num_pages: 356
description: In 1965 Carol Schaefer was 19 a freshman in college and deeply in love. She was also pregnant. When her boyfriends family opposed their marrying her parents sequestered her in a Catholic home for unwed mothers a state away where she was isolated and where secrecy prevailed. She had only to give up her baby for her sin to be forgiven and then all would soon be forgotten she was told. The child in turn would be placed with a good family instead of having his life ruined by the stigma of illegitimacy. Carol tried to find the strength to oppose this dogma but her shame had become too deep. The first time I looked deep into my sons eyes I felt like a criminal. As I unwrapped his hospital blanket and took in the heady fragrance of a newborn I feared the nurses or the sisters would come in and slap me for contaminating my own son. Finding no way out she signed the fateful papers leaving her son in the hands of strangers but with a vow to her baby she would find him one day. For years Carol struggled to forget and live the normal life promised not understanding the consequences of the trauma shed endured. On his eighteenth birthday she set out to find him although the law denied access to records. Her search became a spiritual quest to reclaim her own lost self as she came to understand the emotional and psychological wounds she and other mothers like her had endured. Against all odds she succeeded in finding him and discovered that in many ways they had never really been apart. With her sons encouragement and his adoptive mothers cooperation she tells their story.
language: English
title: The Other Mother: A Woman's Love for the Child She Gave Up for Adoption
publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform