I was one of the unwed mothers of the 1960’s forced to give my child up for adoption. My family was insistent – it just wasn’t done – keeping a child without being married and, since the father was a married university professor I’d met while I was studying in France, it was absolutely out of the question that I should try to raise my child myself. My mother’s cries, "What will my family think!", and my father’s comments with a shake of his head about "being disappointed" in me contributed to my sense of not being loved by them and never being able to win their approval. I wanted to keep my child, for I knew I could support myself and I believed I could nurture and provide the loving care needed to raise a child. But, I listened to my parents, was worn down by their arguments, and finally acquiesced to their insistence that I give my child up for adoption. Perhaps giving in to them was yet one more attempt at seeking approval.

Having graduated from the University of Washington, I decided to go back to Seattle to await the birth of my child. My doctor from my student days knew a couple wanting to adopt a child who would be willing to pay all my medical bills. I moved into a walkup studio apartment with a pull down Murphy bed, got a job with the Kelly Girls Agency and began doing temporary secretarial work to support myself. When my girth began to enlarge, I would ask the agency to arrange a change of jobs. In my last position, I told them that my "husband" was out of the country. I was only there for a short time before I had to stop work – I was developing toxemia.

During this time, I was alone except for my unborn child. I avoided any places where I might run into old classmates. I became a regular visitor to the local library and did an enormous amount of reading and I wondered what my child would be like. I often read to her. At that time, I wasn’t sure of her sex, but I thought of her as a girl child. I selected stories to read to her that I thought she would like – many of them fairy tales about beautiful princesses. I sang to her and stroked her as she moved within me. We were one.

Twenty years passed and each time I would hear of an adopted child being abused, my heart felt like it was in a vise with a pain that permeated my whole being. Every time I saw a little girl about her age, I would say a brief prayer for my child’s safety. Although my son was born in 1969, I still thought of my daughter somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

When the call came from Mike, her adoptive father, telling me that I had a beautiful daughter who was going to be 20 and soon graduating from college, I almost fainted. Mike and Bobbie, Pam’s adoptive mother, had begun searching for me when Pam entered her teen years. They told me that she was going through an identity crisis and they believed it would help her if she knew something about her roots.

Pam and I have had a strange relationship. It is almost as if she had built me up in her imagination as another person. She mentioned that she sometimes had fantasies about being a princess. Perhaps that has bothered her throughout these years. We went to her wedding 4 years ago, but the following spring, she decided to cut off contact with me. I still don’t know why the sudden change of heart. She has had a child I have never seen. A year ago Christmas, her husband, David, sent me a photo of my first natural grandchild. At that time, Colin was 1 year old. When I wrote David to see if I could perhaps send a birthday card or a Christmas present to my only natural grandson, he wrote back that Colin already had two sets of grandparents and didn’t need any more.

And so the cycle goes on, unnecessary hurt, making someone else the outsider, punishing the person who left her so very long ago. How I wish I could convey to her what I went through when I was forced to give her up for adoption. I wonder if it ever crosses her mind that I suffered years of agony until I saw her lovely face. Somehow, I think she has never forgiven me for not having given birth to a princess.