My Wounded Heart – A True Story
I’ve thought long and hard about posting this story because it’s a painful memory that’s hard to talk about, but I feel it’s worth sharing because it may help other women who have had similar experiences.
When I was fifteen I fell in love with a tall, handsome young man, just one year older than me. It was my first love and like most of us experiencing our first love, it was special. Tony was handsome, clever and ambitious. We met at college. I came straight out of an all-girls private school where I was safe and protected from the outside world and Tony came from a grammar school.
Tony had a burning ambition to go to Sandhurst. The army was in his family and he wanted to continue the tradition. I had less grand ambitions and wanted to be a nurse.
I can still remember how I felt when I was with him. When we held hands walking to college, I was so happy I thought I would burst. It was the happiest time of my young life. A year passed by and we were still in love, and I thought it would last forever.
I used to do babysitting for several young families and I eventually succumbed to the temptation of Tony babysitting with me. My mother had always warned me not to be alone with a young man in a warm room. Unfortunately, like many of my mother’s obscure rules, I had no idea what she meant. I was ridiculously uninformed about sex and boys, and even the sex education at school was all about rabbits.
I really was innocent to the point of being stupid. I hadn’t even heard of contraception and looking back on it, I’m not sure if Tony was as uninformed as me by not wearing a condom or whether he just didn’t care. The result of all this ignorance was (you guessed it) a pregnancy.
When I think back on it, Tony’s behaviour towards me in the months that followed (and after the baby’s birth) was unkind and spiteful so I’m pretty sure that he simply didn’t care about me or our baby. He got what he wanted and that was the end of it as far as he was concerned. Do I sound bitter? Yes, I think I am, even now after all these years. We were both very young, I know, but that shouldn’t have stopped him showing me some kindness.
From the moment it was confirmed I was pregnant, my life with Tony ended. He said he loved me but had his career to think of. He thought it best that we didn’t see each other anymore and from that moment on he treated me like a leper. We still passed each other in the college passageways, we saw each other in the canteen, but there was no communication. He would sit with his friends and snigger, often looking my way before they all burst out laughing. What I wanted to do was walk out of that college and never return but I was about to take my GCEs and had no choice if I wanted some qualifications.
When news of my pregnancy was out, my parents were mortified. At first, my mother and my sister were so upset they could barely speak to me but worse of all, my loving father said I had behaved like a whore and he was ashamed of me. Years later, when I had my own teenage daughters, I vowed I would never do this to them. If they were in trouble, whatever they had done, I would sympathise and show them some kindness, support them in any way I could so they could make a decision that was right for them. But to be fair to my family, this was the 1960s, and a teenage pregnancy was seen as a tragedy for the whole family.
My father, who I knew loved me, reacted badly because he knew or thought he knew, how badly it could affect my future. He was a lovely father, so kind and gentle, but he just wasn’t equipped to deal with a situation like this. He ignored my pleas to keep my baby and insisted on adoption, and he made it clear that he could not support me if I didn’t go through with the adoption. He said it was best for me and my future, and that a young married couple would give the child the best chance in life.
So when I was four months pregnant, I was sent away to relatives in Liverpool. It was the first time I had been away from my parents, particularly my mother, and I was terrified. But my Aunt and Uncle opened their arms to me and gave me the love and support I badly needed.
I went to ante-natal classes and had my first lessons in contraception and childbirth. I remember being shocked to learn how a baby was born but I was also excited when I thought about it growing inside me. When I went into labour and was admitted to hospital, I was put in a delivery room. I was alone for twelve hours. The midwife only came in at intervals to check my progress. I wasn’t allowed a visitor or birthing partner. Only husbands could stay.
I had a normal delivery of a boy – 8lbs 3oz – and he was beautiful with the most amazing eyes. I called him Sean. On the post-natal ward, I felt completely lost. I was taught how to change a nappy, but I was told I had plenty of milk and had to breastfeed. I tried to give him some love, held him when he cried, rocked him to sleep during the night but inside I was crying, already grieving for the loss that was about it be. It was five days of pure hell.
When I was discharged from hospital, a social worker drove me straight to the foster mother’s home. I hugged Sean as long I could, and he had to be taken from my arms. But they were kind and kept asking me if I was still in agreement with the adoption. I remember feeling terribly cold, like ice, inside and I signed the adoption papers like a robot, just going through the motions, doing what I was told.
When I left the foster parent’s home, I sat in the back of the car knowing I’d done something terrible. If I had known then how much pain my son and I would endure for decades to come, I wouldn’t have agreed to the adoption. I would have defied my parents, left my family home and done anything to keep my beautiful boy. I had torn a hole in my heart and betrayed myself and my son.
For the next thirty-eight years, I thought of Sean every day. During the first fifteen years, I used to watch children, boys who would be the same age as Sean. I tried to imagine what he would look like.
When I had my daughter, ten years after Sean, I hung onto her and wouldn’t let anyone else hold her. At one point, the midwives and doctors were really concerned by my possessive behaviour but when I explained my history they understood. Having another baby and being able to keep her went some way to healing the wound inside. My second daughter was another blessing. My desperate need to be a real mother was at last coming true but still there was Sean. The beautiful boy I gave away.
I told my daughters about Sean as soon as they were old enough to understand. As they grew older they would often see me crying for Sean and they tried to persuade me to find him. I resisted for years because I was convinced he wouldn’t want to see me, that he must hate me for giving him away.
Then, when I was fifty-five, I had this overwhelming feeling that Sean wanted to find me. I registered with a website that linked birth mothers with their adopted babies. It was only three weeks later when I received an email from them saying that Sean Lowe had also just registered with them. He was looking for his birth mother, Helen Lowe. They named the hospital he was born in and his date of birth.
I was beside myself with happiness and fear, but the fact that he was looking for me encouraged me to send him an email. It was the weirdest email I’ve ever written. How do you find the words to speak to a child you gave away? Well, I found the words from somewhere and I cried while I typed them. We chatted via emails for a couple of months. No phone calls because he said he wanted to hear my voice for the first time when we met.
We arranged to meet at a local hotel by a lake in their grounds. He was standing with his back to me as I approached and when I was just a few feet from him, I said his name. He turned to face me and there we were, smiling at each other through the tears. I will never forget the joy in my heart when we hugged.
We talked for hours, trying to cover as much as we could, to fill in the gaps. When we found out that we had both registered with that website within weeks of each other, both of us wanting to find each other at the same time, it made us think that we must have a connection that’s deeper than anything we can understand.
It’s now eleven years since we met and we’re still close and happy to have found each other. I’ve met his beautiful wife and their two gorgeous children (my grandchildren,) and although I still deeply regret the decision I made years ago, that painful wound in my heart has finally healed.
