BMB Reform Blog: Melanie's Thoughts

Hello again everyone!  I'm back with another reform blog.  This time I have another interview, with none other that BirthMom Buds own, Melanie Mosberg.  For those of you who don't know Melanie, she is the retreat coordinator and was BMB's Buddy of the year in 2010! 

Thank you, Melanie, for answering our questions and giving us your take!

Please tell us your name and a brief intro to your story. 

Melanie Mosberg – Open Adoption 2004

Became broken after a short period of time as the family choose to change visits frequency and contact.

Are there any aspects of adoption you would like to see changed?  Legalize open adoption contracts

What does adoption reform mean to you and why do you think it's important? 

What adoption reform means to me – changing the way things have been done historically so that they are adapted to the current state of adoption.  It is very important because the adoption world is forever changing and at times policies, procedures and laws have lacked in keeping up with the times.

Thank you, Melanie, for answering our questions and giving us your take!!

If you or anyone you know would like to be interviewed for this section, or if you have an important reform topic you would like discussed, please feel free to email me!  I look forward to hearing from you!

Photo Credit

Music Monday: Let Her Go by Passenger

"Staring at the bottom of your glass

Hoping one day you'll make a dream last

But dreams come slow, and they go so fast

You see her when you close your eyes

Maybe one day you'll understand why"

If you have any suggestions for songs to use, feel free to email me or post a comment!

Quote of the Week: Find Yourself

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

If you have any suggestions for quotes, feel free to email me or post a comment!

Photo Credit

The Grief Cycle Part 4: Depression

If I was honest, I'd say that I've been struggling with depression on and off since age 13.  It's hereditary in my family.  And my life hasn't been a cake walk.  Granted, no one's is.  But when one is already genetically predisposed to this condition, it doesn't take much to trigger it.

So you would think that having been through it before, I would know when I was in the middle of it and how to get out of it again.  And you and I would be wrong.  I didn't figure out that I was sunk hip deep in the middle of a depression until I was sitting in a room with about twenty other birthmothers staring at a simple diagram of the grief cycle in May of 2013.  But it did make me realize what had now been going on for the past five months.

So now I drove back to Georgia with the knowledge that I was hip deep in a depression and not sure what to do about it.  I'd tried counseling.  It's worked for me in the past.  But now money and health insurance and one friend who is a psychologist trying out a few until I found the right one just discouraged me.  I do still think that counseling is a very good way to understand and cope and should definitely be utilized.  I just lost patience.  So I decided to take the summer and just drop into the thick of it.  If I was going to be depressed, fine then, I would be depressed.  I went to work every day on time.  I wrote a few things here and there.  I watched a good bit of Netflix and YouTube.  I drifted rather listlessly through life not really trying to do anything other than keep breathing and keep walking, always trying to believe that sooner or later the way out would reveal itself.

I would talk to various friends online.  But I didn't really have any friends in the city that I hung out with on a regular basis or really even knew.  I had a few friends and acquaintances from work.  But most of them were married or older than me.  Not really the people you call at ten o'clock at night hoping to go out for a pint.  And for some reason I was paranoid that I would have to cut ties and leave this city just as quickly as I had left Columbus when I was pregnant.  I had no basis for this thought in the rational world.  It was just my own paranoid brain making up something so I wouldn't have to deal with anyone and wouldn't have the chance to find friends just to lose them.  Most of all, I didn't want anyone new to have to be exposed to this half-human version of myself that I was at the time.  But sometimes the universe has other ideas.

I had met a guy in June.  His name is Rob.  I didn't speak to him again until August.  And a year ago this week I ended up spending almost all week with him at various functions and parties.  He became my first friend in Athens outside of work.  With him came others.  People that he introduced me to.  One of whom is named Kristin.  When the three of us met, we were all recovering from terrible points in our lives for a variety of different reasons.  I can honestly say that this time last year was the turning point for me.  This was the moment where I found people I could relate to; people who didn't mind where I had been or what I had done; people who understood depression and understood sinking into that ugly blackness in order to get to the root of it all and understand why it was there.

Rob pulled me into the writer's group that we are both members of.  And because of that, I started writing more.  I started writing more stories and more poetry.  One of his friends was the reason I went to the open mic poetry reading where I found my son and his adoptive parents that wild night in October.  My son's adoptive father is the leader of that poetry group and I still attend every week to read and listen to more and more poetry and hear what others have to say.

Because I was writing so much, it was only natural that eventually I would start to write about my son and what I had just been through.  I began to take Ernest Hemingway's advice to heart: "Write hard and clear about what hurts."  I wrote blistering and blazing poems that described in gory detail just how much I hurt.  And it was luck that the few times the poems were said in public, either Rob or Kristin were there to hold me after saying everything that there was to say about what was wrong.  They didn't question or judge.  And I am forever grateful that they have been there.

Writing, it seemed, was my path out.  When I wrote, I finally released everything in my chest that I had stored up there.  I was starting to understand the root of it all.  While what I had done was something good, something that I should have done, something that I shouldn't be ashamed of, and something that was the best decision for my son, what I had done was incredibly painful.  I had given birth to a son and then placed him in the arms of others.  I had given birth to a son and then sent him away.  I had given birth to my first child, and now he was gone from me.  In my attempts to try to settle with what I had done, I had never quite acknowledged the pain that I was in.  The pain that, of course, anyone would be in after having to do something like that for the sake of one's child having a better life.  And finally, finally, I was venting that pain and wrapping bandages around the wounds and coming out of the dark.  I had finally gotten to the point that I didn't want to be in the dark anymore.  I was finally starting to climb out towards the light.

The way I got out isn't for everyone.  There were some very dark days in the midst of this and there were days that I didn't want to get out.  Like I said before, I have nothing against counseling or psychotherapy or even medications used to treat this.  I've done them all.  Find what works for you and use that to your advantage.  These treatments are tools that you can use to get out of your depression.  So is writing, art, music, and talking with trusted friends or clergy.  Whatever you need to get out, please don't ever be afraid to ask for it and don't ever be afraid of what someone else thinks of you for needing it.  This is your life.  Do what you need to do.

Photo Credit

Extending Grace

Sometimes I do things that are really stupid. Anyone with me? Just the other day I was running errands early one morning. My family was still asleep at home and I was getting caught up after being away. I went to a store and saw someone I knew there. I'll call her Bobbie Jo because I'm feeling silly today. Anyway, I spotted Bobbie Jo nearby. My first response was a smile and a "hello!"

But when I thought again I started thinking of the way she treated me the last time I saw her. She was rude. She acted like I was invisible. So what did I do? Well I ignored her of course! Because that's the grown-up thing to do.

Fast forward ten minutes and I see her at the next store I go to. What did I do? Did I say "hello!"? Did I act like a grown-up given a second chance? No way! I continued acting like a child and completely ignored her.

Now I seriously doubt Bobbie Jo saw me at either of those two places. And even if she did it's not important. I can't control her. But I sure can control me. And I'm ashamed to say that I did not take the high road and I did not offer her grace. I ignored her and instead of building a bridge I built nothing.

I know women are hard to deal with. But we need each other. This body of birthmoms needs each other. Let's extend grace to each other even if we have received snark in return. Let's smile and hug each other even if our last meeting was not friendly. We are all in this together and whether we like it or not, we are who we are stuck with.

Pep talk done! Next time I will smile and try my best to be a grown-up.

Photo credit

Music Monday: This Angel by Jennifer Nettles

"Can you hear me calling, come let me hold you. 

Naked and falling into my arms 

with every breath in my body, the sweetest surrender 

is losing myself in all that you are."

If you have any suggestions for songs to use, feel free to email me or post a comment!

Quote of the Week: Dreams

"Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us."

If you have any suggestions for quotes, feel free to email me or post a comment!

Photo Credit

The Grief Cycle Part 3: Bargaining

This was the most confusing stage for me; especially since it’s one of the harder stages to correctly define.

When I was sitting in a room with several other birthmothers at the 2013 Birthmom Buds Retreat, we were discussing the grief cycle and when we got to this stage one woman even said out loud, “I've never been sure how this stage works” followed by the agreement of half the room.  What in the world was this bargaining stage and how would we know we were in it if we didn't even know what it was?

“I've always seen it as the 'If I just do this then everything will be fine' kind of mentality,” said our discussion leader.  This statement was followed by even more agreement.  I had been locked into that kind of mentality for months after Halloween.

The tricky part is I knew none of it would bring back my son.  None of it was going to make any real difference to him.  But somehow, it made a difference to me.  I was in grad school at the time.  I was working a full-time job.  I was trying to get myself established as a small business person with my knitted, crocheted, and sewn items.  I kept trying to do everything that I could.  I kept trying more and more things to try to get my life to work like I thought it should.   But I wasn't really sure how it should work.  Wasn't really sure what my life actually working was supposed to look like.  But somehow, if I just got ahead and got things to work, then everything would be fine.

This whole part of the grief cycle, at least to me, often feels like just another round of denial.   You keep yourself busy.  You keep doing everything that you can think of to do.  You keep going and going and going thinking the next thing will make everything better.  I guess my problem was it wasn't going to get better.  Better would mean that I had my son with me.  Better would mean that my ex was with me again.  Better would mean that somehow our lives were actually working like this and we were actually giving our son the life he deserved.  That was my brain’s version of “better.”  And it was an unattainable one.

And just as unfortunately, the only way to break out of that endless cycle, was to realize that I wasn't going to get my son back; I wasn't going to be with my ex again; I wasn't going to get that life that I kept imagining where the three of us were actually making things work.  That realization caused a bone-crunching depression to settle down inside me for the first time in a very long while.  I've had issues with depression since I was a teenager.  But this time it was tougher to deal with than any time before.

I know this entry is a little shorter.  But in truth, this stage I got through the quickest of them all.  I've always been a realist, forever trying to get myself to accept reality and move on to whatever the next step is.  If I had to guess, I probably lingered in this stage for a few months before winter took over and my depression set in.

Since we’re three steps in, I’m wondering what you all think of this and how this in any way lines up with your experiences.  Would love to hear from you!  Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

Photo Credit

Chelcie's Story

When I was young, I felt invincible. Nothing bad could ever happen to me. I was 18 and a freshman in college and ready to tackle the world. I had a good group of friends who liked to drink and party a lot. We danced and had fun and met new people, it was carefree. One weekend my friend Dan had his best friend M come up to visit. He was the cutest guy I had ever seen.  We were never a couple because we didn't want to be tied down together.  We decided we were both so young, too young for commitments. It stayed that way for a little while but it all changed when I found out I was pregnant only 4 months after meeting him.

Making the decision to want to go through an adoption isn't easy for anyone, but I knew I wasn't in any place to bring her into the stable home she deserved. M was in no place to be a father and he made it very clear that he was not interested in keeping the baby or being in a serious relationship. I knew what it was like growing up with a single parent with little financial resources and that wasn't the life I wanted for my daughter

My brother placed his daughter in an adoption several years before and he is not in contact with the family or birth mother. I knew this was going to make it harder to sway my family's opinions on an adoption. It was really hard on my mother at first, knowing that she would have two grandchildren that had been placed.

.

The only person who was initially supportive of the idea was my best friend back home, Kai. Almost everyone else thought I was making a decision I would regret and that I wouldn't be able to go through with the adoption. It gets lonely being one of the only one people who believes in yourself. I don’t think I would have been able to go through it without Kai and my amazing adoption worker.

I am so lucky that I found the agency that I had. The first thing my adoption worker said after I called her agency and explained my situation was "well first off, are you okay?" It touched my heart and I'll never forget it. For the first time someone was asking me how I was feeling about all of this.

I met A and J (the adoptive parents) when I was about six months along. After a little while, M had come around and attended every meeting he could with me.

We met them over breakfast with my adoption worker the first time. I just knew that they were the right family for us, we had just clicked so well and had even picked out the same name for the baby without knowing it! We met again before finalizing our decision but a few weeks later we told them they were going to be parents. They had struggled with loss and infertility and I was so thrilled to be able to help make their dreams come true.

I had developed pre-eclampsia during my third trimester and I ended up being induced on Halloween. E, however, didn't make her entrance into the world until 2 am on November 1st. She came into the world in the presence of M, my mom, Kai, and A & J.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my entire life. A & J stayed for the first few hours so they could get to know their daughter. Seeing them hold her for the first time was a world of emotions. I was happy, sad, and jealous and so many other things that only birth moms can really understand. I knew I was making the right choice for E, but that doesn't mean it hurt any less.

Everybody tries to tell you about how difficult it is going to be but you don't really realize how hard it's going to be until you hold that little baby in your arms and everything in your body tells you to never let go. I think a lot of birth mothers can relate to that overwhelming feeling. I loved her and I wanted her more than anything in the entire world. We placed her directly to her adoptive parents at the hospital. We had to stay an extra night because she had developed jaundice (as a lot of babies do) but I was happy to have the extra time with her. 

Leaving the hospital empty handed was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do and I am so thankful for her adoptive parents and how they treated me in the days, weeks and months after. They were extremely understanding and supportive. In the end my mother was also supportive and helped me a lot after the baby was born. I go to college but I live at home during the summer and my mother and I are closer than ever.

I am very excited to get to know all of you amazing ladies as a new blogger here on BirthMom Buds! Every story is unique and I'm looking forward to hearing them and offering each other the support we all need!

Music Monday: I Hold On by Dierks Bentley

"To the things I believe in

My faith, your love, our freedom

To the things I can count on

To keep me going strong

Yeah, I hold on"

If you have any suggestions for songs to use, feel free to email me or post a comment!

Quote of the Week: Feelings

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”

Photo Credit

If you have any suggestions for quotes, feel free to email me or post a comment!

The Grief Cycle Part 2: Anger

The next step in the grief cycle is anger.  It’s understandable.  Probably one of the few things I understand the most about grief.  We didn't ask for this to happen.  We didn't want this to happen.  We didn't like what we had to do in order to get through it.   So why not be angry?  This is how I dealt with my anger.  That’s me on the far right in the blue and pink with a weird half clown mask on and green hair that was really icky and stringy.  And the others are the ones who helped me bleed this anger from me.  You’re probably wondering how that happened.   Well, this is how.

I have a bit of a temper.  I've always had it.  And I know exactly who I got it from, too.  In the fall of 2012, I was losing my grip on my temper.  I wanted to lash out at everyone who I came into contact with.  Family, friends, it didn't really matter.  I was just so angry and I wasn't sure where it was coming from or how to take care of it.  Remember, I had no idea at all that I was just going through the grief cycle.  To me, I was just angry.  I had lots of reasons to be angry.  But I hadn't settled on the one reason why.  And honestly, if I had known why, there wasn't really much that I could have done to solve it.  So I just stayed angry.

It had been about two years and three months since my child had been born when I finally turned and faced my anger head on.  My birthday is October 30^th.  And before you worry over the fact that I didn't get to be a Halloween baby, don’t worry.  My birthday is the same as my late grandfather’s, and for the last five years of his life, I was the apple of his eye.  In 2012, I was turning 30.  I was turning 30 on the 30^th of October.  I thought to myself, “I have to do something different this year.  This is never going to happen again.”  People suggested the usual: sky diving (fear of heights), river rafting (can’t swim), go to Vegas (with my addictive personality???).  All of them I turned down.  No, my sights were set on something better and stranger.

My first best-ex was working at a theater in Atlanta and they were putting on a charity haunted house and needed people to dress up and scare people.  I don’t really like haunted houses, mostly because of the scare factor and my amazing ability to get startled very easily.  However working a haunted house, that was something entirely different.  I knew exactly where all the scares were.  I saw everything in the light of day; long before night fell and the black lights came on.  I knew where everything was and knew what to expect.  On top of that, I got to scare people while wearing funky costumes.  And this is where I drained my anger.

On my birthday night, I was dressed as a mad clown with two fake wooden knives and got three scares.  I popped out of a curtain, peered out from behind a spinning wheel with a fake clown nailed to it brandishing my wooden knives, and then popped out of a small box.  Each time cackling to the innocent patrons that they would never get out alive and threatening to nail them to the spinning wheel.  Somewhere in the first couple of nights, before my birthday show, I realized that doing stuff like this is a gentle form of violence.  People were giving us money to walk into this place and get yelled at and growled at and startled and scream and run for the exits wherever they may be.  And I dived into it with a vengeance.  I yelled, I snarled, I threatened, and I directed every ounce of anger in me at the people who came near my spots.  By the end of Halloween night, I was exhausted and my temper finally appeased.

I managed to get lucky and direct my anger in a very positive way.  Well, at least one can call it positive.  We were raising money for a no-kill pet shelter and a day home for the elderly so they could hire teachers and get craft supplies.  And once I took off the mask and put down the fake knives, my scaring days were over until the next haunted house I could find.  But there’s a variety of ways to express anger that don’t involve evil clowns.

Breaking tiles to make mosaics, ripping paper to make collages, writing very angrily and hopefully not breaking the keyboard as you type, or just finding a safe place in which to scream at everything that is making you hurt.  Whatever you have to do, I hope you find something to get the anger out of you so it doesn't fester.  Being angry all the time is really an exhausting way to be.  Trust me.  I was angry for a solid six months before I finally got it all out.  And I don’t suggest staying angry for that long.

How do you deal with anger?

Photo Credit 

Jazmynn's Story

I was 16 years old when I first found out I was pregnant with my daughter GiGi. I was more than terrified of what was going to happen to me. How was I going to tell my parents? How was I going to finish school? How were my friends going to take the news? So many questions had run through my head and I felt so many emotions. And to put the cherry on the cake, the father was much older than me and my parents despised him. 

Things were not looking good for me. I ended up keeping it a secret for the first five months of my pregnancy. How I managed to do that, I do not know. Until one day my principal called my mom and said she noticed my stomach. The stomach I tried so hard to hide. My mom asked me about it and that's when it all came out. My parents were more than disappointed. 

Things started to take a turn for the better when I decided to contact a local Catholic adoption agency. At first I wanted to keep my child, thinking that the father would be around but that changed as well. When I first met my adoption counselor, I was skeptical of the whole idea. I knew that I would be judged for giving my baby away. T, my adoption counselor gave me hope and my whole mindset changed. I ended up meeting with her a few times a week to discuss my options and figure out a plan. I then became more enthusiastic by the day. Inside, I did feel some discomfort and sadness knowing that my child, my first kid was not going to be living with me. But I knew that this was the right thing to do, not for me, but for my daughter.

I began to embrace my pregnancy regardless of the judgments, put downs and the fact that I was 16. I still had a lot to deal with and I kept some things a secret from certain people but I knew what I was doing was right. I ended up picking a beautiful, loving family. The couple I picked had already adopted two other children and I thought to myself, they are the family. I met with them consistently throughout my pregnancy and I began to think of them as my own family. It hadn't really hit me yet that they were going to be caring for my daughter for the rest of her life, but I knew she would be in good hands. I still wanted to keep a connection with my daughter so I chose to do an open adoption. 

When the day came to place her in the hands of this other family, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was the day I was being discharged from the hospital. Those two days I spent with her, she had grown on me. I began to hold her close to me and didn't want to let go. I knew I had to enjoy those last few moments with her even though I knew I would be able to see her again someday. When I gave her to her new family, the tears began to fall. I cried so hard my chest began to ache. And then I felt a comforting touch, a hug that meant so much to me. My daughter's new parents had reached over and began to hold me as I let out my cry. 

I can still hear them whispering, "I love you..."

Melody's Story

The smallest decisions we made in life can change our future in ways we never would have dreamed.
For instance, my big life-altering decision came when I decided to try out for my high school's jazz choir when I was leaving the 8th grade. I never wanted to try out, but a friend of mine did so I thought, "Why not?" Little did I know that this decision would affect me every day for the rest of my life in both the best and worst ways possible.

Jazz Choir is where I would meet some of the best people I have ever known who, even 10 years later, I am proud to call my friends. It would open up entire new experiences to me such as musicals, different religions, re-visiting my preschool, my former church, and teaching me to help people through music. I loved performing and I loved putting a smile on someone's face. However, it grew hard for my parents to cart me back and forth all the time since we only had 1 working vehicle and my father's working hours. This is why I began staying after school on days that we had concerts, to take the train instead of my parents in giving me rides. This is also how I met the boy who would change my life.

I met R one day after school while waiting for my fall concert to begin. He was going to be in it too. It was my cousin's birthday and he and I had nothing to do for several hours so, naturally, we gravitated together. That was the first time I became REALLY interested in a boy. This would not be the only first that R would give me. He gave me my first cigarette, first date, first boyfriend, first time, first pregnancy scare, first pregnancy, and my first child.

L was born in the fall, right after I had turned 18. She was beautiful and perfect and the best thing I had ever done with my life....but she wasn't mine.

During my pregnancy, I became the victim of something known as coerced adoption. R's mother, B, was a very manipulative individual. She used to tell me that giving L to her was the best thing I could do, that L would grow to hate me if I kept her, that we would be on welfare, and I would never be able to give her a good life. She also convinced me not to tell my parents about the possible adoption because they would be against it and they weren't good for me, how would they be good for the baby? They would abuse her just like they abused me. B was so adamant about this, she would rarely let me out of the house unless it was to go to school or work. She even kept me in the house when I wanted to go see my grandparents because she was afraid I wouldn't come back and would "take the baby away".

So it came to be when I finally turned 18, a mere 2 weeks before my daughter was born, that I had no way of contacting an attorney when she handed me the adoption papers. So, it was, with no knowledge of what it meant or what I was doing, that I signed away my daughter when she was just 2 weeks old.

It took her over 4 years to finalize the adoption, and over that time I had many thoughts of somehow reversing the adoption, but she kept telling me that I was unfit and if I tried to take my daughter away that she would have me seen as an unfit mother, and ensure that I never saw my daughter again.

Nearly a year and a half after that, B passed away. The woman who stole my daughter was not long for this world. She still lives with her adopted father, P, and his new girlfriend. They treat my L wonderfully and I could not have asked for better parents for her. My animosity is still around quite a bit, but it's ebbing away day by day by day. I am lucky, I know, in the aspect that I get to see my daughter grow up every day. I have been blessed with weekly visits, the ability to take her out to dinner or on special outings, and constant picture and video updates on any milestones I'm not there to witness.

L will be 7 this year and she remains to this day the biggest blessing I have ever known. It's hard to believe it all started when I accompanied a friend to Jazz Choir auditions. So, as a new blogger I'll be sharing my thoughts and views in upcoming posts but today I leave you with a question: What decisions and actions led you to place?

The Grief Cycle Part 1: Denial

We've all heard of it.  We've all been through it at least one if not twice or three times.  Sometimes about the same thing.  But sometimes it's hard to tell what it looks like.  I know I didn't realize what I had been doing for the past three years until I was smack dab in the middle of the fourth step.  But suddenly, there I was, in a room of birthmothers staring at the grief cycle all laid out in simple terms and I realized what had been going on.  So, I thought I might share with you what the grief cycle looked like to me.

Denial.  I know it well.  And right after my son was born, I was smack dab in the middle of it.  Going through pregnancy is painful unto itself.  Childbirth?  Don't even get me started.  But then watching my son be put in another car to ride off with his adoptive parents?  Completely blew every pain I had had to date out of the water.  It was too much.  It was literally too much to handle.  I didn't know how to handle it.  I didn't know if I could handle it.  We are all very lucky that I was living with my parents at the time, because had I not been there, I can guarantee you that I would have been diving to the bottoms of various bottles for a long while.  But I was with my parents.  And they watched me very closely and carefully.

I had to have a c-section after two days of labor, so I got the benefit of Vicodin pills for a while.  I have had an on-again off-again romance with Vicodin before.  And because of that, I am very careful about the point where I'm taking them to numb the pain and when I'm taking them because I want to be numb.  The OB/GYN offered to prescribe me more, but I refused.  The regular doctor also offered to prescribe me more, but I refused again.  I got to the end of the bottle of pills and was able to get about with a few ibuprofen.  So I was satisfied.  But now I needed something else to make my numb.

Enter Netflix.  That wonderful time consumer of all time that you didn't even know existed.  I watched three or four whole runs of shows.  I watched movies of all kinds.  I re-watched whole runs of shows.  I re-watched movies of all kinds and some that I didn't even know existed until I saw them.  I discovered shows I never knew existed.  For the entire rest of July, I allowed myself to eat, take pills, watch Netflix, toodle about on the computer, do odd jobs for my father like organize his documents into well-labeled folders, and find new recipes to cook for my parents on the one night of the week my mother worked late.

The vast majority of my day was spent finding ways to occupy my time so I wouldn't have to think about the monstrous amount of emotional pain that I was in and the fact that sooner or later, preferably sooner, I was going to have to face it all and deal with it.  And this was how I spent the next year.  I got a job.  I got a better job.  I got into grad school.  I moved out of my parents' house.  And then... my boyfriend, the biological father of my child, broke up with me.  It was more a matter of distance and time than anything else.  And he is still my best friend and confidant to this day.  But that was about the time that my denial ended and my anger started.  And that will be covered in next week's entry.

To all who are in the first tender stages of placing for adoption.  I know exactly where you are and I know exactly where you have been.  So do a lot of women on this site.  However you escape into your denial, be it as simple as Netflix or a more serious and harmful route, know that you will never get any judgments from me about it.  I understand.  I understand every which way that one can slip away from the world and try to deny everything.  And I hope none of you take this as a judgement, but to those who are on a more serious and harmful route, without condoning it, I do understand it.  If you have taken one of the more harmful routes, I do beg of you to get help.  There are fantastic groups out there to help you and there are people there who know what it is like.  Please don't ever think that you are alone in this or that no one will understand you.  There are people who understand and you should never feel like you need to go at this alone.  My love and prayers and thoughts are with all of you, no matter where you are.