I think I’d just finished crying again. I realized that so long as I kept her with me – I always knew it was a girl – he would never leave me alone. He had a drug problem, he had a violence problem, he had a severe reality problem… and I was woefully short on compassionate support. I made a hard choice – one of the hardest in my life – and on January 17, 1994, I gave away a little piece of my soul. My little Persephone was named Cassidy instead, but that would probably get her fewer weird looks in her neighborhood in New York.
I would never have agreed to it if closed adoption was the only option, but keeping up their end of the bargain in an option adoption was harder than they thought, I think. I get it: when you don’t have a strong example of Expansive Love, when you don’t know that having more than two parents means more the kids, not less for you, it’s hard.
Still, the interim years were grueling and hard. When we finally met in person when Cass was 19, it was only a few months after her mother died. “Awkward” doesn’t cover it, but it was also such a relief and so amazing to finally confirm that the voice on the phone, that the words over the internet, truly belonged to my firstborn and not to some bizarre grifter.
And, trust me, she’s definitely my child:
In the question of Nature versus Nurture, Nature definitely won by a wide margin, and yet… there are still some beautiful pieces of her mother that peek through. That woman was fiery and fierce and funny, so incredibly creative and passionate – all the things I would’ve given Cass myself had circumstances been different – but the way her mother delivered these things was so brilliant and utterly perfect.
I honestly wouldn’t change a single thing. The good, the bad, the weird, they all brought us to where we are right here, right now.
There’s so much more I want to say about this – it’s just such a huge thing – but there will be time later. For right now, I wanted to share with you all that though the journey has been long and hard – as I’ve written about before in 2011 and 2009 and 2005 – the culmination has come, and the future is incredible.
Thank you all so much, those who have watched this saga unfold. I promise more later. <3
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