Life Interrupted by Kristen Kehoe Page B

to pelt us.
                  “You’re going to be okay, Rae, you’re going to be okay.” She said it over and over again that day and the next as she drove me to her friend’s counseling practice where I started seeing someone once a week.  She said it that whole second month, and then the third, dropping by every day, calling every two hours, reminding me about my counseling appointments, my online courses, my vitamins, my workouts.  Slowly, she brought me back to life, and even though I still couldn’t be with Gracie by myself— wouldn’t be with her—I could sit and watch G feed her, drink coffee while Stacy gave her a bath, read a story while my mom rocked her.
                  By the end of month five, my counselor got me to realize the thing that was going to set me free: I wasn’t the old me, and I wasn’t ever going to be again.  I had to deal with that, take back the parts of my life that I could and move on.  And I had to choose whether or not I was going to move on with or without Gracie.
                  When Gracie hit six months, Stacy brought me to the university women’s building. There were only a few people there, some as young as me, some that looked Stacy’s age, some that were older.  Wondering if she was staging an intervention, I kept my arms crossed and my mouth closed as we took two chairs on the end of the half circle.  The woman who was scheduled to speak was no older than thirty-five, her eyes dark and round, her hair an odd mixture of red and brown.  She was small, the epitome of petite, I remember thinking.  But her voice was strong, commanding, and she captivated me from her first word until her last. 
    She was a teen mom, an unwed teen mom whose own mother had turned her back on her when she found out.  Alone, she was forced to have and raise her baby by herself, with the on again off again support of the baby’s father. At seventeen, six months after having her son, struggling with what she now recognized as post-partum and just the regular worries, fears, and desires of a teenage girl, she gave the baby to his paternal grandparents and went back to her own life.  Only, her life was never her own after that and in the back of her mind was always the image of her little boy with his long fingers and full head of thick black hair, just like his mama.  She’d done what she thought was easier when she didn’t think she could do any more, but the reality was that she had wanted her baby.  Still wanted him, all those months later.
                  It took her five years and four months to get him back, and another two years of intense therapy to forgive herself for giving up on him in the first place.
                  “I didn’t give him up for adoption, I just gave him up.”
                  Like I was giving my daughter up.  When I walked out of that auditorium and got into Stacy’s car, I gripped her hand and held it the entire way home.
                  It was Stacy who spoke first when she parked in the driveway and we sat there, me staring at the house and seeing the baby inside, the same baby I couldn’t quite feel anything for.  Knowing I should and didn’t only made it harder.
                  “I wouldn’t have been as strong as you, Rae.”
                  I scoffed out a laugh because I knew this me was weak, weighed down by ghosts and feelings, anything but strong.  “I’m serious.  If I had gotten pregnant in high school, I wouldn’t have had the baby.”  I turned my head to look at her then, the sister who had always been so perfect, so right in everything she did, and wondered what the hell she was telling me.  “Having a baby at sixteen would have been admitting that I had done something wrong, something that I shouldn’t have.  I would have done anything to avoid that—I still do.  But watching you, seeing everything you’ve gone