Brief History

At age 18 you are at a legal age to drink in some states, vote, get a job, make important decisions in your life, and other adult things. But in the 80s (don't know about now) you could not search for your natural parents until you turned 21, unless you had your adoptive parents permission.

So after I turned 21 1/2 years old, I met my mom at the same adoption agency that she placed me at. We met in person for about 3 hours. It was the day before Thanksgiving Day. In that 3 hours, we found out that I grew up really close to where she lived. She invited me over for Thanksgiving and I declined. I had just met the mother that I had wondered about since I was 6 years old. I had a lot of processing to do.

That Thanksgiving year was the next to the worst Thanksgiving holiday I had ever had in my life. (I hate to say it, but this year was the worst!) It was very hard for me to have a good Thanksgiving that year, because I had chosen to not tell my adoptive parents that I had met my mother face to face. I didn't tell them for a year and a half later. After Thanksgiving, my mother and I wrote back and forth. I sure wished we would have had email back in those days. But no, we had to wait for the postman to arrive and made a few phone calls.

A few months after we wrote back and forth, I couldn't put what I was feeling about my mother together and it was stressing out my life, so I chose to severe our relationship. She didn't try to correspond with me after that.

Finally, 3 years later, I picked up phone and called her. We talked for hours on the phone for a few nights a week. This ended a month later and I quit calling and she didn't call me.

Years had past and I would pick up the phone and call every now and then just to say "hey" and catch up on our lives. In the mid-90s, I finally went to visit her at her house and met my sister and brother. They are 4 and 5 years younger than me. My sister and I, well let's put it this way, we still don't talk and it is not because of me. My brother and I have been in contact ever since and we are really, really close. We are just alike and enjoy being together.

For the next 10 years, my nmom and I would talk on the phone every year and a half and see each other about every 3 years. My brother and I would talk and see each other a lot, so I would keep up what was going on in the family through him.

This past September, I drove to her house, on a weekend, and spent some time with her. We started talking on the phone a couple of times a week and I started spending time with her on most weekends. I took my children one weekend to introduce them to her. In November, she couldn't handle the relationship that we were developing and told me that she was severing the relationship and hoped that I would have a good life.

Since then I have backed off and am starting to try to develop a relationship with her very slowly and at the same time trying to deal with my feelings that I have had all my life. I know she really didn't mean the things she has said to me about severing the relationship, because I have said the same in the past. So far now, it taking it slow and trying to heal.