The Wreckage

Mady and I in 2016

Madyson was born with a lung infection that only 1% of babies are born with. She remained in the hospital for over 3 weeks after her birth and was constantly monitored. We didn't even get to hold her for the first days of her life. We didn't get to feed her or bath her or change her. She was hooked up to heart monitors and IVs and slept on a hard table-type bed. Throughout the days she spent her time getting medicine and fighting for her life. She came into this world a fighter. The very thought of her being ill, pained me and her dad so severely, we would just stay at the hospital, even past visiting hours. It was an extremely difficult time. But, like a "1 percenter" does, she fought back, and kicked that infection, and after a month, we took her home to begin our new life's meaning.

I was, immediately, although not from a nurturing environment, a nurturing mom. It was instinctive for me to put myself aside for her. To give up sleep, time, goals, wants, needs, and just everything for my child. I tend to think that most moms do that. My birth mother did not. And truthfully, that was when it all hit me. I was 23 years old and I was about to be hit with grief so big it would consume me for years. Grief so long-coming that the effects would leave a wake in many lives. Pain so severe and disgust so profound that rage would follow me throughout my twenties and well into my thirties.

But, that pain was my teacher. The grief became a classroom for growth and understanding. It became a "what not to do" and a lesson on what kind of life I needed to live. The rage would teach me how to parent with love, rules, expectations and boundaries. The reckoning would teach me what kind of environment would be hard to live in. Finally, I would become a survivor with guilt big enough to carry years of character and instincts. I became thankful for the pain, but whilst in the valley of all that hurt, man was it tough. For the first time, I also knew what it meant to wish you didn't know the things you found out. To wish you could go back and not know the stuff you shouldn't know. I began the journey to find my birth father, whom I had, up until that point, known to still be alive. And I started the fight to get my adoption records and information about my birth family. I had to know what the hell my parents were thinking and what happened to us kids. Why my parents, especially my mother, would allow her kids to be sick, beaten, abused, hungry and neglected, I couldn't understand. Not after having seen my very own daughter fight for her life. Not since I watched my own flesh so ill she couldn't even be held. Hell no, it wasn't right. I had to know!

It was important. Finding out would be the difference. But, ultimately, so damaging. And in the middle of all that wreckage, was also a very clear picture of why. Why my sister had a "hard time adjusting" and my brother had to be sent back and why, I would be the only one to be saved from the past and the hell of it all.

Memories are a very strange thing. Our brains have the ability to block the bad and enhance the good. We can recreate the past in the depths of our minds, but our hearts can never be better only worse. The pain we feel is engraved on our hearts and the moment an event happens we are changed forever. The knowledge gained by the investigation into my humble beginnings would both hurt and enhance me. It would both set me back and push me forward. It would both sadden me and make me happy. It would kill me and give me a rebirth. It changed me forever.