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Pro tip: people keep saying birth moms need to "just move on," and my counselor in Boise finally explained why that's wrong
I placed my daughter 7 years ago and for the first 3 years I kept hearing the same thing from well meaning friends, that I should just move on and stop talking about it. My counselor in Boise told me something that stuck: grief for a placed child doesn't end, it just changes shape, and trying to rush it makes it worse. I stopped apologizing for still having hard days and it honestly helped more than any advice I got before. Has anyone else had a counselor or therapist who actually got this, or did you have to explain it to them like I did with the first two?
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nancyd856d ago
There was a study I read about a while back, I wanna say out of some university in the midwest, that looked at birth moms years after placement. The big finding was that grief for them didn't follow the normal stages people talk about. It came in waves around birthdays, holidays, random stuff, even years later, and the moms who tried to stuff it down had way worse outcomes than the ones who let themselves feel it. That matches what your counselor said about it changing shape instead of ending. The first therapist I saw told me I had "complicated grief" like I was doing it wrong, and I spent way too long trying to fix something that wasn't broken. Good for you for finding someone who actually gets it because that makes all the difference.
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