A Dedication to My Mother | Adoption, Love & Loss

Frances. I called her Mom.

She was the woman who adopted me, and although she was younger than I am now when she died—only thirty-seven—she has lived with me every day of my life.

Our time together was brief, but it was formative in ways that still shape me. We shared nine years. I knew her in a way others did not.

A Mother Who Truly Saw Me

There is an openness that comes with proximity to death. Through that openness, my mother saw me in every way that mattered—despite all my differences.

On the night she died, while I was six hours away, I began crying at the dinner table without knowing why.

Hours later, my mother was harmed. I felt it as if my own body had been violated. As a child, I often experienced the world as an extension of my body, absorbing everything around me. My mother used to tell me that I would struggle in life because most people would not accept this about me.

Safety, Loss, and the Body’s Memory

When my father divorced my mother and left us, I reacted in a way that confused many people. I climbed onto the dining room table and laughed. My mother simply watched me and smiled. For the first time, my body felt safe again. Years later, I met a psychiatrist who understood this immediately.

“Yes,” he said. “And you were traumatized.”

I was relieved that he knew this without knowing anything else about me. I was in my twenties then and had lived most of my life feeling everything around me.

I began to wonder what happens to the body when it is constantly absorbing the pain of others. For nine years, my mother and I were deeply connected in a nonconventional way.

The Golden Thread

I always felt she was meant to adopt me, and that I was on loan with her for only a short time.

During one of our final conversations in the barn, she gathered the courage to tell me how sorry she was that we wouldn’t have more time together—and how deeply she loved me.

I thought she meant more time that day, so I said, “It’s okay.”

Then she told me we would always be connected by an invisible golden thread.

Two months later came the day when we would never speak again—at least not in the conventional way.

Love That Continues Beyond Loss

My mother saved my life three times: once when I was sixteen, once when I was thirty-six, and again when I was sixty.

There has always been a part of me that lives on the other side of life here on Earth. On the other side of what, I still don’t know. But I do know that this is where my mother is. I was not allowed to attend her funeral. My father refused to let me go.

My Grandpa George reminded me, “Your mom will hear everything you say. And I know she will always be listening.”

This one’s for you, Mom.