Love Never Fails
The True Life Story of Barbara Hailey, and Elizabeth Christenson
Love is the most powerful force on earth… Love
is born of its’ own desire. It can move any mountain, transcend sorrow and pain, and can heal a
million tears that flow out of a shattered and broken heart. We may feel lost, but love always finds
its’ way home. Love is where miracles live, and
the greatest miracle of life, is the day a woman
gives birth to her child.
This is a story of the miracle of love. This is
the story of a young woman who gave birth to
a beautiful daughter, in an unforgiving time in
history. This is a woman who had the strength of
integrity, to give her baby up for adoption. Her
decision was made in love, and for the better
good of the child. Her unselfish decision, lives
on today, through a beautiful daughter and two
wonderful grandchildren. This is their story.
This is the story of a mother and daughter bound
together by the miracle of love. This is the story
of two great women, told in their own words.
This is the story of Barbara Hailey, and Elizabeth
Christenson: Mother… and Daughter.
A Mother’s Story
Written By: Barbara Hailey
I had closed and bolted a door: suddenly, 27 years later it sprang
open.It opened and in walked a beautiful, tall, slender, brown eyed
woman… my daughter. The “baby” I had given into the care of
another woman, oh so many years ago. There she was, standing
before me, full grown.At that moment I felt like I was detached and
observing myself, as in a play.
This meeting between my birth daughter, Elizabeth, her then husband
Eric, my husband Hailey and myself, had been arranged during a phone
conversation which started out very directly: “Hello, did you have a
daughter on Sept 16, 1967 in California?” The words most birth
mothers of my age, and older, are dreading to hear.
As I recall the conversation, I was very cold at first and suspect of this
woman who had so abruptly turned my world upside down. My long
buried secret was about to come back to life and I was scared.
Questions flooded my mind. “Why is she calling now?” “What does
she want of me?” “What will people think of me when they find out?”
As I was to find out later, she is very in touch with, and quickly picks
up on other people’s feelings. She sensed my apprehension and
immediately began rattling off all her “clinical” reasons for the call.
After a few awkward moments of conversation, we both seemed to let
our guards down a bit and ask the questions we had held locked away
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in that secret part of our consciousness’ for so many years.
I was truly saddened to find out her mother, Florence, had passed on
– because in truth, the gift of a child is the greatest gift one woman can
give another woman. I would love to have gotten to know her. In a way,
I have:the more I get to know “our” daughter.
Back to the night we met, Hailey had arranged for us to meet at the hotel
where we stayed when he and I had married. Two of the happiest adventures of my life, began in the same place: a cottage at the Alta Mira Hotel
in Sausalito, California.
What started out with trepidation and fear, has become one of the most
meaningful, joyous, and enriching relationships of my life. Elizabeth has
embraced me with the same inclusive attitude she has expressed toward
her birth father and his five children, her stepmother Carla and her
family, and the new wife of her ex-husband, Eric. Our numerous hours
spent in long phone conversations, have proven to me, that not only have
physical genes transferred from mother to daughter, but also spiritual and
emotional genes as well.
But as my daughter says: “that’s another story.”
Suffice it to say, she embraced with love her extended family, just the
way I had embraced my late husband’s ex-wife and their children. I’m
filled with love and pride at the grace with which she leads her life.
I am blessed, to be a part of it.
Woman
TEXAS
FREDERICKSBURG