Caitlin Woodstock

I know this was posted awhile ago but I felt compelled to answer. I was adopted by a narcissistic mother. She, like you, is much older and she, like you, can only love conditionally. She only demonstrates care as a means manipulation. She too could not understand why I don't just want... but NEED to connect with my family of origin; particularly my mother. She feels it is "being ungrateful" and will become cold. When I was a child she used physical, emotional and psychological abuse to crush any authentic self expression. She, like you has no respect for boundaries and punishes them when they are put into place. Your son searching privately for his birth family when he is a full grown man? While it's ok to have complex feelings around this, it is not ok to blame him as responsible for those feelings. Your feelings are your responsibility. You just don't want to respect his boundaries as doing so would unleash a flood of unpleasant emotion within you... and you simply... don't want to be responsible for those emotions so you blame your adoptive son for "what he did to this family." Gas lighting, not respecting boundaries, making everything about yourself (it is HIS search from HIS pre-verbal trauma and HE who needs support.. which can look like respecting his boundary of searching solo), blaming... all text book of a narcissistic. Furthermore, you have the audacity to say the adoption system favors the birth mother and adoptee... that is laughable. While today, that is where things are trending thanks to compiled peer reviewed data on attachment disorders and the like, when I was adopted in 1984, closed adoptions were still allowed. (They are today in cases where there is a safety risk to the child, but encourage contact with birth families whenever possible). Adoptive parents have the ability to take a child from their family, possibly their language or culture... they even erase their name. The adoptive parents coo and celebrate while the adoptive child is in a state of grief. It was never set up for us. It was always set up for you. I'm so glad you son's adoptive family is receiving him warmly as you are retraumatizing him by retriggering his first trauma, the loss of his mother. You reject him. You abandon him. You say you "love" him... and while I believe you may think that.. I also believe you have no conception of what true love is... or what it means. While I don't want to invalidate your feelings, I am appalled by your complete disregard of your responsibility to manage them. Sending all my prayers that you can find some help for yourself so maybe, you can glimpse real love, with the short time you have remaining on this Earth. Our time here is so brief. You've spent enough of it blaming others for a reality you are creating. There is time to change it, and working with a therapist is a great place to start. Sending all my prayers and congratulations to your son for his successful reunification and wishing him ongoing happiness with his birth family. |