Baby Cherrie Gets a Home – Where My Life Began

As a newborn, I was shuffled through seven foster homes in six weeks because, it seemed, no one wanted me. I cried constantly. I trembled and shook. And whenever someone touched me I flinched and reacted like I had been shocked.

Now stop. Think about it for a minute. What do you think that kind of experience right out of the womb would do to someone’s psyche? Well, let’s see . . . can we say . . . trust issues? Some people agree with me and some people say it’s not possible, but knowing that trust has always been the single greatest challenge in all my romantic relationships, right up to and including today, well, I can’t help but think it’s possible that Baby Cherrie, the homeless shuffled unwanted newborn, probably developed some trust issues. (Cherrie is the name they put on my birth certificate.)

The adoption agency was at its wits end. No one would keep me, and they needed to get me settled and out of the shuffle. I was starting to look like an orphanage case. But there was a couple, about two years down the list waiting for a girl, that had gotten a baby boy about two years before, and the case worker remembered them. A nice couple, and possibly one that would take this difficult newborn and give it care. The woman was a registered nurse, full of caring, and he was a hospital administrator, strong and good-hearted. If nothing else, Baby Cherrie would have good health care if the source of my crying and shaking were ever determined.

My parents immediately agreed, excited to get a baby girl so soon. They rushed out to the foster home and my mom tells this story just the best, but my storytelling will have to suffice for now. When Mom tells it, she says “we rushed over to this dingy little house on an unkempt street. When the foster mother opened the door she said ‘she’s the one crying in the back.’ ” Like, you’re here to get her so get her, I’m not fetching her for you. What a wonderful foster mother, eh?

Mom says she rushed down this dark little hallway, to a tiny darkened room where the sunlight was blocked out by a heavy blanket over the window. As Mom tells it: “And you were crying and read, wearing a dirty diaper, lying in a dirty bed, with a dirty blanket. And I just scooped you up in my arms and took you out of there as fast as I could.”

I cried for three months straight. I trembled, and shook when touched. The doctors said I was physically healthy, and Mom knew, being a registered nurse, that my treatment as a newborn had been abuse of neglect and I didn’t trust anyone to touch me and I was completely frightened of the world.

Mom took an indefinite leave of absence from her work at the hospital. It must have been an incredibly difficult time. Dad was being supportive, and my brother Eric tried to help, rocking me in the kitchen when my mom needed to cook, and he was practically crying himself, saying “Cynny’s cryng, Cynny’s crying.” It must have torn at her heart, to see her little boy so concerned and trying to make me happy. I’m sure that those few months of his life had a lot to do with how protective Eric has been of me for my entire life.

Basically Mom held me for three months straight. Rocking, rocking, rocking, saying over and over and over again: “I love you, I love you and I will never leave you and this is your family. We all love you very much. I love you . . . I love you . . . ” For three months she did this, rocking this crying shaking baby and reassuring her baby that she is loved, unconditionally, forever.

Mom tells the last part so well I’m just going to quote her. “One day, after about three months, I was rocking you and you were crying . . . then suddenly you stopped crying and you looked up at me and smiled. And you’ve been a joy ever since!”

It makes me a bit misty to write it, how she saved me and how she feels about what I have been for her in my life. For me, there is no greater feeling than bringing joy to someone else. I absolutely adore my parents and we have a wonderful relationship that I treasure about everything else in my life.

This just had to be the first blog for the Cielem’el Personal Growth Journal. Over and over again you’ll hear the same message in dozens of my stories – the importance of that experience as a newborn, both the fear and distrust as well as the lifetime of unconditional love – rises again and again, relating to practically every story of my own personal growth and inspiration.