@TunedOut

Thank you so much for your reply! I'll eventually get to the crying stage of healing. I will wait for it to naturally flow, instead of forcing it. I will also wait to get set up with a trustworthy T.

I texted the adoptive mom earlier last night. She has nothing but great and kind things to say. She is always kind to me about my concerns, and she always asks me to pray for her and her daughter. She's very open to having me contact her around this time, and she is honest with me about the things she struggles with sometimes. We're both a support for one another. And, she understands my disabilities and traumas, which is really nice.

Between her response and yours just now, I feel really comforted and loved. I feel my daughter is safe and protected, and I feel I am doing what I can to continue my healing journey.

I do not like to take as many risks as I have in the past, but I was strong enough at one time in my younger life, before the military, to capture an armed person as a security guard and assist local police, to face anything traumatic and assert my boundaries. It's just hard to be that brave person again after having experienced sexual victimization, among other things from people in charge. I've been disabled for about 15 years, and I've done nothing but volunteer when I could, attend college when I felt ready to do so, and move forward with my healing all this time. Nevertheless, I feel like my life is not fulfilling, and I want to maximize my potentials, given the limitations I have.

Whereas I used to face trauma without fear, I now fear trauma but am highly passionate about studying it and its prevention, including protective factors. That said, in the midst of my own traumas and trauma-based limitations, I'm still struggling with unresolved traumas, dissociation, memory lapses that may or may not be due to dissociation (I did fall 40 to 60 feet into a shallow pond and hit my head, but I never reported those things while in the military since I was able to shake it off and keep going).

I was resilient as a child, but maybe that resilience was masked by dissociation. Maybe my unresolved childhood traumas resurfaced and worsened because of my adulthood traumas. Maybe my resilience became undone during the military, which is why I had no problems prior to military service but only after the service-connected sexual traumas I had to deal with, and the dissociation that came with.

Motherhood is symbolic for many things, including leadership, defense in the military, patrolling as a cadet for police, helping fields such as psychology, etc. Feeling like a failure in one aspect of symbolic motherhood affects all those related identities and career goals, in my opinion. You lose your identity, you lose your own self-respect, and you grieve over the loss of someone you are supposed to love, protect, nurture, and parent. I've lost my family. I probably would not have lost my family had no trauma occurred. I would not have DID or PTSD if I wasn't victimized. I would have been mental-illness free. I truly believe that. This is what sets all other disorders apart from PTSD and DID - the victimization that caused it. Physical disabilities can also be caused by victimization as well. And non-victimization combat trauma exposure, along with other traumatic exposures such as natural disasters, can cause PTSD, but not to the extent of experiencing victimization.

I'm sad about losing my daughter, angry about the reasons why I had to give my daughter up, disgusted at the lack of resources to help people like me at the time stay with family and co-parent, etc. I have so many feelings.

I screamed once, and my daughter got frightened. I didn't scream at my daughter, but she was just an infant and probably couldn't tell the difference. I never screamed again after that, but I was at my wits end with the intrusive trauma thoughts I was having, and the judgments by the church people, and the constantly having to move because the places I resided were temporary and did not welcome infants and mothers. At least I had those temporary places, but it wasn't stable for me and my daughter.

I tried to bond with my daughter by breastfeeding her, and spending all the time I could with her before I could find a safe babysitter. I couldn't afford the safe ones, and I didn't trust the ones that I would have eventually had for free (I was on a waiting list). I screamed and cried so loud. It was just for a second. I could see my daughter's face in shock. I hugged her immediately after, kissed her on her cheek, and I think rocked her to sleep. I also gave her formula, in addition to breastfeeding her. I sang to her once in a while, too. I tried to handle phone conversations while she was with me, so I did have a bunch of toys that she could play with in a secure area where I could see her, while I was on the phone. I think that I should have held her the whole time though, while I was on the phone.

I always got her shots and doctor's visits in. It was hard for me to have no sitter when I took her to the store or to my dentist's appointment. I worried about some other attendant having to watch her while I got x-rays, and I didn't want her to get sick from anyone else. I barely got any sleep, as I had no help. I had to have her in the car seat in the bathroom while I showered, so that I could breastfeed her with clean breasts, and so that I could keep an eye on her. Sometimes she slept with me, sometimes in her crib, but she always wanted to sleep with me. It was hard for her to sleep in her crib alone.

I have over 200 pictures of me with her during our first 10 months together. She was happy.

But I also had to get mental health treatment. I had some people from church watch her, and I got evaluated. At first they knew I had PTSD, but they were concerned about the voices or images I was seeing. They were concerned about post-partum, but they never screened for DID. I freaked, they freaked me out even more. I knew from my police training what would inevitably come next, due to my mental illnesses, so before I got a negative record, I decided to give my daughter up for adoption willfully. I did not want to be evaluated by social workers or have my daughter in the foster care system, as that would be the next step, though that wasn't told to me. I just knew it from my former police training. Unless you have a supportive husband and family, single parents with mental illnesses get investigated - and rightfully so. I agree in part with the system, but it sucks that there's this disparity. When married couples have one partner (not two) with a mental disorder, they're in the clear (that is, so long as they vaccinate). But without that capable guardianship, single parents are at risk of having a child protection record, which I didn't want on top of my mental illnesses.

Apart from those concerns for my well-being and my daughter's, I cared more about my daughter being around my symptoms. I also didn't know what DID was, so I was unaware about my symptoms. My symptoms scared me.

So, I did what was best for my daughter by giving her up for adoption.

Mental illness is a viable concern for parenthood; parents need to be able to maintain their disabilities and to have support in order to raise their children properly. I couldn't, and I really did need to give my daughter up for adoption.

I'm not saying anything negative about those who have mental illnesses and decided to keep their children; more power to them, and I'm impressed with their strength to do so! Maybe their mental illnesses were managed, and maybe they had some social support (husband, family member, friends) who were trustworthy. I wished I had that and their strength, but I didn't. So, I'm not judging those who made different choices, but it is so easy for me to judge myself harshly.

I wasn't the perfect parent, but I wasn't an abusive one either. Nevertheless, I'm sure that some aspects of early childhood neglect was an issue when my daughter went through the process of separating from me and into the arms of her adoptive parents. I'm sure that is a separation trauma she will never forget. I'm sure that one time that I screamed, even for a second, traumatized my daughter, even though I screamed in the wind. I was crying, and that was not good for my daughter to see, not as an infant. I spent about a week in the psychiatric ward while she was with a safe church member, and I'm sure that my daughter (like deployed military parents) must have felt separation trauma from that, too. All of that early childhood trauma my daughter experienced IS MY FAULT, and I'm not going to minimize my daughter's pain. I will not be like those parents who minimize their kids' pain. I want my daughter to know that I failed, but I loved her nonetheless, and that she has every right to heal, voice what she needs to, tell me what she needs to, feel what she needs to, etc.

But yes, I need to be more gentle with myself. I really do not know how to balance this at all. I just want to do what is best for my daughter as the bio mom who failed.