A Year Later

The truth is...she is in my thoughts more than once a day - every hour, lately. It will be a year on Thursday that Marg passed away and to be honest, I'm a wreck. It's like I'm stuck in the middle of, well...a tsunami of grief.

I saw a therapist last Wednesday and I wasn't going to cry. I'm not a big crier, if I cry, the world has to be pretty much falling apart. Apparently - by the looks of it - it is.

The therapist thinks that I never grieved for Marg. That I hid my feelings mostly, because I didn't feel that I even had the right to grieve. Why would I grieve for someone I was in and out of a relationship with? Why would I grieve for someone that placed me for adoption? Why would I grieve for someone that my half-siblings told me - at the funeral - wasn't mine and that I wasn't welcome or a part of their family.

It's complicated. The emotions. She's my birthmother.

Last year, only two people recognized my loss and sent a card to me. One of them was the adoptive mother of a boy I grew up with. The second was a friend of my mother's.

That's it.

Think about it. There aren't any 'sorry your first mom died' cards. And trust me when I tell you that when someone asks why you were off work for a few days and you reply, 'My birthmother died...I'm adopted,' they turn red and they look like they want to crawl into a hole.

I still feel like I need to hide my grief. I still feel unvalidated. I still feel like a dork when I can barely swallow the lump in my throat and make it from my office to my car before I collapse. (I still feel like I should have no reason to feel the way I do.)

I feel so alone and my heart hurts.