One Mother's Journey

Motherhood is something many women share in common. It comes to us the first time in a most unique experience that can bring with it a myriad of emotion. Suddenly, we are the one in charge of this new life and the responsibility can seem quite heavy.

The fears and concerns soon dissipate with practice and “friendly advice” and perhaps reading up on the subject. There are plenty of special moments of bonding with this new person you helped make but have never met before.

Love for your child goes through many stages. Protective, teaching, disciplining, wearing many hats to cover all the needs your child has. Eventually, you have to let go. Usually this happens when your children grow up and go their own way. Sometimes, it happens sooner, as in my case.

When my boys were small, their father and I separated. Having married soon after graduating high school, I conclude that we simply grew in different directions. Had we gone to counseling and made a true effort, things might have turned out differently. As it was, things fell apart.

There were many factors leading up to the final event of my delivering my five and three year old boys to the custody of their father. It was the 70’s and a rare thing for a mother to turn her children over to the father. Originally, I wanted to have joint custody, but we were at two different sides of the country, and I didn’t have the income to send them back and forth. I didn’t have any marketable skill to speak of at the time.

After trying to file for divorce myself and botching it and getting the paperwork thrown out of court, I told the boy’s father to do it from his end. As it turned out, since his state wasn’t a no-fault, irreconcilable differences state, we made me out to be the bad guy. I felt he was a good father and since they were boys, I felt they needed to grow up with their father. Some people said I had no right to see my boys after that, that I had given them up. I didn’t give them up; I let them go. There’s a difference.

Today, I am the proud mother of two daughters who have been very precious to me. God smiled on me and now I know how Job must have felt after losing his whole family and being restored. The new children God gave him didn't replace the lost ones, they were gifts of their own value.

I am not bitter over the time I lost with my boys but I am sorrowful to have missed so much of their lives. I had hoped that when they became adults, they would see things differently and would come to me with questions. There are stories of when they were little I want to share with them, a part of their history.