How many of our first mothers got pregnant with their first loves? My first mother (I’ll call her Sara) was deeply in love with the man who is my first father (I’ll call him Edward). She was young and impressionable and naive. She was just out of high school and into college when she began dating him and trusted him with her heart and soul and body. Unfortunately, he ended up breaking up with her not long into the relationship. He was most likely just bored and ready to move on but for Sara, it was devastating. Her heart was broken into pieces because of everything she gave him in full trust. She was so convinced that he wanted nothing more to do with her that she never told him she was pregnant. I suppose she couldn’t take anymore heart break that would surely come if she told him about their unborn baby, me. Do you remember your first love? Don’t we all? Your first love is someone that remains in your head and at least a piece of your heart forever. Now add the emotions of suddenly finding yourself alone and pregnant and you have the recipe for irreparable trauma to the heart, such as the case with Sara. She was scarred not only by the adoption but also by the man she had first loved. The first time we met, talking about him brought pain and tears to her eyes. It was a short conversation about him that day. In the years that followed I didn’t dare bring him up for fear of his memory bringing back painful memories for her. I’m sure that she thought of him often throughout her life, probably everytime she thought of me. I believe that she couldn’t resolve her feelings for him because she was unable to resolve her feelings about me. Because I had been an open-ended question mark for 30 years, she could only focus the resentment and anger in one direction, at Edward. Last year, she decided to tell him about me and I think, I HOPE, that it actually lifted a huge burden off of her shoulders by not holding on to that secret anymore and letting go of all the negative emotion she had towards him. It’s also possible she wondered all these years, what if he had known, and what would have been his reaction? She was finally able to answer that question when she told him about me last year and confirmed what she had thought all along. There was closure for her. How many other first mothers out there are haunted by the first father that broke her heart? I know of at least one other first mother, author Sandy Musser, who wrote that the young man who got her pregnant at 15 haunted her dreams until the day she found her daughter. It’s yet ANOTHER feeling that first mothers have to deal with in the ocean of emotions caused by giving up her child, which seemed to be the only answer at the time. I’m sorry for the pain that first mothers feel and I pray more reunions are made to give them some release and peace of mind where they can focus more on their children than the men who broke their hearts.

Disclaimer: I know that not all first fathers were like Edward or Sandy’s boyfriend but I do think that was a common situation at that time (40’s-80’s). Of course there are first fathers who were there for the first mother the whole time and they even end up married. There were also pregnancies created out of crime and that is a whole other dynamic. If you have comments about these or other unique situations, please share! Thank you!