Waiting to Forget: A Motherhood Lost and Found

"[An] extraordinary memoir of [the author's] giving up for adoption the baby she bore at 16... beautifully written, psychologically nuanced and sociologically informed."—Nation

Described in the New York Times Book Review as "uniquely enlightening," Waiting to Forget is a mother's story of coming to terms with the child she gave up for adoption over thirty years ago. In 1965 Margaret Moorman was unmarried, pregnant, and still in high school. Forced by societal pressures to give her baby up, she suffered emotional trauma both before and for years after the birth. At forty, she gave birth to a daughter and found herself terrified by the possibility of losing her younger child, a fear she can now trace back to her uncertain decision to give up her son.

Moorman discusses both her own complicated feelings of loss and motherhood and the issue of adoption from the often overlooked point of view of a birth parent.