Question for birth parents about your parents?

my parents suggested adoption and found a place for me to live while pregnant. then when they saw her in the hospital, they called me when they got home to say if i wanted to keep her, they would support me. it was a relief to know i could make my own decision. but i knew in my heart God had lead me to my decision. thru the years they would only talk about it IF i brought it up and sometimes they would say nothing, just listen. especially my dad. my mom never called me on her bdays to say "i remember". if i called her, and said i was thinking about it, then she would say, me too. that always hurt me. i wanted her to call me and say "how are you today..are you doing ok?" now that i have found bd and talking w/ her. they are very excited. even my dad, who has been very quiet about all of it. i get a feeling they felt guilty for me placing her. so this is exciting. they knew this was something i always wanted. i've only been reunited for a little over a week. i call my parents to give them updates. i didnt call one day this week. my mom said, my dad asked if i called her. she said no...she told me they were both disappointed i hadnt called b/c they like hearing whats going on. so that really made me feel good!!! i think for us, its been a healing process. i know i am very lucky b/c God has had His hand on this WHOLE thing. from the day i heard Him tell me i needed to surrender this child to Him. and now Him blessing me w/ allowing to meet and hopefully getting to know her better. we both want that. there have been MANY ppl praying for all this. and that makes a HUGE difference. thanks for letting me share!!!

I had a happy childhood. Love wasn't something to be talked about, but we knew we were. Just knew. Mum and dad had guided me thus far, they seemed to know what was right from wrong. My dad was a prominent person in the community I grew up in. He was respected. So was mum in her quieter way. So hey...when I'm told that adoption was the best option ( after refusing abortion) I believed them. 'Dont bring that baby under our roof....." " Illegitimate..." " Solo parent...." ''Spoil your life..." "Its the best thing for the baby..." rah rah rah rah Any way I did what I was told... This is getting to be a long story....try to be briefer. When I first had contact with the adoptive parents...who welcomed me with open arms...I was buzzzzzzzzzzzzing. My daughter and I wrote letters...no email then and only ten years ago! My dad had never ever said anything about the adoption. Ever.My mum about twice! I was actually busting to tell them I was going to meet her. My mum asked me...I wonder what she wants? WHO CARED...she wanted to meet me and my trhee kids and my husband. Not her birthdad. I couldnt tell dad..but I knew mum would anyway!!!! Well about one year into our reunion they met her. And you know what, she is the most like her grandad, than any of his other 12 grandchildren!!!! Tears sprung into his eyes when they first met...it was like looking into some ancestral mirror for him. Her hobbies are similar and everything. I had to hold back my tears when I saw my dads emotion...hes a stoic ole coot. They have met her several times since then, we have been in reunion for ten years now ( Not without aches and pains). She is a beautiful young woman now, and playing a national sport.Dad's dream child. Ironic eh wot? One of my questions is...How can someone love and nurture their baby through to a young woman, love her, cherish her and decide that for to give her baby away would be the best thing? Just get sad sometimes. Hope I stayed on the topic[FONT="Comic Sans MS"][/FONT]

Susieloo,It seems to me that ironies always abound! I hope that the present can heal some of the pain of the past. Our parents had dreams and hopes for us. Discovering that we haven't fulfilled them is truly a cause for grief (on their part). One of the first stages is denial so we try to pretend it never happened. (Closed adoption is one way to do that.) My mother always felt that my failings were her fault because she had been a bad mother so for her it was a double whammy. The years between adoption and reunion can give our parents a chance to work through their own emotions. (Believe it or not, our parents mature and learn from their mistakes, just like we do.. at least sometimes!) My mother used to complain that we (the family) wouldn't let her change -- and she was right: we assumed, based on past history, that we knew how she would respond/react and acted accordingly. I suspect if your dad could talk about it now, he would tell you he wished he had made different choices when you were pregnant.

This is SO true. My mom blames herself for EVERYTHING. She thinks she should have given me more sex ed, she should have parented my son and so on and so on. I try to tell her that it wasn't her fault but it's so deep rooted it's impossible for her to believe it.

Ah yes, I had plenty of sex ed. I had standards and all kinds of good stuff. I didn't put myself on the pill, because I kept saying... I wasn't going to do it again... Right! I used to want to shout. LET ME TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY OWN CHOICES (AND MISTAKES). My mother would have parented my son, in fact that's one reason I chose adoption... I'd never been the parent. (At that point in my life I wasn't strong enough to say, I'm the parent and I'll do it my way!)

My mother made it clear that I would "ruin" my life if I kept my child. The message was clear, give him up, followed by years of "you've done the right thing". My dad (by then divorced from my mother) encouraged me not to have an abortion. My grandmother (fathers side) said that if she'd have known I was pregnant she would have dragged me down to the abortion clinic. When I was pregnant my father was about to emigrate to Canada, but encouraged me to keep my son and promised me an allowance to help me. I never heard from him for many years afterwards. Fast forward 28 years to reunion. My mother had died the year before my son contacted me. I never let my father know about him, but its possible that my sister did. I've not had a response and I'm not likely to involve him unless my son wants to know more later. I look back at my family's attitude to the whole thing. There was no help, not a jot, but then they weren't individually in any position to help, they were all having relationship problems with whoever it was they were married/ involved with. I look back and can see that I never really connected with any of my family, but the connection with my son is brilliant, even if the time since reunion has been tough. It is a very special bond, the only one I've really had with anyone on that level. If my mum was alive, I think she would be delighted in one way, but encouraging me to dump him the next, because of the substantial trauma he has brought to my life. I do remember the way she toughed it out with me when I was a problem teenager and I admire her so much for it. I try to remember things that encouraged me and the way she was a great mother in lots of ways. I wish she was alive so that I could tell her that I never really did "get on with my life" - giving up my son traumatised me for life. She would be pleased though to know that since our reunion, I am healing and life is starting to be how it should.

Thank you for sharing, Janny. We grow up thinking aour parents know everything, and have all the answers, it's only later that we can look back and see that they were just as clueless as we are. LOL My parents did a marvelous job raising their 4 children in many ways even though we (the children) didn't think so as young adults. As I look back from the perspective of a mother of grown children, I appreciate them much more.

I agree. Although I never went on to either marry or have any more children, the relinquishment paralysed me for life, if I did but know it. I have a great relationship with my son, but its slowly advancing, but as I respond to him on the phone/emails, I now realise that I draw upon a lot of stuff that my mother put there that I never realised was there. It may sound strange to say, but I appreciate my mom more now (lost her 2 years ago) as I'm trying to be a mother myself and its very hard, as I am 50, being a mother for the first time with an adult son!!! So I'm finding it tough, as I'm used to being a selfish individual (to an extent if you get what I mean) as a single person but having to deal with the natural "teenage" self interest that my son exhibits (still stuck in an emotional age of about 13-18yrs when he froze in time as the separation anxiety caught up with him, rather than as a 29 yr old). Isn't it weird. Mum, love ya, wish I could tell you that you stuck in there when I was tough work and I'm now being to my son, what you were to me....

My son's birth was recent, but reading your question and all of the replies really got me thinking. I never told my mom and dad about my last pregnancy. We don't live in the same state and we don't have a healthy relationship right now. They did not agree with me placing my first son for adoption (he was placed with family) and to this day, they tell him that *I* am his mother (NOT bmom, but that I am his Mommy) - something that is obviously wrong and obviously potentially damaging. They tell him that I didn't want him, that I wanted my other children but not him, etc. If my 2nd son decides to meet me in the future, I would probably keep it from them. For me, personally, I don't think they would respect the boundaries and I don't think that they could accept the situation. I hope that this is considered "on topic", I apologize if it's not...I just wanted to give my .02.

Ah, boundary issues! It seems to me that one of the recurrent themes I'm hearing is that even as we struggle as birthparents to establish appropriate boundaries with the children we relinquished, we are still struggling to find and set those boundaries with our own parents. Many of us hesitate to share our bchildren with our parents because of their (to our minds at least) inappropriate responses to the news of our reunions. My mother once said, "When I'm 90 and you're 70, I'll still be your mother and I'll still tell your what to do." She died when she was 66, but trust me... I still hear her telling me what to do. Of course she would also say that when I made up my mind about what I was going to do you couldn't change my mind. (Like my choice for adoption.) Ultimately, our parents are still on the outside when it comes to adoption (at least our experiences); it's easy to say, "X" is back in the family and just like we pretended he never existed, now we can pretend he's always been here! I think that that attitude is especially difficult in situations where the parents were the ones who encouraged or forced the placement. ModernDay, It sounds like your parents have never understood or forgiven your first placement. It took my mother a long time to understand that I could "give my son away" if really loved him. She did eventually come to understand how much I cared for him, even if she never could understand the adoption. As I've said before, one of my reasons for choosing adoption was the effect my mothers comment that I was loved but not wanted had on me. I wanted D to have parents who planned for, loved and wanted him. I have struggled over the years to set boundaries as Mom for the children I have raised... I try not to judge myself by their choices! (I'm not always successful...) I think for many of our parents that was difficult especially since society has a tendency to visit the "sins" of the children on their parents. (Of course there are times when I agree!) I suspect that for most of us, the decision about whether or not to tell our parents and "share" our reunion depends on the health of the boundaries between ourselves and our own mothers/fathers.

Kathy, My dad didn't say a whole lot about placing my daughter. So when my daughter found me, my dad was one of the first people I called. My daughter wanted to meet my extended family. So the day came for her to meet my extended family. She came into my dad's house and he introduced himself as her grandpa. IMO>>>My dad didn't have the right to say that to her. I'm glad that he didn't look at me after he said that, because he meant have seen the angry in my eyes. I don't think that he had thought about what he would say to her. I wish that I had talked to him before she arrived. Found

Dear Found, I guess my question would be, How did your daughter take it? Did it offend her? I agree, it probably just "popped out" and he hadn't planned to say it. You're right , if you had talked with him and done some education it might not have happened.

I can fully relate to this subject. I placed my son 33 1/2 ys. ago and have been in reunion for the past 6 yrs. When I told my parents I was pregnant one of the first things they did was call some people they knew whose daughter had placed a child for adoption about 6 months before that. They talked to them about it and then made an appointment at the same agency. It was a Christian agency and while they never said 'you have to place this child', they made it clear that was what they expected me to do. I didn't want them to parent my child (and they never said they would) and never offered any help in case I wanted to parent him myself. So I did the good Christian girl thing - I did what my parents wanted. And it was maybe mentioned twice in the first 6 mo. after his birth and they never brought it up again. When I found out my son was looking for me, I didn't know whether or not to tell my mom. My dad had passed away the previous year. One part of me wanted to keep it to myself or else tell her and then not introduce her to him. I guess I kind of wanted to hurt her for her lack of support when I was pregnant. But to hear her talk about it when I did tell her that he was looking for me, the adoption was totally my decision. It almost sounded like we were talking about 2 different situations. I knew she was anxious to meet him, but him and I were so much into each other at the beginning, that I only included my husband (who was there when we met for the first time) and then several months later, my children. After several months of reunion, he was coming to see me for the day. So I asked him if he was interested in meeting his grandmother and he was. All four of his grandparents in his adoptive family had passed away and he thought it would be neat to be thought of as a grandson again. So I took him to meet her. It went pretty good, although the whole thing still just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. In this reunion, I also became a first-time grandma! My bson has twin boys, who were 2 when we met. They were my mom's first great grandchildren. My mom said on their 3rd birthday, 'just think, we've already missed most of their life!' and I really had to control myself not to scream at her. She was giving no thought at all to the fact that I had just missed ALL 27 yrs. of my son's life! But I controlled myself and said 'well, I prefer to think of it as they're only 3 and we get to see them grow up! They'll not realize that we weren't there when they were babies.' And she just looked at me. As you can tell, I still harbor a lot of resentment towards my parents, although I think I've worked through a lot of it in the past 6 yrs. My husband thought I should talk to her about the past, but I preferred not to get into it with her at that time, cause she was in her 80's and still heavily grieving my father's death. I really didn't think she could handle the emotion of my anger towards her. I've never told my son about my feelings towards my parents concerning his adoption - I don't want to color his thinking concerning his grandparents. I don't want him to think that they didn't want him. And it's not that they didn't WANT HIM. They just didn't want the situation. Cause I have to give them credit - they didn't send me away or hide me away. I lived at home and still went out and went to church. I know they were embarrassed, as this was the early 70's. It was still a shameful thing. And I think they truely believed that he would be better off in a two parent Christian family. I think my mom was very relieved (as was I) that he was brought up in the same denomination as we were and he even went to a Christian grade school and high school, just as my sisters, brother and I did. But I must admit, I still, at times, have a problem watching my mom with my son. And I think my son senses that and isn't completely at ease with her. He is extremely protective of me and my feelings and I think he realises my feelings, even though I've not discussed it with him. Gee, I've written a novel here, lol. The words just kind of came flying out. Maybe I still have more of a problem than I realize. :(

MIL, Thanks for sharing. I often think that we need to forgive others (in adoption most often our parents!) more for our sake than the others. Not only does our anger and hurt affect our relationship with them, it eats us up inside.

Mil, your story touched me quite a bit as there are quite a few similarities to my own. My bson is 27 this Thursday and we have just met for the "second" time. I too blamed my parents, and I'm sorry to say that I haven't been able to forget or forgive them but when he first wrote me I couldn't keep it to myself as my mom is quite ill and I was afraid she would never know he had a good life and that would generate more guilt! Now I'm having second thoughts as I too want to "keep" him all to myself, at least for a little while. My mom has told me that it was "all my idea" to place him for adoption and that I was afraid of "losing" my boyfriend (now husband at the time). There may be a grain of truth in that but overall I know what my feelings were and how many times I flip-flopped over the decision and finally realized that at 17 I didn't know anything and the pressure was on from everyone else to place him for adoption. After meeting him and seeing the album of "his life so far" that he put together for me I now know I did the right thing - no matter how much it hurts to have missed those years. Seeing his smiling face at every age and the love that is obvious in the pictures eases my pain considerably. I used to cry whenever I thought of him and now I smile and here is a warm feeling all over - not sure how long this will last. The only fly in the ointment so to speak is my mom constantly asking if I've met him, what he's like, can she meet him, etc. I'm afraid she will smother him and he won't want anything to do with us - something that has happened in the past . Too much, too soon. I've had to lay down the law and tell her that when he is ready, I'll let her know. It's hard as I'm caught in the middle so to speak but I want to protect his feelings and at the same time let us find a place in each other's lives. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. So far, we're still in the early stages where we can't seem to spend enough time talking/being with each other (it would be nice if that lasts) however I am aware that this will soon change as we both have our own lives which are quite hectic. If I can keep my head we should be able to figure it all out. Kathy is right (as usual) my failure to forgive my parents is eating me up inside and we don't have the kind of relationship that we should. The only good thing is I haven't tainted my bson with my feelings. My parents are good parents and they were supportive - I just have to let go. LOL