My students don't get much in the way of advantages. They often don't recognize opportunities. They don't get the concept that you make your own luck. Sometimes luck has nothing to do with anything in their lives.
A kick in the head?
That, they get.
So, when one of my students called me to make an appointment to see me, because she knew I was about to dismiss her from school due to a bunch of good reasons. Attendance, grades, attitude, sleeping in class....you name it; she was a candidate. So I prepared my self to give her a stern talking to combined with a "you can do it" pep talk and waited to see what would happen.
I prepared for the wrong conversation.
Some of you know that I'm an Educational Director at a small college. Most of my students are minorities. Most have had limited opportunities. Most are deeply religous. Many dropped out of high school and we have to do a dual enrollment project for them. Most are just trying to get a leg up in the world and start with getting an education, a marketable skill and a job with a reasonable future.
I'm lucky in that I can go home many days feeling like I made a positive difference in someone's life, but not that day.
About a month ago, she came to my office sat down and told me she was sure I was fed up with her and that she needed to tell me what was going on in her life that was interfering with her school work. I knew she was a single mother of 3. She has a 13 year old with a serious medical condition, a 10 year old and a baby a few months old. That's a normal student for me.
I found out during this conversation that both of her parents are dead and she's an only child. She has no family. She works double shifts at McDonalds and goes to school in the morning. Lord only knows when she sees her kids. I'm reassessing her as we speak. She's a C student, which now that I have a clearer picture, is not only understandable; but pretty good. Her absences from class, although problematic, are now explainable.
I figured I was going to end up trying to find a way to get child care for the baby or get a voucher for after school care, a bus pass or two... or something along those lines, but no, that wasn't what she wanted to tell me.
"I needed to take some time, because I gave my baby up for adoption." Then she burst into tears and cried and cried....and I cried with her.
Eventually she calmed down and we went through all of her decisions over the last six weeks. She made too much money to qualify for anything at DCF and too little to live on. Her older daughter's medical bills are covered by Medicaid, but her other children aren't. She can't get child care. She can't get afterschool care, but she can't pay for these things and feed her children either. Hell, she can't pay bus fare after she pays for the things she needs. (I did find a way to get her a bus pass.)
Poverty is cruel to my students. This fine woman through a series of unfortunate events and a series of choices formed by her culture and upbringing led her to give up her baby for adoption. Her older children are angry with her for giving the baby away. They want to know when (not if), when she is going to give them away also. Her older children don't want to hear her reasons for giving up their baby sister. Her ex-husband calls her children when she's working her second shift and tells the older kids that she's a bad mother because she's not home with them in the evening. (Note, that he isn't with them either, but that's not his point.) I didn't ask if the older children's father is also the baby's father....TMI. I suspect not, which would explain his bad mouthing her to her kids.
She's a mess. She didn't talk to me until after she signed away her parental rights. She brought me the adoption papers she signed. My coworker who is a lawyer said they were permanent. She isn't going to get the baby back. Her children are emotionally abusing her. Her ex is emotionally abusing her. She needs her mother, but she's dead. She's got nothing.
She got pregnant because the Catholic Church says birth control is a sin...she couldn't afford birth control pills anyway....nor could she get them for a reduced price. She wouldn't set foot in a Planned Parenthood Clinic - they're bad people...she thought all they do is abortions. Condoms cost money, but she bought them anyway. Condoms also break. To her thinking, she got pregnant from a broken condom because she sinned by using birth control. She could get an abortion but she that was another sin, so she had the baby. She didn't give the baby up for adoption at birth, because she thought she could make it - and keeping the baby was good pennance. Then she couldn't make it. She didn't go to the Catholic Church for help ....I never got a reason for that. Four months later she signs the adoption papers. Two weeks after that she's sobbing in my office. To say she's depressed is something of an understatement.
I got all that from her in a jumbled sort of way and it doesn't make much more sense to me now than it did then, but at least I know where she's coming from.
I have no happy ending for her. In the past month, I've spoken with her several times. I got her to a counselor to help her grieve, but she's going to run out of free visits any time now. I gave her a journal and asked her to write her grief. She decided to stay in school instead of taking more time off to keep busy. She thinks school and work will distract her from thinking too much about the baby, but her children and ex are still sticking it to her. I hug her and invite her to my office for cups of tea, but she doesn't come and see me. She's losing her strength. A little of her is dying every day. She says she just has to get over what she did, but I don't see her making much head way.
I could rationalize that she shoulda, coulda, woulda.
I could say she made her own problems and I shouldn't waste my time trying to help her.
I could criticize her for her choices - no birth control (first on the list)
I could say no one forced her to give the baby up.
I've had co-workers tell me that I shouldn't waste my time on her.
I could find fault with her, but that seems counterproductive to me.
This situation doesn't need blame, it needs solutions.
What she needs is beyond my resources to give.
I could fault an insensitive church
I could fault anti-abortion rhetoric
I could fault so many things I could spit!
So many anti-abortion people point to the mental issues some women have after they get an abortion. Here I have proof positive that this woman is experiencing similar mental issues now that she's given up a baby up for adoption. She gave the baby life, which she takes comfort in, but she is castigating herself for not keeping her child.
The right to life doesn't end with birth.
...doesn't even cover it.
This has bothered me for weeks now.
Thanks for listening.
UPDATE: I wrote this diary yesterday because this woman has rested heavily on my heart and that I felt, and still do, that my efforts to help her have been inadequate. Sometimes, I write a diary that illustrates the heartlessness of our society as a way for me to process the parts of my job that I don't like and that is what I did yesterday.
Thank you all for the many kind words and emails I have received. Thank you for the links to birth mom sites in Florida. These groups might be exactly what she needs right now. I will find the birth mom today and let her know what a caring community you are.
Thank you again.