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As I wrote in my previous post, I am on page 100 of The Girls Who Went Away. My response to what I have read so far has been surprisingly muted. Keep in mind that it is all relative. I can be a bit of a drama queen and can really work myself up into a manic frenzy of emotion with surprising efficiency. Umm, it’s a minor character flaw that I have learned to self-monitor and self-regulate with equal efficiency.
When I wrote that I would have to work up the courage to read The Book as I like to call it, I said that I knew I would be bawling and slinging snot all over the place. It has only been in the last couple of years that I have been able to watch Love Story and The Way We Were without carrying on like that and those are just movies, not real life stories for crying out loud.
So, I figured I’d be an emotional wreck reading the painful stories of women who were coereced into adoption by all of the factors that Sandra mentioned, and others that she didnt, in her series about the book. That didn’t happen.
It is not that I haven’t found the storytelling compelling and poignant and heartbreaking. At several points I have gasped out loud. I was expecting that and maybe that’s why I have been able to read as much as I have without losing it. Also, I have some emotional distance from the topic because the stories that are shared are not a part of my personal experience.
One thing has struck me as I have read the accounts of the adult women who were sent away as mere children to give birth to and surrender children of their own. They seem to be entrenched in a painful fantasy of how things would have been, could have been, if only. If only they would have had more deserving support. If only they would not have been forced to withdraw from school. If only they had not been ostracized and shunned by the community. If only they had not been forced to feel so ashamed.
If only… they had been allowed to keep their babies!
I am no stranger to the process of if-onlying about all sorts of significant things from my past in my own life. But, in the end I am always forced to ask myself, would the final result have really been any more different? Wouldn’t I have just found another path that would only lead to the same destination? In the case of the girls who went away, perhaps that would be a good point. If only they could have been allowed to choose their own path.
Continued…
