After I met my mother for the first time, when I was 21 years old, the contact with her stopped 6 months later. I didn't tell my adoptive parents that I had found her until 1 more year after that. So my parents didn't know until a year and a half after she and I met for the first time.
Not being able to tell my parents that we met was very stressful. I really liked my parents and to keep that from them was very hard. I told no one except my best friend. Then one day I couldn't handle the guilt of keeping it from my parents and the guilt of not telling my mother why I couldn't have a relationship with her.
That's right, I felt guilty. If you recall, I wrote about Adoptees Responsibilities and I had a friend of mine call her to tell her to not contact me anymore. I knew I should have done it, but I didn't know how to tell the person that I wanted to know to get lost.
My guilt finally got to me and I wrote her a letter to tell her that I just met her to find out some questions that I have always had. I told her that I didn't want any kind of relationship with her or her family. I was sorry to have to get a friend to call her and tell her I didn't want contact with her. I had had a good life. My parents were great and I finally told my parents that I met her.
After I wrote the letter, I went to my parent's house that weekend and told them everything and then read the letter out loud. I wanted my parents to know that I didn't want a relationship with the woman that they feared would take me away from them. I chose them over her. They were happy about this and all the guilt went away. Then I sent the letter.
If I look back on the last almost 19 years of our so-called relationship, writing that letter was one of the hardest. For 20+ years, all I wanted was my mother to come back in my life and accept me. I wanted her to want me in her life. All of a sudden I had that, and I had to turn it down. I had to make a choice. I felt like I had to make a choice: be with her or be with my adoptive family. The choice was never to be in both families. That could never happen because your heart is always with one family. I really felt like in order to love my mother, I had to give up the love I had for my parents. Or to love my parents, I had to give up the love for my mother.
So I chose love my parents and give up the love for my mother. Which is what every loving daughter would do, right?
Until a year later....
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8 comments:
I really felt like in order to love my mother, I had to give up the love I had for my parents. Or to love my parents, I had to give up the love for my mother.
This statement reminded me of so many mothers I Lived with at the home. In order to really love their baby, they had to give her up, they then would be back in the good graces of their family. If they loved their child, it meant they did not love their family and were going against their wishes.
Ugh.
Adoption is so incredbly cruel.
This may be stepping out on a limb, but it sounds to me like your adoptive parents' love for you is conditional on them being "the only parents." Somehow, they gave you the message that they were threatened by the idea of you reuniting with your natural mother. Somehow, they ensured that your reunion would fail or have to be curtailed. Maybe it was not an overt message, but it was a strong enough tacit message that you felt forced to take the drastic measure of getting rid of your natural mother. :(
No wonder you felt so pressured. This is horrible.
No child should have to choose between two sets of parents.
Cedar, my parents never told me not to find her. In fact, in a previous post, I had written that they were going to try to find her for me when I told them not to.
Remember the post awhile back about What Ignorant People Say. It comes from that. Everyone has an opinion about adoption and for some reason everyone tells their opinion to adoptees since apparently we need to know what they think. I just always thought that I couldn't love both families.
Thank you for sharing so honestly. I learn so much from you and other adoptee bloggers. Trying to comprehend what I have not experienced. And I appreciate how hard you are trying to understand your first mother.
The only bit I can add: My son and I reunited by phone in late March 1996 and met two weeks later. He was estranged from his a-parents. On Mother's Day, he tried to call his a-mother and learned from his a-father that she had died in early March. SOB didn't even try to find him and tell him!
My son said to me, maybe it was for the best. She died right around the time he started searching, was sending his registration to Soundex (which matched us). He said, if I'd known, I might have felt too guilty to look for you. I might not have registered.
Cruel indeed. The realities of adoption.
TRT,
Disentangling our individual misperceptions about our ability to give and receive love is a worthwhile task. A dear friend of mine reminds me there is never a good reason to stop loving. But it takes examining ourselves to see what we're doing sometimes. Looking at it opens up our options to change and have more loving in our lives. Thanks for sharing your awareness.
I have known many other adoptees who have struggled with the love of both parents. It IS incredibly cruel to feel you have to choose.
I suppose I was "lucky" that I had been estranged from a-parents since I left home at 17. The 2nd rejection just pushed me more into my search. I was determined to find acceptance somewhere. Yet when I did find it, it scared me to death.
I don't know, but i think it might be "closer to home" than society's views, because society readily embraces multiple mothers -- the mother and step mother scenario for example.
But supporting an adoptee search is very different from embracing the concept of reunion. My own son's former a-pars eagerly supported him searching, but their opinion turned 180 degrees when it turned out he wanted ongoing contact and a relationship.
It turned out that their idea of the result of a search was that we'd meet each other, exchange info, and go our separate ways.
A relationship was beyond the scope of what they had even conceived.
So, i do wonder if there were messages given to you, even tacit. Overt once you told them and they were relieved it was over, obviously. But I wonder if the attitude was there before hand. Kids pick up on parental opinion like radar.
"But I wonder if the attitude was there before hand. Kids pick up on parental opinion like radar."-Cedar
So much more than we often realize.
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