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In September 2007 I was invited by two of my Austin colleagues, JoAnn Ponder, PhD, and Joellen Peters, PhD, to be a discussant for the papers they wanted to present at the 2008 Spring Meeting of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. The conference theme was “Knowing, Not-Knowing, and Sort-of-Knowing: Psychoanalysis and the Experience of Uncertainty.” The title of the panel was “The Known, Uncertain, and Fantasized Ties that Bind.” We were an adopted individual, an adoptive parent, and a birthparent, all psychologists and psychotherapists. I wrote this essay as I struggled to write a traditional discussant paper.
I have been working and reworking my experience of surrendering a child for adoption for a very long time. I agreed to participate in the above-mentioned panel because it was a great concept, three triad members presenting scholarly papers on their unique position in the triad. But I had secretly hoped the proposal for the panel would be rejected, that I wouldn't have to go through with it. I am the only birthmother I have worked with; the only case I have to present. I didn't know what I could write about. When in doubt, I read. So I started to read. Writing has always been more painful, but I have learned over the years to just do it.
This time the move from reading to writing was not happening. I hadn't procrastinated like this since graduate school.
By late February I awoke each morning feeling terrified. I felt I could not go through with it. I imagined arriving at the conference empty-handed, speechless. I was telling my co-presenter about this experience, and she said something like, “You are having to give birth to a very difficult paper.” I politely dismissed this, as I dismiss most interpretations, then thought about the date the paper was to be presented, April 11: my due date. The terror in anticipating that childbirth, the feelings of mortification and the certainty of my disgrace, were right