Day 21: {What I would change}
I wish so badly that I had sought support back when I surely needed it most and told myself that I didn’t. I have looked back on my journals over that time and what I read was that I was a silly 17 year old girl. I had no idea what the magnitude of the experience I had just had was. Once I had made an adoption plan and knew that my life could go on after placement day, I thought I was home-free. I was independent and thought I understood how everything was going to be. I never let myself feel anything about the baby that I had placed in another’s arms. I knew she was perfect and with people that loved her and I knew I didn’t need to worry about her, so I didn’t.
I learned a new term today: “disenfranchised grief”. This is when grief is connected with a loss which cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned or socially supported. Now that I am older and oh-so-much wiser and my emotions have been forced to reach a boiling point, I know that support was always what I had needed, or more so, someone to help me see the truth of what I was ignoring for so long and disenfranchised grief is exactly what that was. To those around me, I probably have always seemed like a very well put-together person (and I thought so too) but the truth is, I have always been really good at hiding my pain and the amount of grief I felt after experiencing what I never truly recognized as a loss. Now that I can understand what I was feeling and that it is a normal process that I am experiencing, I can look at it with my mature eyes and see that its ok and I AM OK. The support I have had from those that are experiencing the same things has been priceless. There are still hard days, but as grieving goes, the hard days pass and get easier and I can more easily appreciate the present and look forward to the future.
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