I wrote this to be placed on BEBA for the 7th anniversary of my reunion.

Not many people knows the day they died while they are still alive but I do. My heart is still beating. Blood runs throughout my body. For all intents and purposes I look alive. But part of my heart and mind is not. It's just as dead as if they had buried me, but they didn't. They left me to rot. And that I did.

I died on the day they took my child from my arms. They pulled each one of my fingers back from my child till they got him loose from me, his mother. Then they opened the door and pushed me out of it. When I came back in two weeks they threw me out again, even though I had 6 months to come and get my child back as per the law. They didn't honor a Mother and Child, nor the law.

What did I do to deserve this? Was I bad? No. Did I drink or do drugs? No. Did I kill someone? No. Was I in trouble with the law? NO. Someone wanted my beautiful, white, male child and they got him. A social worker played God. I was young. My Mother did not want me to have my child. So they took my child because, because they could. What happen to me? I died. I thought i'd be taking my child home from the hospital, but my mother had already signed the surrender papers.

I stopped eating till I was a rail and they told me I would be put in a hospital and force fed. In 1966, no one had even heard about eating disorders. I would eat to please them. I ate, then puked till I almost died in my late 30's. The emergency room doctor said if I didn't stop I'd die. I stopped puking, but kept eating. Then I got fat. I ate that way till my late 40's. I tried killing myself, many times. Mental problems are a given. I am still not over my mental problems. The nightmares, the post-traumatic stress.

I would go to every fair and parade to look for my lost son in the crowd. It never stopped. I looked at every 1 year old when he was one. I tried to kill myself on his 1st birthday. But the social worker and my Mother knew what was best for me.

I looked and looked for my boy, I had a picture in my mind what I thought he'd look like. Over the years I married. Still looking for my lost child. I had another son. When they put him in my arms and wheeled us out of the hospital together, I cried. The people around thought those were tears of joy. They were not. I was crying two-fold, first I didn't think they would let me take this one home either, and secondly I missed my first born. I had another child, a baby girl. I was very over-protective with my children. Always afraid something would happen to them, I'd lost my first child, didn't I?

When my son was 18, I started looking for him. I found him 10 years later. No computer. Did it the old way. We've been reunited many years now. I have since married his Dad, who never knew I was pregnant. Yes, we are all together again. But it is NOT the same.

To those pregnant young women out there wondering "Should I adopt out my child?" NO, God, NO!!!!!! You will not be pregnant, broke and young forever. Your life will get better.

Adoption is death to the first family. Don't do it, you'll never be the same. The pain does not go away, or get less with time. It gets worse. Keep your baby. I tried to keep mine. I wish I had won, but I did not. I don't wish anyone the pain I have lived through.