Like was it yesterday, It was our first hug, and our hearts melted as we realised we knew each other right away. It was really our first hug, and our hearts melted as we realised we knew each other right away. It was our first hug, and our hearts melted as we realised we knew each other right away. About two bodies met again after 40 years—two souls that had never been apart. When they saw each other again, the time gap was quickly filled.Mothers and beautiful daughters will always be close, no matter the situation.
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It had been 40 years since I gave birth to my first daughter and then put her up for adoption. I had to bury them deeply, pick up my life as if nothing had happened, and move on. This was because my parents wanted me to honour their wishes and not marry my first love. I was so good at denying the huge hole in my heart that, as the years went by, I forgot even the date my child was born.
Eventually, after 30 years, four children, and two marriages, how was it that I was in a class of six women studying spiritual counselling who al l had a similar deeply held past to mine? We were all moms with babies. After we revealed our secret, people began to gather who were interested in beginning a ministry at our church to pray for adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents. That was a nice notion, but we would need to heal ourselves before we could help others.
So we began the painful process of bringing up our pain. As fast or slow as we could, we each dealt with our own problems, such as guilt, shame, blame, anger, and self-recrimination. At the same time, we prayed for each other and everyone whose pain we shared. As a result, we made it possible for the child, adopted parent, and birth parent to talk to each other and try to understand the different mental problems that each has. Some of us looked for our child or parent. When I decid ed to look for my daughter, it brought a lot of things into my life.
I felt safe enough to face my own walls of defence and denial and try to bring them down when there was praying and spiritual advice going on. It was a terrible process. When I became pregnant as a youth, I felt bad about the shame and pain I caused my parents and brothers. I also felt bad about myself because I hadn’t worked for what I wanted, which was my partner and my baby. It was the shame and guilt of having sinned that I was bringing to my attention and eventually accepting. This was what the church of my childhood and social norms in 1961 said I should do. I was saying that I was mad at my parents for sticking in the way of my dream of having the perfect family and at my boyfriend for not doing more to save me from this horrible sentence of being sent away. I had to think about the hard things that happened when my daughter was born many times while I was looking for her, and it was all I could do not to pass out. When I let out one huge wave of repressed emotions after another, I was always on the verge of losing it. What kept me going was my strong desire to find my daughter, tell her how much I loved her, and tell her that she was born out of love. I wanted to finish the circle that started with her birth.
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So I looked, I prayed, and I started to forgive. As I went through the spirituality classes that were making me ready to be a spiritual counsellor and prayer practitioner, I realised that I couldn’t get out of the negative self-judgement that I had let cloud the beauty of my daughter’s birth without forgiving myself. I knew that I had to find the good in being her birth mother if I wanted to really welcome her now. I knew that the healing miracle I so desperately wanted would only happen when I let go of my shame, guilt, and blame about how she came into the world.
“Seventy times seven.” We are told by Jesus that this is how many times we need to forgive to be free: as many times as it takes. My parents, my first love, my church, and my society were some of the other people in my story that I needed to forgive. It was time for me to forgive myself. I was stuck on the cross of shame and self-blame for a long time and didn’t know how to let go.
At first, I felt very sorry for the girl I was, who was deeply in love and excited about life and only wanted to experience and share that love in any way she knew how. I heard how much that 19-year-old girl hurt because she had lost a lot and felt like she didn’t fit. Because of how bad the pain was, she had pretty much stopped trusting her own beautiful heart. I heard her, comforted her, and told her I loved her and would never let that kind of pain happen to her again. Adjoa, an African lady, believed that she was a bad girl, a sinner, an undesirable good-for-nothing, and a cause of pain to others. The I AM of me, my God Self, forgives her for all of those beliefs.
Finally, I had no option but to become truly free when I let go of the layers of self-blame. She hated me, and I felt sick towards myself over the course of months and even years. Getting rid of the chains of that past that seemed impossible to forgive has really given me a new life. I’m thankful for one of the most important events in my life that has helped me grow. I’m thankful for myself, my family, my first love, and my baby. When I faced my past, I was given the gift of kindness, which I now freely share with all the people I teach and advise. The wonder I’ve experienced since I decided to forgive is the deep love I have for my first-born daughter. This love started when we hugged and has been making my life better ever since.
