The Big Empty (But Don't Talk About It)

by Hannah Andrews
​This month’s blog and support group theme is “Disenfranchised Grief and Ambiguous Loss.” It’s been sparking conversations across all our constellation groups, but I’ve had a hard time writing this blog. It’s three weeks late. Sorry. It’s hard to write about what I was conditioned by the world, and by myself, not to talk about. I suppose in essence, it’s what I already mostly write about, but labeling it somehow mutes me. And also makes me ramble.  ​

Anyway, here goes… 

---

I don’t know when I first heard the term “disenfranchised grief,” but I believe it was in reference to a person losing their partner, their love, during the 1980s AIDS epidemic and not being socially entitled to grieve. How awful I felt for these people, these strangers who weren’t given space, their losses brushed off by society, often by their own families.  ​

Ambiguous loss I heard in reference to soldiers missing in battle as well as kidnapped and long-missing children. My heart ached for those left without answers, without closure. 

Ironically, years later, I heard those terms bundled up like a two-fer and applied to members of the adoption constellation. Loss is the foundation upon which adoption is built, sometimes forged atop unresolved infertility grief. Birth/first parents are told to move past what little grief they’re permitted. Adoptive parents are told to act “as if” this new child had always been theirs.   

And adoptees… Well, we’re left to live in that house constructed by everyone but us and, for the most part, don’t question what it's made of. And we darn sure don’t peel back the wallpaper. Okay, enough with the house metaphor. You get it, right? 

For many of us, loss was ours before we had words to describe it. For many, it was our first breath. And yet, it’s brushed off, glossed over, and celebrated with a “gotcha.”  

Society paints adoption in soft pastels and non-sensicals. We were unwanted but chosen, so loved we were given away, an unplanned problem yet “God’s plan.” (Who is this God that rips babies away from their mothers in the first place?) With one simple signature, our everything was signed away. Our names, genetic history, and heritage vanish, sometimes forever. Yet, everyone tells us to be grateful. We’re just supposed to ignore the big empty.  

Grief is the story of my life, or at least the first chapter. I’m not saying there weren’t happy times. I’m not even saying I had a “bad” adoption. Quite the contrary. I’m saying I had it pretty good, was hashtag lucky, and still, in retrospect, so much of my existence circled back to grief. In fact, if I want to “complain” about adoption, I always have to preface it with, “I had really great adoptive parents,” or I’m often brushed off with, “Sorry you had a bad experience. I have a friend who is adopted and…”  

Guess what? I used to be that friend—the one who was “just fine.” I told myself and everyone else that lie because society told me I had to. Or maybe my infant brain had already, instantly, decided the only way to protect myself was to buck up like a good little camper.  

I had a good experience, and for that I am thankful. But maternal separation is an inherently bad experience.  

But enough about me.  


I want to talk about whales. They grieve too, though some argue that conservationists ascribe human attributes in an attempt to get people to treat animals better. Whatever. I would argue that we shouldn’t need to anthropomorphize animals to treat them humanely, but that’s a whole different soap box. I’d also argue that animals are sentient. They grieve. We’ve all seen dogs sitting forlornly after their canine bestie or human passes away or wildlife footage of elephants sitting by the poached carcass of their mother or calf. If that isn’t grief, it’s definitely grief-adjacent.  

Quick intro to my story:  I looked for my birth mother at age 50 after my adoptive parents had passed. It took about a year of searching to find that my birthmother was deceased (died a decade before at age 57), but I met my half-brother and our mother’s BFF, who came to town for a wedding and asked me to go to lunch. She wanted to gift me my birthmother's ashes. I met her at her hotel, which was right by Sea World, which I’ve since decided is one of the best metaphors for adoption, ambiguous loss, and disenfranchised grief (at least mine) that I’ve ever encountered.  

When life hands you metaphors, write an essay. So, here’s a version of a piece I wrote two years ago, just after I received my birth mother’s remains.  

 I feel like it works here.  
 
An Ocean of Grief 

SeaWorld is still a thing.  

I know because I drove by it to pick up my first mother’s ashes. Well, technically, I went to meet up with her bestie, but I left with her ashes. Her bestie was in town for a wedding and staying at a cute little resort located, as it so happened, just down the street from SeaWorld.  

SeaWorld isn’t far from me, just 30 minutes south, but I forget it’s there. I look past it, pretend it doesn’t exist, until I have to turn towards that white-lettered green exit sign and can’t look away. This was one of those can’t-look-away days. I clicked my tongue and thought, How is SeaWorld still a thing? 

Hadn’t the world watched Blackfish?  

I could still hear those mother whales screaming, their grief reverberating through the ocean as their babies were scooped away. Hadn’t every viewer, like me vowed never to visit again? Hadn’t they, like me, scolded themselves for sitting giddy in the splash zone, watching those beautiful lonely creatures, forced into confinement, earning their daily fish in exchange for flips and tricks? I hated that I’d been so naive, thinking those whales were happy in captivity, that they wanted to entertain us, and that they didn’t suffer a lifetime of pain as a direct result of the separation from their mothers.  

You can believe anything if it's glossed up enough, if its a showstopper, if you just really want to believe.  

I watched that documentary in 2013. I never went to SeaWorld again, though that day, I drove by it. Oblivious to my own ocean of grief, I could still hear those mother whales calling as I pulled into the resort. I made my way to the outdoor restaurant and scanned the sparse crowd for the woman who’d known the mother I hadn’t.  

Upon seeing my face, she fanned hers, as if warding off tears, “You look just like her. Oh my God, I can’t believe it.”  

I had a hard time believing it, too. I had never looked like anyone. 

For the next two hours, we sipped Diet Cokes and picked at some random shared appetizer. Neither of us ate much. My stomach was in knots, and she was too busy talking. She told me snippets of stories, no beginnings and no ends, all the middles strung together over years of their friendship. One segued into another. I clung to every word. Then she spoke a sentence I could barely grasp. 
 “I brought your Mom.” 
For a split second I believed the impossible, that my first mother was waiting, that we’d finally meet. Reality interjected. Bestie had mentioned my mother’s ashes in our first conversation. She must’ve brought them.  
I followed her back to her hotel room, a cutesy little bungalow, a tiny pond behind it, a random duck standing sentry near a patio chair. 

“That duck won’t leave us alone,” Bestie said. “I think it's a sign.” She continued, for context, “After your mom passed, we sprinkled a smidge of her ashes in her favorite little pond, and a duck she used to feed came by. It was magic. And now today, there’s this duck. It’s a sign.” 

I considered telling her it was more likely a sign that the guests had been feeding the ducks, that this duck was trolling for breadcrumbs, but I held my tongue. 

What do I know about signs anyway? I ignore them all. 

Bestie handed me a delicate mahogany keepsake box. Inside were the ashes of the mother I never met, but that part of me always knew.  

I burst into tears, the way a sneeze comes out of nowhere. I crumbled and cried for my lost mother, and only then did I finally see it.  

It’s me. 

I am the motherless whale.  

*** 

Afterthoughts:  

I am eternally thankful to my first mother’s bestie for telling me stories, for gifting me the ashes of the woman who carried me in silence and shame, and then left me.  

Still, the wound remains. Festers.  

If I’d known my first mother, if I’d met her, maybe getting her ashes would’ve been closure. It didn’t feel like closure. It felt like I’d been ripped open. Like a wound that wouldn’t heal, wouldn’t scab over, was seeping into my blood, poisoning me with regret and the grief that has always been, and remains.  

It has always been grief. For so long, I couldn’t name it.  

For so long, the world told me it wasn’t my loss to grieve, but it was. It is.  

Disenfranchised. Ambiguous. Mine. 


*** 


Thank you for reading. I’m always happy to hear your thoughts, comments, and welcome guest bloggers from across the adoption constellation and adjacent communities. 
 
Email me at [email protected]