Chip Chick
This woman’s parents had her when they were 16-years-old and still high school students.
When she was born, her father left school so that he could work full-time hours to help support her and her biological mother, and her mother stayed enrolled in school.
Once her mother graduated, she came to the decision that she no longer wanted to be a parent, and she walked out of their lives.
“I was 2, so I don’t really remember her being around. After that, my father worked three times as hard to provide for me. He also met a nice woman whom he later married when I was 7. I consider her my mom,” she said.
Throughout most of her life, after her biological mother left, she didn’t hear from her. Her mother didn’t support her monetarily or reach out often. The last time her mother contacted her was when she sent her a birthday card in the mail when she turned 3-years-old.
She never had hard feelings for her mother choosing to leave because she had so much support from her father, stepmother, and half-brother. In her eyes, they helped fill the void that she had from the absence of her biological mother. Her father and stepmother never spoke ill of her mother, either.
“Her leaving was not something I thought about every day, so you can imagine my confusion when she reached out on social media to talk. I thought about it for days before I agreed. We met in a restaurant for the first time in 25 years. It was awkward small talk at the beginning before we delved into why she left. My biological mother teared up while explaining why,” she explained.
Through her tears, her mother told her that she’d been going through intense postpartum depression. She felt stuck in her life, and so she didn’t know what else to do besides leave. She reassured her that it had nothing to do with her.
She empathized with her mother’s struggles because her stepmother dealt with postpartum depression as well after she had her half-brother, and it was awful for her stepmother to go through as well.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
