There was a season of my life where I found myself trapped in domestic violence. Surviving abuse changes a person in ways that are difficult to describe unless you have lived through it yourself. Abuse slowly strips away your sense of safety, identity, confidence, and self-worth. You begin living in survival mode every single day. Fear becomes constant. You learn to anticipate moods, tension, anger, and danger before words are even spoken. You stop feeling like a person and start feeling like you are simply trying to survive another day.
During that chapter of my life, I faced one of the most heartbreaking decisions imaginable. I voluntarily placed a child for adoption while trying to survive circumstances that felt impossible to escape. That decision was not made from lack of love. In fact, it was made because of love. The deepest kind of love. The kind of love that breaks your own heart in hopes of protecting someone else.
There are no words strong enough to explain what it feels like to carry a child, love them with every part of your soul, and still believe that placing them for adoption is the safest or most stable option during a time of chaos and abuse.
People often misunderstand birth mothers.
They assume weakness or abandonment when the reality is often the exact opposite. Sometimes birth mothers are surviving situations nobody sees. Sometimes they are carrying trauma so heavy that they can barely breathe beneath it. Sometimes they are making decisions while terrified, heartbroken, and completely alone.
The grief that follows placement does not disappear after papers are signed. It becomes part of you. There are moments where the ache resurfaces so strongly it feels fresh all over again. Birthdays. Milestones. Quiet nights. Random memories. Certain songs. Certain smells. Tiny reminders that unexpectedly reopen wounds you thought had scarred over.
There are pieces of your heart that never fully stop aching.
And yet, there is still love inside that grief.
For a long time, I carried shame about my story. I questioned myself endlessly. I replayed every decision in my mind. Trauma has a way of making people believe they are defined by the worst moments of their lives. But over time, I began to realize that surviving abuse and making impossible decisions did not make me weak. It made me human. It made me resilient. It taught me compassion in ways I never could have learned otherwise.
Eventually, life began to heal parts of me that I thought would remain broken forever.
Continue Kaylie's Story: Read Part One of Kaylie's Story or Part Three of Kaylie's Story.
