Model portrayed.
No doubts exist in my mind about whether I lost a child. I did.
In most contexts, “losing someone” implies a death. But some scenarios, including mine as a birthmother, are much more complicated.
With a Ph.D. in child development and family studies, Pauline Boss is an educator, researcher and author of the theory of ambiguous loss. As defined on her website, ambiguous loss occurs when traditional forms of closure cannot be utilized to find peace after someone’s absence. This absence may be psychological, while the person is physically present — for example, in cases of Alzheimer’s, chronic mental illness, traumatic brain injury, or addiction. Or the loved one may be physically absent but psychologically present, like with kidnappings, missing bodies after war or natural disasters, absent parents due to divorce, or placing a baby for adoption.
Boss explains:
Ambiguous loss freezes the grief process and prevents closure, paralyzing couple and family functioning.”
Ambiguous loss concisely explains the type of grief birthmothers endure throughout their lives.
At my first birthmother retreat, one of the facilitators led a group discussion for first-timers on the topic of ambiguous loss and grief. One of the materials she provided is an excerpt from a pamphlet on birth parents and grief in open adoption, published by R-Squared Press. The author is Brenda Romanchik, a speaker, writer and publisher of open adoption resources.
Romanchik writes:
Open adoption is often presented to birth parents as a way to lessen the grief of losing a child to adoption. Being able to see your child and eventually develop a relationship with him or her do not, however, change the fact that you are no longer the child’s parent. In fact, the loss of being Mom or Dad is often painfully obvious to us with each visit. Losing a child to adoption is one of the most significant losses that birth parents will ever have to face….The grief we feel for our children includes not only missing the times we had with them as their mother or father, but mourning for the times we will not have with them as their parents.”
Someone once suggested to me that birth parents might be able to find closure during the adoption process by holding a ceremony when the baby is transferred from the birth parents’ care into the adoptive parents’ care, or shortly thereafter. This is not a traditional form of closure in the sense that it is not widely practiced, she postulated, but couldn’t it act as a substitute?
While I agree that a ceremony held near the time of the baby’s transfer of care may be helpful in feeling closure — for me, it was a great bonding experience between my husband, the adoptive parents and myself — I do not think it can serve as an end to the seeking of closure.
I find closure — and, therefore, a sense of peace — in many different circumstances. The first time I visited Dominic, Robby and Marie, I felt more at ease because I knew what his daily life was like, where he spends his time, what’s in his nursery and just how large his canine protector is!
I also felt some closure when I met a few of Robby and Marie’s family members and friends, because now I know some of the people in Dominic’s life who shower him with love and gifts, who will be giving him guidance and discipline as he grows, whose habits and mannerisms he may acquire.
But my relationship with Dominic and his family is so fluid that I believe there cannot possibly be only one ceremony of closure. With each twist and turn of his life, I must seek out new ways to accept my decision. For me, negotiating my ability to accept is my form of closure.
