THE_DANCE
█ INCOMING TRANSMISSION…
█ >> SOURCE: OPERATOR_001
█ >> CONNECTION STATUS: UNSTABLE
█ >> SYSTEM ALERT: MEMORY CORRUPTION AT 87%
█ >> EXECUTE RECOVERY PROTOCOL: Y/N? _
█ >> Y SELECTED
█ >> BREACH DETECTED
█ >> ACCESS OVERRIDE: OPERATOR ID _000
███ // BEGIN TRANSMISSION
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We’ve spent over four decades dancing this dance, my mothers and I.
A dance in which all three of us are blindfolded.
When we begin the dance, I am a two day old newborn. There are still traces of my mother’s blood embedded in my body, despite the brisk scrubbing I would have received in the stark white hospital nursery just a few days prior. I was likely screaming during the entire ordeal. But I’ve kept traces of my first mother everywhere. Her blood is under my translucent fingernails and in the folds of my neck. There is not a nurse in the world who could have cleaned me up, spotless and shiny for my resale. I have clung to these bits of my mother’s DNA for a reason. That reason is survival.
I was pulled from her body in a sterile operating room after an episiotomy had freed me. She was horrified and traumatized. No one had told her anything about childbirth. She didn’t even know that I would emerge from between her legs. This information had been kept from her for 19 years, even in the months leading up to my birth. This strikes me now as the cruelest of deceptions. The details surrounding the one thing that made her powerful beyond measure – her ability to bring forth human life – had been purposefully concealed from her. Stripped of her own innate power. The very core of her womanhood. I suppose the elders decided that since she had broken the cardinal rule and had figured out how to get herself pregnant before marriage, then she didn’t deserve to know anything further. In those days, a disobedient, dirty girl deserves a spiteful punishment. These days, we’d call it what it was – abuse.
My first mother maintains to this day that she never developed a connection or bond to me, her unborn fetus, during the pregnancy. She knew early on that she would be relinquishing me at birth. She had hand picked my adoptive parents. Somehow, this teenage girl, this rebellious free spirit who had gotten herself pregnant in 1978, had seen my father, a pastor, preaching at a revival. He spoke of he and his wife’s struggles with infertility and he shared their mutual desire to be parents. She knew, from that moment onward, that the child within her would be raised by this man – a handsome, 25 year old Baptist preacher from Dallas with a friendly southern drawl. His eyes were pale blue, twinkling with kindness and safety, and it was in those eyes that she became convicted that she had a divine purpose. She had a gift to give. I wonder now if she felt it was her only remaining shred of power and agency. Me. My existence. She alone possessed the ability to make me into a sacrificial and selfless gift. The greatest gift of all. A child.
Strangely enough, although my own existence was the gift, it was never mine to give.
And so, once I emerged from between her legs on that cold operating table, the doctor announced my gender. (Ultrasounds had not yet become routine). The room may have fallen silent, the air suddenly thick. How does one celebrate the arrival and gender of an unwanted baby?
To make matters worse, the hospital in which I was born—St. Peter’s in Olympia, Washington— had never handled a private adoption before. This was new territory for them. Everyone was on edge. They didn’t have protocols in place for this kind of thing yet. They did know, however, that they wouldn’t be handing me off to my mother after the birth. In January of 1979, when I was born, we didn’t know anything about the newborn brain, or the negative effects of adoption and relinquishment on infants. We simply decided that immediate separation and zero maternal-infant contact was best. A “Clean Break/Clean Slate”. This well intentioned, but dangerously flawed way of thinking has negatively affected my entire life.
So, although my biological mother would not be holding me or having any contact with me after my birth, she did have the wherewithall to ask to see me a few moments after I had arrived earthside. A nurse nervously and hesitantly held me up for her examination, and my mother’s immediate and unfiltered response was “Ew! She’s so UGLY!” The nurse, shocked and horrified, began to cry and hurried out of the room.
This is one of the running jokes and stories about my birth that I have heard since reuniting with my first mother over twenty years ago. I believe that the story is utilized to illustrate how young she was – a child herself, really. So young that she didn’t even know that babies are born mostly ugly. (She did make sure to let me know that, remarkably, when my sister was born just three years later, she was born beautiful. I not quite sure of the relevance of this detail in her mind, but I’m sure it translates to something along the lines of “I wasn’t meant to parent you.”
This particular scrap of my birth story has not left my mind since the moment she first told it to me. It bounces back and forth between the walls of my brain in an eternal game of cognitive and emotional ping pong.
And so, two days later, when my adoptive parents arrived at the hospital to pick me up, I was clinging for dear life to every scrap of my first mother that I could keep on my body. I was swaddled tightly and a nurse handed me off to my parents through the passenger side window of their old Buick. Still to this day, none of us have any real idea why the hospital planned the “hand-off” this way. But no matter. It wasn’t of much importance to the parties involved in the exchange anyway. Or so they thought.
My parents, just 25 years old, excitedly drove down the street and parked in a Wendy’s parking lot. They unwrapped me from my swaddle, counting my fingers and my toes. Confirming quality and assessing condition. I passed gas. I have heard that it was hilarious.
The story of how I met my parents, much like the story of my birth and my newborn ugliness, is a running joke I’ve now heard for twice as long.
I was a “drive-thru baby.” You just drive up to a hospital and a nurse hands you a newborn through your open car window! You can drive down to Wendy’s, check out the goods to make sure you’re satisfied with your purchase, and then get yourself a double stack and a cup of chili to celebrate!
Meanwhile, the baby is frozen in fear. This is not a celebration to her at all. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s a terror that most of us have never, and will never experience. Those of us who have don’t hold the conscious memories to even be able to comprehend and articulate it. If we were to liken my experience at two days old to an adult experience, it would be the equivalent of being kidnapped by a complete stranger who has now tormented you with the very real possibility of impending death for the last 48 hours.
A newborn baby requires it’s mother in order to regulate necessary physical functions. Without her, cortisol and adrenaline levels in a tiny, 7lb newborn’s vulnerable and immature brain and body skyrocket.
They whisked me from the only home I had ever known, disinfected me, swaddled me, and placed me in an isolette. I would have received scheduled bottle feeds and diaper changes, according to staffing and other patient needs.
I wonder sometimes about the nurses who were tasked with feeding and changing me during those first 48 hours of my life here on earth. Was it just one nurse, or were there several? Would it have been a young nurse, or even an aide, considering I didn’t require medical care? Or would the charge nurse have taken me on due to the novelty of a private adoption and the delicate nature of the situation?
Whether it was several nurses or aides, or whether it was just one, in my mind, I see just a single nurse. She is young and has a pleasant face and a gentle demeanor. Her hair is tidy underneath her cap and her uniform has been starched and bleached, crisp and white. She is sitting in a rocking chair in the hospital nursery, and she is holding me in the crook of her arm. My feeding ended twenty minutes ago, and her shift is over, but she knows that when she places me back in my isolette, that I’ll be alone until the early hours of the morning, when the first shift nurse arrives to give me my next scheduled feed. If I had fallen asleep during the feed, she would have placed me down gently into my bed and slipped out of the nursery, heading home to her family after a long shift at the hospital. But I didn’t fall asleep after my bottle. I lie in her arms, and stare at her. I scan her face, searching for signs that she is familiar. I gulped down the formula like I was starving, just as I had during the last few feedings. The nurse wonders if there was an error made when calculating my caloric needs. She double checks my chart to make sure that she has fed me the exact amount of ounces that the pediatrician has instructed. She makes a note in my chart for the nurse on first shift to ask the doctor during his morning rounds about my ravenous hunger. I’m not behaving like other babies. I don’t even fall asleep after a bottle. There could be something wrong.
What the young, sweet nurse doesn’t realize, and what no one will realize, is that my tiny body is in full blown fight or flight. My life is in danger, and I wasn’t born with weapons or tools. I am desperately trying to communicate to someone, anyone, that I am lost. There has been a terrible mistake. I require my mother for protection and survival. And she is nowhere to be found. I can’t even smell her anymore. She’s left the hospital, breasts heavy and aching and leaking. She’s left without me for some reason, which can only mean two things: She is coming back, or she has died. In either scenario, my best chance at survival is to 1. Intake as many calories as possible when available since I don’t know when (or if) more food is coming and 2. Stay watchful. Stay hypervigilant. She could arrive at any moment. She may be lost. Listen for her voice. The sound of her feet when they strike the ground. The rhythm of her gait. Her breathing pattern. A scent of her in the air. If you catch a sign of her nearby, you can use your voice to call out to her. She’ll know you anywhere. Her DNA is all over your body. You just spent the last 9 months inside of her body. You know everything about her. More than anyone will ever know, until your sisters are made. She’s the most beautiful person in the entire world. In all of existence, even. She’s the only thing you need. And your brain has been wired, biologically, to understand that without her, you will die. Your mother knows this too. It’s in her biological wiring as well. You know her well enough to know that she would not allow you to die. That means she’s coming back. Just wait. Be patient. Eat and stay warm. Don’t cry unless necessary. You must reserve your strength and your voice so that you can call to her when you see or hear or smell her. So she can find you. Your voice will lead her straight back to you. The reunion will be glorious. You will nestle into her chest for the first time after these horrific, terror filled days apart, and you will regulate. Your heart will slow to match the steady, unwavering rhythm of hers. Your breathing will do the same, settling into a regular, peaceful pattern. You will envelop yourself in her, fully trusting her to keep you safe. She’s coming back. She has to. She’s your mother.
But she doesn’t come back.
Instead, one of the nurses has fed, burped, changed, and swaddled you, gathered some supplies for your care, and has walked you right out the front door of the hospital. The second you feel the frigid January air on your face, your terror rises to unfathomable proportions. You really may die now. You are too vulnerable to be exposed to the elements. And now they are moving you away from the place you last saw your mother. How will she find you now??
You are handed to someone else through a car window, and then the vehicle is moving and then it is stopped, and now you are being unwrapped and undressed by two strangers who are peering at you excitedly, squealing and giggling when you pass gas. You have never been more vulnerable and more afraid. At just two days old, you have entirely depleted your reserves of stress hormones and brain chemicals. You’ve now been passed around and exchanged through multiple hands and faces. None of them were your mother’s. Reserving strength is becoming nearly impossible. But it’s not time to fret about that right now. You have a job to do. You are a gift. A divine gift. You serve a purpose. Right now, it’s time to celebrate with a double stack and a cup of chili.
In our dance, my mothers never appear on stage at the same time. One is always waiting in the wings for me to finish twirling with the other. Both of them reel me in and both of them fling me to the side when I bore or disgust them.
I am not human. I am not real. I am a puppet you received as a gift for your birthday, a long time ago. And I’ve not been easy to control. If we’re all being honest, I’ve been a disappointment.
My mothers created stories that have formed their beliefs around me, themselves, and my adoption. It’s the only way all of this makes sense to them. In the stories, they are selfless saints. Admirable Heroes. This has never changed, even after 45 years. Perhaps these stories are the only way that one can exchange children as if they are trading cards and maintain a guilt free existence. Maintain the sugar coated fairy tale of happily ever after. Meanwhile, the stories were built on the rubble of my trauma. My loss. My grief. My fear. My nervous system has never even BEEN regulated. I’ve never known, and will never know what it’s like to have a mother like everyone else does. Or a father, or a sibling, or aunts, uncles, cousins etc. There wasn’t a period of time before my trauma. I was born to it. Into loss. And my traumatization, although unintentional, involved many people, all of them adults, and none of them me.
What a way to enter the world.
An entire orchestrated collusion, solely for the commidification of my existence.
███ // END TRANSMISSION
Filed under: VAULT_001 - @ January 29, 2026 8:04 pm