My Mother Threw Me Away: The Birth Story Of An Unwanted Child
It's obvious when a parent has no desire to be a parent.
Getty Images I was born in February of 1977. My biological mother had just turned seventeen years old and had no desire to settle down and be a parent. She was a wild child and liked to have a good time.
Responsibility wasn't one of her virtues.
Don't get me wrong, she was well-loved, and was one of those people that others said, would, ‘Give you the shirt off their backs.’ However, she had zero maternal instincts and didn't want any — not as far as I was concerned anyway.
I can't remember those early days, but there were lots of stories.
The first was that my bio mom didn't bring me home from the hospital. Her mother did.
I didn't even know my birth mother was my mother until I was school age. My grandmother was mama to me. It wasn't until years later that I realized the woman I called mama was my grandma.
Oh, I knew my bio-mom. I saw her most days. She still lived at home when I was born.
She had married at fifteen and then separated by sixteen. My bio-dad was more of a hook-up and one of several possible fathers. She remarried soon after having me, so we didn't live together for long.
I remember my mama telling me once that she had asked my bio-mom to watch me while she and her husband had a date night. But, my bio-mom said to them that she wouldn’t babysit on the weekend. So, no date night for them. Like I said: zero maternal instincts.
It all came to a head when I was about a year old. Bio-mom had become angry at something mama had said or done and decided to get revenge.
So, my bio-mom took me and left. I assume she figured that I was hers when she wanted me. Unfortunately for my bio-mom, mama and daddy chased her down; daddy threatened her life for the stunt.
Even though I was there, I only know the story through retelling.
My daddy, the kindest, laid-back man to ever live, was ready to end her in true papa bear rage. The gist of the conversation was, ‘If you ever kidnap my baby again, I will kill you; do you understand?’
My mama, who was my bio-mom’s biological mother, took daddy's side. She was ready to take out her daughter for kidnapping me.
After that, she never tried to use me against them again. However, it didn't mean that she developed any feelings for me.
If anything, she became jealous and spent years bullying me My bio-mom was very much an older sister who resented the younger sibling.
When I was fifteen, we went to a store together, and she randomly said, “Don't call me Mama. I don't want anyone thinking I have a kid your age.”
I looked at her like she was crazy. “When have I ever called you Mama?”
Honestly, I felt like calling her that to piss her off. She was seventeen years older than me, but I often felt like I was the older sibling.
By the time she was twenty-eight, she had seven children.
There are eleven years between myself and the youngest. Out of seven kids, she only kept four. That is another story, though.
The moral of this story is that not all mothers have maternal instincts.
Sometimes, biological parents shouldn't raise their children and, in some cases, have little to no contact with them.
I would have been happier with little contact with mine. Saying that I love my siblings. I would take all the grief and heartache all over again to have them in my life.
Sometimes, you are given a bad hand in life, and you have to work with what you're given.
J.B. Miller is a writer. Follow more of her work on Medium.