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

  And knowing that she’d be back in my life, I wanted her to be proud of me. I wanted her to find a woman that she could really be proud to call mother. Whenever my life went crazy, and it did, I was very self-destructive for the first five years after her birth. Every time I would start to self-destruct, I would remember that little girl. So Karen was my beacon.

  The first year after Karen was born, my mother sent me a Mother’s Day card, and she sent me a Mother’s Day card every year. My mother always was very empathetic to me on her birthday. She so, so deeply regretted her decision and it haunted her for years before it haunted me. My mother never forgot that baby, ever.

  Interestingly, when Karen turned thirteen, my mother went bananas. I don’t know how to describe it any other way than that. My mother was absolutely convinced that Karen was living in the neighborhood. In truth, Karen had moved from Georgia to New Hampshire, to a town just up the road from where my mother lived. She was working as a lifeguard. She was a swimmer, like I had been, and was a lifeguard at a place where my older brother taught diving and where her two cousins were in the pool as often as she was. That’s how close we were to her as a teenager. My mother has always been a woman who has had a sense. She’s got that gift.

  When Karen was twenty-five, my next-door neighbor at that time, unbeknownst to me, was the child psychologist at the agency where I surrendered her. And she and I were planting tulips that spring on either side of our borders. She was well into her seventies then. I asked her, I said, “You go off somewhere a couple of days a week. You can’t still be working. Where do you go?” And she told me who she was and where she worked. I looked up and she looked at me and she said, “Let me think, you don’t have kids so you must be one of our birth mothers.” We talked about it, and she said, “So why aren’t you searching?” And I said, “I don’t really have a right to search.” And she said, “Oh, yes, you do. Start the search now.” So I have her to thank. She was an incredible woman. Everybody at the agency loved her. She died that December. Before the search could even happen, she was dead.

  Karen was found in six weeks, on the day that her first child was born. And she and I were reunited a month later. There are no coincidences in life. Years back, my husband and I would have dinner on about a quarterly basis with two of the other executives in the company we worked for. One of them had a daughter Karen’s age. Every time we would have dinner with them, I would leave the house and I would sob. Sob. And my husband would say, “Okay, princess, what’s the problem?” And I would say, “I’m absolutely convinced that their daughter is my Karen.” He would say, “Cut it out, she looks just like them.” I would say, “But I don’t care, it’s a feeling I have. Honest to God, that’s my kid.” She didn’t look a bit like me, didn’t act like me, but I was convinced she was my kid.

  When Karen and I reunited, I asked her where she grew up. Well, in her thirteenth year she came to live in New Hampshire. That was the year that my mother went mental. She lived right next door to the house where my husband and I had dinners. My daughter and their daughter went to school together and were best friends. And it was very likely that my daughter was in the house the nights they had dinner parties. My daughter was right there under my nose. It just wasn’t for us to see at that time.

  So we make plans to meet at the agency. I really didn’t know how it was all going to work out. I gathered up family photos and put together an album. I found all the poetry I had written in the years that we were separated. My attitude was if this was our only meeting I wanted her to walk away with something genetically connected to her. If she chose not to have a relationship, it was okay. I just wanted her to have that information.

  The Wednesday we were scheduled to meet, I was training a group of about three hundred salespeople, one of whom was my niece, and she could not believe that I could work and then get in my car and go for my meeting with my daughter. I just shut it off.

  I got to the agency and they put me in this little room, an interview room, and the social worker said, “It will probably be about ten minutes and then I’ll come to the door and I’ll knock and I’ll let her in.” So I sat there waiting. And I was totally shut down. I mean, devoid of any worry, of any fear, of anything. And I remember thinking to myself, “You know what, this is it. This is it. You get one shot at feeling this feeling. You can put it away, you can shut it down, but you know what, this moment will never come again and if you stay shut down you’re not going to show your daughter who you really are and what you’re really all about.” It was a physical thing I had to do. I mean, I physically had to get in the moment. And I did. I mean, when the knock on the door came my daughter got to see who I really am. Not a fake, not a phony, but somebody who really was in that moment for her. The social worker opened the door and she said, “I want you to meet your mom. This is Sue. Sue, this is your daughter.” And this beautiful young woman walked through the door.

  We looked at each other. I mean, we were both stunned, because she looks just like me. We were totally stunned. We hugged each other, that wonderful sustaining hug, and then we leaned back and the tears were streaming and we started to laugh. I mean, how could you not laugh? It was like looking at yourself.

  I tell people about that moment and I tell them that the rest was this blur; it was like my life in fast forward. We could not get enough. It was as though she had gone away to college and she was back and she had to tell me all about what had happened. We were there for three hours by ourselves. All of a sudden I looked down and she had started to leak. She had been nursing her daughter and she said, “Oh, the baby.” I said, “Where’s the baby?” It was six at night. Her stepmom had been sitting out in the lobby with the baby for three hours.

  So we asked her to come in and here was this baby. Here was this baby. I shut down. I saw that baby and I shut down. She nursed the baby. She sat there and nursed this child and I totally shut down. I mean, I held my granddaughter, but I can honestly tell you I don’t remember it. There are pictures of it, but I didn’t feel that baby. I could not. It was too close.

  You know, it’s twelve years now that we’re reunited and twelve years we’ve been back in each other’s lives. It’s not been easy for either one of us. In the early years she would say to me, “You know, you can’t ever be my mother.” And I’d say, “I understand that but you will always be my daughter and that’s the way it will be for life.” I think about three to four years into the reunion I started receiving birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards. She doesn’t call me mom. That’s okay. I’m Grammy Sue to the girls. I’ve been totally integrated into both of my grandchildren’s lives. The years that I missed with her I’ve been able to make up with her two daughters. I’m very blessed.

  But I never knew until after the reunion how angry I was. It’s hard to even describe it, but it interlaced my being. I was angry at everybody. The world. I was cheated. I was screwed. I mean, I was had. I was had by society, by people who were bigger than me, who were more educated than me. Certainly some of them were well meaning. I mean, some of them were very well intentioned. But I should have had the right to parent my child. I didn’t realize how the anger permeated my life until we were reunited and until I was able to finally articulate who I really was, until I was able to come out of the closet of shame. It really was a closet of shame that we were all put in. We were all locked into it. And they did it so beautifully that if you ever revealed what happened to you, you would pay the price.

  Birth mothers do not forget. I know a lot of birth mothers have drilled it down, but they don’t ever forget. My shame came afterward, because I couldn’t talk about the experience. I had an incredible fear that if I revealed who I was I’d lose everything. For a woman, I attained incredible stature in my career in the business community. And for all but the last twelve years of it nobody ever knew who I really was.

  When I came home from meeting my daughter at the agency, I brought home all of these Polaroid pictures of her and in the morning my husband pi
cked out a couple of the pictures. I said, “What are you doing with those pictures?” And he said, “I’m a father, I’m a grandfather, I can’t wait to show everybody at work.” And I said, “You can’t show anybody. Oh, my God.” He said, “What do you mean, I can’t show anybody? Sue, there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I was still trying to preserve the status quo of this persona that I had created for myself. I was terrified that it would destroy my career. Thank God, he said, “Pfft, get out of here. This is a joyous moment, this is the best thing that’s ever happened.” I often wonder if he hadn’t been here what would have happened. It was my husband who absolutely blew my cover. And by revealing who I was, I was destroying the person I had created.

  I hope that my story helps other women heal. I do feel healed. That closet of shame is huge. There are a lot of us in it. I had my moments of sadness but, truly, when I lay my head down at night now, I’m thankful. I know where my baby is. She’s all grown up. She’s a beautiful woman. I’m blessed and I feel healed. It kills me to think that there are women who are not out. I hope talking about this allows women who have not been out of the closet to get out and, hopefully, change their lives—by getting them on the Internet, getting them to join the groups, and letting them hear their own voices for the first time.

  JENNIFER

  I grew up in a small town on the east coast of Florida. My father was an attorney and we were big churchgoers. At thirteen, fourteen, people started dating. At fifteen, it got a little more serious. Some of the boys were driving. That’s when I started dating my first real boyfriend. I’d had a puppy love before, but this was what I considered to be my first real love.

  He was a lifeguard at the country club and he was just this gorgeous man, strong, and a few years older than me. I was pretty astonished when he asked me to go out. We started dating and I had decided that virginity was a burden. It had lost its glamour. I wanted to get past it. I wanted to be a woman and I just wanted to get in the game and I wanted to get it over with. So we started having sex on a regular basis. I just felt completely protected and insulated from anything bad. I grew up in a very nice home with nice friends, nice family.

  He had used condoms a few times and fumbled with them and I just did not have a good experience with them, either. I just still didn’t get that I could get pregnant. I thought, “Well, if I have sex when I’m close to my period, or right after my period, then I won’t get pregnant.” Then that next cycle didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come. We were both terrified. Three weeks later, I got my period: “Phew, we’re fine.” So, feeling invincible, I went ahead and continued to have unprotected sex. Then the next month my cycle didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come. I thought, “Well, it’s happened before. This is no big deal. I couldn’t be pregnant.”

  Then the signs became very evident. I was rushing around the house before school, and I ran back upstairs to brush my teeth and all of a sudden I just threw up. I thought, “Wow, that’s weird.” Then probably about two weeks later at church we stood up to sing the last hymn and I felt really woozy, like I was going to pass out. I looked down at the pew and I can remember the musty smell of the hymnal, and the organ going, and the Reverend, and I’m in my Easter clothes, with my shoes, and I all of a sudden I just went down.

  From that day on, my boyfriend and I knew I was pregnant. I can’t get in touch with the person that I was then. I was in a dreamworld. We were not doing anything about it. We just sort of continued, biding our time, waiting for something to happen. I tried to imagine how I would tell my parents if it ever came to that, and I just couldn’t even imagine.

  Then one Sunday my boyfriend and I came home from the beach and we were in our family room having sex on the carpet. My parents were supposed to be out on the boat. Well, they had boat trouble and had docked near our house. My father and my uncle came in the back door with the little jalousie windows. I heard the door opening and there we were. I had been wearing a bikini and there’s no way you can quickly put on a bikini. It was a nightmare; it was an absolute nightmare. I can’t imagine how I looked. I know that my boyfriend looked as white as a sheet. He got behind the draperies and I threw him his bathing suit and picked up a towel. My father just looked at me and said, “Go upstairs. Go upstairs and get dressed.” Poor Daddy. So I’m upstairs in my beautifully decorated room, trembling, with the towel still around me, and my father came in and said, “Let me see your stomach.” He looked at my breasts. He looked at my stomach and he said, “You’re pregnant.” I thought, “How in the hell could he know?” Thinking back on it, of course, he had four children with my mother. He knows what a pregnant woman looks like. Later that evening before dinner, I heard my father crying. I heard him sob in his room and I’d never heard that before. It was just gut wrenching and I figured, “Whatever they want to do, I’m going to do.”

  That same night they went down to my boyfriend’s house and spoke with his parents. I was still holding out hope that we would get married. I really wanted the baby. It just felt like love to me. They came back and my father called me into his den and we had a conversation without my mother, which was kind of unusual. He told me that my boyfriend’s parents felt that the best thing would be for me to have the baby and give it up for adoption. I must have looked horrified at that suggestion, because he said, “It’s hard for me, too. It’s my flesh and blood, too.” We were both crying and he was comforting me and he said, “You know, Jenny, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. If you can just get through this, you’re going to have a wonderful life. It will all be like a bad dream. You’ll get through it, and you’ll have fun again, and you’ll have a full life. You’re still Daddy’s little angel.” It just broke my heart. It totally broke my heart. It didn’t occur to me to protest. The main feeling I had was just to not make any more problems, do whatever they wanted me to do, just basically be invisible.

  I was whisked off to Texas to live with my sister. My mother went to my high school and cleared out my locker. She told me that I shouldn’t talk to anybody, that she was going to tell everybody that I had rheumatic fever. I didn’t even know what rheumatic fever was—it sounded like “romantic” fever to me. All I knew was it was some sort of disease. I got set up in the extra bedroom in my sister’s house. I never looked more beautiful. My hair was glossy. My skin was clear and beautiful. I had roses in my cheeks. My breasts were full. I would just look at myself in the mirror and wish so much that my boyfriend could see me and we could share this.

  I didn’t have a sense of shame, ever, during the time that I was pregnant, even when they found out. Maybe when my father walked in on us having sex I felt embarrassed or ashamed, but shame was never part of my pregnancy. It was either sadness or love and wonderment, nothing in between. I would go to bed early and my baby would start kicking. I would talk to him. I would tell him how perfect he was, and that I would always love him. It was our time, and our space, and nobody else got into that bubble. I felt like I was feeding him little bits of love, and nurturing and taking care of him, just like if I was holding him in my arms.

  I was, allegedly, meeting with this caseworker throughout my pregnancy and discussing my adoption plan. I met with a woman once. She jotted down all my vital information and asked me to please obtain baby pictures of myself and my boyfriend. She basically just gave me assignments to gather information, like list any special talents that ran in my family or in his family. There was never any discussion about how I felt about giving my child up for adoption. I never thought there was supposed to be. It was never explained that it was an option. I was basically just going through the motions. I was being told what to do, and I did it. They asked me if I wanted to see my baby when I delivered and my mother piped up and said, “Oh no, that would be too difficult. You should say no.” So of course I said, “Well, no. I don’t want to make things difficult.” I couldn’t imagine seeing, or not seeing, my baby. I couldn’t imagine delivering. It still wasn’t me that this was h
appening to.

  One Saturday I did my exercises and went to bed and later that night I couldn’t get comfortable. They walked me over to the hospital and I was already dilated. This was it. I sort of felt this shade being drawn down on my life, like one of those old window shades. It just came down. I’m thinking, “Oh no, oh no, I’m not ready for this. This is good-bye.” I just couldn’t bear it. They gave me something to knock me out and I was in la-la land. I don’t remember much of anything, just some stainless steel and some tile and some voices. It seemed like about a minute later a nurse was saying, “Well, you did just fine. You did just fine.”

  I have very few memories of being in recovery. The rule was that you had to stay there for eight days. They said it was eight days to fully recover, but later I put it together that it’s eight days before you can sign the adoption papers. Every time the door would open into the room, I’d hear the nursery. I picked out my baby’s cry. I said, “Do they just let them cry?” And the nurse said, “Oh no, there are nurses in there. They’re holding the babies and talking to them. They’re cared for.” But they were crying.

  The caseworker presented me with papers. She said, “This will finalize the adoption.” I asked if my baby had been placed in a home yet. She said, “I think we’ve found a wonderful home for him.” I said, “When will he be placed?” And she said, “After you sign the papers he will be placed.” I read through this paper, legally cutting off any connection to him, took a deep breath, and signed my name on the bottom. I put the pen down and I started to get up and go and she said, “You have to sign these, too.” There were about twelve papers to sign. It was the first time I showed anger. I yelled, “Can’t you use carbon or something? Why do I have to sign each one?” I said, “You’ve got my signature. You’ve got my soul. You’ve got my baby, and now I have to sit here and sign twelve pieces of paper for you?”