Slowly Steadying

I had found a family within Adoption Star. Between the staff and other birth mothers I was able to connect with because of Adoption Star I had found enough support to help me want to get my life together.

Things were slowly getting there too. I had been clean for months and was doing really well with recovery, although not everything was going as well. My family and I stayed distant for a long time after I told them about my son and my decision to leave the hospital without him.

I understood why they were so angry, well some of them. My mother and I had talked about it and I understood where her pain and anger came from and why. I just felt like she didn’t understand that as right as she was in saying I didn’t think of her when I made my choice the reasons for that where not what she believed them to be.

Some other family members had issues with my decision as well some made sense and others not so much, I always felt that most of that was because my mother was so upset and therefore everyone followed suit and found issue as well.

I knew that I had a family at home that I could have turned to for help but that didn’t feel right to me, which is odd since at this point my mother already had full custody of my first child. As much as it didn’t make sense out loud I knew in my heart that this little boy needed so much more than was available to him.

The one thing I had learned early on from my Star family was that I did nothing wrong by not thinking of others while I made my adoption decision the fact that what any one would think never crossed my mind not one single time was not a bad thing. In that moment the only thing that mattered was what was best for my son.

As some parts of my life were lifted into place others fell but with each step I took I had a family I could turn to when life got just a little too hard to deal with on my own.

Adoption carries the added dimension of connection not only to your own tribe but beyond, widening the scope of what constitutes love, ties, and family. It is the larger embrace.      Isabella Rossellini