Keeping secrets in adoption can make you ill

Lorraine

Reasons enough for the sealed birth certificates of adoptees everywhere to be released comes from this month's issue of The Atlantic:

"Research shows an association between keeping an emotionally charged secret and ailments ranging from the common cold to chronic diseases."

Reading this reminded me of when I held in the secret of my life: my daughter whom I relinquished. I lied to a doctor once who asked if I'd ever been pregnant, feeling like a criminal as I did so--but he was the doctor giving a physical which would qualify me for the company medical policy. If I told the truth, would I be fired from a job I so desperately needed and wanted? It was my first job after having to quit my last before I "showed."

As for the rest, I didn't so much outright lie for those first few years as feel I was somehow lying by omission by not telling anyone I was becoming close to that I had given up a child for adoption. Dating was a bust as I kept this canker sore of a secret inside. I was moody, difficult, distant--talk about not opening up to love. I was a woman with a past. I remember one man I spoke to regularly in the course of my work told me I was "hiding something." He was right, of course, but I said nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if he had even figured out my secret. As for illness, I was suicidal for a time, and one night weeping profusely I confessed my sorrow to a resident in psychiatry who had moved into my apartment building the same day I had. He prescribed uppers; they made me even more nervous and jittery than I am normally, and I would devolve into a crying mess at night as the drug wore off. I ate. I was enormously eager to fill my ache with food. I gained about twenty pounds in a few months. 

The only thing that saved me was the job into which I could fully throw myself and work long hours. Days I worked my regular beat at The Knickerbocker News covering health and science; two months later I was able to add reviewing ballet four or five nights a week--after working a full day. I would go to the ballet in Saratoga Performing Arts Center, drive back to Albany, write my review, and be home sometime after midnight to be back at work the next morning at 8:30 a.m. It was crazy, but those long hours were my salvation. I didn't have time to think or feel sorry for myself. 

A year later I had a few days of vacation time and went to Nantucket by myself. My first husband said he saw the pain in my eyes, and that if I walked by three times that evening, he would simply introduce himself. Main Street on Nantucket is a couple of blocks long and not being able to face going into a bar alone, I did walk up and down, just strolling and window shopping, killing time. The third time he saw me, he stopped me and asked if I'd like to go for a cup of coffee. I somehow kept my secret inside for a couple of months, but when he asked me to marry him, I told him about my daughter before I said yes. I felt like tarnished goods, and he had to know the truth. 

So whenever I read about secrets, I remember the awful pain of holding mine close. The Atlantic piece by Sarah Yager, all tidily footnoted, says that the "bigger the secret" the harder it is to keep. I'll add--and the more likely it is to lead to physical and emotional problems. 

I remember the utter relief when I came out publicly in a magazine piece for Town & Country in 1976. I shocked some people at the office, appeared on the Today show, and though that was somewhat nervous making--what a fucking relief it was not to have to hide my greatest sorrow anymore! Other magazine stories followed in which I said who I was--a mother who lost a child to adoption--and though there was usually some kickback in the early years (nasty comments said to my face or behind my back, hate mail, etc.) what I remember most was the relief. Take me as I am: a woman who lost a child to adoption. Yes, one of  "those women."  Birthmark followed three years later.

Luckily I did find some salvation, according to Yager, by writing about it: "Other evidence in favor of disclosure includes multiple studies showing that writing about a traumatic experience can boost the immune system." Well, I got that covered.

Yager adds that teens who confide in a parent or close friend report fewer physical complaints and less delinquent behavior, loneliness, and depression than those who sit on their secrets." Which would appear to be reason enough for anyone whose thoughts are filled with their own adoption angst to share it--with their parents, or friends or a counselor.  Facebook and closed list serves and blogs have opened up a whole world to people like us. We have found each other and can be free to express our deepest thoughts about the worst thing that ever happened to us. Yes, the worst thing. I did not write that word lightly. I believe it. The worst thing. The act that changed our lives forever. Others may feel differently, but losing my daughter was the worst thing that ever happened to me. 

But there is always the exception: a small group who seem to get along just fine by totally repressing intrusive thoughts about secret information: they are so tightly wrapped up they manage to hide their secrets--even from themselves. Are these the adoptees who are not interested in their true past, their first identities, the names on their original birth certificates? Are these the women who don't want to know their children, I wondered? Or are they, years later, so deeply invested in the secret that they repressed that the reason of the secret is no longer the problem; the fact they have have kept this secret so long is. Their lie of omission has gone on for years. If I could reach them I would tell them that letting out the secret is like finding a new breath, fresh air in their lungs and new space in their hearts, not taken up with...the secret. Letting go of it would be a new lease on life. The truth really can make you free.

I'm thinking about the harm of the secret, because legislators, lawyers, judges, Catholic bishops and the ACLU state chapters who oppose unsealing birth certificates to the adopted think they are doing good by speaking up for silent mothers who have "moved on" with their lives and do not want to be reminded of the painful time of their lives. They assume they are helping mothers in the closet by allowing them to continue to live their false lives. They are "protecting" them from the reality of the truth. What they are doing instead is letting the hurt continue and spread, like a virus that cannot be cured with a miracle drug. Yet this sickness would shrivel and die in the light.--lorraine

______________________

SOURCE
Why You Can't Keep a Secret

From FMF:
Secrets in adoption: Dealing with betrayal of lies by omission

You are only as sick as the secrets you keep

How shame keeps birth mothers from embracing reunion
To Tell the Truth or Not, Continued: Secrets and Lies

FURTHER READING 
The Adoption Reader: Birth Mothers, Adoptive Mothers, and Adopted Daughters Tell Their Stories With eloquence and conviction, more than 30 diverse birth mothers, adoptive mothers and adoptees tell their adoption stories and explore what is a deeply emotional, sometimes controversial, and always compelling experience that affects millions of families and individuals.--Amazon. Note: One of Lorraine's essays that originally appeared in Town & Country opens the book. 

THANK YOU FOR ORDERING ANYTHING THROUGH FMF. JUST GOING TO AMAZON THROUGH FMF FOR ANY PRODUCT HELPS.