Giving Birth Doesn’t Make You a Mother: A Guide To Conscious, Healing, And Transformative Parenting

By veronica finnegan

Giving Birth Doesn't Make You a Mother is inspired by the journey of a therapist with 26 years' experience in various mental health settings with an enormously varied client base, thousands of therapy sessions, and conversations with a countless amount of people, who was miraculously led to the Foster Care System to get the son who was destined to be hers.

The book honestly and profoundly highlights the struggles embedded in the system, the impact of "unconscious" and ill-equipped parenting on children, and the ingredients for parenting in a manner so many clients and patients long for. 

Veronica brings forth the needs of not just her son, but all children, with an emphasis on the conscious awareness parents must have to deliver them. Giving Birth Doesn't Make You a Mother is an essential guide for current and future parents to raise awareness about their own blind spots, trauma, childhood wounds, and unfinished business that will hinder their readiness and ability to parent. It can also help existing parents to assess their efficacy at meeting their children's emotional needs, and a create a recipe to build the competence and compassion to heal and transform even the most harrowing trauma and deepest wounds attesting to the healing power of unconditional love.

This book powerfully conveys the deep joy of being a mother and the ultimate gift to give life to another or to breathe life into another with the oxygen that is a mother's unconditional love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: veronica finnegan
• Release date: Apr 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201925390

Book preview

Giving Birth Doesn’t Make You a Mother

Giving Birth Doesn’t Make You a Mother

A guide to conscious, healing, and transformative parenting

Veronica Finnegan

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Write My Wrongs, Co., United States

www.writemywrongsediting.com

Copyright © 2023 Veronica Finnegan

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission from the author.

I would like to dedicate this book to my beautiful mother, now angel, Nora Finnegan. I lost my mother just over one year ago. It is because of her unconditional love and guidance that I can be the woman and mother I am today. She exemplified all the amazing traits I speak of in the book of what a mother should be.  I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. I wish more than anything that she could be here to see my first book come to completion and fruition, but I know she can see it all and watches me in all I do from heaven.

I would like to wholeheartedly thank my father, Michael Finnegan for being the best father a girl could ever ask for in every way possible, your undying support and strength keeps me motivated and focused every day of my life. To my sisters Noreen and Sharon, blessed to call you sisters is an understatement. You are two outstanding mothers who brightly lit the path for me. The love of my family inspires me daily. My nieces and nephews who loved my son from day one, Chet, Cassie, Finn, and Lainey. My brothers-in-law Mike and Chet, The Willix and Finnegan families Aunts, Uncles, and cousins, Aunt Sis, and Uncle.

To those who have shown love, encouragement, and excitement while walking this path with me to miracles and motherhood, I am eternally grateful; Jeanne Callahan, MaryPat Donovan, Jane Burke, Lisa and Christina Boerem, Madeline Peralta, Audra Cerruto, Tara Strother, Anthony Taylor, Andrew and Jeanna Talamo, Theresa Marett, Ephraim Gallimore, Billy and Chrissy Hopkins, The Kilbride’s, The Peralta families, Eddie Guzman, Dena Larocca Lennon, CariAnn Boccio, Coleen LaDonna (OLP Pre-K),Mrs. Lake (formerly Ms. Gaitings Oceanside Kindergarten Center), The Oceanside School #2 personnel, Phyllis, and Chet Kempinski, Ally Rothwell, Jennifer Coard, Dr. Vitagliano, Sr. Julie Hauser, My Queens Hospital Family

A special thanks to Dr, Eleonora Rubin for encouraging me to write my story from a therapist and mother’s perspective about what I have done with my awe-inspiring son. For your support and always providing me a safe space to vent, share, and explore strategies, I appreciate you.

A warm hug and round of applause for my son Joseph, for letting Mommy share our story with the world and writing his very own chapter. He understands that helping others is what it’s all about, and part of our destiny. I love you more than everything, no matter what.

Contents

Introduction

1. The Miracle of Joseph

2. What Is a Mother?

3. It’s Not About You Anymore

4. Kids Are Sponges: The Impact of Environment

5. The Ways and Words That Shame

6. Allowing Emotions—Even the Not-So-Nice Ones

7. Keep It Together: You’re in Charge of Your Buttons

8. Look in the Mirror: Get Conscious

9. Anticipate Needs: Two Steps Ahead

10. Look Beyond Behavior

11. Create Secure Attachment

12. Become Multilingual: The Five Love Languages

13. Stop, Look, Listen, and Validate: The Recipe

14. Trauma Informed and Neuroplasticity

15. Playing Catch-Up: Post-Traumatic Growth

16. I Love You no Matter What: Unconditional Love

17. What I’ve Done: From Survive to Thrive

18. Learn Your Childhood Narrative

19. Peace at Last: Evidence of the Transformed Brain

20. Simply in Awe: A Gift from God

21. The End of Transgenerational Trauma

22. Joseph’s Personal Account: How Do You Know I Love You?

23. Are You Ready to Be a Parent?

References

Helpful Resources

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Introduction

Bye-Bye, Bronx... Forever: A Miraculous Foster Care Survival Story

What is the definition of a parent—biological, foster, adoptive, or otherwise? The noun definition is one who begets or brings forth offspring, mother or father, person, or animal, or protector, guardian. Hmm, animal. That might lead to the concrete belief that only the first part of the definition is necessary to acquire the title. The verb definition is "to be or act as a mother, to give warmth, attention, to bring up, to raise, look after, and care for, to love, discipline, protect, guard, or provide nurturing. I prefer the verb definition to the noun definition. The term parent" is used quite loosely, especially in the foster care agency environment.

Some of those parents, whom I like to call vessels, who birth a child or carelessly provide some sperm to create one don’t make a parent and aren’t deserving of the title, nine months of carrying a child or not. We can talk about the violation of human rights in sterilizing Americans with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities as they did from the 1920s to the 1970s. But what about the cycle that gets perpetuated by these vessels who get pregnant by every Tom, Dick (no pun intended), and Harry or who get pregnant at the drop of a hat just to have another baby to neglect, abuse, or give to the system, damaging and traumatizing another child for life?

My motto always was and always will be: It is never a child’s fault. I believe with every fiber of my being that people should need a license to become a parent. I strongly feel they should have to get a degree. The system makes parents take parenting classes only after they screw up their kids.

Let’s talk about my story of the foster to adoption of my now nine-year-old son. I must talk about what goes on behind those walls. As a therapist, I cannot overestimate the value of sharing feelings and speaking the truth to allow one to process and let go. This is a personal account and burdensome truth I had to keep silent until I got him out—until I knew we were safe and free.

I went to a mental health conference at Molloy College in March 2017 and had the pleasure of hearing world-renowned physician and expert on addiction, trauma, and childhood development Dr. Gabor Maté speak about addiction and primarily trauma. He said something that resonated with me because as a therapist, I practice from this perspective: Children swim in the unconscious of their parents like fish swim in the sea.

In my practice, I work with adults in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties who are wounded and trying to heal from the damage done by their (as Jeff Brown, author, spiritualist, and creator of the Inner Child Rising audio course refers to them) unawakened parents. We can call those parents inept, unconscious, ill-equipped, limited, and often traumatized themselves, but sadly, it is the children who bear the brunt of their parents’ unresolved trauma and who absorb their parents’ generational familial dysfunction like sponges.

I often refer to the love of a mother in those early years as oxygen, and without it, a child suffocates. The list of what a parent should provide is lengthy but necessary to illustrate the adroitness required to do it lovingly and effectively. Children need comfort, reassurance, praise, affection, interest, acceptance, anticipation of their needs, encouragement, protection, soothing, structure, compassion, empathy, validation, patience, tolerance, honesty, listening, stability, security, enthusiasm, reliability, flexibility, playfulness, and consistency. Let me expand on this as if that wasn’t expansive enough. All children need more than love—they need unconditional love, and the aforementioned modes of delivery of that unconditional love need to be given and shown consistently.  

Children absorb what goes on in their environment like sponges. They observe subtleties—every facial expression, tone of voice—especially in an unsafe environment. They learn to be hypervigilant. They’re prematurely aware. They learn survival skills and bear burdens that no child should ever have to bear without the necessary ingredients for normal and healthy emotional development. Then you add abuse and neglect. Then you add the trauma of removal from the family the child knew. Then you add the placement with strangers in the foster care system, sometimes multiple placements and sometimes with parents just as inept as the first ones. How is a child supposed to not react?

I often show clients the Still Face Experiment conducted by psychologist Edward Tronick in the 1970s, in which researchers observe a mother and baby in a room. The mother engages the baby with affection, interest, loving words, kind eyes, and touch. The baby smiles, coos, and seems secure. Then the psychologist asks the mother to withdraw and sit still with a neutral face, emotionless and detached. Immediately, the child tries to engage the mother, confused and frightened. Within seconds of receiving no response, the baby starts to panic, desperately trying to get back the mother’s love, affection, and attention. This lasts no more than a couple of minutes, but the impact on the child is visibly distressing and palpable. The mother then resumes engaging the child, and the child is clearly relieved. But imagine this happening repeatedly. Imagine a child having to experience this every minute, every hour, every day, and every formative year of childhood. It’s like living without oxygen. Then couple the deprivation with overt abuse and imagine how distressing that would be for a child.

My now-adopted son and I endured hell for thirteen months. We remained entangled in the foster care system until adoption day, the day we were freed from the chains of a broken, heartless, and unethical system that bound us. The foster care system. The business of retraumatizing children. No choice, no voice should be their motto. Child welfare? More like child woefare. Association for Children’s Services? More like disservices. Child protection? More like child destruction.

I now realize I was fighting a war for thirteen months. I needed to get him out. I needed to save him. During the process, I would ask myself, how can I protect my child? Hasn’t he been through enough?

Most of the workers in the foster care agency would minimize and deny my child’s trauma—yes, trauma. The trauma of being a foster child, being neglected with no stability, no normalcy, the hypervigilance of never knowing where he would go next. Maybe they didn’t have the education or formal training, or maybe they were desensitized, detached, or burned out.

Some other foster parents there, often with four or five kids, some with special needs, (I just read fostering these kids can rake in somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,200-plus a month), yelled shamelessly and yanked these children’s arms forcefully during a typical day at the agency. Imagine how they treated those children at home behind closed doors. There was no sheltering the children from the angry, cursing parents who wanted to see the kids who’d been removed from them due to their own neglect or abuse. There was no attempt to shelter the children from the tension, chaos, unpredictability, and lack of security. There was no acknowledgment nor processing of feelings with the kids, no protection for them.

The agency staff walked back and forth, unphased. They were hardened and emotionally detached.

I tried to stop the forced sibling visits for my son. He didn’t want to go. He was beginning his new life. Whenever we went back to the agency in the Bronx, my son would ask, why? How was a four- or five-year-old child who was healing and settling into his new, active, fulfilling life not supposed to worry that he may not be able to come back home with me?

Family isn't always blood, it's the people in your life who want you in theirs!

He didn’t want to see his sisters, so I learned more about them, the events leading to their removal from the home, and the family dynamics. I knew it wasn’t their fault. I knew they suffered the same abuse and neglect my son did. They were traumatized too, but the distress that being together caused my son was a constant trigger, reminder, and obstacle to his survival and potential healing. It was a detriment, not a benefit. The system is a proponent for keeping the family together, but at what cost, I would ask. And what is their definition of family?

––––––––

I requested a meeting when I was informed of the magnitude of my son’s trauma by his siblings and his caseworker. After I learned about the disturbing details of his early years, suddenly his nightmares made sense. His resistance and anxiety about visits made sense. I had to tell the social workers. I was sure they would stop the visits when they knew. I was sorely mistaken. What was I expecting? Compassion? Action? Someone, make it stop, I pleaded in my head.

During the meeting, we sat in a room—me, the caseworker, and two supervisors. I told them about his nightmares, during which he ran and cried, pleading, Stop, stop! and Help!

They callously told me he must be running in his sleep because he is much more active now.

I shook my head in disbelief. I told them my concerns.

That supervisor looked me in the face with her stone-cold heart and definitively lied, I mean stated as she flipped through his file, saying, I see no documented trauma. He only came into care for neglect.

I listened in disbelief as they nonchalantly spoke of his trauma or, in their eyes, his lack thereof. First of all, I thought, who doesn’t consider it traumatic to neglect a baby?

My son’s caseworker sat in silence. She was the source of all the information other than my own observations, yet she said nothing. The reality slapped me in the face. I immediately got it. She wasn’t allowed to speak the truth either. I didn’t name names; I didn’t