Birthmothers by Jones Merry;

Author:Jones, Merry; [Jones Merry Bloch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Published: 2016-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

7

Connections

Dreams, Flashbacks, and Coincidences

Cindy sat up straight, startled out of sleep. She blinked, trying to unblur her eyes and figure out what had awakened her. The baby—the baby was crying. Howling. She jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway. Her nightgown caught on something—a hook in her doorway?—and she felt a rip, but she tugged her body away and kept going, desperate to get to the baby. It was difficult to see in the darkness. The door to the baby’s room glowed unnaturally in the shadows, and, even though she was running, Cindy had trouble getting to it. Her body dragged, so heavy with sleep that she had to will it forward, to argue with her legs to hurry. The baby’s screams grew frantic. Cindy reached for the door. Her hands trembled, fumbled with the knob, but finally she pushed the door open in a clumsy rush. Something was wrong; she sensed danger or evil. Her only thought was that she had to save the baby. Cindy lunged through thickly sweet air, past fluttering curtains, and pulled the squalling infant, swathed in blankets, to her breasts. It was all right! She’d saved him!

The crying stopped and the baby lay quiet and still in her arms. Cindy sat down on the rocker, winded and breathless. Looking down at the baby, she was puzzled to see blood streaming over her torn nightgown. She’d have to put the baby down before her blood could stain him! Cindy leaned over to kiss him before putting him back in his crib. She pushed the blanket back but, instead of kissing him, she gasped and recoiled in a soundless scream. Mouth wide open, Cindy sat in frozen horror, staring at her baby who inexplicably, horribly, had no face.…

Theater of the Mind

The daily lives of birthmothers interviewed were often riddled with recurring nightmares, dreams, flashbacks, preoccupations, premonitions, and anxieties that were linked to relinquishing. Some, in fact, had these experiences so often and found them so disturbing that they avoided contact with any people, places, or things that they associated with relinquishing. Many tried to dismiss their dreams or other psychic episodes as “tricks of the mind” or as the psychological scars of unfinished emotional business. Others interpreted them metaphysically, imparting symbolic meaning and spiritual significance to the images or emotions that haunted them.

The dreams that recurred tended to fall into two main categories: those that frightened and those that comforted. Each category, in turn, could be further divided: they reflected either relinquishment itself or the troubled periods of grief that followed.

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

Nightmares about relinquishment typically portrayed themes of violence and pain, often replaying the same troubling scenes: losing babies and finding them bloodied, injured, or dead; trying in vain to rescue infants from dangers such as floods, abuse, or nameless brutalities; watching helplessly as infants were kidnapped by couples without faces. Powerlessness and lack of control were dominant themes. In their nightmares, birthmothers repeatedly experienced total and inexplicable paralysis or moved with horrifying sluggishness.

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