I got pregnant at 21 back in 1989 and figured I’d parent, but my scared boyfriend convinced me to attend crisis pregnancy counseling. I thought it might help him stick around. Instead, the program forced me to address my history of abuse and emphasized my incompetence to parent, so when he left, I chose adoption. I have mixed feeling about the counseling – both helpful yet coercive and preying on my innocence.

Navigating the aftermath of placement proved infinitely more traumatic than I’d imagined, but I got yearly updates so with hopes of one day reuniting took advantage of my second chance. I attended college and got a decent job, but when my son, Michael, turned eight, the updates ceased. After discovering I had no recourse, I resorted to blocking him out.

Then, on the day before Michael’s 18th birthday, a letter arrived from the adoption agency. A big stack of photos and a thick letter. This is when I discovered that the adoptive mother committed suicide when our son was ten. I took this information as further evidence that I was a bad mother for choosing a poor replacement. I feared Michael would hate me and struggled with the complex emotional nature of reunification. I wanted to throw myself into a relationship with him, but I listened to the advice of professionals and loved ones and let him set the pace. His sporadic texts and emails were emotionally excruciating. It was two years before he finally asked to meet face-to-face.

After a whirlwind, hours-long meeting, I hoped for more but was disappointed when his communiques` dwindled again. Assured by my husband there was plenty of time, I sat back, albeit impatiently, to wait. Then, in the early hours of the Fourth of July 2013, I received the news that my twenty-three-year-old son had died in his sleep.

The shock of his sudden death was tempered by the unexpected compassion I received from his adoptive family at the funeral. They welcomed me and introduced me to everyone as his birth mother, contradicting years of negative internal messages. In the years since our son’s passing, we’ve built a mutually caring relationship.



I've written a memoir about the experience of loosing my son twice. As I struggled in the aftermath of losing my son a second time, I discovered I could not heal one loss without also addressing the other, and that the losses were strikingly similar.