“They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.”
~ Gabrielle Zevin
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| Photo Credit: Sakura Mutsuki, Flickr |
I thought this year might be a difficult birthday because I’d had so much to process the last five months.
Reflecting on my very first birthday -- I spent it totally alone.
(With the exception of receiving medical care.)
My natural mother just recently told me that at my birth and during her hospital stay, she didn’t want to see me or hold me -- and she didn’t. (That explains a lot.) She did see and hold me later on at the adoption agency, before I was adopted. But there was no rejoicing in the delivery room.
I wasn’t laid on my mother’s stomach or cradled in her arms after my umbilical cord was cut. There were no family members who came to see me in the hospital. No one sang lullabies to me in the hospital and there were no happy announcements on the day I born.
Back in the 1960’s women stayed longer in the hospital after birth. My mother was drugged during my birth and remembers nothing. After I made the transition out of her body, I was abruptly whisked away and placed in the nursery until I was released from the hospital, went to foster care, and was then adopted.
My mother and I were separated the entire hospital stay.
