Meltdowns like this are exactly why I would never, ever, ever give a child up for adoption.
You’re right, MrMyth. Sorry about that–I evidently missed where you started off the sentence with “You think…”.
No offense intended.
None taken.
Well, Persephone, it’s all well and good for you to say that this selfish bitch is looking out for elmwood, but if she had even the merest three brain cells to rub together, she would have thought all of this out before she contacted him.
What effect did she think it was going to have, getting in touch with a long-lost son only to tell him that, for the sake of family harmony, he still has to be the dirty little secret? It’s not like it’s a simple matter of not telling the daughter and still introducing elmwood around to everyone else; the fact is, for the secret to successful, he will have to be kept away from all family gatherings, and probably all the family except the mother and two sons.
I understand that this woman probably knows the way her daughter thinks, and that she’s concerned about the effects this news might have on her, but if she wasn’t willing to bring him fully into the family right now, she should have left him the fuck alone until she was ready.
Despite your protestations to the contrary, Persephone, it sounds like this woman is thinking more about herself than she is about anyone else.
And elmwood, i wish you all the best in this awful situation. I’d probably ride it out a little longer, because i think that SkipMagic’s “loose lips and sinking ships” observation is right on the mark. Families often have secrets, but i think it’s hard to keep something like this quiet, especially among siblings.
If time and/or family gossip don’t change things, however, i’d be tempted to contact your sister if i were you. I know that this might sour the relatinship with the rest of the family, but if it were me in your position, i’d have a real problem having a decent relationship with my birth mother under the circumstances that you describe. I would be very bitter about the way she handled the whole reunion experience. But that’s just me. 
Good luck.
This has to be, quite honestly, one of the most ignorant and uneducated things I’ve ever heard. Especially considering the option of open adoption that is available to every birthmother now.
Having kids is a gamble. Whether you raise them yourself, or you make the decision to place them with adoptive parents, that in many states, you can choose yourself and meet with before the child is born. Unless you have a crystal ball that can tell you the outcome of an adoption 20 years down the road, foreseeing a ‘meltdown like this’ is not only improbable, but also unlikely, as there are many happy endings that we don’t always hear about.
Not knowing you, or your background, I can only hope that you have never had to contemplate giving up a child. If the selfish reason given above is your deciding factor, and not the health and well-being of the child, then your head and heart aren’t where they need to be.
elmwood, your birthmother should never have agreed to a reunion if she wasn’t prepared to have you meet and become part of her entire family. I realize that doesn’t do much for the pain your are feeling, but just as the decision she made when she gave birth to you was hers, so is this one. Luckily, unlike the decision she made when you were born, you have a say in this one. Or a course of action, at least. Keep in touch with your brothers if they are agreeable to that, but distance yourself from her, and make sure she understands your reasons why. She can’t make decisions for you, but she can be made to understand that her decision will have consequences where you and your siblings are concerned, and they may not be pleasant ones.
Best wishes to you, and feel free to email me if you want to talk. My address is in my profile. I am a birthmother, and the way yours has treated you makes my heart sick.
mhendo -
Bullshit. In most adoption contact situations you have very little information to work from. She and he contacted each other. It is possible that one or both of them would like:
- Mearly to touch base, say “I’m well” and move on
- Want to pass on health information
- Establish a one on one relationship that does not extend beyond themselves
- Establish a bigger relationship
- Pick up like nothing ever happened and create a family
Sounds to me like elmwood has his sights someplace between 4 and 5 and birthmom is realistically between 1 and 4 (although she also may harbor hopes that they’d be able to get to 5). Is it selfish if she only wants to let him know she is ok and want to know he is ok? She probably hasn’t thought everything out - it may have been years between her deciding to start and search and her and elmwood getting into contact - the contact part she may not have a lot of control over when it happens. This situation with his sister could be a momentary glitch - when she gets over this current stress, birthmom may tell her. There may be something going on that wasn’t happening when the search was started.
This sort of disconnect happens all the time between adoptees and birthparents - its a normal part of the reunion process - establishing these boundries and expectations. And very often each individual has different boundries and expectations.
Adoption reunions are anything but the magical moment seen in the “movie of the week” or covered in Good Housekeeping magazines. Realistically, they are messy, disappointing, fulfilling, wonderful and horrible experiences that create complex relationships that take a lot of time to sort out. Everyone has mixed feelings - often neither birthmom nor adoptee has completely forgiven the birthmom for the adoption. For my husband, having a sister that was not raised in the same house because his dad was too darn selfish for a baby, discovering that his sister is a conservative Christian (he - and the whole family are liberal atheists), trying to work her into the family - well the whole situation kind of screams “dysfunctional.” And its been TWENTY YEARS since contact was established. And NOBODY has done anything but work to make the situation work (well, except my sister in laws adoptive mother - who was very jealous and did everything she could to undermine the relationships my sister in law tried to establish with her birth family. Oh, and my asshat of a father in law, who is less interested in her now than when she was born).
(Which reminds me, elmwood, you may want to contact an adoption agency or counselor that can help with reunion issues and perhaps reunion mediation. They are out there).
(((((elmwood)))))
Wow, what a totally awful situation. I’ve no advice for you, but I hope things work out somehow.
Dangerosa:
Whatever.
She chose to make the contact, and she should have thought things out in advance. Your suggestion that “she only wants to let him know she is ok and want to know he is ok” is a bit disingenuous, considering that we have been told that she promised him that he would “never have to worry about feeling alone,” implying that he would be a part of the family, or at least would be friends with the family. To then say that she can “never, never, ever, ever” tell his own sister that he even exists is pretty fucked up in my opinion. She would have been kinder to leave him alone until she worked out how to really iintroduce him to the whole family.
No-one ever said that these things are easy, or that they all go like fairy tales, but her lack of consideration and foresight has had hurtful consequences. And if elmwood’s story is the way it happened, then the main reason she has for not telling the daughter is that the daughter might get angry at the mother for having kept it a secret for so long. Well, that’s certainly something she could have thought of long ago. My opinion is that the whole “just graduated from RIT so she’ll be stressed” thing is nothing more than plain old sophistry to justify a selfish decision. So what if she just graduated from college? Tens of thousands of Americans do that every year. As TeaElle argued, the fact that she managed to graduate suggests that she’s an intelligent adult who should be able to evaluate the situation and understand why things happened the way they did.
I make absolutely no judgements about the woman’s decision to give elmwood up for adoption all those years ago; such decisions are very hard and should not be second-guessed. But, having been given a second chance to get to know him, she then just ends up hurting him again though selfishness, thoughtlessness, or lack of planning. And that just sucks, IMO.
You’re right. It does suck. And I never said elmwood didn’t have the right to be angry about it. In fact, I said quite the opposite. Here, I’ll even quote myself:
And this?
Foolish. It wouldn’t just sour his relationship with his birthmother. It would sour her relationship with her daughter. And his relationship with everyone else in the family.
He said in the OP that his birthmother is 55 years old. Well, my own mother is 56. She gave up a daughter for adoption 37 years ago (my older sister, with whom we were reunited in 1988). I never knew about my sister until the day we met. Why? Because things were different in 1966, when my sister was born. Adoptions were closed, and you didn’t talk about them. My mom was afraid she’d let us down by telling us. She’d raised us to not have that sort of thing happen, you know?
Well, it did anyway. To me. And I chose an open adoption. And my mother was with me every step of the way. But still, she didn’t tell me about my sister, because now I was the one who had a choice to make (I was 20–old enough to make the choice), and she didn’t want to influence me. She’d have stood by me no matter what I’d chosen (and she has since then, trust me). But two months after I relinquished my daughter, my sister showed up.
It’s been wonderful. But. I’m not talking out of my ass when I try and tell elmwood what I think might be going on. I’ve been through it. With my own daughter, and my own mother. It was joyous at first. Then it got shaky. Now it’s great. Because no one stopped talking. No one stopped sharing. No one did anything in anger to hurt anyone. We talked. Sometimes we screamed and cried got really really mad, but we worked our shit out.
That’s all I’m suggesting that elmwood do. Stepping back for a bit won’t hurt. But walking out completely might.
Elmwood, my SO went through a similar situation upon meeting his birth mother. The only twist is that she’ll call him every so often for them to have lunch (or whatever), then doesn’t show. No explanation. She does it time and again, putting SO through the emotional wringer.
He finally decided that the pain wasn’t worth in fostering any sort of relationship with her.
Does it bring up a lot of issues? Hell, yes! Sometimes I wonder why she found him in the first place. Their initial meeting not only raised a lot of issues around why he was adopted and his sister wasn’t (birth mother kept her), but also fractured SO’s relationship with his family, and, more import, his sense of self. I’ve never met the woman. I’m sure she must’ve had conflicting feelings contacting him. But seeing what her contacting SO did to him…
(((((Elmwood))))))
She was looking for me for about 15 years. I was looking for about four months. She hired a private detective agency, which came up with a list of names of all kids born in Buffalo on my birthdate. She tole me that she used to get depressed on my birthday. Her early letters were along the lines of “new extended family!” Definitely 4 on the scale.
Me, I’d like to head to 4 eventually, but right now it’s 3.5. It’s hard bonding with brothers, when you have grown up an only child.
The thing is … early on, there were all these promises of a new extended family, with closer bonds after my parents pass away; I couldn’t think of my borth mom as “mom,” but there was the promises of a support network that would have otherwise been nonexistent when my parents pass away. Now, though, there’s no prospect of that. That’s one of the things that bothers me … the PROMISES that my future would not be lonely, only to be told later that … oops, I think of you as a “lie” and a “secret,” code words for "bastard child whose existence shall not be mentioned.
Though she may have been looking for you for a number of years, actually meeting and developing a relationship with her long-lost son will probably take a while. Keep in mind that she’s probably dealing with some guilt issues–and those don’t disappear overnight.
Personally, I think the biggest remedy to her hesitation at this point will be if (and “when”, hopefully) your sister finds out about you (assuming she hears about it from her mom or your brothers). I don’t know her, but if she has the smarts to finish college, my guess is that she has the smarts to deal with a brother she never knew. Once your birth mom sees that, she’ll probably shed a lot of her doubts, fears and personal roadblocks.
Like it has been mentioned: this is new for the both of you, so taking it slow and heaping tons of patience on your birth mom will probably prove to be the best course of action (or inaction as it is). If you rush things, they (or she) might pull away for fear of her or the kids she has raised being hurt.
Also keep in mind that your birth mom as of yet doesn’t know you as a person, so any decisions she makes now are largely based on her fears, doubts and personal baggage. She doesn’t know enough of you yet to make personal judgements (at least valid ones), so–hard as it may be–try not to take these relatively “sudden” hesitations on her part to be a condemnation of you.
After all, you didn’t spin your head and throw up split-pea soup at our Dopefest, so that’s a bonus character trait. 
Thanks for the hugs, everybody.
Right now, I’m in Buffalo, with the 'rents. Skip, I’ll be heading back to KC on Sunday, arriving on Monday night.
Tomorrow, I’m going to draft a letter to the birth mother. Really, I’m amazed at the rational thought that is behind many of these posts. It gives me a lot of ideas about how to collect my thoughts, what to say.
Adoptive Mom – REAL MOM – is pretty POed as well. She thinks my birth mother’s actions are cruel, selfish, and very illogical. Why let the sons know, her best friend know, her mother know, but not my sister, her daughter? We mulled this over lunch, and came up with only two things that make sense.
-
Birth mom really is incredibly selfish, in valuing her short term inconvenience over a slightly miffed daughter more than the long-term torment that I’ll face.
-
My sister could have gotten pregnant in high school or college. Birth mom forced my sister to have an abortion. If my sister finds out about me, she’ll be very resentful of her mother’s actions … “Why did I have to give up my kid, when you had yours?”
Purely speculative, of course.
The past few days, my 'rents have never heard me swear so much. Most of the profanity was in reference to birth mom.
Thanks for the hugs, everybody.
Right now, I’m in Buffalo, with the 'rents. Skip, I’ll be heading back to KC on Sunday, arriving on Monday night.
Tomorrow, I’m going to draft a letter to the birth mother. Really, I’m amazed at the rational thought that is behind many of these posts. It gives me a lot of ideas about how to collect my thoughts, what to say.
Adoptive Mom – REAL MOM – is pretty POed as well. She thinks my birth mother’s actions are cruel, selfish, and very illogical. Why let the sons know, her best friend know, her mother know, but not my sister, her daughter? We mulled this over lunch, and came up with only two things that make sense.
-
Birth mom really is incredibly selfish, in valuing her short term inconvenience over a slightly miffed daughter more than the long-term torment that I’ll face.
-
My sister could have gotten pregnant in high school or college. Birth mom forced my sister to have an abortion. If my sister finds out about me, she’ll be very resentful of her mother’s actions … “Why did I have to give up my kid, when you had yours?”
Purely speculative, of course.
The past few days, my 'rents have never heard me swear so much. Most of the profanity was in reference to birth mom.
Thanks for the hugs, everybody.
Right now, I’m in Buffalo, with the 'rents. Skip, I’ll be heading back to KC on Sunday, arriving on Monday night.
Tomorrow, I’m going to draft a letter to the birth mother. Really, I’m amazed at the rational thought that is behind many of these posts. It gives me a lot of ideas about how to collect my thoughts, what to say.
Adoptive Mom – REAL MOM – is pretty POed as well. She thinks my birth mother’s actions are cruel, selfish, and very illogical. Why let the sons know, her best friend know, her mother know, but not my sister, her daughter? We mulled this over lunch, and came up with only two things that make sense.
-
Birth mom really is incredibly selfish, in valuing her short term inconvenience over a slightly miffed daughter more than the long-term torment that I’ll face.
-
My sister could have gotten pregnant in high school or college. Birth mom forced my sister to have an abortion. If my sister finds out about me, she’ll be very resentful of her mother’s actions … “Why did I have to give up my kid, when you had yours?”
Purely speculative, of course.
The past few days, my 'rents have never heard me swear so much. Most of the profanity was in reference to birth mom.
Or not.
Perhaps birthmother just didn’t <i>want</i> her kids to deal with the trauma of unwanted pregnancy. So she tried to get them to avoid it altogether instead.
I was 16 when my mom learned that I was sexually active. My mom didn’t tell me about my sister then. Because she knew then, and I know now, that I’d have taken it as a “my mom did it, and she survived” type of green light. No, my mom never tried to convince me that she was pure and virginal. She really didn’t say anything about what she was like when she was my age.
See, she was in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. She didn’t want me to go through what she’d gone through, but like I said, telling me that she too had been sexually active would have come across as the “do as I say, not as I did” sort of hypocrisy that drives teenagers absolutely batshit. But if she’d told me that she’d gotten pregnant too, she knew I’d think (at the time) “well, my mom lived. So will I.”
I didn’t understand what a hard spot my mom had been in with me until I met my sister. My mother had been my staunchest supporter when I made an adoption plan. But I know that it broke her heart–not so much that I was pregnant, but that I was having to make the decision as to what to do with that pregnancy. But, I was 20. She couldn’t tell me what to do, like her parents had done.
Then my sister came along. When my mom told me, all I could do was cry and hug her and say “you gave a baby up for adoption too! You knew all along what I was going through!” I knew why she hadn’t been angry, and why she hadn’t abandoned me, even though she had tried so hard to learn me how NOT to get pregnant.
It’s a combination of a lot of things. Trying to set a good example for your kids, even though you haven’t been one in the past, is something your kids will see as hypocrisy. Because kids see things in black and white, not gray like us grown-ups do. And there’s the shame. The shame I’m sure she felt back when you were born.
I don’t know your birthmother. So maybe she is selfish and immature. But if she’s been looking for you for 15 years…do you really think she hasn’t imagined every possible scenario?
Again, maybe her way isn’t the best way. And I do agree with you being pissed off about it. But you might want to rethink your opinion just a tad.
Write your letter to her. Then pitch it and write it again. Then pitch that one and write it *again. * And keep doing that until what you’ve got in front of you comes out as rational, righteous, well-expressed anger instead of venomous hatred. It’s like Great Debates. Share your view, express your opinion, and back it up honestly (although in your letter to her, you obviously don’t have to provide actual cites)…and maybe you’ll get her to change her mind.
Good luck to you.
Oh, and have I told you how much I loathe the terms “real” and “natural” when it comes to parents? It implies that one or the other set of parents is “unreal” or “unnatural” in some way. You have a mom, and you have a birthmother (or biological mother–some people prefer that term). So just refer to your adoptive mom (argh…sometimes even using the term “adoptive” grates on me) as your “mom,” and we’ll know who you’re talking about. 
Man, that is so fucked up. What a jerk.
I know this doesn’t help, but I mean it, and hope you will take it to heart: this person is absolutely not worth having in your life. At all.
I don’t fault her for giving you up to begin with. There are all kinds of reasons that women do this, and it is always an extremely difficult decision.
But she was actively looking for you for over a decade, and then when she finds you, she will only accept you on her own terms. That is just bad parenting. I don’t think she’s a bad person, but I do think she’s really screwed up. If this is how she’s treating you, who needs it? Human relationships should be nurturing, and not only should we feel safe with the people closest to us (and who mean the most to us), but we should be able to learn from them (and they from us) and grow with them (ditto).
This won’t help, either, at least not right now, but it’s also true: There are many, many people in the world (or in this country, anyway) who, for one reason or another, have to divorce themselves from their families, and make new families by choosing people who love, admire, and accept them. It’s a big world out there, and there are better people.
Believe me, life is way too short to spend time with people like this woman who happened to give birth to you.
I think qts gave the very best advice:
That’s funny. Although the situation probably doesn’t seem very funny to you right now, elmwood. I hope the hurting stops soon–many of us feel your pain.
And another thing: it’s really important to realize that your mom’s refusal to be open with the entire family has absolutely nothing to do with you. This is about whatever convoluted and no doubt very messed up relationship she has with her daughter.
Although she’s rejecting you in a not-very-subtle way, it’s about her, and her anxieties, and her inability to achieve healthy adulthood. Too bad for her that she hasn’t figured out how to put her children’s needs and feelings first.
As an adopted person who has come very close to searching for my birth family and repeatedly backed off because I did not want to open a potentially messy can of worms I could not handle, I couldn’t have said what MrMyth said better, myself.