Disenfranchised Grief and Ambiguous Loss

I decided to choose birthmother grief as my research project for grad school this year. What an amazing journey the past few months have been as I have prepared for this semester. There is so much to read about birthmother grief and surprising to me, numerous studies have been done researching the impact of relinquishment on birthmothers over the years.

There are a few common threads that I have found in my reading. I'll share two with you today.

DISENFRANCHISED GRIEF
Because grief from relinquishment isn't recognized by society as a whole, few understand the profound pain and feelings of loss that most birthmothers experience after relinquishing. After all, she chose to place her child for adoption, so why should she be upset? This is a common question. Let me clear things up for everyone. Just because something is the right thing to do doesn't mean that it's easy and that there isn't pain and loss. Most birthmothers choose adoption because they know that their child will be better off in another family, NOT because they are selfish and want to remain in a promiscuous or party lifestyle.

Because society as a whole doesn't understand and recognize the need for birthmothers to grieve, we are often left to grieve alone, attempting on our own to figure out why we feel the way that we feel, afraid to ask for help and afraid to express the indescribable pain that we feel on and off throughout lives. Birthmothers most frequently grieve in isolation and that isolation along with the questions and fears and uncertainties that she feels can and often does lead to psychological trauma, PTSD, depression, suicide attempts, anxiety, unresolved grief, physical complications, etc..

AMBIGUOUS LOSS
I have a friend on facebook who shared about two young girls in her area that disappeared a few months ago. They have few leads and the community is heartbroken. But there is still hope. Hope that the girls are still alive and will be returned home one way. And then there are pictures of missing children, just inside the door at Walmart. Have you seen those? Some have been missing for a short time. Others have been missing for years.

Have you ever wondered what the parents of these children must feel? There is no closure because there is no dead body. There is always that hope of a reunion. Hope that someone will find their child and return them home safely. For those children who have been missing for a short time, the hope is more fresh. It seems more of a reality. But it gets tricky for those who have children that have been missing for years. Are they dead or alive? Do we grieve a death of that which we are uncertain? Do we continue hoping that one day, our child will return and we can wrap our arms tightly around them and remind them over and over again how deeply they are loved and how much they were missed.

Ambiguity is something that is uncertain. Ambiguous loss results when there is no finality or resolution to a situation. Something that can't fully be grieved because it can't fully be acknowledged. For birthmothers of open adoption, ambiguous loss results from the "what if" and the "when" type questions that remain in their heads. When will I get another letter from my child's adoptive family? When will I receive updated pictures? When will I have another reunion with my child? What if my son or daughter wants more contact with me someday? Exactly who am I to my child and what role do I play in his or her life? Technology complicates things even more. Do I befriend my child on facebook or twitter (something I just learned how to use, by the way) and if so, will that make it even harder to grieve my loss?

Denial can result from the waiting game. Denial that a loss has occurred because there is an ongoing relationship. Confusion about what exactly I am grieving. Uncertainty about a future relationship with my child and even what a future would look like without him. My son is alive and well but living a life without me. He has had a wonderful upbringing with amazing parents and I have been around his entire life so a relationship with me is not high on his list of priorities. So do I grieve and move on with my life? And if so, what exactly am I grieving and what did I lose (a question that I recently found the answer too and will share with you another time)?  Do I wait in hopes that one day we will have a great relationship? Do I wait in hopes that he will one day tell me thank you, tell me how much he loves me and maybe even let the "M" word slip once or twice. I'm referring to the word, "mom" for those of you who didn't catch that. Do I wait in hopes that one day I will be able to wrap my arms around him, just as the mothers of missing children long to do? There is NO END, which makes grieving this loss very difficult. Although open adoption saved my life, I spent the better part of the last 21 years since my son was born, trying to figure out the answers to all of these questions. If my son had died, I would have been able to grieve and move on but my son is alive and well (Thank God!).

I continue to wrestle with these questions and many others. I don't have all the answers but I am learning new things every day. I am learning about myself - who I am, why I am the way that I am, why I feel the way that I feel, and why I do the things that I do. What I have discovered through my research so far is that the answers to most of these questions are directly correlated to what happened August 31st, 1991, the day that I relinquished my son.