I wanted. Certainly I wasn’t in any position to say, “Is there any way that my baby wouldn’t have to be taken?” You know, “You have done quite enough, young lady.” In those times, and certainly in my family, I would not come up against my father or my mother and say, “I’m gonna do this or I’m gonna do that.” If they put their foot down, that was pretty much the way it was going to be. So the decision was made that I would be sent away and that our baby would be put up for adoption and that was just how it was.
When the time came, my parents loaded me up and took me down to this place and I just remember never being as fearful and distressed. I mean, looking back, I can’t imagine sending my child away in that condition. I just don’t know how they could do it, but they did. We went to this place and it was institutional looking; it was just cold. I remember there was this aquarium in the sitting area, with all these little fish in there, and I was just mesmerized. I just wanted to be in there with the fish, just take me away from this place and from these people. I didn’t want to be deposited there. They left and I was in such shock, I just clammed up and I think I just went inside myself.
I was taken to this long, long room with a bunch of beds. I don’t know how many, there had to be twenty or thirty beds right next to one another, each with this little tiny two-drawer stand. After I was there for ten days or something, I told my parents that I was going to run away if they didn’t come and get me. My dad finally came down and took me to dinner. I was very, very lonely and unhappy there.
There was just a constant sort of indoctrination with these meetings. They’d sit us all in a big group and tell us what a wonderful thing we were doing, and that whoever the families were that would get our babies they were these sort of idyllic sort of families, they were perfect. That sounded good to me. I was sixteen and I thought that’s what my baby needs. It doesn’t need me.
At some point my dad did come and take me home. I don’t know which place was worse because they really did not want me to be there; that was really evident. They were very angry with me. I pretty much stayed in my room and at one point I put a lock on my door because my mother was especially unhappy with me and treated me badly. They called me terrible names that I would never call my daughter. First they tried to get rid of me and then they brought me home and called me terrible names. That stuck with me, too. To have your mother call you a slut or a whore. I mean, it sent a real message about being pregnant and having children. Those were my memories, that’s my experience.
My boyfriend and I were very much in love, we saw a future together, whatever that would mean. The message I got as a young expectant mother was I wasn’t good enough. I mean, basically that was the message. I wasn’t good enough for my child. That stands out as a message that I carry to this day. That’s probably why I never had any children after my son.
Ironically, my son’s father didn’t have any children of his own, either. I think that message really hit home with us at a point in our lives when we hadn’t really developed the ego strength to withstand that kind of onslaught. I felt denigrated, marginalized. I couldn’t put it into words then, but I just thought, “I’m not good enough,” and that never went away. I also didn’t want to have children again because I really felt strongly that—how do I put this?—I didn’t want to do that to my son. If I couldn’t raise my son, why would I have another child to raise? That would dishonor my son. I honestly felt that all my life. So I never had children. But I was always striving to be better and better and prove that I was good enough or that I was mother material, that I could be respected in that way, and I never got there.
I wasn’t looking forward to going to the hospital and giving birth because then I knew that was going to be it. I’d be separated from my baby. They let the father stay with me for quite a long time and so that was very comforting. I guess they finally told him that he would have to leave. It’s very painful even now, thirty-five years later. I gave birth to a little boy and they let me see him, but they took him away pretty quickly. I remember he screamed really loudly and they said he had a really good set of lungs.
The first morning, a couple of people came from the county in suits. I was flat on my back with my head flat because I had had an epidural. I remember I had to sign the paper; it was only about nine hours after I gave birth. I had to do it, like, upside down. She said, “This is just so that we can give your son any medical attention. This is your permission, that’s all this is.” Well, come to find out that it wasn’t just that; it was also for foster care. No one had ever said the words foster care. I had no idea. I signed it, and I guess a day or two went by and finally a nurse came in with my son all wrapped up and she gave him to me.
I was really surprised because they had told me that he couldn’t get out of his incubator. They told me that he weighed three pounds three ounces, or something like that, and that he was so frail that he had to be in this incubator or he would get sick. And, of course, I believed the doctors. So, anyway, this nurse brought him and let me hold him for about an hour and that was just the best. I never forgot that time. It was the best thing that I can ever remember. I was so happy, I felt peaceful. I thought this is how it’s supposed to be.
I’m fifty-two now. I had my son thirty-five years ago and to retell…to recount what happened during that time and to talk about this even after all these years, I’m trembling. I think a person could see that my body is trembling. It’s just as intense as it was when they first took my son away.
We got to see our son one more time when we went to sign the papers at the social-services office. We got to sit with him and hold him and then we were brought into a little area where we were supposed to sign these papers. I just remember shutting down even more so, just going on automatic. They told me what to do and where to sign and that’s what I did. The father was right there with me and he held my hand and I signed everything that they wanted me to sign. I distinctly remember walking out of that building and leaving my little boy in there.
I was never the same person after I came out of that building. I became much more introverted. Definitely not trusting, I didn’t trust people after that, really. I had a pretty good self-image right up to that time. I think going through that, and being told by all kinds of people—parents, doctors, social workers—that I wasn’t what I thought I was…I guess I thought they were right.
I became very depressed. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I had never been depressed before. I had been a pretty happy young woman, pretty well adjusted, I loved life, I looked forward to things, I was pretty smart, I was resourceful, I was creative, I liked who I was. Not that all those things went away, but I think to have your baby taken—and I want to make the point that he was taken from me. I never gave him away. He was never meant to be a gift. If anything, the gift was that I thought I gave him the parents that he needed. They were the gift. They were the gift to him. My son was not a gift.
My boyfriend and I were still together. He graduated and we actually got a little home together. A beautiful home up at the top of a hill and we were very happy for a long time. I think as time went by, though, I had changed so much, I really became a different person. So eventually we went our separate ways. I decided that I would go ahead and get into college; I was a good student. I really enjoyed creative writing. My professors encouraged me to send my work off and I got published in some very good journals. That sort of lifted me up and I thought, “Well, there is something that I’m good at.” I think I had to prove something to myself. I had to find something that I felt like I could do, that I was good at.
I think at that point, emotionally, I was trying to cover up and just, as they say, dance as fast as I could to not think about what had happened. Then one day I just couldn’t get out of bed. I was at school and I was in the midst of all these midterms and I couldn’t move. I really didn’t see it coming. I simply broke down. My parents had to come and get me. Even then, they didn’t recognize that I was having a very serious problem coping with this loss. I can’t imagine that they didn’t know what this stemmed from, but they didn’t acknowledge it. We never talked about my son ever, ever, until he found me thirty years later. It was like a big dead horse on the dining-room table that we all danced around.
Eventually, I just got on with my life. When I thought of my son, I had to put a positive spin on it because what else could I do? He was gone. I just had to think that he was in a wonderful place. It was sort of a recording. I would say, “It was a wonderful thing I did for my little boy. He has a wonderful family. I’m sure he’s having a great life.” I started believing that, and still there was just something so missing. I mean, I was just bereft under all of that. I didn’t really understand why it was supposed to be a good thing. I’m still sort of perplexed.
I still don’t know what hit me. It was like an eighteen-wheeler came at me, or a train came at me, and here I am still standing. That’s kind of how I feel. You just keep going, you know, the emotional wreckage aside, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you go through the motions and you look like you’re a normal person among all these normal people. You just go on.
But that young woman in me was always there. There was just a little place set aside somewhere; she was locked away and not allowed to have her voice. People did not want to hear what she had to say. Believe me, she was very angry. I can say that with a second voice that I have. This young woman that they locked away had feelings, she had emotions, she wanted her son and nobody wanted to hear that. So the older woman just took over and that’s how it had to be to survive.
I got married in my early thirties and after that I actually did some interesting advocacy work. I worked for about five or six years for the Romanian orphans who were discovered after Ceauşescu was deposed in 1989. In the early nineties I worked doing direct emergency relief for those children—airlifts with food and medicine and clothing. Looking back, I feel that I was sort of compelled to work with children in some capacity. I felt I was helping rescue them or something, these little children. I’m sure that has some sort of meaning, you know, because of what I had gone through in losing my son.
After that, I became involved with a very large animal sanctuary in the United States. I coordinated a volunteer corps for them and I helped put together a manual they’ve been disseminating to shelters around the country. I would help put on very big animal-adoption festivals. I kept pretty busy.
Then, I guess it was in 1999, I had gone out to have lunch with my mom and we were sitting in a little restaurant, and she told me that she had gotten a call from a very nice young man who had left his phone number and wanted me to call him. She was still in the same home and had the same number. He had not told her exactly what it was he wanted to speak to me about, but she felt real strongly that it could be my son.
So as it turned out, yes, it was my son. I was just stunned. I had never thought that this would ever come to pass. I went ahead and called his father, we hadn’t talked in years and years and years. I just said, “Are you sitting down?” He says, “I can be,” or something to that effect, and I let him know that our son had found us. He was as elated as I was. We were just so shocked and happy. We both got to speak to our son that evening. When he got on the phone, the voice was familiar because he sounds like his father. I think one of the first things I said to him is “You sound just like your father.” I remember he said no one had ever told him anything like that before.
We had a long talk and just filled each other in, and it was very…it was very emotional. It was happy, and a relief, and everything rolled into one. It was just…I mean, I can’t describe the feelings…to talk to my son for the first time after all those years. We decided that we’d try to see each other as soon as possible. His father wasn’t going to wait. He got on a plane the next morning. Then I flew in, and there he was. I definitely recognized him. I mean, he had to be our son.
He’s just very sweet and he’s a very intelligent young man and he’s accomplished all these things. We continued to talk on the phone after that and see each other back and forth. He came down and visited me and met his grandmothers and cousins and brought his wife and everything and it was very, very happy. Through all this, you know, it’s difficult…he’s known a family that he calls his own all his life. And, of course, that’s his family and he has wonderful memories with them. It is difficult to sort of be added on. So over these last five years it’s been difficult at times and happy at times and sad at times, for both of us, for all of us—trying to figure out where we all fit. We really want to be in each other’s lives in some way and I guess we’re just still working through all that. So at this stage we’re just looking to the future and I’m hoping that we’re going to have a good, productive, loving relationship from here on.
When my son found us, we were all extremely happy and just so relieved that he was with us. We wanted to see one another and talk with one another and that continued for many months. Then I’d say maybe nine or ten months into our reunion it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was as though a trigger had gone off and I started to experience all of the trauma that I wasn’t allowed to experience, or didn’t even know I should be experiencing, when I was much younger. I think I was coming out of denial.
I feel as though I was preyed upon by this system, by these people that I was surrounded by. Not some nebulous thing but real human beings, real people had a hand in taking my son away. I knew this, but to this day I really haven’t been able to express this to my son in such a way that he accepts it or understands it completely. I was not able to ever mourn my loss of him or be able to express how sad I was. Nobody ever said, “Oh, I’m sorry.…”
All of that came to a head when I realized that this wasn’t a good thing. It was in everyone else’s best interests. It was the convenient, expedient thing to do at the time, but it wasn’t really in our best interests. It was not a win-win situation. In my opinion, it was a loss for him, too. He didn’t get to know his mother and father. We didn’t get to know our son, and be with our son, which we should rightfully have been able to do. The winners were the adoptive parents and the social workers who got to do their job in the way that they thought they should do it. We lost and we lost big. I mean, we lost the most precious thing in our lives that ever was or ever will be—our baby. Nothing can ever make up for that.
After my son and I reunited, I experienced what was probably posttraumatic stress. I can only describe this as a sort of out-of-body experience, but at one point I felt like I was not human. I didn’t feel the humanness in me and that was really scary. It was just like a big, ugly, dirty, dark hole. I realized that I had been used. I wasn’t recognized as a human being. I was a mother. I was not a breeder or an incubator for somebody else. I was a young expectant mother and I was treated like I was this thing used to produce a child for somebody else.
At that point, my marriage started on a downward slope that never stopped and I eventually divorced after a twenty-year marriage. My family couldn’t understand and it was making everyone very uncomfortable. I refused antidepressants. I really felt like I was silenced before and I was not going to cover it up or make everybody around me comfortable by taking a happy pill. I’m sorry, everyone needed to see what this had wrought.
I was very determined that I was going to make it through and it wasn’t going to be on pills. I did reach out and go to some pretty good psychologists who understood adoption issues. Unfortunately, it’s not recognized as a loss, so no one has worked up a nice psychological model to treat us and to get us healthy again. I kn
ew that I needed to vent or at least talk about this, but I would not take pills. I wanted to be able to mourn and grieve the loss of my child, and I wanted to be coherent when I did that. I had a right to be sad and angry and I didn’t want to be shut up again. That had already been done to me for thirty years and it was not going to happen again.
It makes everybody real uncomfortable to think that they took a mother’s baby away, that she didn’t give it up happily and voluntarily and as a gift. Nobody wants to face the fact that this is very traumatic. Even back in the sixties, it was a matter of finding a child for a family instead of finding a family for the child. It leaves a lot of emotional wreckage and it usually goes unaddressed because it’s not even seen as a problem.
It always comes to mind whenever I see somebody on the news who, God forbid, has their child kidnapped. Or you see in a magazine that a child anywhere in the world has been killed, and the mother is just grieving inconsolably, hysterically. We have all the same feelings but the public doesn’t know that. They don’t want to acknowledge it because it is so unpleasant. It makes everybody so uncomfortable to think that in this civilized society anybody could actually take a baby away from a young woman and expect her to not cry or be sad, or not want that to happen. We have those same hysterical, out-of-control, inconsolable, never-goes-away grief, you know, “Please, where’s my baby?” sort of feelings. It’s just that no one recognizes it and they don’t want to hear it. We have those feelings and they’re all bottled up. I mean, talk about people raging inside.…When you have your child taken away and nobody cares and nobody wants to help you or even recognize that you might be sad, that’s rage.
Before my son found me, if I would share that I had had a son and that he had been taken into adoption, people would not have sensed any kind of rage in me. They would have thought that I was very much at peace with what they thought was my decision. I actually had to think it was my decision because otherwise I would have been enraged for thirty years and I probably wouldn’t be here now.
