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If you have recently placed your child for adoption, you are likely dealing with the emotional fallout of that decision. While you felt sure of your decision at one point, you might be asking questions of yourself, of God, of the Universe and of those also involved in the decision making process. You may be angry, sad, depressed or generally confused. You may be struggling with finding a meaning to all of this, wondering where your silver lining is among the heavy clouds.
I will be the first to tell you that the silver lining is not always obvious and, sometimes even then, not for years and years.
We often don’t understand why we are allowed to endure such things while we are in the midst of the storm. As we attempt to put the pieces together, it doesn’t often make sense. Things don’t seem to fit together as we feel that they should, pieces of the story often blocked or missing all together. This, of course, only adds to the confusion and the anger.
How then does one find the good, make sense of the loss?
You keep on keeping on, as cliche as it sounds. Until you work your way through the muck and mire, continuing through your journey, it won’t make sense. Until you are able to get out of the immediacy of the relinquishment, the loss, you won’t be able to see past it. Not many are told about this, the blindness of the initial aftermath. They’re just told that they did a good thing and that things will work out in the end. They’re not told that the inability to put it all together right now is normal, to be expected. They then feel alone, as if something is wrong with them, that they’re somehow even screwing up this process.
Sometimes the loss feels meaningless for years, especially as you learn that you could have parented had someone, anyone, helped you in your time of need. However, retrospect often brings things together. We don’t often know the lives we touch just by living our adoption stories, by speaking out and pushing for change. I now believe that I have been needed where I am now, a place I wouldn’t be without the loss I have experienced. While that doesn’t take away my grief or lessen my daughter’s existence, I am doing the best with what I have been given.
I know she would want that from me.
