birth sibling support

Thanks so much everyone. It helps to hear many viewpoints. I most likely will never be reunited with my half brother, so my main focus is getting though my feelings of anger, hurt and betrayal. My Mom and I have been through a lot these years, and I just have to wonder how much of it relates back to her grief. Long story short, divorces, drinking, emotionally unavailable, my struggles that were kept to myself to avoid burdening her, as she always seemed to have too much on her plate to trouble her. I don't want to get into the long story of 40 years, but only ever wanted some of her heart, but now I guess I know why that wasn't possible....as it must have "died" in her so many years ago. It's just too bad, and sad.

I have a question on this topic. My partner has an older sister placed for adoption, but placed with family so remained in contact. There were no lies told, everyone know the deal (in the 1950's--wow.) My partner wants nothing to do with her sister--feels the relationship is an accident of biology. Her sister on the other hand wants some (asking for very little) contact. I don't get where my parter is comming from, but I know it is really really really how she experiences this relationship. What am I missing?

Did she have a relationship with her sister growing up since she was still part of the family? Does she think if she acknowledges her as sister, your partner loses her own position in the family. I have no answers, really. It is sad however.

Valerie, I think I hear my daughter's voice in your words. I am a birthmom reunited with my son within the past year. The three children I raised have each had their own way of dealing with learning that they have a brother they never knew about. The two youngest (19 and 23) seem to be doing fine, but my oldest daughter, who is 25, is really struggling. Since my daughter learned of my son a year ago, she would barely speak with me about him, except to tell me that she wasn't ready to talk about it. I left her alone with this, to deal with it at her own pace and in her own time. I wanted very much to be her mother and to help her with this struggle as I have for her in other struggles, but I knew I needed to respect her right to process in whatever way that she felt was best for her. A few weeks ago all four of my children gathered at my home for the first time. My oldest daughter had considered not joining us, but in the end decided to come, but was obviously very uncomfortable and unhappy the entire time. Some emails followed in which she began to tell me how she cannot feel anything for this brother she never knew and how she cannot trust me because I kept his existence a secret from her all her life. She said that she cannot ever think of me in the same way again and that she never wants to talk about it again... I think until the sibling "reunion," she was in that emotional numbness you described and since actually seeing my son, she is no longer able to remain there. If she would allow me to talk with her about this, I would want her to know that she has a right to ALL of her feelings and that I respect her right to take the time she needs to process them. I would tell her that her anger is understandable and justified and that I'm not afraid of it. My love for her will be strong enough to handle it. I would tell her that I don't want her to worry about her words hurting me because any attempt or form of communication is preferable to imagining the pain and fear she is living with alone, in her silence. I would tell her that there is nothing she can say or do to make me stop loving her and that I am ready to listen to her, whatever she needs to say to me, whenever she feels ready to say it. Every mother-daughter relationship is different, but I think the feelings of betrayal and anger are to be expected under your circumstances and those of my daughter. I am touched by your concern for your mother's feelings with all you are going through and think my daughter may be keeping her feelings to herself because of what she, too, is afraid she might say, and what she thinks it might ultimately do to our relationship. Many birthmothers talk about the pain that comes from the feeling of suffering in silence and isolation, with no one to understand. We come to forums like this one so that we can find others who have lived what we have lived. In all its varied forms, it is the same thing--that sense of loss, shame, regret, and pain. And many of us find that we cannot proceed with our healing and the healing of our families until we emerge from that isolation and begin to process our experience with others--other birthmothers, family, friends, therapists--in the light of day. As strange as it may sound, people in your situation and my daughter's may actually share this in common with birthmothers--the need to reach out as you are doing, to not remain isolated, to know that you are not alone. It doesn't change what has happened but perhaps it can make you feel that your feelings are less alien, more normal. Finding others who have come through the same thing, and maybe have even experienced healing in their relationships with the mothers they feel betrayed them may give you hope for your own relationship. It might feel like this can never happen for you, and I can't tell you that it will. But I can say that my life has taught me that things can change, and that "never" is a long time... Please know that you're in my thoughts as you struggle through this painful process and that there are others out there, like my own daughter, who struggle, too. And I hope that my daughter somehow is able to do as you have done and reach out to find others who are experiencing what she is, so that she, too, can know that she is not alone. Susanne

Again, it's been a while, how are you doing? Have you looked for a counselor/therapist? I hear your concern about the 40 years of "stuff," but if you find a counselor who is familiar with adoption issues it may be much easier than you expect. How is your mom doing? Maybe you could try some family counseling. I hope you have continued to read in the forums here and that you have found support.

Just checking to see if anyone has come across anything else about support for the bsiblings of adoption??? I tried seeing a counselor a couple of years ago, but it seemed she was very well versed in what aparents, bparents and adoptees go through but not so much how to help bsiblings who weren't adopted out. We seemed to spend the entire counseling time focusing on how I can be supportive of my mother... And most of the support groups in our area focus on the triad, too.....

That's an interesting question. I would recommend finding a counselor who is familiar with or uses the concept of family systems. While family systems theory doesn't deal particularly with adoption issues, I think it could be very helpful at figuring out what's happening with you (not your mom) and helping you. I suspect counseling, books, other helps aimed at that 4th side of the triangle would the a positive addition to our understanding of adoption! (I'm envisioning a pyramid rather than a simple 2 dimensional triangle.)

I'm in the same boat as you, except mine is a half-sib. I'm expected to just be happy for my mom that she has found her daughter, but I'm very threatened by this person. I don't know what kind of pressure you are getting to establish a relationship with your sister, but mine is extreme....so much that my mom isn't even speaking to me right now because I can't be happy for her. It has been frustrating for me also to find a lack of support in the adoption community and literature about our issues as siblings. Check out my thread started yesterday about difficulty accepting newly discovered birth sibling for more info about my situation. Hopefully this gets better with time.

Hmm. Can you say to your mom (even if not quite true!) I'm glad it makes you happy to have found and begun a relationship with your daughter. Please allow me to process this at my own speed and in my own way. I wonder... did you know you had a sibling? Sometimes the secret birthmoms keep can be very destructive, because it shakes the foundations of the raised child's relationship with mom. (If you didn't tell me about this, what else are you hiding.) You have no previous relationship with this person, your mom carried the baby to term... that's a big difference! You may or may not feel a bond with this person. Creating relationships and building them definitely takes effort. That's true of all relationships but especially those with stranger/relatives.

Knittygirl: Lots of good, practical advice from the moms here. I'm wondering if it might also help you to hear what's been happening with my relationship with my oldest daughter since I last wrote (see my post earlier in this thread). It's been an extremely emotional year for all of us, but we've weathered it. This past weekend my oldest daughter (raised) and oldest son (placed) were both present at my parents' house--the home of their grandparents. My son, who is a wonderful cook, prepared dinner for all of us, and my daughter told him how good the food was and thanked him for cooking it. They had some really nice conversation at the table and some good laughs, too. They exchanged hello and goodbye hugs and have talked about getting together in the city sometime. I also know that there have been a few emails going between them; not frequent by any means, but communication just the same. Thsi was their fourth face-to-face experience in the past 5 months. If you do read my previous post in this thread, you'll know how impossible this seemed just a few months ago. What has changed? Well, I think the two most important things were time and acceptance. I encouraged both of them to allow the other the time and space to process as they needed to, and also urged them to be compassionate and accept that they could not know how the other felt and therefore should not judge. I think as time went by and my daughter realized she didn't have to fight for me or her "place" with me--as she had expressed in one of the emails after the first sibling meeting--because she'll always have the place she's always had in my life and in my heart, and because I'll always be the mother who loves her, it became easier for her to see my son as my son. She came to know that if I loved him as my own, of course I would continue to love each of my children as my own. I also explained to her that while he was the first child born to me, she was the first child I parented and that gives her a unique place in my life, as each of my children have their unique place with me. None of them can replace another (I have four, three of whom I raised), and none should try to. I also think my daughter struggled with a terrible truth, one that she could never have imagined about her very intense mother. I think when she told me that she didn't know who I was anymore and didn't recognize me as the mother she had always known, it seems that this was a reflection of her disbelief that someone who loved her children as I did could have given up her own child. This is why she couldn't recognize me: the mother she knew me to be would NEVER allow anyone to come between her and her children. And because unless a person is in that situation, they cannot possibly understand what can provoke the relinquishment of a child, I couldn't begin to expect my daughter to understand. I didn't expect any of my children to understand and only explained it if they appeared to want to know. And even with my explanation, still did not expect them to know. It's okay. It isn't their job to understand me. It's my job to understand them. I only asked that they accept me and know that I am still the mother they love and the mother who loves them and who, frankly, might not have done it so well had I not experienced the life-altering loss of my first-born. It was very difficult for my oldest daughter to accept the relationship I have with my son; she recognized right away that there was something intense about it that she couldn't share. I did my best to shelter all four of my children from the tidal waves of emotion I was experiencing in the reunion process; my poor hubby had to bear the brunt of that craziness. But still, she could see that I wasn't always on top of things. Without understanding the nature of relinquishment and reunion, she couldn't possibly know how to reconcile this with the in-charge mother she thought she knew. Heck, I couldn't reconcile it with who I thought I was half the time! So, she was extremely threatened by this and found it disconcerting. As time went on, however, she began to recognize that although the differences are more subtle, I have a different relationship with each of my children. The three share a history with me that their brother cannot, but still there are differences in the way I relate to each of them, and those subtleties became more pronounced as each of us began to examine the family dynamic in the context of a new member. I cannot say that all is perfect. There are still some awkward moments and misunderstandings and everyone needs a lot more time to get to know each other. But we have come SO FAR in such a short time, much further than I could ever have imagined. Most surprising of all is that my son has just moved into our home and is going to be renting the "in-law" apartment at the back of the house beginning next month--my oldest daughter and raised son have their own places; my youngest daughter is away at college, so we have an "empty nest" most of the time--and everyone seems to be doing fine with it. My son needed to make a change from "city life" and needed to have his family around him (his childhood with his adopted family was characterized by violence and dysfunction, so he is estranged from them at present), and asked if he could be with us. He calls my husband--who is not his biofather--"Dad" and everyone seems good with that. We are becoming a family, it seems. Imagine that! I'm not sure what else may lie ahead, but I believe that we're headed in the right direction. Truly these things take time and tender, loving respect for each person and wherever they are in their process. There were times when I "helped" them along, if they seemed "stuck" in a particular spot for an extended period of time and that spot didn't seem healthy for them (what are mothers for?), but for the most part I let them be. That is not to say I left them all alone with their own angst, but tried to find the balance between checking in with them and giving them space. I don't know how others did it, and even as I was doing it I didn't know how it would all turn out. But for me, the bottom line was love: if we all just loved each other enough, all would be well. My raised children's experience had always been that when each new family member was added, the love in our family grew. It seems to me that families generally grow over time anyway--through marriage, or birth, or adoption, or any other way you can think of. Our family was going to grow sometime as people got married, had babies, etc. So this was just another way for our family to grow, unusually so, I know, but still.... For us, more people has always meant more love, and what could be better than that? Once everyone remembered that, I think it opened the doors and as each one felt safe enough to walk through, they did. I don't know if any of this helps, Knittygirl. You might not be ready to hear it, and if so, please don't listen. Give yourself the time and space you need. I, too, wish there were resources for siblings. But until there are, perhaps these forums will help. You can vent here and read about others' experiences, and maybe even find some words of comfort or wisdom. Things take time. Gift yourself with that, and give it to your mother, too. It's highly likely that her own tidal wave of craziness will modulate at some point and you'll find each other again. If anyone had told me that my daughter and I would rediscover our relationship in this time frame, I would never have believed them. And perhaps the loveliest thing of all is that it feels like we are closer than ever, and have achieved a new understanding and appreciation of each other like we couldn't have had without having weathered this storm together. I feel hopeful in a way I wasn't in November. I feel free to believe that all will be well. My best advice: Follow your own wisdom: "Hopefully this gets better with time." In my family's experience, it most certainly did. Wishing you all the best, Susanne

Another great post, Susanne.I agree... it takes time and the willingness to be empathetic. Avoid judgment... and love each other.Susanne... how wonderful to have some time to get to know your son better while he's living with you and your husband. Wow... Best wishes to all,Susan

Suzanne,I am crying as I read your post, hopeful that things will heal in my family in much the same way as they seem to in yours. Right now, I feel rather hopeless about my own situation, and I am aching for the relationship that I thought that I had with my mother pre-discovery. She seems to have shut me out of her life at this point, and unless I am able to be "happy for her" and not express my hurt feelings, she does not want to talk to me. I don't know what to do about her inability/unwillingness to allow me to work through this situation in my own way and in my own time. She feels that she is "done" working through this in only 3 months and that I am somehow trying to hold her back. All I want from her is what you have described: for her to treat me with tenderness when I need it, allow me to feel however I am feeling without judgement and support from her as my parent to weather the storm that we are all experiencing. I don't understand why she is so unsympathetic with my experience and tells me that these are "just facts" and that it isn't her problem. I crave her attention, I crave her understanding and all I can see is her offering those things to her placed daughter. What can I do to get the support that I need from her? I have tried SO HARD to allow her to do whatever she needs, and have only asked her not to talk with me about it for the time being while I am adjusting. I just can't hear about how much she loves this person who seems to have invaded my family and upended all of our relationships. I have tried to understand her situation...understand the guilt and shame that she must have felt for so many years. But I feel as though I get nothing in return and I am extremely hurt by this. It is as though I have become nothing more than an obstacle to her having a relationship with her real first born. I don't seem to matter to her in the way I thought I always would. The straw that broke the camel's back came last week when she decided not to babysit for me on the evening of my 10th wedding anniversary because i wouldn't agree that she could take time out from a planned vacation with me so that she could visit her placed daughter. I asked her to have the time with me that I so needed from her and to visit with her other daughter another time. She told me she could not do that. She told me to face the facts of the situation and accept that this person would be in her life until the day she died. When I told her I could not discuss this further as I was becoming too emotional, she said she would not babysit for me unless I discussed it more. I can't understand where this kind of ultimatum is coming from. Why can't we have a relationship that is outside of the one she is developing with her placed daughter while I struggle to come to terms with this tremendous secret that I've only known of for 3 months? Why does she feel that she must punish me if I don't go along with her time frame? My husband is equally baffled by this development. She seems so obsessed with her placed daughter that nothing else matters, including me and my children. I miss our previous relationship terribly and fear that we will never again have the comfort level with each other that we used to have. I have tried to communicate this to her, but she tells me that if I don't want to talk about it, then I "want lies just like the rest of them". I presume that by this she means her parents (now deceased) who urged her toward adoption for this child and then never spoke of it again. I know that her experience was awful, but my problems stem more from her coldness to me now. I don't judge her for her past, and I want her to feel healed and whole, but I feel like she is throwing me under the train to get that and it really hurts. I pray that she will come back to me with time and that we will be able to heal in the way that your family has. I am deep in my sorrow now and it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you so much for all of your time, support, and positive thoughts. These forums are very meaningful to me right now and I am constantly amazed at the inspiring posts from total strangers. you are my most powerful ally right now, and I am glad to have found you.Knittygirl

I am an adoptee who has reunited with both bio parents. I have a bio sis on each side. One was brought up an only child and has not made any effort for a relationship with me. It makes me sad, but it is her choice. I am here if she ever chooses to want a relationship. My other bio sis and I are very close. We hit it off from the start. I've been following this thread in hopes of understanding my bio sis who doesn't want a relationship. I don't know if she feels like some of the posters here, but if so, I wish I could do or say something to her to ease her mind. She is my sister and I love her no matter whether or not she wants a relationship. I hope someday she will choose to get to know me. I just hoped she and I could be friends, and I will be here if she decides that is what she someday wants. Something I noticed with my bio mom and I think it occurs quite often in reunion, is that Bmoms sometimes regress back to a younger age when maybe they were not so mature. It's almost like they go back in time to that time of relinquishment. They, for lack of a better description, forget what is in the present and sort of go back so that they can redo or undo the past. It's all new. They have their baby back, and nothing else matters. I'm probably not explaining this well, but it's a phsycalogicle thing. Reunion does a real number on your mind, and can put you in places you didn't know existed. Bio parents are no longer the mature adults their families know them to be. Adoptee's, who were well adjusted, mature adults, turn into little children. We all, for reasons out of our control, can forget who we are to the people in our families. Only time and patience will make it better. I think you bsibs who have posted here have a right to be angry. Your lives have been turned upside down. You want the mom you've always known to go back to who she was. You want her to be there for you because she's always been there for you. I would just ask you to give it time. I know it's hard, but for reasons your moms may not even understand they may not be able to give you that right now. Give them time to come to terms with it all. Take time for yourself to figure out how you feel about it all. I am the first born to both my bio parents. I did not replaced or change my bio sis's positions in their respective families. One bio sis is still the oldest child in her respective family. My other bio sis is still the only child in her respective family. What I am is their sister, someone related to them biologically, nothing more, nothing less, and another person who cares about them. In my mind, my relationships with my bio parents have nothing to do with my relationships with my bio siblings. Each relationship is its own. We are all adults who can make choices for ourselves. After more time goes by and the strong emotions of the moment ease, I think you guys will see what I mean. I'm sorry if I haven't explained it well, but things work out in time. I also hope you will keep an open mind to your bio sibs, and not let your anger at your mom's keep you from a relationship that sometime in the future might be a wonderful thing.

Dear Knittygirl: Oh my! I can hear your pain and I'm so sorry this is happening to you. I wish I could tell you that everything will be better soon, but I can't promise you that. It sounds like your mother is in the throes of wrestling with ancient and entrenched feelings of anger and pain and injustice and loss, all tatooed upon her heart long ago. Anyone who has relinquished a child, especially during the closed adoption era, knows these feelings well, and I can see how you are doing your best to be empathetic and supportive of her. But it's impossible for you to fill her need at this time. She has to find her own way. It is so painful for you to be left out of this, or to be permitted to only deal with it according to your mother's prescribed process. It is a fact of reunions--we cannot understand how the other person feels, because I think in this situation, only those who have experienced it can understand it and each point of view is different. In time, your mother may become as sensitive to your perspective as you seem to be to hers. But this will take time and there will be emotional and psychological carnage in your family in the meantime, I'm very sad to say... I think it is unlikely that your mother wants to hurt you in the way she is hurting you. I think it is more likely that she is trying to protect her other daughter, and her new relationship. While it's impossible for me to speak for your mother, experience has shown that three months is still the very beginning of the reunion process for almost all of us. At that point in my reunion, it was not at all unusual for me to find myself suddenly gripped by feelings of terror that my son might tire of me and leave me and that was something I was pretty certain I could not survive. I had feelings that were much stronger and more confusing and more "raw" than those I had even at relinquishment. And whenever I got the feeling that someone--even my own children--might do something to hurt him, my protective feelings were almost primal. I would have done almost anything to protect him from the threat of rejection by any family member, all of whom I loved. This was mostly an expression of my own guilt and shame that I had failed to protect him when he was born, and in all that followed, especially as his history began to unfold before me and I knew it was nothing like what I had hoped or expected for him. He was NOT protected as a child; he was hurt and rejected and damaged and grew up to experience more pain and sorrow than anyone could wish on a child. I've had to learn to live with that and my part in it. But even without this particular history, I think most first mothers feel this almost overwhelming need to protect our found children from anyone we perceive might hurt them. Again, we carry so much guilt and it takes time and really hard work to let go of it and move on... The way we first mothers behave in reunion can be a mystery in so many ways. But I'd like to quote shadow riderer; I think she hit the nail on the head... We become other people, people we don't recognize ourselves, people we sometimes don't even like, when we enter into this crazy process of reunion. I could say so much more, and if you want to PM me, I'd be happy to share whatever you think might be helpful. But for now I guess I want to offer this: What your mother is doing is NOT a reflection of a deficit in you, or even a deficit in the relationship you and your mother have shared all your life. It is nothing but an expression of where SHE is in her reunion process. I can't emphasize enough--even though you report that she says she's all through her process--that it is still very, very new. While it may be impossible for you not to take what is happening personally, I urge you not to take that on yourself. Your mother seems cold and hard and unyielding to you at this time. It sounds to me like she is processing in a particular way and is finally exercising her own agency and responsibility in taking care of the child she may feel she failed to care for when that child was born. As ridiculous as it may sound, and as profoundly as this is impacting you and everyone you love, your mother's journey at this time is NOT about you. It is not even really about the child she placed. It is about your mother, HERSELF, and her need to find her own way. If the two of you had the relationship you have described, I think it's safe to imagine that that relationship can weather this. Try to avoid taking on responsibility for what is happening to your mother right now. If you can, try to step back, take a breath, let go of as much as you can. The less the two of you engage in angry exchanges, the less you will both have to feel guilty about later. And if there's anything the reunion process doesn't need more of, it's guilt. There's already more than enough to go around. You didn't cause what is happening to your mother and you can't fix it. You can only be there waiting when she is ready to re-engage with you as her daughter. If you can't bring yourself to talk with her about her new relationship, then don't. Step back and wait it out. Again, I'm sorry to say that there will be carnage, but there can be healing on the other side of it. I know... Those of us who have been reunited with our placed children do not love them more than we love our kept children, but at least for a time, we often do have to love them differently--more intensely, more passionately, and most definitely more insecurely. It may be that your mother is trusting that because of your history together, the strength of your relationship can withstand this firestorm and come out healthy and whole in the end. It may be that the power of this experience will not end your relationship with your mother, but grow it and enrich it in the long run. I would not presume to predict what lies ahead for you in your particular situation, but can only speak from my own experience. Stay in touch, and again, I'd welcome your PM if think it would be helpful to you. Hugs, Susanne

Susan-- You're not kidding--WOW! I guess now you know why I've been off the forums and out of the "loop" for awhile. It's been a little busy around here... :) Things are going well, and it's been a very healing experience for both of us. I don't know where it will lead, but for now, it feels right, so we're just going to roll with it. It has been a delightful surprise that my three raised children have accepted the change so well. My youngest had the most to say about it. Of course, she still lives here when she's not away at college so her life is most directly impacted, but she also tends to be the most insightful and introspective, and she's a psych major so she's always looking at the interpersonal and psycho-social ramifications of any change in our lives. She was the one who, when we first told the three about their "secret brother," said, "It's like we're living in a Lifetime Channel movie of the week! You mean all this time I thought there were five of us and there are really six of us?" She was also the one who, upon being presented with the idea of the first sibling encounter said that she had thought about it and decided that she could view having another sibling as a good thing or a bad thing, and she had decided to view it as a good thing. This doesn't mean she hasn't struggled with her own variety of angst over the past year and a half. She most certainly has, and has availed herself of the counseling services at her college, etc. She is still not as comfortable with him and the situation as she would like to be, but it's a process and she is on her way... What I think is most interesting about both my daughters' reactions is that, when we got to the bottom of it, their issues were NOT with my son, their brother, but with me. At first they expressed it as being about the secret-keeping (clearly one of our worst decisions, ever; not quite, but almost as bad as the adoption decision, itself), but even though I know that created trust issues, it didn't seem to be adequate to explain all of their reactions to me. I finally had to call them on it: their father kept the secret, too, and NO ONE was mad at him or had trouble trusting him. NO ONE called into question his love or judgement, and NO ONE told him that their relationship with him would never be the same again. That's when I knew it had to be something else, and eventually realized it had to do with the adoption act, itself. They saw me as an alien, someone not really the mother they had always known because the mother they knew would not, COULD NOT have allowed her baby to leave her. It was a tough one to tackle and I have to accept that they can never understand. But we seem to have found a way to bypass that need to "understand" once we remembered the love and allowed that to lead to acceptance. And I can't underestimate the value of the passage of time and seeing this family--in its current form--create a history together. I think the one-year mark is significant, too. Although I first learned of my son through a third party in November 2006, our first direct contact via email was in April 2007. Having that year anniversary roll around last week was a way of marking time. My three raised children are all quite practical and would look at this milestone as a sign that it's time to get on with it and make the effort to get things "normal." Still not all smooth-sailing, but oh! so much progress and so much more comfortable for everyone than a year or more ago. And we continue to remember that everyone needs respect and time and space to travel her/his own journey in this thing. Everyone has a right to that, at the very least. I believe that this is one of the fundamental demands of unconditional love. I feel for all the siblings just beginning this journey with their mothers and their newfound family members. It's so very difficult to discern all the different feelings and to know what to do with them once you've identified them. And making it all so much more difficult is the reality of the reunion experience for the first mother--the tidal wave of emotion that we feel, how blindsided and unprepared we are for it, no matter how much reading and studying we've done ahead of time, how much counseling we've had, how "at peace" (HA!) we thought we were with our decision to place. Our kids are dealing with what looks like a "new" mother, one who is remembering and reliving and reprocessing so much long-held trauma, so much unspeakable pain, shame, guilt, anger, loss--scary stuff, indeed, both for the mother to live through and for the children they raised who now have to witness it. Many times during this process my husband has remarked how good it was that all the kids were out of the house while this was going on. He talks about how awful it was to witness what was happening to me, and how powerless he was to do anything much to help. As you may recall, these forums really helped him as he saw that I wasn't the only crazy person, but rather that "craziness" was normal given the circumstances of relinquishment and reunion. The kids don't talk about how strange I was anymore; they're just glad that most of it seems to be past and I'm looking more and more like the mother they knew growing up. That said, I think it's been healthy for them to see these other parts of me, parts that only my son seems to have been able to evoke in me--the person I was before pregnancy and relinquishment, before the guilt and shame and secrets formed and defined my entire adult life until I began to find freedom from them through reunion... It's good for me to be back to the forums again. I'll talk to you soon! Susanne :love: