It’s mother’s nightmare, being forcibly separated from a child.
In ancient Rome, a few days after birth the child’s father was given the responsibility determining the child’s fate. Would the family keep the child, or was the child more of a liability than an asset, and would she, therefore, be exposed? (For more on this click here)
A harrowing thought, right? The mother carries the child for nine months, goes through labor and delivery, bonds with the child, all the time knowing that the child might be snatched away from her.
Move forward two millennia to Northwest Florida, 1900. A woman gives birth to a child born of rape. She has no money and no prospects. The mother believes that the only chance the child has of being fed and clothed properly is for the mother to give the child up to a family who can care for her.
That woman is my great-grandmother. And the child? My grandmother, who bore the shameful stigma of “illegitimate” for her entire life.
But my grandmother was determined to make certain that her own children were sheltered from such pain. She guarded her children’s happiness with ferocity. In her old age, my mother’s dementia robbed her of most of her memories. But she remembered the happy childhood my grandmother—her mother—gifted her with.
Out of the darkness, light.