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Catherine West

~ The Words Matter

Catherine West

Tag Archives: Rejection

One Adoptee’s Story – LJ Jacobs

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by Catherine West in Blogging, Life

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Adoptee, Adoption, Healing, National Adoption Awareness Month, Redemption, Rejection

It is 14h00, Tuesday, 10 November at Universitas hospital, Bloemfontein, South Africa.  My mother, Greta Dreyer, is giving birth to me. There are no flowers or family members waiting anxiously in the hallway.  My mother’s family does not know that she is pregnant. She is too afraid to tell them because it is 1981 and to be pregnant and unmarried is a disgrace.  My father is not there to hold my mother’s hand – he is at his vintage car dealership, continuing his daily life which is looking peachy because his divorce is almost finalised and there is a new lover on the horizon. His affair with my mother is a distant memory.

Forty eight hours later, I am sleeping with clenched fists in a strange house among strange people and my mother is at the station with one suitcase and a box filled with books on her way to her new life in Johannesburg.

After the birth of my daughter, one of the first thoughts I had was: “How can you hand over a defenceless baby to strangers?”  I decided to search for her to find answers to the mystery surrounding my existence.  It was surprisingly easy to locate my birth records, although it only contained her name and the name she had given me.  The social worker who assisted at the time made contact with her, but she declined to speak to me.  In 10 years I have received two letters and three curt e-mails from her.  She has made it clear that her current husband and three children do not know that I exist and that she has no intention of telling them.  My messages have gone largely unanswered. Although I know almost everything about her, including her home address (approximately 40km from where I live).  By and large we are strangers to each other and that is the way she prefers it.

Growing up, I imagined that someone must have forced her to give me away and that every year on my birthday she was thinking about me and wondering what I look like.  I imagined that she was searching for my face in a crowd, as I was searching for hers everywhere I went.  Turns out, she could not manage to work out what year or month I was born in.  She asked me when my birthday was in one of the first letters she wrote, and I was devastated.

With the help of Sherrie Eldridge’s books and online support group, I started to examine how my adoption experience has governed my life.  I have blocked out the pain and feelings of rejection, but these feelings had a way of coming to the surface when I least expect it.  A seemingly insignificant thing like seeing a mother with her baby at the supermarket, or my partner with his family, would bring my simmering rage to the surface.  After investigating my feelings and understanding the role that anger, fear and rejection has played in my life, I could find healing and inner peace instead of trying to pretend that I am fine with the situation.

I am convinced that God revealed several insights to me during my journey, of which one is that He expects me to make a decision to forgive her, as I had been holding on to resentment and anger towards her because I felt it unfair that she is allowed to go on with her life without facing any consequences for her actions.  I realised that I will never stop searching for peace if I keep on searching in all the wrong places.  Corresponding with her can be compared to banging my head against a brick wall repeatedly – no response, just pain.  I do not have all the answers surrounding my birth (she has refused to tell me who my father is for instance), but I believe that God will reveal this information to me one day in His way.  For now, I have found healing and comfort through God’s grace and understand that His grace extends to her as well.

I was not alone and defenceless the day they handed me over to my parents, because God, my “wingman” was there and my path was already mapped out by Him.  My first purpose was to bring joy to a woman who wanted desperately to have children and was given the chance to be a mother to me.  My second purpose is to live the live that God has mapped out for me before I was formed.  I am alive and not going to waste it.

My name is LJ Jacobs.  I am a 30 year old South African woman.  I have a daughter.  I work as a project manager at a construction company.  After studying fine arts and French language studies, I decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and follow a career in the civil engineering industry.  I have three university degrees and have been admitted to a prestigious business school to commence my MBA studies in 2013.  I enjoy reading and playing the violin and have a passion for all types of music.  I received a black belt in karate earlier in 2012, an achievement that has been on my bucket list since school days.  By the time this blog is published, I will have already gone on an elephant safari in the African bushveld (another item on my bucket list) for my birthday to celebrate the woman that I have become, not in spite of, but because of, my adoption experience.

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Rejection – The Unwanted Guest

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by Catherine West in Blogging, Life, Writing

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Adoptees, Adoption, Birth Mother, Hope, Rejection, Survival

Ever had somebody show up at your door uninvited? Depending on who that person is, this can be kinda cool, or really awkward. When my kids were little, we lived in a constant state of toys on the floor, dishes in the sink, socks stuck to the curtains…you get the idea. If anybody stopped by, it was most likely another Mom with kids in tow and her shirt on backwards. It really didn’t matter what my house looked like. She was here to see me. To let our kids play with abandon, whilst we caught up over coffee. If my mother or somebody from church stopped by, now that was a different story. I’d spend a frantic few minutes rushing around, tidying and trying to remember if I brushed my hair that morning.

I am not a neat freak. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t have one junk drawer. I have several. Yet it bothers me when people come to my house and things aren’t perfect. Why is that? Why do I prefer to put on the mask that says everything is perfect rather than telling it like it is?

Why? Because I want to be liked. I want to be accepted.

I avoid rejection at all costs.

But…you say…aren’t you a writer? Yes. Yes, I am. God does have a sense of humor.

Once I began the search for my birth mother, it didn’t take me long to figure out where all these weird and wonderful feelings came from. The minute I saw that space on my adoption papers where my name should have been –

Unbaptized  ****** 

The last name was my birth mother’s surname, but I knew it was not my own. Not the name she wanted me to have. They may as well have written bastard. It’s an ugly word, but it speaks to the depth of feelings that slammed me that day. Rejection moved in, shoved all logic aside, rearranged everything I knew about myself, settled in and waited for me to feed it.

And I did. For days.

I wrestled with that image of myself as a newborn, laying in a crib. Who held me? Who talked to me? Who fed me or comforted me when I cried? The nurses at the hospital, I suppose. I wonder what they thought of me, this tiny abandoned baby with no name. Unwanted. Unclaimed.

Someone who has never felt such soul-deep pain cannot possibly understand it. I still don’t fully understand those feelings. Why now, as an adult, mother, wife, did I suddenly want to curl up in a ball and cry myself to sleep? Why did I ache for that baby? It all turned out okay in the end. I was given two loving parents and a wonderful home. What did it matter how that happened?

It matters because it did happen. And I needed to acknowledge it.

If you want to overcome rejection, accept it.

There is nothing I can do to change the way I came into this world. I accept it. I see it now as part of God’s plan for my life. And I know that in the deep places, the recesses of my memory where that first small seed of rejection was planted and allowed to grow, something else was placed there.

Hope.

God knew who I would become. He knew who my parents would be. He turned a hopeless situation into victory. He created a family. He had a plan and it was good. I am forever grateful for His loving hand on my life.

And those feelings I dealt with all my life, and still deal with? Sure, they show up once in a while and I invite them in. Sure, it sucks to read a nasty review of my writing. It hurts to hear that a publisher doesn’t want my next project. It’s sad when a relationship crumbles, when people reject you and choose to walk away. But this is life. This is how we learn. This is how we grow. I process what I’m feeling, but then I move on to things that make me feel good. My family. My friends. Pictures like the one above.

When I find myself drawn back to that dark place, I back up. Fast. It doesn’t always work. Some days I give in, open the door and have a chat with my old friend. That unwanted guest. But we don’t have that much to talk about. He doesn’t stay long and I am glad. He doesn’t belong here anymore.

I am no longer threatened by rejection. I know it will show up again. And again. I don’t welcome it, but I refuse to run from it.

I have lived through it.

And I have survived.

What about you? Have you ever felt rejection so deep you thought you’d never get over it? 

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Why The Words Matter

Life speeds along and we do our best to catch up. Some days its hard to take a breath, let alone form a sentence that makes sense. Is anybody listening anyway? You might be surprised. The words matter. All of them.

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