Friday 21 December 2012

We weren't the first

My mother had my siblings and I while she was with my dad, but we were not her only children, nor the only family she had ever created. My older sister was born ten years before I was when my mother was 18. Life was hard for my mother, she did not have an ideal upbringing, and she has never made good relationship choices. As a result of the wrong choices, my mother found herself pregnant, and alone.

When my mother had my sister she was young and confused. Though she wasn't ready for a baby, she kept my sister for quite some time. My mother lived with my sister's great-grandmother for a long time, though from what I understand, it was the great-grandmother doing a lot of the baby care. Eventually, my mother moved out with my sister and that's where things took a downward turn. My dad has told me many stories about my mother, many I thought were exaggerations, but after hearing the same stories from other people, I know they were true. My dad told me my mother was confronted one winter day by my sister's aunt and uncle, they stopped her as my sister had no mitt's on, was very soiled, and my mother was dazed. They took her back to their house and spoke with her about how she was neglecting her baby and if she couldn't care for her that she needed to find someone who could. Shortly after the intervention my sister went into the care of her paternal grandmother and my mother never looked back... that is until my brother contacted the long lost sibling he(we all) craved to meet.

My sister was around 14 months old when my mother walked away and moved to a new city, this is something I can not fathom, but was likely for the best. How could she do this not once, but twice? I always felt bad for my sister even though I hadn't met her, I felt sad that she was abandoned by my mother and that I didn't know her. It's silly to think about that now, as my mother abandoned us too, and it was probably more traumatizing as we had a longer working memory of my mother. My sister was likely miserable without my mother initially, but baby's can be very resilient to stress; 4,5, and 7 year old's aren't as quick to bounce back from abandonment.

How do you feel about mother's leaving their children?



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