It's been a long week and a half of investigation into the Core Issues in Adoption as they affect birth parents. Some of it was incredibly hard to research and then write because, as a birth parent, I'm going through some of this stuff on my own end. I didn't want to make every post about me and my journey through healing as I wanted to show that these are universal issues that hinder us all at times.

Yet today, I want to show you some various birth parents (mothers) and the writings that they have done on these subjects. Their personal experiences speak louder than the article. They speak louder than my general, all-encompassing words. They speak to the heart and soul of each issue. Some of these aren't easy reads. Some will need tissues. Some won't fall in line with what others feel or believe. Yet after speaking for such a length of time about these issues, I felt it important to show you that these issues are alive and "thriving" in today's multi-generational birth parents.

I searched for something and someone to appropriately give us a glimpse into the loss a birth parent experiences. I found it in the words, both prose and poetry, of Writing My Wrongs. In her post entitled "It Wasn't Worth It," she sets up the scenario of when and how the poem was written.

Funny. The place I wrote it was the place I often woke at night. On the floor, under a table, with the table cloth as a blanket. I used to have night terrors following her birth. I would wake at night in a cold sweat, hearing a baby cry. I would get up and search this tiny roach infested box of an apartment looking for the baby. For whatever reason, I would end my night search by finding peace under the kitchen table.

I wonder if she was really crying at those times?

The physical symptoms of loss, the night terrors, lead to a poem dripping with the pain of a mother separated from her child. I felt myself nodding. I felt tears spring to my eyes. I have been there as well. This entry, this poem, they both offer more than just a glimpse into a birth mother's loss. A long, hard and somewhat unnerving stare, perhaps.

When it comes to rejection, I'm all over the topic. At my personal adoption blog, I hit on the topic in early 2006, before Josh's paternal side of the family had been informed of the Munchkin's presence in our lives. In short, I felt it was my Husband's place to tell his family and he, like me, wanted to avoid confrontation. It left me feeling all different forms of rejection and fear.

But my Husband won’t meet me on this issue. I cannot force him to tell them because I can’t hold a gun to his head. I do not wish to be present when the issue is discussed because I will vomit on their shoes.

I just don’t want to be cast out. I hate that feeling. One of my biggest fears is rejection. I’m in tears again.

A quick search of the blogosphere will have you finding other birth parents who have similar feeling and fears of rejection, whether it is with regard to telling a new friend about the child they placed for adoption or actually stepping back into the dating world.

When it comes to guilt and shame, the subject is all over the internet from birth parents to adoptees to adoptive parents to Joe Schmoe. However, Paragraphein takes us on the journey of actually confronting her guilt. I think that it is a necessary read for any birth parent dealing with the fallout of guilt and shame. She speaks of anger, forgiveness and compassion: all for herself.

Does the guilt ever creep back up, from time to time? Yes. If I miss a day of taking my meds and get a little down, it can tip-toe its way back in. If I think too long about how Sunshine might feel someday, knowing she has a sister she can't live with, then sometimes, yes, the guilt comes back.

But it's not overwhelming anymore. And I know how to handle it.

Really, it's an amazing story and bit of writing about one birth mother's journey to that point of understanding, to the point of being able to let go of something (guilt) so all-encompassing that it alters how you feel about everything. While her journey is uniquely her own, I think that we can all learn something vital from her words and her life.

Under the issue of grief, I felt that Wet Feet's post, "What Did It Feel Like," really hit to the core of some of those immediate and then postponed feelings of grief and loss. Her words about the physical and emotional aftermath speak volumes to the loss experienced by birth mothers.

My body had other plans. From the months immediately following placement I have fragmentary memories of panic and ache, imaginary injuries (I thought the epidural had caused a tumor to grow on my spine, for example), nightmares, paranoia, minor visual disturbances that had me convinced I was schizophrenic. Bear in mind, I was a high-functioning crazy person: I got A’s that semester in school, the semester that started six days after E’s birth.

The rest of her post follows the journey through grief, asking a few tough questions on the way. You can almost feel and taste her loss as the reader. If the loss can be felt, so realisticly, by the reader, it is not hard to imagine how real that loss is to the mother.

In searching for something written about identity or self-esteem, I came upon MagicPointeShoe's archives from 2004. In a survey, she offers up information about who she was at the time of placement. Her answer to a question about how the choice altered her self-concept speaks volumes, especially considering how she felt prior to placement.

Before this choice had happened, I was mostly sure I wanted to place him for adoption.

Afterwards, it was a long healing process. Trying to figure out how to live some sort of normal life again after such a huge emotional and physical train wreck of childbirth followed by loss from adoption, I lost myself for a while. Or really, the world lost me while I stood still in grief.

Lost. I know many another birth mother who would describe their post-placement selves as lost; lost to themselves, lost to the world, lost in general. Altered to the point of being completely unrecognizable. Interesting and saddening at the same time.

In my searches, I did not find any posts relating directly to intimacy or mastery and control issues. I may have been googling with the wrong terminology because I know that I have read posts of this nature in the past. If you know of or have written posts on either topic, please comment to link us or e-mail me at firstparentblogger@adoptionmail.com .

In the end, this series was not meant to depress birth parents reading or to show others in the triad that we hurt just as much as the next guy. The point was to show one another that we are not alone. Whether in relation to other birth parents' journeys or in comparison with our triad counterparts. We're not alone. Together we can make it through these things. Together we can make a difference in each others' lives. Together we can make a difference in the world. Issues don't have to stop us.

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For more on the Issues Surrounding Adoption for Birth Parents, read:

1. The Core Issues in Adoption by Deborah N. Silverstein and Sharon Kaplan, 1982.

2. The Core Issues in Adoption for Birth Parents by Jenna Hatfield.

3. Core Issues in Adoption: Loss by Jenna Hatfield.

4. Core Issues in Adoption: Rejection by Jenna Hatfield.

5. Core Issues in Adoption: Guilt & Shame by Jenna Hatfield.

6. Birth Mother Guilt by Jan Baker.

7. Core Issues in Adoption: Grief by Jenna Hatfield.

8. Core Issues in Adoption: Identity by Jenna Hatfield.

9. Core Issues in Adoption: Intimacy by Jenna Hatfield.

10. Core Issues in Adoption: Mastery & Control by Jenna Hatfield.

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