Member-only story
To say my relationship with my mother was complicated would be a gross understatement. Our love-hate dynamic began when I was 3 weeks old. At that time, my biological mother passed away following a medical mishap and I was suddenly placed for adoption. She agreed to take me on after her husband, my soon to be adoptive father, fell instantly in love with the little bundle that was me and refused to let the matter drop. At 43, with one son that was 15 (and halfway out the door), and a history of what I now know undiagnosed mental illness, she was neither inclined nor equipped to devote the second half of her life to a newborn, but it was 1971, and she did what she thought a dutiful wife should do, she agreed. She signed the papers and they brought me home.
Winnie was born in 1929, and having been raised in the 1930’s and 40’s she soon found herself in over her head with a headstrong, questioning child of the 70’s and 80’s. The world was changing in ways she couldn’t understand and she genuinely feared. Children were no longer seen and not heard. Young people began expressing their opinions, their preferences, and asserting their rights. For her, I was the very embodiment of the generational shift she saw as the downfall of…
