I couldnt even finish it҅

Me

July 23, 2004

Originally posted by dl

This may have been the experience of some bmothers, but many adoptees that have reunited or attempted to reunite have discovered that this was not the experience of their bmother ~ that relinquishment was a choice that bmother/bparents made.
Based on my conversations with my half-siblings they have many more wounds from the life they led being kept , than I have from being relinquished and adopted. Two of them have specifically stated that they wish they had been adopted.
Did some bmothers/bfathers have no choice. Obviously. But many did have a choice and not all bfathers "failed mightily to step up to the plate". My bmother did not choose to parent her first two children. She used the same adoption agency both times. I'm sure it was not easy for her in 1953 as a single woman to keep a mixed race child but again, that was the choice she made. Unfortunately she basically abandoned the three children she kept and died at a young age.
Each story is unique and different IMO ~ whether a bparent, an adoptee or an aparent.

I cut some of your post out to shorten this response. Regarding your comment that relinquishment was the choice of some birthmothers, that obviously is going to be true. I will say though, having been a member of Concerned United Birthparents and attending regular meetings for over five years, I literally met hundreds of fellow adoptees and birthmothers. For almost ALL the birthmothers I met, they didn't relinquish their children through their OWN choice, but through the CHOICE of their own parents (as in my situation as a teenager).

My birthparents were older, mom was 36 and father was 30. My birthmother tried to get my birthfather (who professed to love her) to do the right thing so that she could keep me. He was Greek with a domineering mother who was determined he would marry someone of HER choosing and she did not choose my mother. My mother fought off the adoption 'solution' as long as she could, and when my bfather didn't "step up to the plate," she surrendered me. That was not what she wanted.

In my case, I was underaged and under the control of my adoptive father and a stepmother who never actually adopted me. It was HER choice that I lost my child, not mine. My daughter's father managed to be conveniently 'out of town' at the time of her birth and I lost the battle to keep her.

I don't believe I made a comment that most birthfathers failed to do the right thing. Perhaps I misunderstood you? I will say that in most of the scenarios I heard over the years of CUB counseling was that most of the birthfathers in those womens' lives did NOT do the honorable thing and those moms did not want to surrender their children to adoption. Maybe that is because if someone is OK with having surrendered of their own choice, they don't feel the need to seek counseling and empathy from other birthmothers.

Now in your case, I would have to agree with you that your birthmother was very dysfunctional and you probably were better off adopted. Your situation is not very different from my adoptive sister's which she discovered only last year. Her father actually took her mother out of high school and married her. She got pregnant with my adoptive sis and her husband (!) forced her to give my sister up! She then had a child from an affair (while her husband was overseas in the Navy) and gave that boy up. Her husband came home (apparently not the wiser) and they proceeded to have two more daughters. He again tried to make her give up those kids but my sister's birthmother refused.

Supposedly, my sister's birthfather was an alcoholic and somewhat abusive. He had passed away though about 15 years ago. My sister found a mess of a birthmother (who tried immediately to cling to her), and two sisters who have been welfare queens and have had ten kids between them, all by different fathers! My sister is extremely grateful to have been given up, even though our adoptive home was not exactly a dream come true either. She was hoping mightily that her birthmother would have turned out to be more like mine. She was very disappointed that it didn't but she is still glad that she searched. She is happy that she was adopted, I am not happy that I was but accepted that life was unfair long ago!

I think everyone's story is different, some adoptions are good, some are bad. I don't think all birthfathers are losers, just mine and my daughter's. I did like Primal Wound but I think I stated in an earlier post that Birthbond helped me (and my mother and daughter) the most emotionally.