" The biggest myth about Southern women is that we are frail types--fainting on our sofas...nobody where I grew up every acted like that. We were about as fragile as coal trucks."
--Lee Smith

Now, I bet you’re scratching your head about now, wanting to know, what on earth that funny quote above has to do with anything. I like it – that’s all. Oh, and I grew up in the South and consider myself a “steel magnolia” type of Southern woman. If nothing else positive – losing my first son to adoption – did help make me a strong woman! You know that theory? “What doesn’t kill you makes you strong.”

By the way, I probably should introduce myself - I'm Jan and a mother who relinquished a child to adoption (“MWRACTA"). I grew up in Tennessee and lived there until I married and moved away with my ex-husband. My second son, the son I relinquished, was conceived there. Whoops, maybe too much info! Just giving you some background info though. Didn't grow up in the smoky backwoods hills of East Tennessee though. Instead, I was raised in a suburb of Memphis, within spitting distance of Graceland (for those youngsters reading, Graceland aka former home of Elvis Presley.

Love of family, nature, the earth and mountains are prominent in my genetic make-up. Birthmotherhood was never an experience I contemplated becoming a part of - ever. Adoption was a foreign concept except that I loved babies and children, dreamed of having a large family and thought some might come to me through adoption.

Mostly until reunion though, I never "lived" the role of a birth mother. After my son's birth, I had a 5-year old to raise, so that necessitated keeping my grieving and carrying on to a minimum. A few horrific months after my son's birth and adoption, I neatly filed away the experience into the innermost recesses of my mind. From time to time, thoughts of my son inevitably pierced my coat of denial, however, I became quite adept at burying all my feelings of loss, love and longing for my son. I never identified with the label “birth mother”. So, how did I “become” a birth mother? Part 2 explains that and why I am here now talking about search and reunion.