I posted the question “If you had to reduce a mother giving up her cild to one sound, what would it be?” on Instagram.

Here are the answers—(the indented comments are what others wrote—they are not my comments):

The sound that you see and feel but can’t audibly hear by the ears. It’s an empty sound that haunts the mind, after the glass shatters.

Silent screaming.

I second that.

Oh my. I’ve had a recurring dream about this since I was a child.

The sound you might make when their hand slips out of your on a 1000-foot fall.

Exactly.

The scream of someone being suffocated to death while everyone around says, “Nope. That’s not dying.”

In light of how absurd the world gets after coming out of the fog, how frustratingly hard it is to move through invalidation to come to my own story—in this moment in time all I can think of is a wheeze or a fart. Because the narrative that swathed me away from her and suffocated my core has made the action that probably took minutes to seconds, that ridiculous in sound to have such a lasting impact: wheeeeeeze pffff gone.

I was going to say fart! I swear!

Have you seen Ant Man where they go to “absolute void space”? And you can see but there’s nothing to hear? That’s where I went.

The most heartbreaking scream. Guttural. Shattering.

Something like the sound you make when your finger gets caught in the car door. The crunching plus the screaming.

For me it’s characterized by a frantic scanning accompanied by these words for the rest of the adoptee’s life: Where is she? Where is she? I am not safe! I am not safe! Where is she? I am not safe!, deeply rewiring the central nervous system from the very first day of separation.

Howling.

I feel all these sounds to my very core. Just goes to show how much trauma and pain are involved.

A strong wailing from the gut.

An echo in the darkness.

I have no words.

Silent scream.

Whatever it is…it reverberates and circles back again and again.

Shhhhhhh.

That’s a really tough question. I like and agree with the glass shattering. Or maybe the sound an animal would make while being eaten alive.

Violent barfing but stifled.

Screaming.

Remember the movie Alien with the tagline: in space no one can hear you scream? That.

Unwanted empty heartbeat.

Glass shattering all over.

Complete and utter silence. Over 50 years later…she maintains that cold, steely silence.

A silent scream.

Primal scream.

D# minor. Feelings of the anxiety of the soul’s deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depression, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.

A funeral dirge.

I have heard how a mother sounded who lost her child in childbirth, a bone-chilling, deep and guttural cry “No!”

SILENCE.

I imagine a POP.

White sound. I don’t even know why, but that sense of disconnection.

Deafness with a high-pitched ringing. Silence, eternal screaming.