Being a girl that was raised in a um a strict Catholic background in a
small country town in Iowa. And I was pregnant when I was in college.
Unmarried. I didn't tell my family. I even had a baby. I didn't tell my
family that Christopher was born until the day Christopher was born. I
found myself to be an incredible outsider in my family. So everything I
did seemed to happened really in my own world. I was looking to move as
far away from my home in Iowa and anything I knew as possible. So
Washington DC was about as far away as I could get. I was in art school. I
was 22 uh living in Washington DC all alone. So my son was born in 1988
but he was conceived on a trip. I took on the back of a Harley. I bought
the Harley for my boyfriend at the time Christopher was conceived on a
raucous night in Mexico on the Baja Coast amongst a lot of tequila shots.
And I knew it, the moment that it happened, I absolutely knew it. I just
knew it. And then I remember I had to go back to school 10 days later and
I had said goodbye to the father, the presumed eventual father of, of this
child in front of the whiskey ago. Go on Sunset Boulevard on January 14th
, 1988. P knew pretty much I would never ever see him again. My pregnancy
, I remember being exciting even though it was, uh, I was the only one
participating in it and there was, there was nothing like um baby showers
with, you know, crepe paper. It, it was a lot like the conception was, it
was based with strange friends around me who had a lot of drug and alcohol
problems and I was trying to keep it together and, and, and try to figure
out where, how I'm gonna create a life for this child in the future. And
what was I going to do in Washington DC with this child as an art, as an
art school graduate? When I really realized how pregnant I was two months
in, I quit smoking marijuana immediately. I quit doing any kind of drug
that I was used to doing, including ecstasy, anything. And I became an
artist model to support myself. And that's www was an interesting
transition for me as a woman to go from being a very young, sexual, really
sexual young woman who felt really uncomfortable. And I found interesting
that I liked myself physically more because when I was an artist model and
I was taking my clothes off. Now it didn't seem sexual before I was an
artist model. And before I had Christopher, I'd also worked in a strip
club, not as a dancer though because I so don't look like a dancer.
However, I had this desperate need when I was in college to be objectified
as a woman, which sounds like a totally weird thing in the age of feminism.
But I needed to know where I was or a placement as a woman or what men
thought about me. Because growing up, I had really bad experiences with
boyfriends with brothers, with my father. And so I wanted to be seen, I
think in some ways to help me get over a lot of body image which you know
, became the narrative, the narrative arc that ran through all of my life
as a young woman. My nickname as a child was Ellen Capel and the
watermelon. That was the nice nickname. The nickname I grew up with that
caused me all the trouble in my life was double ugly, double ugly. I
loathed the nickname, I loathed it and I was known as double ugly and
Ellen Capel and the watermelon and smelling Ellen so much that by the time
I'd run away from home and I mean, run away from home and never speak to
your family again. I needed to somehow psychologically unravel this these
nicknames and these impressions I had of myself. And so I put myself in
these really bizarre situations, like working in a really high in strip
club on M street in Washington DC. I felt that I needed to have, I needed
to learn something about myself. So for about five months, I cocktail five
nights a week dressed as a playboy, Bonnie just to work through this body
image thing I had. But I think even more so was gaining all this weight
while I was pregnant and really getting comfortable with myself, moving
into motherhood and accepting myself as sort of um you know, diva sitting
on a lotus flower for people to paint and seeing me as an object of beauty
and fertility. I wouldn't get up on a stage and take my clothes off for
money. But I would get up on a stage and take off my clothes to have
people make art. People told me I couldn't have this child and I, I
explored abortion options. I went far scheduling having an abortion in
Washington DC because the father wasn't involved and I was just so beyond
what I could do. And I felt that this was the only thing I could do and I
go to the appointment and the doctor doesn't show up. And I'm like, oh my
God, I remember the women's health clinic made another appointment for me
in New York City and I was supposed to drive to New York City and have an
abortion. I thought I could do this and I planned to do it. I made the
appointment. I was gonna do it all alone. And once again, something
happens where they call me and say it's not going to happen. Doctor
doesn't come. I mean, this freak experience, I could never figure out how
this came to be that. Now I'm past, I'm so far past the time of even
considering this, that I recognize I'm having a baby. This conception is a
surprise. This even idea that I'm gonna have a baby is a surprise. I'm
sleeping on a couch at a friend's house with my dog. I have no money and I
can't call my family and tell them it was an amazingly complicated time.
But, you know, friends were kind of around and then a friend volunteered
to go through birthing classes with me. We did, um, something called the
Bradley method, which was based on intuitive connectedness, which I really
liked and what exactly was going to happen that day when you went to the
hospital. And so I felt psychologically probably more prepared than other
people seem to have told me they were when they went in to have a baby. I
felt pretty ready about what was gonna happen that day because I'd written
a birth plan and I was working with midwives, which was a little different
than going to a hospital. There were often different people in the room.
So there would be students there and there would be maybe a different
midwife than I'd had the last time. So it was sort of like Ellen's having
a baby and it's a community event. And so when the actual day came in the
hospital, I do remember lots of people came in to watch. It was more like
a learning experience and an art happening kind of thing. Or at least I
thought when I was going in, it was a living be there event. So people
were kind of invited to come and they, and people showed up, which was
nice. There were a number of women in the room. The best thing I remember
happening was that if this woman came in the room that I had never met
before and that she was not a midwife, I had been introduced to previously
, but she came, she came into the room. I remember and I didn't have a
long labor. It had started the night before and I didn't tell it, I didn't
tell the people in my house, but I knew it was through the night I knew I
was laboring alone, which for me always seemed like the most natural thing
to do is just you're in your own headspace.
But this woman came in and she was like this angel. And I remember her
sitting down behind me and said to me, you're not in pain. You're just
connected to this bigger part of the universe and this, these sensations
you're feeling are all a part of this birth process and there's nothing
here that's gonna hurt you and you're gonna be fine and we're gonna
breathe through this. And she just held me with this huge sense of love.
And I remember even though my son's father was not there and he didn't
know the baby was being born. That day. I could feel him in the room. I
felt my grandma in the room who had passed away about six months earlier.
I felt this huge sense of love in the room. And so for me, the whole, the
whole birthing part went very quickly. There was no pain. And I remember
having a primal scream that was extremely exciting. It was, it, it just
felt like like the big bang theory was in me and I loved it. I loved the
birthing part. That part. I remember thinking it was great. It was so
different than what other people told me afterwards. And people wanted to
share with me before. It was exciting. It was a roller coaster. I remember
things like being offered an epidural and I said, oh, no, this will be the
one thing I will do totally drug free. I will remember every sensation and
every moment I needed it to be just a clear, clear headspace because I
felt this need to go so deep in my head and into my psyche. I didn't want
it to be as much of a physical experience. I wanted this deeply spiritual
connectedness because I thought this is it. It's, you know, life is a one
time thing and, and this is probably the only time I'm going to have a
child. This is really, this is the only child I'm gonna have with this man.
And I wanted it to be perfection. I want it to be something I would never
forget, filled with details that I would want to share again, that
hopefully would enable someone else. If I kept telling this story over and
over someone else would, would hear this and say, I'm going to have a
birth like that. I'm going to have this sort of experience where angels
are in the room singing and, and you feel like this is what I was meant to
do. I did not talk to the father of Christopher. My son's name is
Christopher Robin and then I saw him again 18 years later when Christopher
graduated from high school and he finally wanted to reconnect with his
father. And by then I was married, I've been married for many years and I
was way over the pain of being left. So after an exhaustive search, lots
of phone callings, lots of calling to the universe. I gave his father a
deadline. Like in my mind, it was very specific. It was 12 o'clock March
15th during the last commercial set of The Young and The Restless, which I
used to draw to every day without fail. For 20 some years. That was for
studio hours for me. I told a friend the night before, if he doesn't call
by tomorrow, I quit thinking about him. It's been 18 years. You know, a
girl's got to move on even in her heart, I've been holding this man in my
heart even though I was married. But I had reached out two months before
looking for him just out of curiosity. And since I hadn't had a call back
, I decided that that morning at no, at noon, that was when we would never
think about this anymore. And I would have to call it quits. And I'll tell
you at 1157 I swear it's the truth. 1157 the phone rings. I turn it over
and I see the caller id, I take a huge breath like, like your first gasp
of air, you know, out of water. And I pick up the phone and I said, is it
really you? And he said, yes, it's really me. I said, I can't believe you
made it in three minutes. And he's like, I'm on time, aren't I? The
conversation I remember flowed like we had just spoken maybe two hours ago
because I said, II, I, I'd waited 18 years. I've waited 18 years. I gave
you till noon. You made it, you made it at 1156 1158 you made it. He said
, well, I'm, I'm under the wire. He had a lifestyle in Hollywood
that, you know, basically shame Charlie Sheen. He made Charlie Sheen look
like a choir boy during his life in Hollywood. So when I found him again,
he looked the same. He was still stunningly handsome, but he had changed a
bit. He was more settled and he was, he was a person now who could work
consistently and, and maintained AAA fairly seemingly normal lifestyle. He
wasn't, he was no longer a roadie for Ozzy Osborne. And the thing was the
electricity was immediate. It was just, I felt like I was in a way back
time machine. Here, I was presenting this man this myself to this man
again, almost like a bride would. And I really mean that it was the first
time in my life since I was 22 that I had some freedom here. I was AAA 40
a 42 year old woman with some cash in the bank and some time on my hands,
I sounded like an eagle song and I just played it out over three weekends
, you know, having a torrid affair. I really, really did because I needed
to know I needed to know I was a woman because I'd lived through, I'd
lived through a marriage with celibacy 100%
celibacy, including my wedding night. I swear it's the truth. And so here
I was a woman with a child left the nest now because he was 18, he was
going off to college. My husband had moved away to move on with his career
and expected me to follow him again in my celibate marriage now of 15
years. And I was a young woman suddenly with freedom. Like I hadn't known
, I felt like I was 22 again or who I wanted to be when I was 22. And it
was almost like I recapitulated right back again to where I was. And three
months later I was pregnant. It was not a happy pregnancy. The second time
you would have thought the first pregnancy would have been really sad and
under tragic circumstances. But it wasn't. And this one, the second one
with my son, Ansel Jackson was fraught with sadness here I was with the
man I always wanted to be with that. I thought about for 18 years and yet
I was in the middle of a messy divorce and ending a life. I had no
intention really maybe of ending. I hadn't really thought when I was
having an affair and figuring out what sex, you know, it was Paradise Bed
, the dashboard life. It was a meat loaf song and I couldn't get over it.
And I, I just didn't think, oh, what's it gonna be like when I unravel
all of my life, my grown up life, what's that gonna be like? And so my
pregnancy when I was 42 was a hidden secret pregnancy. It was, it was
totally secret. I hid in my house. I didn't let next door neighbors or
close friends see me. No one knew it was happening. But my closest friends
who maybe lived out of town, the father by then had decided to come and
move to Arizona to be with me. He now was the one interested in having a
child. And I was not, I was the one who couldn't, who said I can't trust
you. You've left other Children. I can't trust you well enough to have a
child. And I'm a big grown up adult. Who knows what it's like to raise a
child alone. And I didn't think I could do it. So there was a lot of
disharmony, Christopher had to then reconnect while I was pregnant in
front of him with a father. He had never known while he was disconnecting
from me. It was turmoil in a house that should have been able to come
together. But it was not. And so I decided when I was pregnant,
I wasn't going to be able to keep this child. I don't know what I was
thinking, but I totally said I can't keep this child. There's just no way
there have to be people better than us to raise a child. We're not in a
relationship. This is not a marriage. I'm still, you know, I'm still
technically married to somebody else at this point. This is not a good
situation for a child to be raised in and me raising a child as a single
mother. A second time, I went through the desperate search of finding the
perfect people to adopt my child while I'm living here with the father
who's willing to do this for me because I've already raised one of our
kids. So he doesn't have a whole lot of cards to play in the whole game
here. He's, he's better just be supportive and he was, but he really, I
could tell, wanted to keep the baby. But I, I began a search. I found a
couple, we met with them, we had lunch. I met their child. I conversed
back and forth with them. We moved ahead with details and then my gut told
me something wasn't right. Something wasn't right about the situation.
We're only maybe three weeks from delivery date and something besides the
baby inside of me is saying something's not entirely right and I'm not
getting the answers I need from the adoption agency about the adoptive
couple and I am questioning things and I'm feeling things
and I'm, I'm a prayer, I'm praying to God. Show me the way I'm screaming
in my backyard. Help me, help me, help me, show me what it is. And I find
out that this family has had some problems. The father's been in federal
prison for embezzling maybe $2 million from one of his clients. I did not
want my child raised in a family where money was an ongoing issue because
I've already heard these arguments in my past. I've heard this as my
childhood. This is part of my verbal memory and I think they're lying to
me. They got a lot of skeletons in their closet. I'm sure they're nice
people. I'm sure time served everybody's nice people, but I didn't feel
good. So I immediately discontinued my relationship with them. I consulted
another adoption representative immediately who put me in touch with the
most amazing family ever professors at a university. A couple, they're
perfect. They're perfect except they're on their way to Brazil to do a
little research. So I tell them I can do this by myself. I can birth this
baby by myself. I can wait until you come back to Brazil and then I'll
give you the baby. I think I can do this because I think I'm really
generous. I think I'm so generous and so wanting to do the right thing for
my child, for his future that I, I can live through whatever this pain is
. I can, I can live through this. This is OK. So the family is off in
Brazil and I'm not a happy woman at all. I've gained a lot of weight. I've
been in hiding now for months. I haven't told anyone I'm having a baby. I
did not bother having birthing classes. There was no nursery prepared in
the house, there was no diaper, there was no plan for a child. I was
literally psychologically thinking I'm doing the right thing and I'll get
through this. It's gonna take some counseling. I'm gonna get through this
, but I'm gonna have done the right thing, the right thing for someone. So
we go to the hospital, mind you, I feel that I can have a baby by myself.
So I don't go until 20 minutes before the baby is gonna be born. Skipped
all that walking, all that, you know, anything ice chips, anything anybody
else ever talked about in in their birthing story wasn't a part of it. We
just went into the room. I said it's time to have the baby because I was
ready to be done. Now it was an easy, easy, easy delivery. I remember even
thinking ahead, I'm going to be getting up on my feet and squatting. I
could be I because I used to say to people I literally could deliver in a
field, pick up the child and move on and work because I was just such a
worker, such a midwestern girl. And I literally went back home with the
baby the next day and thought I'm waiting for somebody to come back from
Brazil to get their child. And I started nursing the baby. And you know
how, even if you don't think you're bonding with a child, you are bonding
with a child, you might not be looking at your child and thinking, oh,
they have their father's eyes or they have a nose like their grandfather.
Those weren't the thoughts. I think it's the un verbal moments. It's the
back and forth, symbiotic energy between you and your child and, and this
is where it changes. I see the father now with this child in his arms,
this baby with his father and the way he holds him and I think, oh, this
is what this older father, now, this father now is 51 years old who's
never raised any of his kids. He has four other Children. He's never
raised here. He is in front of me and I am seeing him for the first time
in this loving parental role. And I think this is his child. I'm letting
him bond with this child. Maybe I'm letting him bond with this child
because I don't want him to leave. And so for about the next week,
although I was nursing the baby, I knew I was psychologically stepping
back. This was really more about him having this time and I start to
realize this baby is not leaving us, baby is not going anywhere. I
remember the adoption person came to us, the family came back and we had
to take the baby. We wrote down a name. I didn't choose the name, the
baby's father chose his name Ansel Jackson. I remember he'd seen a number
of Ansel Adams PBS documentaries. I think the name was in his mind, but it
also connected to my work as an artist and doing large landscape paintings
, my drawings, they, there was a visual connection. So he chose the name
and he went along with the idea that we were gonna still adopt this baby.
But somewhere in my mind, I thought, I don't know if we're really, really
doing this, but we did get in the car, we did go to the family's home and
we left that baby for a night. We drove back home without the baby.
And I got up the next morning and I walked in my backyard and I screamed,
what have I done? What have I done? What have I done?
And so
I called the mo the new mother
and I begged for my child back and I cried and I begged and I begged and I
cried and I didn't have a leg to stand on. And they politely argued with
me very politely, very kind and said, we don't have to do this. And I said
, of course, I know you don't have to, I know you don't have to do this
for me. And they agreed to let me come and get and get my son. So I drive
and I pick up this child and I pull this child from this woman's arms.
This mother was so good. She looked at her daughter, her five year old at
the time and said, well, let's just think of it as we took care of the
baby for a night and that he was our baby for a night and that was good
enough for us. I quite thought, man, that's a good mother. She's weeping,
I'm weeping. Everyone's crying. No one's happy. And I know I have broken
hearts. I have broken a family. I look at a grandmother there visiting and
she tells me you've broken hearts and I know I've broken hearts. I know
everyone hates me and I'm in turmoil and pain. There's nothing happy about
it and we take the baby home and I'm not happy the baby's with us, but I'm
not happy. I did this very hurtful thing and I was going to have to do a
lot of soul searching trying to make everything ok with people. And I
remember driving to the Walmart and thinking, what am I doing? What am I
doing? What am I doing now? I have a baby living with me in my adult life.
My very manicured, perfect adult life. There's nowhere in my house. Have
I thought about a child coming or what's gonna happen? But I'm in, I'm a,
I'm in a situation light years different than I was 20 years before when I
had my first child. And yet I wasn't prepared at all, but I was told I, I
knew you don't really need, you don't need color schemes in a bedroom. And
a mural painted none of that is necessary. You need some diapers. And so I
went to Walmart and got diapers and thought, I can't believe this is
happening and we're moving forward with this. But this is what we're doing.
And it really became a one day at a time. Really, really, really slowly,
there was no excitement of a family. There were no phone calls, there were
no flowers, there was nothing that said this is a cherished experience.
Instead, it was this beautiful child that came to a broken home.
But the thing that became magical about this child is that Jack Ansel
Jackson has always been known as Jack began the beginning of a family.
There were remnants of, of his family everywhere when he was born and all
of these siblings started to meet each other. The two brothers in Los
Angeles met for the first time and became very close adore each other and
a family started to come together that had never been a family. Suddenly,
Jack had two parents he was growing up with and Christopher had two
parents living in a house for the first time that knew each other. And he
had the older brother that he had always prayed for but never knew that he
had that he's very, very close with as an adult. And he had the younger
brother that he always wanted. And this family that had no connection
throughout its seeming life suddenly now is coalescing around this baby
like he's the fire. He's the fire that holds us all together and we all
couldn't get close enough to him.