The Mystery of My Third Mom

You were the first person whose face I recognized, day after day, as you cared for me. As my eyes learned to sharpen the blurry edges of objects, and the facial recognition center in my brain searched for eye-nose-mouth patterns anywhere and everywhere, I always found you, smiling at me. Although you didn’t smell like her or sound like her, I grew to expect your scent and your calming voice. The anxiety of being separated from my birth mom kept me awake in those first 6 weeks — it dysregulated me — I would cry out, in search of the familiar body I had been a part of for 9 months. You would come to me, feed me, hold me, sing to me, and it would soothe me. Although you did not embody those sensory qualities I craved, you were a constant source of affection and love, during a time when I needed it most, a time when the world was brand new — a frightening cacophony of sensory overload — a time when my brain was just beginning to forge the body-world connections it would need to navigate the complex terrain of interactions that would go on to shape me profoundly.

You kept watch over me in that space between the trauma of being ripped apart from my birth mom and the eventual comfort of my forever mom. I grew to trust and love my forever family, but I still have abandonment anxiety and attachment problems. It is no one’s fault. It is just the biological situation of my birth and first few weeks of…