Kim Mooney - Hidden Daughter – Secret Sister: A Story of Adoption

There I was on a Tuesday morning, sitting with a group of young mothers at a Mums and Tots group at the local United Church in Richmond, British Columbia. I wasnt normally much of a joiner, but I was desperate for a few minutes of adult conversation. It was a chance to wash away the stickiness of breakfast and talk to someone, anyone, over the age of three or four.

One of the women in the group commented to the mother on my right that her little girl must look like her dad because she certainly didnt look like her mum. A moment passed before the little girls mother quietly replied that her daughter was adopted. The statement was received and everyone moved onexcept me and the woman on my left. For whatever reason, I turned to the adoptive mother and said, Im adopted. This was not a fact I generally shared.

The woman on my left then leaned in and said softly, I gave my daughter away. Now what were the odds of that! For a moment, there was silence among the three of us. A fragile silence enveloped us. We had each retreated into our own memories. From that point on, it was as if there were no one else in the room as we began to tell one another our stories.

The adoptive mother was Anne. She spoke about her deep fear that her daughters birth mother would come knocking on the door, explaining that she had made a mistake and wanted her daughter back. She also spoke about the shame of not being able to bear her own child. She came from a large family and all her siblings were having babies. It should have been as easy for her as it had been for her sisters. But it seemed that she was unable to have her own child. Her only chance to have a family was to adopt. She said that her blonde, blue-eyed daughter was a gift from God.

Leah, the one who had given up her child confessed to living with the guilt, shame, and anguish of having done that. She had grown up in a small, poor, Catholic community in Quebec where everyone knew everyone elses business and unexpected, unwanted pregnancies were not uncommon, since using any form of birth control was forbidden by the Church. Pregnant at sixteen years old, Leah became the latest statistic, and she hated that it had happened to her. Predictable and shameful, according to the old gossips in town

Having an abortion would have been at least as big a sin as her pregnancy, so she did what other girls in the community had done before her. She had the babya girland gave her away. After that, she tried to move on, but she knew that her child was living in a neighbouring community with her new family, and, as she told us that morning, she thought about her every day.

Finally, it was my turn. I talked about my childhood fear of being sent back to the orphanage and about how ashamed I was of having been rejected by my birth mother. When I was finished, I touched each of the other two women gently on the arm and said quietly, I have to leave now, even though it was only about halfway through the play session. Leaving difficult or disturbing situations was my default mode of behavior but, somehow, I knew they would understand.

I swung my three-year-old son up into my arms and headed for my car, squeezing him so tightly that he began to cry. I drove the few blocks home carefully because I was shaking so badly. Tears streamed down my face. My son was jabbering away in his car seat, happy with his own company, while I was engulfed by the childhood memories and feelings of rejection and abandonment that had flooded back in the wake of that mornings conversation.