Ilene is a birth parent that placed her child through Adoption Advocates. We recently asked how she feels about adoption now, and we appreciate her honesty in sharing the intermittent grief that accompanies adoption.
I have always felt good about my decision to place. But sometimes old wounds open up hard. I recently moved out of an apartment I had been living in for a few years. As I’m sorting out things in my closet, contemplating what I want to keep and what I’m tossing out, I come across a little red box. It had a layer of dust like it hadn’t been touched in years (which it hadn’t). I can blame it on being busy with life in general and almost believe it, but the truth is I don’t think I wanted to open the red box. I was happy keeping it closed and out of sight.
I had to reach up and high to get it down off the shelf. It wasn’t heavy to hold in my arms, but the contents of the box weighed so much that before I even opened it, my heart was already breaking from the weight of its memory. I blew off the dust and slowly removed the lid. The memory was slowly coming to me. I remembered gently wrapping its contents in tissue paper and finally being able to put them away. But right now my mind is racing and my heart starts beating faster. I reached into the box and grabbed the first thing on top. I could tell by the shape of the tissue paper that it was his baby bottle. I sat it down, I don’t need to open this one. (Truth is I couldn’t unwrap it.) I reached back into the box once more and pulled out something that was soft. I slowly started unwrapping it and my heart sank, tears filled my eyes when I realized it was “The Cloth Diaper”. Not just any cloth diaper, it was the one I used for his last feeding before I kissed him goodbye. I had kept it so close for so many years and finally was able to put it away when I moved here. So why was this bothering me so much now? I mean, I’m the one that wrapped it up and put it away. I thought I was past this point. Why couldn’t I bear to pull anything else out? My mind said I was done with this ache but my heart had a different story. A flood of memories hit my mind like a locomotive and I can feel the healed wound open back up as I recall the day I placed. So like a chicken I gently wrapped the cloth diaper back up picked up the wrapped up bottle and placed them back in the box. Covered it back up and put it with the sea of boxes I had in my living room. I’ll tell myself I will deal with this pain and face these demons of grief. But the box will most likely be in the top of my next closet collecting dust until I’m brave enough to open it again.
