My brother was adopted by my parents before I was born in the late 1960s. He learned about this when we were kids, and I think it affected him a lot as we grew up - I think he felt very alone even tho we were both loved. I know he has always wanted to know who his birth parents were. Over the years he tried in vain to get info from the state where he was adopted, but those records are sealed and he never got any headway with that avenue. He does have some psychological issues and wanted to know if anyone else in his family had the same, to understand better what is going on with him. Our parents could not shed much light for him, either, other than a few documents that did not provide much info. They are both gone now.
Fast forward to 2019. He did the 23 & Me test and lo and behold, via a few twists and turns, got a match with someone. The long and short of it is that he was able to identify both birth parents (they are both still alive!). Eventually, he made contact via email, and then phone with his birth mother, who is very interested in this revelation. The birth parents split-up several years after they gave him up for adoption, and lead separate lives. It turns out he has a full younger brother, and younger half-brothers and sisters, and as he learned more, a couple of extended families related to his birth parents. Turns out he’s not so alone.
Anyway, he has had regular conversations with the birth mother and they will be in our area due to a family commitment in the coming months, and she has proposed visiting him. He is a little hesitant about this - he only wanted to know about their medical history as it relates to his, not having a relationship. I have been encouraging him to do this as it may be the one and only time in his life for this to happen (for a variety of reasons). Since they are coming to him there is little risk. He has arranged for meeting at a neutral location (not his home). I have offered to be there as well in support. Note: we are both in our early 50s.
This is a most unusual thing to occur, right? I am curious how this may go. I guess either good or bad or ?? Has anyone here been thru this experience, or known anyone who has? Either as the adopted or as the sibling of the adopted? Thx
Yep, met my birth mother in 1996, we still keep in touch to this day, regularly visit her and her family each summer. Got 2 gorgeous sisters and 3 cute nieces out of the deal. Both her and my adoptive mother have met several times, get along famously.
Note: I had just moved to NJ for graduate school before I commenced the search. Not only was she living a mere 25 miles north of my apartment, her youngest daughter had worked under the same professor 2 years before I did.
My sis gave up her son for adoption in 1983 when she was 17 - no way could she have cared for him. She’d always kept the adoption agency apprised of her contact info, in case he sought her. A few years back, she had the agency forward a letter to him, and they eventually met. At that point, she learned she was also a grandmother!
We’ve all met him, as well as his adoptive parents. My sis keeps in touch with him, even tho he lives halfway across the country now. It’s been a pretty positive experience for both sides. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, he was in town, so my sis, my mom, and the adoptive parents all went to lunch together.
A very close relative used Ancestry’s DNA services to identify the parents who had given her up for adoption 54 years before. It was a long and difficult process but My Relative was determined to find out about her genetic history.
Both parents were still alive (in their mid-70’s), and MR contacted both of them. It turns out they’d divorced 48 years ago, remarried new partners, and yet remained close friends to this day.
To make a very long story short- it went better than any sane person might have hoped for. One year later MR and both her bio-parents are enjoying their new loving, happy relationships, and all three consider themselves extremely lucky. If I were religious I’d call it a miracle.
When my dad was 14 and his girlfriend was 13 she got pregnant and the baby boy was given up for adoption. Fast forward 40 odd years later and we met him - the spitting image of my dad. Turns out he was a Nazi and yada, yada, yada - haven’t seen him in many years.
Yes. My first wife and I realized we were unfit parents and put our infant daughter Eve up for adoption. Eve found me 30 years later and we’re now close. Her birth mother, who married my ex-best friend, wants nothing to do with Eve, but her mother’s fairly famous sister stays in touch. I’m not “Dad” but I do okay as “Grandpa”. It all works out.
My old neighbor, who is in her late 50s, went looking for her birth parents a few years ago, and located her mother in the next state, and last I heard, they’d spoken on the phone a few times and exchanged pictures. She also told her the name of her birth father, and she not only found out that he lives just a few blocks from the place where she lives now and she can literally see his house from her window, but that the birth mother had never told him that she was pregnant.
Haven’t seen her in a while, so IDK what’s happened since.
I also used to work with a woman who knew only that her birth mother was 16 and her birth father was in his late 20s. (see footnote) As an adult, she located her birth mother; they have exchanged pictures and spoken on the phone, but have not met because the birth mother says she “isn’t ready” and may never be. Reading between the lines, I suspect the birth father is deceased; he’d be in his 60s by now. She has a half-sister from the birth mother; they have met, as have their spouses and children, and they have been welcomed into each others’ families.
(Footnote) I had worked with her at the grocery store pharmacy, when she was just out of high school. This store was in a town with a high poverty rate, and one day, she told me, “I always knew I was adopted, and it was something I never really thought about until I started working here. Now, I’m really grateful that my mother gave me up, because I see all these women come in here with their kids and no husband, no education, no job, no money, and no hope, and I know that’s what my life would have been like if she had kept me.”
I think you are right going slow into this like meeting in a neutral area. Yes, many stories are good but you might not want to suddenly be burdened with the problems of a new set of family members. For example, what would you do if you find out your birth mother is homeless and living on the streets and needs money?
My husband’s bio-brother found him in around 1991 or 1992. I don’t remember exactly the order of things- but within a year, we had met the brother, the two half-sisters and the mother and had visited the brother and his family, who live about six hours away ( the mother and sisters at that time all lived in NYC). I agree about going slow. My husband didn’t, and he ended up with a number of expectations that he didn’t really want and didn’t anticipate- for example, spending holidays or part of them or having alternate celebrations with the bio-family. He refers to siblings as his brother and sisters ( at least partially because he was raised as an only child), but does not refer to his bio-mother as his mother, which causes some friction occasionally. There’s a certain lack of boundaries in this family (or maybe it’s just that they treat my husband as if they grew up with him) and my husband wasn’t really prepared for that and therefore did not set the boundaries that he later wished he had. He didn’t go looking for them but overall, I think he’s happy to have met them , but he would have preferred to have more of a “friend” relationship with them, rather than figuring out how to juggle two Thanksgiving dinners and so on.
Thanks for the comments. Sounds like this is likely to be a positive experience for my brother, but there is some risk of obligation or hurt feelings if the relationship does not flourish.
I agree with doreen regarding the boundaries and going slow. I have encouraged my brother to establish boundaries and remind him that he gets to decide what those are. Don’t want them to know your address, you don’t need to tell them. Don’t want to feel required to spend time with them after the meeting, don’t, etc. I also told him that he is likely to get cold feet prior to the meeting and that is natural, and to push thru those feelings, but he also reserves the right to cancel the whole thing if that is what he determines is best for him. My guidance is basically to keep all options open as long as possible without closing doors, even if that means being intentionally vague with them at times.
He is worried about being scammed somehow, but I reminded him that he does not have a lot of assets and essentially does not have a lot to lose. He can protect his privacy while moving forward with this meeting by carefully managing the boundaries. MHO is that these people are genuine in their interest, and from what he has told me they are all normal people with homes and jobs and obligations just like anyone else. But, I tend to assume the best in people from the outset (until they do something that changes things), and my brother is more pessimistic.
54 years later, Bio-Mom says it was the biggest mistake of her life and she’d regretted it ever since; Bio-Dad says he’d never stopped feeling terrible about it but still knows it was the right thing to do. He points out that the very unhappy life of a second child (two years later, who they kept) proved him right.
Better late than never- at 76 he and his ex-wife are now the proud happy (bio)parents of a happy, successful 54 year woman.
I also worked with a woman who had been adopted at birth around 1970. Naturally, she was curious about her birth parents, but she knew enough about that kind of thing that she probably didn’t want to know what happened: that her mother was raped, or didn’t want to give her up, or that her parents had been in prison or a mental institution, that kind of thing. The person she was really interested in contacting and thanking was the social worker who decided that her mom and dad would be her mom and dad. Of course, her life hadn’t been perfect - nobody’s is - but she knew she had the right parents for her.
I also heard about a man who located his birth mother, and she lived in the region and agreed to meet him at a coffee shop. He showed up with a big flower arrangement and balloons that said things like “Thank You” and “I Love Mom”, and when he showed up at the coffee shop, he reached out to hug her and she held up her hand and said, “Not so fast. Let’s go sit down.” She then proceeded to tell him that she had given him up for a reason, and that reason was because she never wanted to see him again, and had agreed to meet him only because she felt it was best to tell him this in person. They got up and left, and he dropped off the balloons and flowers at a nursing home.
He may have scared her off. His approach was over the top and jumping the gun, IMO, although never having been in his situation I’m in no position to judge. Regardless, I’m surprised there haven’t been more stories like this in the thread. I’d think it can’t be uncommon. Maybe those of us with happier stories are more prone to talk about it.
What a sad story. It does point out the necessity to take things slow in cases like this, though.
Turns out my aunt placed a child for adoption when she was 15, back in the early Sixties. None of us ever knew anything about it, though it’s notable that when she got married, she named her first child after the one she had given up. It must have been so traumatic for her. He finally tracked her down just a few months after she died.
Today my kid knows his birthmother’s name and address and could call her up any time he felt like it (so far he hasn’t). I think society has moved in the right direction on this issue.
My best friend is adopted, and got in touch with her birth mother sometime in the 90s. She also found out she had a bunch of half-brothers and sisters. She saw her mother a few times, and hit it off with one of the siblings, but the relationships never developed and they are now only occasionally in touch in Facebook. It was a positive experience in that it answered a lot of questions and doubts, but she also learned things that were shocking and upsetting. Overall, she says she is glad she did it.
There’s a TV program on TLC (I think) called Long Last Family, and I have become addicted to it. They’re always showing successes. The few unsuccessful ones are usually finding someone “who isn’t ready to meet yet,” but they always have another person who does want to meet. It’s obvious that any reunions they film are done at neutral places, as has been recommended here.
My mother in law gave up a daughter, and when the daughter was an adult they reunited.
And while they have formed a relationship, it hasn’t been easy for either of them. But has remained intact for 30 years now. In part because my mother in law is a doormat operating off guilt.
But my husband and I won’t have her in our house, which hurts my mother in law (my “sister” in law is very religious - in the intolerant and vocal way - and we have a queer child - no one is telling our kid they are going to hell while seated at my kitchen table - well someone did, but there will not be another opportunity for her to do so).