By Brittney Womack, Special to the Journal
Dear bio mom, I am your youngest of three; I stood by you longer than your other kids. I tried my hardest to be a good kid. I did not say much, and I did not tell our secrets. I wanted you in my life, and I wanted to have the love I saw others have; I needed it. I needed to hold on to something in life, but I was not good enough. It seems all my memories of you are bad, but I do not know if we had good memories or if I just blocked them out.Â
You never let me be a kid. You let me grow up too fast. You never let me have a friend for longer than four or five months. I never had clothes that fit, and there would be days I would question if I would eat again. You loved the men in your life more than you loved your kids. You have been married three times, and I do not know how many times you dated while I lived with you. I wanted friends and needed a family.
We never stayed in the same house for longer than a year. You never kept a job to support us. You never did much of anything but disappoint. I can tell you many stories about why I felt this way or how it became our ending. The one I will never forget is when I was little, maybe five or six, when I lived in Strawberry Plains.
You were married to a man named Greg. We were all in the car one night and it was raining. It was raining hard; I do not know if you were drunk or just on drugs, but you said let us do some spins. Well, those spins you did ended us up in a field. We crashed into a fence. We got out of the car, and you made us walk back to the house we lived in at that time in the rain. That is why I am scared to drive in the rain or even drive at nighttime.
And then there was one of the worst days of my life, the day I was taken into foster care. That day plays in my head repeatedly because you could have saved us, you could have done better but instead you let us go because of the choices you made with a man. The day was Sept. 11, 2001, the same day the terrorist attacks happened. I remember this because we got to leave school early and we talked about it in the car on the way home.
After we got home, I was in a room, and the police officers came busting into the house. There were so many of them, I was crying, and you were nowhere to be seen. A lady came up to me and asked me if I knew where the man was. I did not, but they found him hidden under a bed in one of the rooms. The same lady told me I was going to be leaving and staying somewhere else for a while. She gave me a trash bag and told me to put some clothes in it and some items I wanted to take with me.
The sad part was I did not have many clothes. When they were put in a car, I still could not find you. I was crying and I had no one there to hold me or to tell me what was going on. They took me to a group home, and it was days before I knew what was happening, but did I really understand what was going on?
I never recovered from that; that was the day I knew I was unloved, unwanted, and never believed. I had no one. I did not have you, my brother, or my sister. There was no family who wanted me or needed me. I was just another kid in the system. I waited for weeks, months and years to see if you wanted me. The day you finally came for me, you were married again to another new man. I knew at that time you did not want me, and you did not care. You started another new life without us kids.
What does being a mom mean to you? I want to know this answer. I want to hear it come from your mouth – no lies and no stories this time, just the truth. Did you ever want me? I can say you are the reason my kids will never know you, but they will know what it feels like to be loved every second and minute of each day. They will have family, a stable home and will know who loves them. I will never speak your name to them because I do not ever want them to feel disappointment, to feel the loss and hurt you caused.
My kids know about you, they know you hurt me, and they know you never tried. I told them it was okay because it made me a better person and a better mom. You broke me and at the same time pushed me to be a better person and mom. Being a mom means putting your kids above anything else, to keep them safe and to make sure they are loved.
Dear bio mom, I am sorry I was not what you wanted in life, and I am sorry for not doing my best at being your daughter.
