Notes from Nobody |
By Claudia (Hill-Balch) Turner VanLydegraf. |
Walmart.com |
Books-A- Million.com |
(A Loving, Caring, Helpful Gift for One Mothers' Adopted Out Lives) |
SOON to be available at your favorite bookstore NOW on Amazon.com, B&N.com, Borders.com and AVAILABLE from PublishAmerica.com |
Searching, is this my son, my daughter, mother, father, brother or sister, will we ever, can we ever, every place-every face, where is......??? |
Please let me know if you have comments or issues to discuss about the adoption process and how it has affected your life. I know that I am not alone in the feelings that I had about what I did. There are a million stories about this painful thing that we did to ourselves and our offspring. And all in the name of WHAT? We broke the BOND!!! |
This is a book about and by a Birth Mother who found her two babies (35 and 33 years later) that were given away through adoption at birth. It tells about the ramifications in her life from the beginning to present day. It reflects present day reunion stories that are on TV all the time and tells what the shows don't, by delving into the feelings and needs that are brought to the surface in finding long lost children. Most books on the market deal with the reunion, this one deals with including long lost adopted out babies into the life of the birth mother and her family and she in theirs. There are many aspects of the human heart and mind to understand, this is my way of trying to make some of these a bit clearer to the woman or adult lost child who may be hoping to, or has found the part of them that is missing........... |
amazon.com borders.com- |
bn.com |
ISBN # 1-58851-861-2 |
A story of love, loss, reunion and of life and how it affects everyone involved in the adoption process. |
Publish America.com |
Barnes&Nobel. com |
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Please come sit a while, visit and read a few chapters of Notes from Nobody, grab a cup of coffee and come into my life......... Pretty is as Pretty Does..... "Pretty is as Pretty does," that's what my mother always said and I believed her. I didn't want to be pretty. I was, but didn't want to be, or so I would tell myself. (I really liked being pretty, but at points in my life, it was a real problem, being looked at as pretty.) I really wanted to be smart, but boy, did I have a long way to go to get there. Smart was the thing that makes you pretty after the looks fade. My momma told me that and again, I believed her. I had the ability and the brains to get started, but youth was a thing I had to overcome to make the brains work better. Brains take brains to make them work. Growing up is a process that shows you how to deal with all of the little things that could set you back. One step forward and two back is the way the saying goes. My life was more like half a step forward and five back. Life was getting ready to hand me a big whammy, and I had to figure a way to deal with it. I didn't know at the time that it would take me most of my life to get it back together again. How I long to have those days back so that if it were possible, I could live them over. At one time, I was a very pretty seventeen year old that had most of the world to look forward to. My name is Claudia. I had just competed in the Miss Universe Pageant and had placed third in the California division. This was before that particular pageant became big, although there were over 300 girls in the pre-trials and the final event was televised in the whole central valley in California for the first time. I got some modeling contracts and was workng for a local housing contractor. I must tell you that the reason that I competed was not to validate that I was pretty, but to try to get over an excessive amount of shyness that I carried around with me. Why I was shy, I can't remember. To look at me today, you would never know that I was this most painfully shy girl at one time. I am forward, and aggressive, and outgoing, sometimes almost too much of those things. Those pageants have a way of getting the contestant to realize her potential and lose the fear. It did for me, anyway. There is nothing like walking around a swimming pool with nothing on but a swimsuit and a pair of high heels to make you feel totally naked. When you feel that naked, you lose your fear of ever again not knowing how to handle a situation. No matter what the situation. Your mind starts working the problem out. At that time, life was good. Little did I know that the bottom was about to fall out of my existence. Time To Grow Up......... Let me start at the beginning, or at the first part of my adult life, anyway. My mother had been diagnosed with cancer of the mouth and throat, and at that time, she chose to tell me the truth about my family history. The reason she had chosen that time was very simple; she was going to have an operation that only gave her a one in ten shot of coming off the table alive. So, being a good mother, she called a family conference to tell my brother and I that the man who had been raising us was not who we thought he was. We had always been under the impression that he was our father. For as long as I can remember, he was my Daddy. Not so. Our real father and our mother had been divorced when I was two and a half years old, just after my brother was born. The man that we thought of as Daddy had come into our lives and married our mother when I was four and a half. Our mother had placed us in a foster home where we lived while she decided if she was going to keep us or not. I am as certain as I can be that that time was one of the most painful that she ever experienced. I think that I have a special insight into what she was feeling and how she looked at her life in that time. I went through much of the same. They say history repeats itsef, GOD, I hope NOT. I hope that I have stopped this history and have not passed it on to my daughter. At the tender age of two and a half, I was at that time, the youngest runaway that the Oakland police department had, and after many illusive attempts at avoiding, finally caught. I had not only run away, but I had taken another two-year-old gilr with me. Momma lived in a boarding house and could not keep us with her. She worked two jobs, no time to care for two babies. We saw her on Sundays and went to Lake Merrit Park in Oakland to feed the ducks and geese and ride the little boats around the lake. She eventually married my Daddy and our family was reunited. All was good, life was beginning to be right. I grew and played, and told everyone I was adopted. Lesson in Life...... I was adopted!!! That is what I told everyone who asked, when I was ten, eleven, twelve and even on after that. How long I held on to that theory, I really can't remember. When I was seventeen, I found out the truth to that theory. I was not really adopted, but rather, just had another father out there. DAMN DR. SPOCK!!! It was the reality of the time, that if a child did not ask any questions, give him no truths, for evidently he required no answers to anything that may have been bothering him. I required no answers, because I had no memory of the events that had preceded the marriage of my mother and my daddy and the time in between the divorce from my father and mother. I blocked out all of the unpleasant stuff and woke up with nightmares that had me screaming my lungs out at the age of two. I ran away to find my Momma and Daddy. |
