I always find it fascinating to learn about the lives that others live. This is why I love reading memoirs — because you get to experience another person’s life right along with them. Sometimes the journey ends up in a good place and other times not. And just like in life, you don’t know until you get there. All of this is true while reading "Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self" by Tracy Mayo.

The book reads much like a novel as opposed to a memoir. Tracy is a wonderful writer and often uses beautifully descriptive language as she tells her story — “Summer here is like a fully ripened garden – in abundance, but with a hint of decay”. She switches perspectives from time to time, allowing her to step away and see her younger self from her now adult perspective.

Right from the start, with the Table of Contents, I got pulled in immediately. It was so simple and, yet said so much about the story you are about to read:

Part One: Dazed

Part Two: Lost

Part Three: Found

Tracy’s story starts in the third person: “Before she moved into double room #12 on the first floor of the east wing of the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers, she had moved into a three-story Georgian on the Norfolk Naval Shipyard with her upright U.S. Navy father, her anxious mother, and their Shetland Sheepdog, Brandy…” Despite constantly moving from place to place as a result of her father’s career, she managed to make some good friends. In the summer of 1969 at 14 years old, she met 16-year-old Kenny and became his “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

But life was about to change for Tracy that summer.

Once she became pregnant, Tracy’s life ceased being her own. She lost all control. The decision was made for her to go to a home for unwed mothers and to put the baby up for adoption. It was all to be kept a secret; people were even told the lie that she was going to Seattle for a while to help her grandparents.

Tracy had bonded with her baby even before he was born. Once she was handed that “white bundle of cotton swaddling wearing a tiny knit blue hat” and his dark blue eyes met hers, he became a part of her forever. She named him Thomas Neal Mayo, a name he didn’t get to keep.

As she left the hospital after giving birth to her son she said, “Goodbye, baby Thomas … I make this promise to you: we will meet again someday.”

Even though she was told to forget the son she carried for 9 months and was forced to give up, she could never forget.

“For twenty-three years I lived as a mother without my child, but I was a mother, nonetheless. They said it would be best if I could forget, which only made me more determined to remember.”

The next section of the book is appropriately entitled “Lost,” which was truly how Tracy felt. She struggled with drugs, dropped out of school, and had a very hard time moving forward with her life. She never forgot her son and was constantly thinking about where he was and how he was doing.

The adoption was a closed adoption, but once he turned 18 if he wanted to find his birth parents the adoption agency could give “clues,” if not outright information. The only way that Tracy could survive was to come up with a strategy for herself: “I would give my son the years between 18 and 21 to find me. If by age 21, fully an adult then, he hadn’t knocked on my door, I would hereby give myself permission to search for him … extraordinary patience was required.”

I won’t give away the rest of the story but suffice it to say that the book had such an impact on me. It was emotional, heartbreaking, poignant, introspective, and hopeful all at the same time.

Part 3 is called “Found,” and it’s about more than just the search for her son. Tracy was also searching for herself. At one point she retrieved the one photo she had of baby Thomas and placed it between two others of herself. “… You at the NNSY pool in your yellow and blue polka dot bikini, wet hair streaked blonde … outsize smile, August 8, 1968. On the right, your Granby High junior year photo, October 1970, long black hair parted in the middle. Unsmiling. And there she was, before and after, that gutless girl.”

We all have regrets in our lives and things we would do differently. But some are bigger than us and impact not only our lives but others’ as well. And what is the eventual outcome? The resolution? Only time can tell. This memoir is well worth the trip to find out.