The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade

by Ann Fessler

  I developed a nightmare that stayed with me until I found her. The dream is: I’m at the hospital on the freight elevator. I’m trying to find her. I’m going up and down the floors. I get off but there’s nothing there—no people, no nothing—so I get back on. Over and over, I’m trying to find her. Up and down and never any relief, just searching and frantic, always frantic. That dream went on for years. I found her when she was twenty-two, and we met when she was twenty-five. The dream started subsiding somewhere in that time period.

  —Barbara

  About a year and a half ago, I started having this dream about a baby in a grave, and I don’t dream, or if I do I don’t remember. I could see this coffin. It was just this little white box and I’m standing looking down and I just got this haunting feeling. And at that point I didn’t think about the child that I had so many years ago. But I knew something was bothering me. I decided to go into therapy, which kind of surprised me. But I just didn’t understand why I’d been having this dream, and this sense of just missing something.

  —Sheila

  I gave my baby up when I was seventeen. When I was eighteen, I had my first migraine headache. I had them steadily until reunion. I ended up in the hospital on IVs because I had had a migraine for three months straight that would not go away. I’ve been in reunion for three and a half years now, and I cannot remember the last time I had a migraine. I think it was from holding everything in, you know, it all has to go somewhere.

  —Connie III

  Some of the women I interviewed turned to therapists for help with their relationship problems or intimacy issues, or for answers to unexplained physical ailments. Unfortunately, they did not always receive the help they needed. Many professionals were unaware that these symptoms were characteristic of women who had surrendered a child for adoption. Indeed, since many of the women did not attribute their problems to the loss of their child they did not always reveal their secret to the therapist, nor did the therapist ask.

  Despite the fact that numerous small studies in the fields of clinical social work, nursing, family studies, psychology, and psychiatry carried out in the United States9 and much larger studies completed in Australia10 concur that “relinquishing mothers are at risk for long-term physical, psychological, and social repercussions,”11 and even though millions of women have surrendered, there is still no widely accepted therapeutic model for counseling mothers who have lost their children to adoption.12 Many women are still not able to find adequate therapy. In one study, 50 percent of the mothers participating reported ongoing pain and suffering as a result of their loss.13 If this percentage holds true for the entire population of relinquishing mothers, millions of women today may be experiencing long-term problems resulting from their relinquishment, a great many undiagnosed and untreated.14

  Some women spent years self-medicating with alcohol, drugs, or food, or years medicated by psychiatrists, before they found a knowledgeable therapist or learned through a support group that their symptoms were consistent with those of other women who had surrendered. Relinquishing mothers are not the only members of the adoption triad—comprised of the surrendering parents, adoptees, and adoptive parents—who seek counseling for adoption-related issues. Yet in one survey only 27 percent of practicing clinical psychologists felt either “well prepared” or “very well prepared” to work with adoption issues, even though 8 percent of their patients were triad members.15 About half of these professionals had no graduate coursework that included adoption content. A similar absence of adoption research and study has been found in the fields of sociology and anthropology,16 and in studies of marriage and the family.17

  I’ve been in therapy twice a week for six years. It took about three years to figure it out. He was trying to treat the symptoms: depression, trouble with relationships, a little bit of perfectionism, overachiever, wrapped up in my kids’ lives, and then this isolation. I said, “Don’t you get it? It’s not about not being able to have relationships or friends.” I said, “It’s about being a mother and giving birth and falling in love and then they take your baby away. And it’s supposed to be okay. It’s supposed to be a good thing. I lost my firstborn. But she didn’t die and I didn’t get to grieve.”

  He said, “But you did the best thing for her.” I said, “I abandoned my child! How could I be happy? I abandoned my child! Who wouldn’t be depressed? Inability to have relationships? Well, who the hell am I going to trust?” So, yeah, we figured it out, and we work on it.

  —Suzanne

  I’ve tried therapy off and on for years. One time I was on so many different medications for picking me up, for relaxing me, that it was just unbelievable. That was prior to my finding my son and prior to the cancer. When I was diagnosed with cancer the first time, I told a nurse practitioner about my relinquishment and she made a referral to a couple of therapists. I saw one but I remember not bonding with him well enough to talk about the adoption. His thing was just to medicate me. The nurse told me I needed to talk about it and she encouraged me to get in touch with the person I felt closest to and just talk to them about it. I thought I’d call my grandmother and talk to her, but I just couldn’t do it. So I never really dealt with it.

  —Carole II

  My voice problem started when I entered the maternity home. I started getting a slight hitch, and it progressively got worse over the years. When I went to school at UCLA a year later, I finally went to a neurologist. I’ve been to many doctors over the years but this doctor pretty much hit it right on the head. It’s been a waste thereafter. He said, “You’ve got a nervous tic and it happens to show up in your voice.” He said, “When did this start?” And I could not get the words out. It took about five minutes. I’d open up my mouth to say…it’s happening right now, I can’t get the words out of my mouth.…I cannot say…“I had a child out of wedlock. I am an unwed mother.”

  Over the years, I went to voice specialists, ear, nose, and throat doctors. I also went to this famous speech therapist—two hundred dollars an hour—and he said, “When did your speech problems start?” I couldn’t get the words out, just like earlier. Finally, I said, “At the home for unwed mothers.” And he looked at me and said, “Do you think you’re the only person who gave up a baby for adoption? Why are you taking it so hard?”

  Then I went to a psychiatrist and he didn’t know how to help me, either. He listened to the story and he comes up with the idea that I should pretend the baby was born dead and put it behind me that way. I said, “I don’t think so, Doctor. I don’t think so.” I went on antidepressants at that point.

  You know, years later when I was teaching school a little girl came up to me and said, “Mrs.——, when you talk it sounds like you’re crying.” And I think that’s it. I’ve been crying all these years through my voice, because I didn’t cry and deal with it then.

  —Sheryl

  In the 1970s, support groups for mothers and for adoptees began to proliferate. The first groups were sponsored by adoptees’ rights organizations, such as the Adoptees’ Liberty Movement Association (ALMA),18 which was founded by adoptee Florence Fisher in 1971. Soon after, in 1976, Concerned United Birthparents (CUB)19 was founded by surrendering mother Lee Cambell. Both ALMA and CUB continue to thrive and link members through either in-person support groups or the Internet. Many of the mothers I interviewed felt alienated and alone until they were able to communicate with other mothers through ALMA, CUB, or one of the many other support groups such as SunflowerFirstMoms,20 OriginsUSA,21 First Mothers Reunited,22 and Empty Arms—an online support group for mothers who surrendered and had no other children23—or one of the hundreds of other groups available. The Internet has become one of the best conduits for communication among mothers, because it has allowed women to share their grief anonymously and to gradually come out of the “birth mother closet.”

  I’ll never forget the day I saw this flyer that said “Birth Mothers’ Group.” I was shocked. People talk about this in public? My God in hea
ven. This was in the mid- or early eighties. There was a phone number. I called the number about three times and hung up because I thought, “I can’t utter this horrible word. How can I say this is what I am?” I couldn’t get it out. I would have to hang up. Finally, I called and I stuttered and stammered it out, and the woman very nonchalantly said, “Yeah, they meet every month upstairs.”

  I remember going and peering into the room. I thought, “What are these women going to look like?” I looked at them. They were all sitting in a circle with their eyes closed and I left. But the next time I came and I sat. It was a beautiful group of women. We would just talk about day-to-day things. Diane would talk about how she couldn’t be in a room with a baby. Marie would talk about how she was always so afraid to let her daughter go to school. We talked about the physical things, the emotional things, just everything. That was the real, true beginning of my healing process.

  When my son was twenty-seven, my birth mothers’ group celebrated his birthday because I had never done that. We had a cake and we weren’t supposed to have alcohol in the Women’s Center but I smuggled in champagne. We had this great celebration and when I came home I had this enormous bleeding, like a period, but I wasn’t due. It was like this afterbirth coming out. I had to go to bed. It was the strangest experience.

  —Diane IV

  In April of 1983, I saw a notice in our local paper: “Adoptees and Birth Parents in Search.” They were having a meeting at the library. So I called and made arrangements to go to this meeting. When I walked in, it was like I had come home. They had told us, “You’ll forget, you’ll get over this, you’ll go on with your life.” And for years when it would resurface I would think, “There’s something wrong with me, they said I would forget.” When I went to this meeting it was like…these were people who knew. They had been where I had been, they felt what I had felt.

  —Pollie

  The relinquishing mothers I interviewed who attended these group meetings or met other mothers through chat rooms on the Internet learned that the grief they felt over the loss of their child was not abnormal but was consistent with the grief felt by many others. Their realization was bittersweet. On the one hand, they learned that they were not alone and that they were not crazy because they could not “get over” the loss of their child. But on the other hand they realized that, despite the enormous number of people affected, few outside of this community knew of their experiences. It appeared that no one, other than those who had experienced relinquishment, cared.

  Giving up my son was a seminal moment in my life. People will say, “Get over it.” I can’t tell you how many people say, “Aren’t you ever going to get over it?” Never. You never get over this. Men often go to the military and fight in wars and they never really get over what they see. This is like one of those huge tragedies in your life. That’s how I look at it, as a tragedy. It’s a tragedy because it didn’t have to happen.

  They said, “You can’t raise the baby alone.” But no one expects a widow to give up her baby because her husband dies, do they? No. It’s punitive. That’s it in a nutshell. You don’t deserve the baby. I think that parents whose children get into trouble should be the village for their family. It’s as simple as that. When you’ve experienced this, you realize that every social problem is like this. People don’t see themselves in the other person. I think this experience does make you much more aware. It comes from having other people not empathize with you. You understand what it is to be marginalized.

  —Maggie

  SUSAN III

  I thought I might be pregnant. My period was late. So I called the doctor and made an appointment. I was very nervous. I was appalled when the nurse told me I had to get naked. I said, “Doesn’t he only need to examine my bottom half?”

  I figured I had plenty of time to tell my mother, that my boyfriend and I would have time to make a plan. I had been going out with my boyfriend for a couple of years. We met when we were freshmen in high school. On my sixteenth birthday, he gave me a beautiful pearl ring and asked me if I would marry him after we graduated. I was crazy mad in love with him. I knew he loved me, so I wasn’t too worried.

  The next morning when he picked me up for school, I told him I was pregnant and he said, “Now what are we gonna do?” I said, “We’ll get married.” He didn’t say much. We never talked about it a whole lot. Later he said, “Where are we gonna live?” And I said, “Well, we’ll figure that all out. I’m sure our parents will help us.” His parents were wonderful people. My parents were wonderful people. I couldn’t see that they wouldn’t wanna help us.

  A few weeks later, my mother was sitting on the chair by the telephone and she said to me, “Come sit on my lap,” which wasn’t uncommon for us. I sat on her lap, I put my arms around her neck, and she said, “Are you pregnant?” I said, “No, of course I’m not pregnant!” She said, “Susan, I checked your napkin; it wasn’t soiled.” I had been pretending to have my period and I would wrap up a pad and put it in the wastepaper basket in the bathroom. But the gig was up. I said, “I’m so sorry. I really hoped that we would have all this figured out by the time we told you and Daddy.”

  So that night Daddy came home and he said, “Don’t worry, honey, this happens to a lot of people.” He said, “You two will be married and you’ll live here with us.” The next morning when my boyfriend picked me up for school I told him that my father knew and that he understood. He was not angry with us, and that we can be married and live with them.

  That following weekend, my mother invited his mom to come to our house to have a little powwow. He just kept looking down; he couldn’t look me in the face. Finally he said, “Susan, I love you, but I’m not gonna marry you. I can’t do this. I cannot live with your father. He’s a cop. I couldn’t live with his rules.” Later, my parents made me tell him I had miscarried. I think my father’s biggest fear at that point was that he’d change his mind and come looking for me.

  Mom started making me new clothes to hide my weight gain. There was a new fashion called a tent dress, which was very convenient for me at the time, and that’s what I wore to school. I don’t know how many kids fell for the miscarriage. I worried that everyone knew I was pregnant and hiding it. I joined in nothing after school, none of the activities. I went to school and home. I couldn’t wait for school to end. It was such a stressful thing, especially during the months I had morning sickness. Mom used to pack me saltines so that if I started to feel nauseous I could sneak one during class. I stayed at home until July 8. Then I was sent to St. Mary’s home for unwed mothers.

  I woke up in labor on September 16. Sister walked me over to St. Margaret’s Hospital and placed me in the care of a nurse and I never saw her again. She didn’t touch me—there was no compassion, no feeling. And, boy, did I need some compassion at that point. I was so afraid. As much as they gave us medical care, they didn’t give us much emotional support, or even knowledge as to what labor and delivery was gonna be like.

  The nurse who took care of me for the first few hours was an older woman and she was very distant. When they came to prep me, I had no idea that they were gonna shave me. I was, like, “You’re gonna shave me where?” I was appalled. I was so embarrassed. As I lay in the room by myself, I began to cry and I don’t know why I cried. I probably cried for more reasons than I could even absorb at the time. I was afraid of what was happening to my body and I was afraid that this was the end of my pregnancy and that I wasn’t gonna be with my baby anymore.

  After my daughter was born and they wrapped her up a bit, they kinda held her close enough that I’d get a good look at her, but not close enough that I could have reached out. She was so beautiful. The next thing I needed after seeing my daughter was to hear the sound of my mother’s voice. I asked the nurse if I could call home. She wheeled me out in the hall and dialed the number. When my mother answered, I could tell I’d woken her up. It was two o’clock in the morning. All I could say to her was “I can come home now.” She started
to cry and, of course, I cried along with her and I told her a little bit about my delivery and my baby. And she promised she’d come up and see me in the morning.

  I don’t even remember my mother coming that first morning. I have no recollection of her being there. All I remember is when the nurse brought Madlyn to me. I put her in my lap and I undressed her and checked her from head to toe. She was so soft! I was amazed by the sight of her. Once the nurse left, I pushed aside my nightgown and I laid Madlyn against me and I covered us over with a sheet. I just wanted to make the most of every minute I had. I just remember how soft and smooth her skin was and her hair was tickling my chin. When the nurse came back, she brought cotton balls and warm water and we bathed her. I remember laughing. It was the happiest day I’d had in the twelve weeks I was away, that morning I spent with the nurse learning to care for Madlyn.

  We did that every day for eight days. On the last day, I fed her and rocked her and bathed her, and I made a promise to her that I would find her when she turned twenty-one. My father always said that I was very determined and I guess I proved it to myself then, because I knew I would find her. I knew that someday we would meet again.

  When we left St. Mary’s that day, I knew my life had been changed forever. I wasn’t the same fun girl I had been. Going back to high school was very hard. I was very distracted. My grades suffered. I couldn’t concentrate on the things my friends were saying or the things going on around me. Most of the talk seemed so trivial to me. I thought about Madlyn constantly. I was trying to be so brave for my parents and I was trying to keep up the façade. Everyone told me I should feel fine and that I should go back to school and be a teenager and go to football games and parties and it just hit me that I’d never be the same. I would never be like the other girls.