It Was Almost Like a Novel... almost.

By way of explanation for my latest hiatus, here is the premise of the story:

A couple prays and hopes for years for a child of their own. When finally they find their son, a legal battle ensues that lasts for two years. They not only fight the negligent and suspectedly abusive birth mother, they fight for a little boy that doesn't think he wants, or needs, parents because he's been taking care of himself since he was a toddler. When the legal fight is over, and the papers signed, and the worst of the little boy's baggage under control, the couple thinks they can relax and settle into family life.

Fast forward three years, when a letter arrives on the woman's Facebook page. It is from the birth mother of her son. As she reads, she is horrified to find that the other woman believes that her children were kidnapped from her, that she was a great mother, and that the legal papers were signed under duress.

How far would you go to protect your adopted child?

She disappeared.

Every online identity she had that related to my given name was deleted: every presence, every network, every profile. Hundreds of long distance friends, professional acquaintances and online opportunities were lost within minutes, with no time for explanations. Five years of online blog, the only  journal of their adoption journey, gone. According to the internet, for well over a year that boy's adopted mother no longer existed. 

The family even moved their physical address to the other side of the city. Only cell phones, no listable house phone. Notes were given to the new school that if anyone other than the parents asked about the child, the police were to be called immediately. She doubted 'that woman' would bother searching public records - that would require knowledge, effort and money, but if 'that woman' did, this family were prepared to disappear even farther. She had grown up in the wilderness, she knew places in this old world beyond "the grid", even in this age of satellites - places where even the government didn't go for fear of what they might find. She could do it, live in the deep woods in that old camper her husband bought a while back. But for the moment, falling off the net seemed to have done the trick.

Sounds like an excellent plot, doesn't it?

Except, this is all one hundred percent actual. Add a bunch of sub-plot twists in there, and you've got my life. 

Only in the last few months have I made any kind of a come back to the world at large. Slowly, I am refinding my friends online, while apologizing to those I abandoned without explanation. 

I have another identity besides that mother described above - my life and name as a writer.  This one, too, had to disappear for a while.  It's hard coming back from something like that, and I wonder if I'll ever get back to where I was before, social-media-wise.I doubt I will ever make up the opportunities I might have had during that year of invisibility. 

But I'm back, and I'm determined!  

And maybe, just maybe, I'll turn this into a novel someday.