Getting to Know Each Other

I am new to the forum and would like to invite each of us to share a bit of who we are and how we came about being united as adoptive parents. I was 17 years old when my husband and I met and married in 1994. He had gone through a divorce and had joint custody of his two darling children, dd-4 and ds-7. He had gone through a quite lengthy custody battle and in the end won due to her lack of response to court orders. He decided that rather than to deny the children (that he and the ex shared), the gift of knowing their siblings, he would allow a joint arrangement. Whereas, the ex would have the children throughout the summer and he through the school year. When dh married the ex, she was pregnant and the oldest child (ds-8) was not an issue in the divorce, although he carried the dh's last name. The ex now lived 4 states and 650 miles away. After the first year of divorce both parties remarried and the ex had a new child (ds). The new husband was an alcoholic and the ex wife fell further into her own alcoholism issues. While the children were in their care, they were consistantly left to fend for themselves in a strange place, locked out of the family home, left with stranger for days on end and exposed to some of the harshest southern corporal punishment I have ever heard of. Following the first summer visit, the children themselves had decided they never wanted to return and dh also was doing everything he could to change the custody issue. The courts denied him, we fought year after year for six years. They continued to deny based on lack of evidence of abuse and neglect. The bruising was gone by the time we would get the children back at the end of summer visits. Finally, the courts saw fit to have her pay child support. Something that had never been requested in the case for all of these years. Year after year, the children cried, screamed and through fits. They absolutely did not want to go. It was horrible to watch and even more horrible for either my husband or myself to have to turn them over to her time and time again...knowing they were going to go through their own personal HELL! After a year of non-pymt of support obligation, we began enforcing it...hoping that if atleast she was in jail for failure to pay, she couldn't pick up the children for her summer visits. She was down about $3,000 in back support, when they were about to issue a warrant. Suddenly, she declared "I will just sign off my rights then I won't have to pay". Bingo!!!!! In the state of Michigan and many others, you cannot just sign away your rights and no longer have the financial obligation. It doesn't work that way. In order for her to no longer be liable for the support, someone else would have to be liable. Furthermore, an agreement to withdraw past due amounts owed would have to be made in order to stop the warrant. After a few months of negotiating, she signed on the dotted line. We went home and had the biggest family freedom party for four people!!!! :rockband: That was in 2000, and we still allowed her to have supervised contact with the kids...until she became addicted to Meth and lied to the children and us saying she was dying of Cancer. We ended contact for a few years. A year ago when our ds turned of age, after years of conflicting feelings, he left home and ventured to his birthmothers state. Perhaps longing for something he thought was there, he was found empty by her presence and called home sick. Sick of her, her extended family, her addiction and sick for the home he had a hard time realizing was always there. Last December, she came to our state and our dd wanted to meet up with her. She had some questions for her, some things that dd felt her birthmother had to answer for. We set it up in public. She got her answers and to her surprise even the truth. Which in the end, she wished she hadn't asked at all. She holds her at arms length, only making contact with her birthmother to remain connected to her youngest brother. Who now also isn't living with the birthmother. None of the four children stayed with her after the adoption went through. The oldest boy moved in with his maternal grandparents in our state, the youngest boy lives with his father in their state. And the birthmother, well ....still the same, if not worse. Being an adoptive parent is a blessing, but our situation as an adoptive step-parents is quite unique. Lots of baggage exists, many hurts, sorrows and memories that we are not apart of. My dd-17 sits here with me, remembering, the words that fluttered..... "Those were some of the longest summers of our lives." "If I were still going down there, I would have ran away by now." ....used with her permission. There is a serious lack of support out there for the adoptive parents and the adoptees in these situations. It was by complete accident that I even found this site. I happened to be scrolling through different sites, looking for adoption poems that relate more to our situation for our dd's graduation slideshow...NO LUCK! I really hope to meet more ppl who have gone through some of the simular situations we have. I feel like I have alot to offer ppl in the means of support after having gone through all of this and would really like the opportunity to share in my experience.:thanks: