Aftershock

I suppose things were never the same for me once I was forced to hand Aaron over to Enrique. I loved Aaron so much, and I only wanted what was best for him. It is such a shame, therefore, that his father did not feel the same way.

One story in the Bible will stay with me for the rest of my life. Kings I tells a tale about King Solomon, which I feel is reflective of my situation:’

‘Then there came two women [that were] harlots, unto the king and stood before him.

‘And there was one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house.

‘And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we [were] together, [there was] no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house.

‘And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept and laid it on her bosom, and laid her dead child on my bosom.

‘And when I arose in the morning to give my child suck, behold it was dead. But when I had considered it in the morning, it was not my son, which I did bear.

‘And the other woman said, nay, but the living [is] my son, and the dead [is] thy son. Thus they spake before the king.

‘They said to the king, the one saith, this [is] my son that livith, and thy son [is] dead, and my son [is] the living.

‘And the king said, bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king.

‘And the king said, divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.

‘Then spake the woman whose the living child [was] unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise stay it. But the other said, let it be neither mine nor thine, [but] divide [it].

‘Then the king answered and said, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.’

Isn’t it a shame that real life is not as fair as the Bible. In real life the criminals walk free while the victims are given little, if any support’.

The fact is that Aaron was my child, not Enrique’s. If Enrique had his way Aaron would not even be here today. When I fell pregnant Enrique asked me to have an abortion, now are those the words of a loving father? The ONLY reason why Enrique wanted to keep Aaron was because; he wanted to harm me, he knew that he could get all kinds of government benefit he would not otherwise have been entitled to, and he wanted an excuse not to have to go out and get a job by saying he had to take care of Aaron.

Many people believe I left because I did not want Aaron, but that is not true. I left because I had to leave to work and pay mine and Aaron’s way in this world.

I did not have a supporting family who were prepared to help me keep my son, and not one individual on the face of this Earth has ever told me they would help me get my son back. Now that is incredibly sad.

I simply did not have any fight left. I could not fight Enrique on my own and there was no one who was willing to confront my abusive husband on my behalf.

Enrique likes to pretend he is honourable, but honourable don’t sit back and do absolutely nothing while their wives work themselves to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. Honourable men don’t beat their wives. And lastly, honourable men don’t steal children from their mothers.

When I arrived in Nue Ulm, Germany I received absolutely no support from anybody with regard to getting my son back. In fact, the opposite was true. The military did not want single parents among their ranks, so if I had Aaron with me I would have had to give another person power of attorney to be his guardian. In addition, I had to go on deployment several times a year and would have had to arrange for someone to keep Aaron during that time.

When I rang Enrique and told him about my working situation, his reply was, “I’m not letting Aaron go to Germany with you!”

Deep down in my heart I knew the military was not a suitable environment for a child, so I acquiesced.

Enrique also started a hate mail campaign. Whenever I wrote him a letter trying to be nice, he would respond with all of the venom and spite he could muster. So many times he reduced me to tears from the hateful things he said in his letters.

Even after we had separated, Enrique still caused me financial difficulties. He refused to co-operate, as usual, and would not fill out a joint tax return even though I had earned all of the money and had given him half of my reenlistment bonus. I therefore was found to owe the Internal Revenue Service a significant amount of money and it took me several years to get that debacle sorted out.

The following year when I moved to Prum Air Station, Germany, my misogynistic shop supervisor went to the section commander to do whatever he could to get me thrown out of the shop. I was therefore summoned into Captain Sasser, the section commander’s office, and he proudly informed me he had read my medical records in their entirety. Even though he was not a health care professional and I had never given him permission to read my medical records, he felt that by virtue of his position in the military he was justified in doing so.

After Captain Sasser told me he had read my medical records, he informed me that he thought it was a good idea I did not have my son with me because people who are abused usually go on to abuse others.

Captain Sasser then went on to tell me that he was keeping his eye on me and I had better watch my step. I was particularly offended by what that man said because I had never been a discipline problem, yet he was insinuating I was. Thinking back, I find it incredulous that Captain Sasser would have spoken to me with such impunity, especially with regard to my son.

The fact is that my son was staying with the man who abused me, so it is not unreasonable to assume that if Enrique would abuse me then he would likely go on to abuse Aaron when he matured and developed his own personality. I do not understand, therefore, why Captain Sasser felt it was perfectly acceptable for my son to stay with his highly volatile father and not acceptable to say with his mother, who had never harmed another living soul in her life and who had only ever acted in self-defence.

The fact is that men (and women) who abuse women (and men) quite often go on to abuse children. So it is therefore not appropriate for a child to stay with a man who has abused women because it is highly likely that he will go on to abuse the children in his care. But of course I did not know all of that when I handed Aaron over to my wife beating husband. If I had known that men who abuse women usually abuse children as well, I would never have allowed my son to stay in his care.

I can only assume, therefore, that Captain Sasser was either not in possession of all of the facts or was a highly misguided individual indeed.

I had a boyfriend, Whit, who had at one time been a photographer for the Office of Special Investigations. He told me of some of the very unusual sights he had been required to photograph. Because of all that Whit had seen, he expressed to me grave concerns about Aaron’s welfare.

Whit told me that as soon as Aaron grew up and started to develop a personality in his own right, Enrique would attempt to control him in the same manner that he tried to dominate me.

I was in such a state of denial about the whole situation with Aaron that I simply could not understand what Whit was trying to tell me. I believed Enrique loved Aaron and would never harm him. But then again, I had always believed Enrique would never harm me either, and look what he did.

If Enrique truly loved Aaron he would put aside his personal feelings for me and would have tried to get along with me for Aaron’s sake. Enrique would have done what was best for Aaron. No decent man deprives his child of a mother.

The fact is that Enrique never loved Aaron. Aaron was just another person who Enrique could exercise control over.

An unknown author has written an article and placed it on the internet, entitled, “Separation – A Half Life: More Than Grief – Not Quite Death” I found the piece to be quite reflective of my situation and have therefore included it in this work:-

A number of mothers have mentioned the guilt they have felt in not having grieved the loss of their baby at the time of surrender – how they felt a total numbness for years and often decades afterward. As a result it was decided to include a personal non-identifying psychiatric diagnosis in the hope of helping others understand why this might have occurred, by explaining how a sound mind protects itself from unbearable distress by shutting off from the trauma until a trigger event occurs where the mind is no longer able to repress the event.

For too long adoption separation has been minimised by being referred to at best as grief and loss, at worst something we are often expected to “get over” and put behind us. Some of us even thought we had - but had we really?

The possible reason many mothers have been unable to speak of their experience is because their experience had become unspeakable, ie to speak of it is to make it real – and to make it real is to then have to face their loss – something many were unable to do until adoption legislation gave them hope, bringing their as if dead babies to life and making them real again.

Naturally the length of and depth of dissociation differs from mother to mother depending on “trigger” events bringing her out of denial, ie some mothers do not block out the experience but cannot access their grief until much later, some grieved immediately and then blocked out the whole racking experience for years.

Some mothers blocked out entirely for years or decades – their grief manifesting itself in other forms – at other objects or life events, some remain dissociated even when they have met their adult child and cannot access reality until some years after reunion, (this often results in delayed emotional bonding between mother and child) at least for a time.

For some mothers the pain of their experience and brainwashing is so deep they may never allow themselves to access their own reality and sometimes place vetoes or deny their relationship with their searching child, disclaiming (as was required of them) that their maternal instincts even existed, some spend their lives denying the existence of their child and cannot physically or psychologically fall pregnant again or until a trigger event (eg entitlement) forces them to be no longer able to deny.

For many the combination of sedation, trauma, not seeing the baby etcetera causes the mind to manifest an unreal quality regarding their experience (the picture never becoming quite clear until or unless some tangible information is acquired to help piece it all together eg obtaining medical records, social work reports, revisiting the unwed mothers home/hospital, speaking to other mothers with the same experience and with whom they can identify etcetera.

For some the moment of dissociation is upon signing consent, when their unborn was taken at moment of birth, when the revocation period had expired, when they attempted to reclaim their baby only to be told it was too late.

For others that moment of dissociation occurred much earlier – somewhere after their pregnancy was diagnosed, when they were told the foetus they were carrying was not their baby but already belonged to someone else, that they could not keep their baby.

Also when their condition was seen by others as a problem to be gotten rid of, when all hope was gone as no-one saved them at the eleventh hour after all. When they were forbidden to see their child and did not know how to ask, or when they asked and were ignored.

Sometimes it is impossible to dissociate and mothers turned to a lifetime of drugs, alcohol, anti-depressants etcetera to get themselves through, tragically some took the permanent way out.

Those mothers who do survive the loss of a child often suffer from a severe psychiatric syndrome. There are features of distinct personality modes, but not of the pattern described under multiple personality disorder. There are features of psychogenic amnesia and also major features of depersonalisation. When the protective aspects of their separation have been threatened, such as being forced to acknowledge that the baby was surrendered, major depression can occur. Dissociative disorder is mostly precipated by acute shock, loss or trauma. The psychopathology is an attempted adaptation to unbearable pain and distress. The nature of this mental stated would totally preclude the mother from making any claim, yet it is entirely caused by the matter about which a mother would make a claim.

The End