14 years and one week ago now.....

Before I continue this story, here's some of my thoughts on my documenting these memories from 14 years ago. These memories hurt. Yes, I write them down so that YOU and anyone else who wants to can read and hear from my perspective about placing my newborn child for adoption. What you don't see is the anguish, the tears and sobbing, the sadness and loneliness. This remembering is physically painful, emotionally painful. I can smell the smells, feel his skin, the weight of his body in my arms and the emotions like it was just yesterday. So I write the words for you to read, but I mostly write this for myself, for my kids, for my husband, and someday for my son to read.

The next part of my story actually hurts more than any other part, which is why I have been loathe to write it. It's the part where I move on as if my life were unaffected by the fact that I just grew a human, loved him with every breath of my body and then with all that still happening, placing him into the arms of people who I trust after only knowing them for, really, a few hours and walking away so that they can take him home to integrate into their family and pretending like their lives haven't just changed in some hugely dynamic unexpected way. And same for me. I have had to live my life for the last 14 years like those 3 days of my life of giving birth, seeing my baby become a reality and then in that next instant giving him to a couple to call Mom and Dad. I have had to "act" like my life didn't just change forever. Because it did and it will forever be changed. It will forever be both happier and more sad in the same breath.