Cedar had an interesting comment on my Why Oh Why post. She was very on target with her comments.
Yes, my mother wanted a mother-daughter relationship when we first met 18 years ago when I was 21 years old. But I shot that down after a few months of contact because I didn't go into my reunion to have a relationship with my mother. I found her to answer the questions I had had all my life. That was it. In fact my letter to her was, "thank you for meeting with me. I really appreciate you answering all the questions that I asked you and that was my whole purpose of meeting you. I do not want a relationship with you and I am sorry that I can't give that to you."
Now, don't shake your head in disgust. That was a long, long time ago and I was very young. As I was growing up, I had questions about my adoption that no one could answer except for my mother. My goal was to meet her, see what she looks like, ask her questions, tell her I was ok, and go on about my life. That was it. I NEVER, EVER imagined having a relationship with her especially a mother-daughter relationship. I didn't think I needed that. So after meeting with her, I had gotten everything I needed and never thought about what she wanted. After many letters (thank goodness we didn't have Internet back then), I felt that I couldn't handle her wanting something more than I wanted and thought I needed to tell her that I didn't want a relationship. Gosh, if I could go back in time and tell that 21 year old that it was ok to build a relationship or even consider a relationship with my mother, I would.
So here we are. After Cedar's comment, I never considered that my mother might still be keeping that in the back of her head. Does she have to relearn the last 18 years? I have moved on and am ready for a relationship. Why can't she? If I am part of her, and I can change my mind and rethink things, why can't she? Or am I more like my natural father? Is he like this and she is not? Don't know since I can't find him.
"Did she get counseling?", cedar asked. I do remember that 14 years ago, when we were sort of trying to build a relationship, she did finally go see a counselor to talk with, but I don't know what came of that. I am sure he told her that she could never have a mother-daughter relationship with me, so maybe she is going off of that. If that is the case, that was so many years ago, can we not make our own decisions now?
Cedar also said, "I wonder what your mother's expectations now are, what she feels are the boundaries she must respect, and if she feels that she must keep ALL her emotions and hopes to herself."
To answer this I must say, I am not a self-centered, it is all about me, person. Really I am not. But I do feel that I am the only one that is having issues about our relationship. I don't think my mother is having issues because she doesn't talk about them, or even give the slightest hint that she has issues. So that being said, my mother has expectations? boundaries she thinks she has to respect? and she feels she has to keep ALL her emotions and hopes to herself? You are kidding, right? I have never thought about this. My answer would be she doesn't care about all this, well, maybe the boundaries, but they are for her. I would think she is keeping boundaries for herself so that she doesn't get hurt, because she (I don't think) is confident enough to know that I am in this relationship for good and won't walk away.
Cedar's last comment: "This might sound harsh, but from my own experience my guess is that you taught her for 18 years that you don't want her as a mother -- this lesson she learned may take a LONG time to unlearn, if she can "unlearn" it at all."
Are you kidding? No way!!! I really get what happened in the BSE years and what happened to our mothers back then, but why can't she just decide to be happy. "Hey my daughter is finally back in my life, so now I am going to be happy and look to the future; not the past." If I can get past being angry for 39 years of my life, then why can't she get past her issues?
Can we not get in the same boat and flow down the river together?
We have had our ups and downs, our "in" the relationship and "out" of the relationship, but truth be told, we would rather be together than be apart.
The girls
About Me
- TheRightThing
- I am an adoptee that has been reunited for 20 years with my mother. Unfortunately, it took me 41 years to come to grips with being adopted and wanting to be a part of my natural family. I am hoping to allow myself to release the built up emotions that I carried through life and allow myself to have two families that I love very much.
5 comments:
I loved this line:
why can't she just decide to be happy.
Maybe she doesnt know what happy is? Seriously, i am not joking. My own mother has had such a miserable life that if things start to go well, or are calmn, she has to stir up trouble. She thrives on chaos. She has become so conditioned to angst = the way of life she has no concept of happy.
As a final note, I wanted to say I appreciate your honest and compassion and ability to see YOU and your mother. So many adoptees I see of late, it is all about them.
Its nice to see daughter care about herself and her mother and realize that both parties have to work at it and that both parties are traumatized.
As for the 21 yo you were, WOW, I know someone JUST LIKE THAT! Can you talk to her? Wink wink.
"but why can't she just decide to be happy. "Hey my daughter is finally back in my life, so now I am going to be happy and look to the future; not the past." If I can get past being angry for 39 years of my life, then why can't she get past her issues?"
I can only take a guess, and what i write below is ONLY a guess about her "process" as I don't know her and have never met her, so please accept it as such.
... my wild "stab in the dark" is that during that long break, you processed a lot, and when you finally took the overtures towards a relationship again, you were ready for one. Even subconsciously you may have worked on the issues, until you got to a point where you were "ready."
But, she on the other hand likely "processed" it in a completely different way.
It is only a guess, but based on some therapeutic methods i'm familiar with, the processing she did likely involved a LOT of emotional and psychic energy put towards achieving *closure* and thus being able to resolve grief. A therapist may have instructed her (quite rightly) that this was the ONLY healthy thing to do -- to finally grieve your complete and total loss. Her "helping profe$$ionals" may have got to to the point of emotionally relating to you as COMPLETELY and utterly dead/lost to her.
For her own health, she needed to go thru the grieving process and likely was aided in that, as the grief is crippling.
Now you have "come back from the dead" and of course she has no emotions -- because she only survived by finally accepting that the loss was permanent and grieving this loss until there was closure and peace inside, and nothing else but a fond memory.
I would be interested in finding out what the (likley various) therapists, counsellors, and/or family members told her to do to cope after you rejected her.
She is caught between a rock and a hard place, in several ways. And not only that, but she knows that you can't be honest with others about your relationship with her and have to "sneak around behind your a-parents' backs" to see her, which likely makes her feel even worse. Are you certain you even want a mother-daughter relationship with her?
I'm sorry, i shouldn't have put in that last sentence, it could be taken the wrong way, and I apologize. Plus it wasn't even related to the majority of my comment.
I've been in reunion for about 18 years. My daughter, Joy, found me when she was younger than 21 and we've had a lot of ups and downs. We pretty much fumbled our way along on our own.
I buried/hid/repressed a lot of my feelings, in efforts to juggle my process with everyone else's. A couple months ago I finally answered a question she'd been asking me for at least three years -- honestly. Not feeling that I had the 'right' to have the conflicted feelings I've had. There's a lot of work to healing the wounds of abandonment on both sides. One thing I've never felt comfortable doing is asking my daughter to call me anything particular. It's a gradual and delicate process discovering what we call ourselves.
You seem very willing to explore yourself. I hope your mother can decide to be happy more of the time.
Ok, Justice, I just gotta know. What was the question that took you so long to answer? I thought I was the only one in a relationship which who had a mother who would not answer questions.
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