By Patrece Maluzynsky
by Patrece Maluzynsky
Sometimes I’ll spot an adorable baby in a Costco checkout line. He will smile and drool and melt my heart. In turn, I’ll wave and make silly faces at him like an idiot. The two of us will share a delightful game of peek-a-boo, and for a moment, it will feel as though the rest of the world has temporarily disappeared. Those witnessing our amusing exchange might assume I’m a mother or grandmother, but they would be wrong.
As a young adult, I made the serious choice not to have children. Now past my childbearing years, I don’t regret that decision. It’s not that I dislike children; I simply wouldn’t have been capable of being the kind of parent I wanted to be during those years. I lacked the patience, maturity, empathy, and equanimity necessary to parent effectively. Eventually, I found other ways to nurture.
When I reflect on my decision to remain childless, I’m certain it relates to the adverse childhood experiences I endured. The greatest of these was being relinquished at birth. Before being adopted into a loving family, I spent one week in hospital and four more being fostered. I was cared for by multiple people during my first weeks of life. None of them was my birth mother. This arrangement was common for babies adopted during the closed-adoption “Baby Scoop Era,” which lasted from 1945 to the early 1970s.
Even now, many people fail to recognize adoption as trauma, particularly for newborns separated from their mothers. Like many others, I once believed adoption was beautiful and always mutually beneficial. I no longer believe that. From lived experience, I understand that closed adoptions like mine rarely ended in “happily ever after.”
My parents were instructed to raise me as though I were biologically theirs. Not once did my family discuss the possibility that maternal–infant separation might itself be traumatic. Well-meaning as they were, my folks grew uncomfortable whenever I asked about my biological parents, nationality, or medical history. Instead, I was encouraged to be grateful to have been adopted in the first place. I was told, “You’re much better off with us. What could your teenage birth parents possibly have given you?”
As a child, I lived in a near-constant state of anxiety and hypervigilance, though I lacked the language to explain it. My painful feelings were neither acknowledged nor validated, so I learned to hide them. I became highly attuned to other people’s moods and expectations, desperate not to disappoint anyone. Inside, though, I felt defective.
My childhood fears were endless. I feared abandonment, authority, and especially failure. At night, I lay awake worrying about my grades, my parents’ health, and countless things beyond my control. My academic struggles were interpreted as laziness or lack of effort rather than anxiety and dissociation. My mother sometimes raged at me for not performing to my potential, unaware that I was already drowning in shame and fear. Because I had no healthy tools to regulate my emotions, I eventually turned to addictive substances and behaviours to soothe myself.
Today, I understand that early maternal separation profoundly shaped my nervous system and sense of self. Through therapy, conversations with other adoptees, and much research and reflection, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of why I struggled throughout childhood and why I never wanted children. Until I entered addiction recovery and began re-parenting myself, I simply had not healed enough to care for another human being in the way I would have wanted to.
My adoptive parents loved me and did their best. But they, too, carried unhealed wounds. They could not give me what they themselves had never received.
I have made peace with not parenting a child. Instead, I now pour my care into my ten-year-old silver tabby cat, Smoothie. Smoothie came to us as a rescue. During his first year, he had clearly learned that the world was not a safe place. He startled easily, hid under beds for hours, and distrusted strangers. His hair-trigger nervous system felt deeply familiar to me.
With time, patience, consistency, and unconditional love, he has become calmer and more trusting. Whenever he feels dysregulated, he leads me to my yoga mat. As soon as I lie down, he climbs onto my stomach, kneads gently, and purrs himself into calmness. Sometimes he stays there for ten or fifteen minutes. In those moments, we gaze into each other’s eyes and help regulate one another’s nervous systems. Endorphins and oxytocin flow. We are both safe.
What I could not give a child years ago, I can now give this sweet rescued cat: presence, patience, gentleness, and safety.
Rather than filling my Costco shopping cart with children’s clothing, toys, and snacks for school lunches, I fill it with cat litter and cat treats. The cashier and I exchange small talk about our felines and the enormous joy they bring us.
No matter which species we choose to nurture, there is meaning in offering another creature the best of our healed selves. In that offering, there is purpose, forgiveness, and love.
Patrece Maluzynsky is an adoptee and writer living in Alberta, Canada. She hopes to publish her recently completed memoir, A Surprising Peace: How One Adult Adoptee Transcended Her Anxiety and Addiction and Reconciled Her Grief. It’s a deeply honest account of how she faced her fears, overcame her addiction, and learned to love herself. Learn more at her website and find her on Substack.