On Writing You’ll Forget This Ever Happened: Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960s
Laura L. Engel – You’ll Forget This Ever Happened: Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960s.
If you had told me years ago that at the age of seventy-three years old, I would be publishing a memoir about the worst year of my life I probably wouldn’t have believed you. For my entire adult life, I chose to forget the year 1967 had ever happened. That year I was a typical high school senior with dreams for the future, when I found myself pregnant with no one to turn to, no support, and no ring on my finger. I was ultimately hidden away at an unwed mothers maternity home in New Orleans, Louisiana, where I lived and worked for five months until my son was born. Expected to surrender my secret son to a closed adoption, I was told repeatedly that I would go back to my carefree teenage life and forget that this had ever happened.
I never spoke of my secret son for five decades and lived with private guilt and shame that entire time. Never once, even for a day, did I forget him.
In 2016, through the miracle of Ancestery.com DNA, my first-born son found me. It was magical and cracked my heart wide open when I heard my forty-nine-year-old son’s voice for the first time. In a heartbeat I instantly changed from never speaking my truth about his beginnings to wanting to tell the world. I began writing memories in my journal and jotting down notes when memories surfaced in the middle of the night. Soon, those journals and notes took on a life of their own and I found myself driven to write my story and give voice to the sad damaged girl I had been.
I learned so much in my writing journey, not just about myself, but about all the other hundreds of thousands of young women who had been traumatized by having to leave their children during the 1960s because there was no ring on their finger. Writing memoir can be difficult because it often takes a toll as the writer reaches back to memories that are devastating once brought to life on the page.
I found myself back in time, reliving those years. Often, I was angry as well as shattered as I wrote. I experienced many an ‘aha moment’ as a much older and wiser me recalled how men had made all the decisions and we women followed through. It had been a turbulent time in our country. Political strife, mixed social norms, and civil rights colored those impressionable years. Intolerance was giving way to the Summer of Love as confusion reigned.
I had always told myself, I was not a victim, but the more I remembered, my heart hurt for the young naïve girl I had been and for all the women who had suffered for decades secretly mourning their children. Never knowing what happened to our babies and the difficulty searching for them before the internet and DNA tests, left deep emotional scars. Damaged, we went on with our lives, all the while the silent mothers, the secret mothers, and the forgotten mothers.
For five years I wrote my story and began to speak about it, soon realizing how younger generations seemed unable to comprehend a time when young women were forced to hide away and wait to give birth, only to leave their newborns. They were often appalled at the archaic medical practices of that time. This compelled me to provide a window back in time, hoping to show that although we still have much work to do here in our country, we have come a long way from the judgmental, chauvinistic, and hypocritical society experienced in the 1960s.
At times grief flooded through me as I wrote and I took self-care breaks away from my computer for days, sometimes weeks. But always I returned and slowly after the first, second, and finally fifth draft, I felt at peace knowing I had written my story to the best of my ability. As painful as it was to revisit that troubled time in my life, it was cathartic and healing to write my story and speak my truth out loud. In writing my book, I learned to forgive the people in my past who had hurt me, the judgmental society of the 1960s, and most importantly myself.
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Laura L. Engel, born and raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast transplanted to San Diego over 50 years ago. She is married to the love of her life, Gene, and the mother of five beloved grown children and an adored golden retriever, Layla Louise. Laura is the proud Grammy of 10 cherished grandchildren.
In 2016 Laura retired from a 35-year career in the corporate world with plans to quietly catch up on hobbies and travels with her husband Gene. In October of that year her plans changed when a miracle happened in her life. She soon found herself busier than ever taking writing classes and writing up a storm about a secret she thought she would take to her grave.
Along with writing her memoir, Laura holds the office of President of San Diego Memoir Writers Association and is an active member of the International Women Writers Guild. She is also a member of San Diego Writers Ink and San Diego Writers and Editors Guild.
Today finds Laura fulfilling her life-long dream having written her first book, a memoir she never dreamed she would write, You’ll Forget This Ever Happened -Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960s published by She Writes Press and available May 2022.
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You’ll Forget This Ever Happened: Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960s
Mississippi, 1967. It’s the Summer of Love, yet unwed mothers’ maternity homes are flourishing, secret closed adoptions are routine, and many young women still have no voice.
In You’ll Forget This Ever Happened, Laura Engel takes us back to the Deep South during the turbulent 1960s to explore the oppression of young women who have committed the socially unacceptable crime of becoming pregnant without a ring on their finger. After being forced to give up her newborn son for adoption, Engel lives inside a fortress of silent shame for fifty years—but when her secret son finds her and her safe world is cracked open, those walls crumble.
Are you still a mother even if you have not raised your child? Can the mother/child bond survive years of separation? How deep is the damage caused by buried family secrets and shame? Engel asks herself these and many other questions as she becomes acquainted with the son she never knew, and seeks the acceptance and forgiveness she has long denied herself. Full of both aching sadness and soaring joy, You’ll Forget This Ever Happened is a shocking exposé of a shameful part of our country’s recent past—and a poignant tale of a mother’s enduring love.
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Good luck with the release. I’m glad you’ve met your son and sorry for the way it was “back then.”