Ep. 4.16 The Good-Bye Room

[boxman]

Hi FirstMother, Thanks for the reply. It's given me lots of things to think about. I tend to post long "essay-like" responses when I really get into a subject, and that's what's going to happen here! The thing is that I'm busy with work during the week, so I have trouble finding the time to write lengthy replies. I'll try and get online tonight for a response, so expect more later on!

[longislanditalian2]

Anyway, Lilly 's hurting a lot while viewing the picture it was very evident. She does love her mother but still there was still many unanswered questions about why her mother did the these she did.

[mamarobina]

"was still many unanswered questions about why her mother did the these she did. "

First of all, thanks for the welcomes.

I know that my mother was sure that I was ruined for life unless she covered it up and made it go away. She was acting in what she saw as my best interests, but truly, how can the loss of one's own child be in anyone's "best interests?" We lived in the Bible Belt South of the early 60's and she took the loss of my virginity and the proof of same as an indication of her own failure as a parent.

Most of our parents, born in the first part of the last century, were devastated when they thought of the neighbors finding out. To them, it was the greatest shame possible. I bore that shame for many years until I realized that, for Pete's Sake, it was just sex! It wasn't anything that most everyone else wasn't doing...we just got "caught."

I have to echo firstmother in her assertion that records should be opened in all states for BOTH the adopted person and the mothers of adoption loss. I mean, most people expect references from their babysitters. How could we be expected to give our children over to a secret, closed system on pure faith, alone? But we were expected to, coerced into surrender, and, if every other mom is like me, we either had nightmares, worried or supressed our emotions until we were emotionally handicapped by doing so. A mother is a mother regardless of age or marital status.

But the fact is that today's "open" adoption is no better. Loss is loss and coercion is not always overt and immediately recognizable. It STILL happens.

Feel free to visit my blog. motherhooddeleted.blogspot.com/

[LillyKat]

naj said:

Hi LillyKat,

I know what you mean about the feeling we've already explored certain things and it feels like it's nothing new in the episode even Vera reused a former line... "your a real door prize". I thought with the new timeslot they'd ratch up the stories more but they haven't. That said for me I hold onto those eps that are more season 1 ish with Lilly leading the pack and less of the personal stuff on the others except for some on Lil. I know I'm biased and I just can't help it. It's just the roots of the show. I'm hoping they have something entirely new in the way of cases coming down the pike the remainder of the season.

Hi Naj ...

I thought that "door prize" line sounded familiar. LOL!

I feel kind of strange talking about CC in a series context since I only JUST started watching last season; I am by no means a true veteran like you, TVFan, etc. But in the last 9 months, I've caught myself up on all the eps, so a lot is very fresh in my mind when viewing the eps this season. Thus, I think I'm perhaps watching with a different viewpoint (and arguably with too MUCH to compare to). That's also why I struggle a bit with some of the loose ends / things that seemingly were explored and now aren't / things that seem to be coming up over and over again. I kind of want to say, "Get on with it already!" (as I felt with this ep ... please don't have Lilly yap one more time about mom being not fit to be a mom, etc. ) LOL!

Also, the way this ep was billed ... with the whole "Lilly must reexamine the relationship with her mother" ... I just didn't find a whole lot "new" or "reexamined" for this ep. It seemed part and parcel with how Lilly always is when it comes to her mother ... yes, she pulls out the baby pic at the end, but that just didn't work for me ... I was expecting something a little more, I guess. But perhaps for Lilly, that IS a lot.

Ah well, what can I say, the woman keeps us guessing.

[riche]

lillykat said:

Ah well, what can I say, the woman keeps us guessing.

Isn't it a woman's prerogative to be mysterious?

[michelle]

lillykat said:

naj said:

Hi LillyKat,
That's also why I struggle a bit with some of the loose ends / things that seemingly were explored and now aren't / things that seem to be coming up over and over again.

I agree SO much!! Many things started up but never resolved or that seemingly leave no changes to the characters. Case in point: Joseph the Wonder Man/Cat Carrier. . . walks out and Lilly has no after effects whatsoever (that are shown to us anyway, and since it's a TV show, if they aren't shown, they may as well not exist.)

I could give half a dozen examples like that! I'm glad it's not just me. (I hate having issues alone!) ;D

[riche]

Shows like this have a habit of keeping things in the wings to bring out again in the future. Things have gone quiet on Scotty's little playground justice but I guess it will come up again. The same could be true of Lilly's career-risking relationship with Joseph.

BuffyTVS was very good at it. The show would start with a "previously on..." containing stuff from a show 2 series ago. You'd be sat there thinking "they're playing an old repeat" or "they've made a mistake" and then you'd find out they've brought an old character back or issue up.

[michelle]

Pffft!!! That's no good! I want instant gratification! All the answers, all the action, all the plot. . . NOW!

[longislanditalian2]

I kind of like everything not being explained, somethings are better left being unsaid.

[chris]

Thanks Boxman and all for the welcome to this forum.. Believe me it is a relief not to be chided and discounted, as so often happens when we older moms who lost babies to adoption, decide to speak up. I would like to answer your questions, one by one..

I was wondering:

--Was an accurate portrayal that like Barbara, many of these children are now adults and don't even know they've been adopted??
Yes it was a very accurate portrayal. There are many older adopted people who do not find out til late in life that they are adopted, many times, like Barbara, after the aparents die and the adopted person is going thru papers. Older adopted people who do not find out til later in life are called..Late Discovery Adoptees...LDA.

--Have any of you been successful in finding your children?? If so, how far have you've gone to make contact with them??

I found my daughter almost 8 years ago, when she was 34 yrs old. I had not a shred of paper, just a few memories and it was pure luck I stumbled upon a 'searcher' on the internet in 1999, who would find my daughter and 6 days later we would be talking on the phone. We have been in contact since that time. By phone and visits to her home.

--""What about friendships you've made with other young women at these maternity homes. Have you folks kept in touch with other women you've met after giving birth and over the years??""

Though I was not in a maternity home, I made the horrendous mistake of paying ONE visit to an adoption agency, after the Social Worker at the hospital where I had my first pre-natal exam, told me it was imperative that I visit this adoption agency, as I had nothing to offer my baby, that my baby would be called a 'bastard' in the playground, no man would want me with another man's child and that if I reallllllllyyyyyy loved my baby, I would give 'it' up. I also am 'Christine' in Ann Fessler's book..'The Girls Who Went Away'. Many young unmarried pregnant women were not in maternity homes, but sent to live with relatives elsewhere, hidden in their own homes and some sent to 'wage homes'..meaning the young girl/woman acted as the in-house babysitter, cook and housecleaner for no $$$$$ while she was pg, for the upper classes. Slavery did not totally disappear in the 19th century.

--How do you folks feel about Roe v. Wade, and the option it provides to young women today??

I lost a baby to adoption and later I would have an abortion. I can tell you, in all honesty..I have never had one day's regret about the abortion. I have forever regretted that my baby was surrendered to adoption. It was like a 'living death'... no closure, no ritual, no one to acknowledge that I had lost my firstborn, 'as if' she was never born. When I gave birth to my daughter in 1964, abortion was illegal and 'good girls' did not seek out back-alley abortionists, most did not even know they existed or how to locate one. Let alone the tales of horrible infection/death caused by 'coat-hangers'. I do not believe in abortion as a method of birth control, but if a pg woman decides this is the course she must take, I am relieved today for those women who at least have this 'choice' to make. Also in those days, in most states even birth control pills were illegal to dispense to an unmarried woman. The state of Connecticut would have it illegal to even dispense BC pills to married women either in the late 60's or into the early 70's. Right up into the mid 70's a few states were still practicing mandatory sterlization for females, even males. Being an unwed mother could deem you the recepient of mandatory sterlization in some states.

--Are there organizations and websites that reveal more on the matter? (After just a quick search, it seems to me at the moment that there isn't a whole lot of info on this available.)

Takes a good bit of practice to find some good scholarly material on this subject. If one googles 'adoption' you will only find all the happy-dappy stuff, no one wants to talk about the loss and pain. Especially the Adoption Industry, puts a crimp in their profit margins. Here is one link that is of historical nature and has quite a good bit of historical fact surrounding adoption and the negative presumptions of unmarried young women who have lost a child to adoption. darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/


--In retrospect, do any of you feel that putting up your child for adoption has given you a better life by freeing you from the responsibility (and at that time, the stigma) of being a young, unwed mother??

NO! absolutely not.. I did not have a 'better' life without my baby. I went on and lived my life the best I could after I lost my baby to adoption. I was a responsible person at the age of 17-18 yrs old. Problem was I loved a guy, too much, too well...who determined the 'responsibility' of fatherhood was an inconvenience. Please understand back in the Good Ole Days.. What determined us unmarrieds 'unfit' 'unworthy' of our own children, was in large part the absence of 3 letters... M R S.... Those 3 letters for most young unmarried pg women, made all the difference in the world. You were mostly doomed without those letters and/or a supportive family, morally and financially. Remember too back then, at least in 1964.. there was not a lot of help for single mothers with children. What little there was, most of us white middle-class girls had no knowledge of nor were informed of what little help did exist in that day.

I want to thank you very much for asking these questions, with real interest and presenting these questions in such a sensitive manner. That means a great deal to me and the millions of mothers of my time that lost their babies to adoption. It is reckoned during the Baby Scoop Era.. in the Westernized Countries over 6 million young unmarried women were pressured and coerced to surrender their children to adoption. With little to no choice, other than the choice of adoption. I apologize for the length, but wanted to answer your questions as fully and best as I could... Thank you again...

[firstmother]

How does Cold Case develop it's story lines?
Do they only use their own writers? I love how complicated the plots are. For me, it's always hard to tell who the bad guy is...

[firstmother]

Chris, I want to thank you for so accurately describing what it felt like. I heard all the same reasons you did when they thought I was *resisting*. my child "would be called a bastard on the playground", how dare I try to keep my baby away from a couple who could give him everything I couldn't, fuggettaboutitI, you'll "have plenty of other children" and on and on til I felt like I must me the most selfish girl in the world to try to keep my own baby... Never once was counseling of any kind offered. What a racket adoption was ... Many of those homes wouldn't even allow the girls to have calendars in their room because they were hoping they wouldn't remember their child's birthday!
I was called before the head honcho of my maternity hope and given a lecture about how I was upsetting the other girls because I kept talking about how I was going to find a way to keep my baby... !!
I was lied to over and over to get me to surrender. Told the adoptive father was a doctor (he wasn't), told my baby was leaving the home the same day I was and going immediately to his new adoptive home. (he wasn't - he was put in a foster home for 3 months) Told I had already signed the papers and it was too late to change my mind (it wasn't true either - by law I had 3 months to change my mind) They told me if I ever dared to try to find him, I would be arrested and go to jail) Also not true - all I had signed was a surrender of my parental rights - it didn't say anything about not being able to someday search.

This country should be ashamed of itself for the way it allowed young woman to be treated who were pregnant outside of marriage during those days.

[mamarobina]

--""What about friendships you've made with other young women at these maternity homes. Have you folks kept in touch with other women you've met after giving birth and over the years??""

I was in a home and, while we did form friendships, exchange of personal information was discouraged and, if done at all, done in secret. Because of our "shame," most didn't even try past a couple of letters, maybe. And contact with our sisters also brought, into sharp focus, our grief. We were not supposed to even mention the fact that we had just lost a baby to adoption, much less show our grief. We were to "go and sin no more."

""--How do you folks feel about Roe v. Wade, and the option it provides to young women today??""

I don't believe there is one, across the board opinion on that one. I am pro-choice, but many of my sister moms are not. We are, in essence, everywoman. We're not a particular type of have a "group" belief about anything except that a woman losing her child in this way is something to be avoided at all costs and as explorable only in dire cases. I thought about what it might have been like had safe, legal abortion been available. But I don't envy anyone who has to make that choice. I found myself more envious of the growing acceptance of single motherhood that followed my loss in the early 60's. It seems like it was only 10 years later that I was invited to a baby shower for a young, single mom-to-be.

BTW, I saw, in the shot where Stillman was looking at the box, someone with a lot of sympathy for us.

[boxman]

FirstMother, Chris, and MamaRobina, let me say, "Whew". I'm still feeling stunned and overwhelmed by this whole topic. Thank you for answering my questions; It's opening a door to something I've been completely unaware of. I am very relieved to hear that each of you have reunited with the sons and daughters that you were separated from. I hope this also means that each of you and your families are well underway in reconnecting with each other, and have at least begun to find ways to heal the wounds from these forced adoptions.

Chris, I was able to find a New York Times review of Ann Fessler's book. I was taken aback when I got to the middle of the review--and right there, the reviewer told the story of how the "T-chart" interrogation was used to break down the young mothers' spirits. I thought the scene where Hilary wrote "LOVE" on the paper was just fictional; I was stunned to think that it was very likely based on an actual event.

MamaRobina, I took the time this evening to read portions from your blog. Very powerful stuff, and I had to take breathers. Someone posted a haunting response that I think I should mention here: She was 38 year-old woman when reunited with her mother. Even after two years together, her mom would never talk about what had happened. I have to admit that I didn't fully understand why I sensed some anger in some of the posts each of you have made; then that reply to your blog made me realize that even to this day, there are still many women who cannot talk about that time. The anger, the "ruffled feathers" FirstMother mentions is definitely necessary not just to bring about changes in societal views and values, but also to help give a voice and strength to those who are still unable to discuss the past with loved ones.

Now I was born in 1965, making me a person who could've been an "adoptee". (After all, this episode took place in 1964.) But that's not why I find this topic interesting. I'm also someone who did have sex education in school, and for the most part lived after 1973's Roe v. Wade. So it's the episode's topic of unplanned pregnancy that I can relate to. However.... It's 4:00 am and I need to get to sleep... I will need to continue more with this discussion later....

[boxman]

The New York Times

June 11, 2006
'The Girls Who Went Away,' by Ann Fessler
In Trouble
Review by KATHRYN HARRISON

Ann Fessler was nearly 56 when she first met her biological mother, who was 75. By then Fessler had already collected more than 100 oral histories for "The Girls Who Went Away." She knew that those girls — pregnant, frightened and coerced into surrendering their babies for adoption — never came back from the experience, not really. None of the women who agreed to be interviewed by Fessler were able to follow the advice of parents, pastors and social workers who told them to put their "mistakes" behind them and move on, pick up their lives at the point at which they'd hurriedly exited them to wait out their confinement in a maternity home. Whatever private fantasies Fessler may have attached to the idea of reunion with her birth mother, they were informed by what she'd learned from other women who, like her mother, had suffered what one called "a horrible, horrible, horrible loss."

The language of adoption makes it clear: Babies are surrendered. They're given up. Relinquished. Mothers, even very young and panicked mothers, don't usually part from their babies without a struggle. But while many books, articles and television shows in recent years have focused on the often overwhelming experience of adopted children who as adults find themselves helplessly pursuing their biological parents, less has been said about mothers' separation from their infants — mothers as opposed to mothers and fathers, as biology grants males the freedom to move on, especially in the absence of DNA tests to establish paternity. A legacy of shame and guilt surrounding the circumstances that forced young women to surrender their babies has effectively silenced them from sharing the emotional fallout of that loss.

Between the end of World War II and the legalization of abortion nationwide in 1973, 1.5 million babies were given up for adoption in the United States. This turbulent era for young women, whose sexual independence preceded their access to birth control (and their exposure to sex education), produced "an explosion in premarital pregnancy and in the numbers of babies surrendered for adoption." Unmarried girls in the 1950's and 60's may have felt increasingly liberated to have intercourse (Helen Gurley Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl" was published in 1962, identifying a revolution that was well on its way) but the babies they bore were still considered illegitimate, and pregnancy outside of marriage was still a disgrace. A girl who found herself "in trouble" had virtually no means of resisting the forces that conspired either to push her into a speedy marriage or to hustle her out of town to have her baby far from the sight of all who would condemn her. "In one of the strictest forms of banishment," Fessler writes, "high schools and most colleges required a pregnant girl to withdraw immediately." And this was only an institutionalized form of the rejection she encountered wherever she turned, insisting she withdraw from all social interaction.

Mothers and fathers went to what now seem ridiculous lengths to conceal their daughters' shame, "disappearing" them before they sent them away to deliver their babies. For a 21st-century reader, accounts of a girl scurrying upstairs to hide in her room each time the doorbell rings, or of a mother insisting that as soon as she pulled the car out of the garage her daughter duck down below sight, come as a shock; some of us don't even remember when an unwed pregnancy could provoke a genuine scandal. A month or so before her due date, the girl was put on a bus or escorted by a parent to a necessarily distant maternity home, where she waited out her last weeks feeling abandoned, as she in fact had been.

Many of these homes, though conceived in the name of charity, didn't extend much to the young women they took in. "Write down on this side of the paper what you can give your baby. Write down on the other side what the adoptive parents have to offer," one nun instructed her charges. Against the presence of a father, of money and all it could buy — house and clothes and food and a good education — what could a girl give her baby, other than "love," as one wrote? And love could seem very little to a teenager who had been made to feel so small herself, reminded constantly of the trouble and shame she'd inflicted on her family. If she really loved her baby she'd make sure he'd have a better life than what she could give him. "Tearing you down and breaking your spirit," was how one woman described the process.

Fessler's thorough analysis of the social context of adoption in America between 1945 and 1973 demonstrates only too well how good intentions can produce disastrous outcomes. "The Girls Who Went Away" is a remarkably well-researched and accomplished book, especially considering that its author is not a sociologist but a professor of photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. She does, of course, have her vested interest in the topic. Fessler was adopted during the 50's, and she explores the era's glorification of the conventional nuclear family, along with the power of a cultural institution like Life magazine to create and disseminate comforting myths, as it did in its Feb. 19, 1951, cover story. Beginning with its title, "The Adoption of Linda Joy" infuses a sense of serendipity into an experience that virtually all birth mothers seem to have found irreparably damaging. The article, Fessler writes, not only implied that Linda Joy's mother made "an uncomplicated decision that was not influenced by outside forces," it also presented the case of Linda Joy as if it were typical. In other words, it was so misleading as to be propaganda.

Such discussions provide the background necessary for readers to fully appreciate the many profoundly sad and disturbing oral histories in "The Girls Who Went Away," and it isn't fair to compare Fessler's measured tone to the raw emotion of these bereft birth mothers' stories — unfair and unavoidable, as they are juxtaposed throughout the text. "I think of my life as before and after, sort of like B.C. and A.D.," one woman says of the impact of losing her baby. "Guilt was always such a pervasive part for me. Not that I was sexual, or not that I was pregnant, but that I let somebody take my child," confesses another. It's not possible to overstate the despair, rage, loneliness and unrelieved anguish represented here. "I associated death and pain and loss with sex." "It's as if I was the unwilling accomplice to the kidnapping of my own child." Even an impassioned academic can't compete with the immediacy of these voices.

"Why are you traveling around the country collecting the life histories of all these surrendering mothers, but not your own?" one subject demands upon learning that the author had not yet met her own biological mother. "A legitimate question," Fessler concedes. As much as each interview must have provided a kind of surrogate for learning her own mother's story, it's easy to imagine that once the chorus of voices came to an end the silence they left in their wake demanded Fessler discover just how it was for the woman who lost her. By then she would have been aware of all that was held in common by the girls who went away, and of the importance of hearing each separate voice.

Kathryn Harrison's nonfiction includes "The Kiss" and "Seeking Rapture." Her most recent novel is "Envy."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[eurache]

longislanditalian2 said:

I kind of like everything not being explained, somethings are better left being unsaid.

Well, I think the writers leave things unexplained b/c they want the audience to view these matters, to really think out situations that are so true in RL. Look at all these responses we received from these three moms. Look at what they went thru. So some things should not be left unsaid! I think this is a "Lesson to learn and understand" of the time period of what went on back then. I appreciate our new members sharing their experiences with us. I was from that time period and what was explained here just pains me. There was no true explanation of sex in Health Classes like now; because of the Catholic beliefs, it was taboo to be on the pill! All these unknown facts brought forth should be educational to our present generation. I thank the writers of Cold Case of presenting these different situations. Right on!

[firstmother]

Boxman,

Thank you. You have no idea how validating it is to have someone want to take the time to understand.
And Robin, I agree with you that Stillman seemed to have sympathy with us.

[mamarobina]

Boxman, You are a very decent, open-minded person. Thank you for reading at my blog and trying to understand and learn. My raised daughter was also born in 1965 and had to figure out why Mommy became a zombie every spring. She is such a sweetie and has lived this with me.

If everyone were like Lily, then people would stop and listen. I think that is why I like her character so much. She has compassion and empathy...something we did not get a lot of back then.

You should read Ann's book. It is soooo moving and you would recognize the parts that Ms. Johnson incorporated into her script. The part about the "T" chart?...that was my close friend Pollie who helped my daughter find me in 1993. We had known each other for years and never realized that we had each been through this horrendous experience.

[longislanditalian2]

I do have such sympathy for the mothers who had to go through this , it's so heartbreaking to let go of a child that you love. Even back then they should have known how it was going to effect the mothers and children later on, I think takening away the child from the mother is simply sad even if you only could provide love.

When Hilary asked the Nun" is love enough" I personally think so, without love nobody can survive without it. And what Karen said" Nothing's stronger then a mother's love" it's true, why could they see that a long time ago.

I just feel so bad for all the mothers who had to give up their children like that



I hope I didn't offend anyone

[canuckiepen]

I had tears in my eyes during the closing song, "You are My Sunshine". My 8 yr-old son asked why. I told him it was so very sad.

I can never imagine giving up my own flesh and blood.

I really feel for those unwed mothers who were forced to give up their children.

Very well-done episode, heart-wrenching indeed.