“Are you afraid of the role you played in this loss?”

-Ann, Lili Taylor of Lifetime's "State Of Mind"

This is what I encountered while flipping through channels late at night, searching for something to help keep my eyes open just a bit longer. Boy did that open my eyes.

Lifetime’s new show “State Of Mind” staring Lili Taylor, aired a particularly interesting episode (only the show’s 4th) centering on a birthmother’s quest to locate her now 13 year old son, placed as an infant, and in her belief as a direct result of coercion. The woman basically seems obsessed with the only resolution to her extreme loss she can imagine, reuniting with her son, and doing it now. Taylor’s character is a therapist, and the show deals with her patients and the other therapist who share the same Victorian home as a collective office space. Interesting to say the least.

After being involved with adoption for many years, I could clearly see and understand some of the perspective the show tried to share. It was obvious on some levels they had consulted with someone for this script who knew what they were talking about. This mother placed her baby as a teen. She had no support to attempt to parent, from what she shared with Taylor’s character Ann, she had her baby taken, she was coerced, and she would not rest till she had found him and reunited. Ann tries to discourage the young patient, from placing all her hopes for repairing her feelings of loss and grief on this hoped for reunion, but the birthmother goes and finds a reporter interested in the story to help her track down the child.

Ann as a therapist encourages her client to wait, to instead look for healing through facing her fears about the adoption, even her small part in the placement, and facing them head on. When the son is located, they go to his home together for a meeting that turns out to at first be huge emotional crush after all her years of anticipation. Her son does not share her desire for reunion, he does not appear to feel the intensity of loss that she expected. At first he rejects her, but with the help of Ann and his adoptive mom, you can see a window of future opportunity open. The son hints that perhaps when he is a bit older, he will be interested in seeing her again. In the end the therapist Ann seems to have learned that you can’t always save you patients from additional grief, sometimes they need to face old demons head on in order to move forward in other areas of their lives.

I did find the way this new show explored the topic of adoption dynamics and grief interesting. Not sure how much more they will explore those issues with this same character, but I believe I will be checking back to find out.

Regret

Moving On and Getting Over It

Living In The Shadows Of Adoption Loss