Meet Darla…

One day during my senior year of high school a girl said to me: “Darla, you look pregnant.” My reply: “I am.” That moment began a journey of shame that lasted over 40 years. I had never seen my mother so angry. In her background, out-of-wedlock pregnancy was deplorable – she couldn’t look at me, or love me, or help me. She was shamed by me and wanted me out of her sight. She dropped me at a clinic one morning for a physical exam where I waited for her all day. She finally arrived as the clinic was closing and as I got in the car she said, “I almost didn’t come back for you.”

I graduated five months pregnant and soon after was sent to stay with relatives and then to a home for unwed mothers. My mother did her best to keep my shameful condition as hidden as possible. I never questioned whether adopting my daughter out was the right thing – my mother’s reaction made me not question anything. A year later I started attending church. This led to a Christian university, marriage to a pastor and having two girls of our own, but I lived those years with confounding depression and a constant sense that all was not well in my world. My husband knew about my teen pregnancy, but I never told my girls, nor anyone else because I was convinced it was too shameful to talk about. When I started the Rapha program, my depression eased, but my pregnancy secret was deeply buried and I never explored it.

One day a letter arrived saying, “I believe you are my birth mother.” All my shame came crashing down on me – my secret, hidden for over 40 years, was about to be exposed. I thought about the half-truths and lies that kept my secret intact. I spent seven months reliving the pain of my past and the consequences of keeping a shameful secret. Then I attended a therapeutic workshop that involved writing about a difficult childhood experience and sharing it in a small group. I wrote about my pregnancy. I was shaking and tearful, certain it was wrong to be telling my story. However, when I realized we all had stories riddled with shame I began to feel more normal. By the end, I relinquished the shame, both my mother’s and my own, and maybe for the first time, realized I was just like everyone else because everyone has a story. Shortly after, I met my birth-daughter and for several months I could feel my emotional state stabilizing.

Then one day I realized that all shame was not gone from my life. I began to be nagged by my teenage behavior that led up to the pregnancy. The guilt of hurting people and the amount of promiscuity haunted me with shame that I just couldn’t shake. In working through this, I sought to understand why I had behaved that way and the answer revealed a picture of the chaos surrounding my life at the time. My parents’ extreme work habits brought chaos, doing poorly in school brought chaos, and my chosen peer group brought chaos. I was surrounded by chaos in all major
aspects of my life so my out-of-control behavior was understandable as a byproduct of the conditions. When I saw this picture of my life, I knew that I could let go of my shame and have compassion for that young girl who was caught up in the whirlwind of chaos that surrounded her.

Today, I no longer feel unaccepted because of my secret and I can walk out on a busy sidewalk or into a room full of people and know I can interact with them instead of feeling like I don’t belong. I no longer feel judged, so I can now support others without judgment. Interacting with my family has totally changed. Not only do I have a growing relationship with my birth-daughter, but my other daughters can now trust communication with me because my reactions are no longer tainted with fearful expectations that they will also fail in life. With my siblings, I no longer imagine myself as the tarnished ‘black sheep’ always feeling like a failure; and in my marriage I have gone from being a totally dependent spouse to one who can make decisions and be a blessing to our covenant, instead of draining the life out of it.