I feel so guilty!

Wrgamom, It is so hard trying to please everyone and making sure that no one feels hurt or left out. You didn't say how long you have been in reunion - except that it was last year. I also have been in reunion, just almost exactly 1 year. From what I have read, this honeymoon period and obsessiveness does calm down and most people seem to get used to the new realities in their lives. That being said - you can not be responsible for the fear and hurt that this has caused others. You can only be responsible for your reaction to it. And you should not feel guilty that you have found some answers. I also searched for medical history and to reassure my bmom that I was ok and that she had done the right thing - give her "the rest of the story". It has also turned out to be much more than that. Our reunion has brought healing to both bparents, issues to bsiblings and spouse of bdad - bmom is single with no other children, and issues with my siblings (my parents have passed away). It is a very good reunion and still there are hurt feelings, rollercoaster emotions, and relationship issues. There are good and bad things to everything you do ... this is just unexpected and there are few role models out there to follow and know what will happen. Just keep reminding your parents that they are your parents and nothing has changed that. I saw in another thread a comparison with inlaws - maybe that would help. Your bmom will have to deal with her own children. Just keep the communication honest and open as much as possible and keep yourself grounded. Good luck and peace. Jill

Oh Sweeie, first let me give you a ((HUG)). What your are feeling is 100% normal as far as how you are feeling about your aparents, especially if you had such a wonderful life with them. You must understand that searching for your birth family is your right and you have done nothing wrong and it has no reflection on them, how they parented you or how much you love them. It is one thng to ponder, imagine and think about searching but you are right, when reality hits it is a whole different story with all the feelings and emotions that come with . Unless a person is an adoptee, there is no possible way for them to actually know how you feel not having the information about YOUR life that comes so natural for others. As afr as your Bmom goes, it is understandable for her to want to make up for lost time and want to cram it all at you at once and of course her raised children are going to feel it. Just like your aparents are sort of feeling "left out" or maybe set aside having to share you with bmom. There is really nothing you can do to fix things exception communicate with them and explain to them just as you have here. As an adoptee myself I know all too well of wanting "make things right" and keep everyone happy. All you can do is let aparenst know that they will always be your parents and you love them and reassure them that because bmom is now in the picture does not change the love you have for them. I can only imagine how difficult this is for you feeling as though you are in the middle of all this. Just know that you are not responsible for making people's live right and this is something that you needed to do for you. It wasnb't as though you set out to purposly hurt people or inflict pain on them. This reunion stuff is so complex because it involves feelings and emotion we never thought possible. It is very important to set boundries too because renuinion quite often (almost always) brings with it expectations and many times one or both parties can be needy and over bearing. now the bsibling would take an entire post of their own especially if they do not know about you or have just found out about you and all of a sudden their mother is placing all her attention on this new person. It is undertandable that your bsiblings feel lied to and somewhat betrayed. It happened to me too with my bsisblings. You do not say how long you have been reunited, but right now the best thing to do would be to slow down and give the bsibs time to let it all sink in. Again, you are not responsible for their reaction or their relationship with bmom. Rememeber that YOU were the one that grew up depreived of your birthright, not them, not your bmom and not your aparents. I am certain that you will recieve alot more grat advice here. EZ

There is nothing for you to do to fix anything. It is not your responsibility to do so. So I wouldn't even go there. If you continue to feel guilty, I would seek counseling to work through this. There is nothing for you to feel guilty about. As you are aware, the idea of reunion and the reality are very different. I think going into it, we think it will be smooth sailing, everyone will get along with everyone else, no one will have mixed feelings, etc. Just as with any other family relationships, this is not necessarily the case, and most often isn't! It sounds like you are feeling bad for "opening up a can of worms" and "creating problems" for other people by your decision to search. But you had every right to search, and keep in mind, your bmom agreed to this, too. As far as how she handles her kids and other relationships, that is for her to deal with. Your parent's reactions are theirs to deal with. If you try to sort through what is your stuff to deal with and what is their responsibility, you might feel much more at ease with all this. Also, keep in mind all the positives that came up from your decision to search. And remember that nothing in life is 100% picture perfect, either.

Wow ... getting rid of guilt. Is it realistic guilt for something you've done wrong, or is it false guilt? First, what you did was completely normal. Remember, you bonded with your bmother. That bond started before birth, and immediately upon birth you were ripped away from her. She wasn't just your mother, she was your universe, she was all you knew, and then she was gone. You don't remember it with your conscious mind but it has been a part of you ever since. Babies have no way to grieve this loss, so it was turned inward and buried. If you are the typical compliant adopted child it was buried good and deep. I remember thinking, at one point of my reunion journey, that I would never have believed I could contain so much pain and grief, and not know a thing about it. So you needed to search. Your inner mind knew this, even if your conscious mind didn't. It kept prodding till finally you took action. You needed to remake the bond that was broken so long ago. Never mind if it was possible, if your bmother was still alive, if she wanted or was able to have that kind of relationship with you. You needed to try. You needed the closure of knowing who she is or was, of knowing you did all you could to find and heal the broken pieces. Everything you do will affect someone in some way. Good, bad, or a mixture. The reunion journey is no different ... happiness and completion for one can mean pain and resentment for another. The thing to remember is this: you were a baby when this happened to you. You were the one person in all this who had absolutely no say in what was going on, and you were the one most affected by it all. It was done for you and to you. Now you are all grown up and you have the ability and the right to make the attempt to mend what was broken. This has nothing to do with your afamily. It doesn't matter if they're good people who love you or not. The need to find bfamily has nothing to do with them. Saying you should be satisfied with your wonderful afamily is like saying you just had a good meal so why should you be thirsty. Your aparents will come to know this, as time goes on and your relationship with them continues unchanged. It will just take them a little time to understand. I wouldn't lose sleep over it. As far as your bsibs are concerned, you can't control how they react to a situation. They had the option of being interested, even curious, as my bbrothers were, and welcoming you to the extended family, or getting themselves all worked up because mom had a secret she didn't share with them. Your bmother going overboard ... well, that's perfectly normal too. When I met one of my bbrothers the same thing happened ... we are so much alike we bonded the instant we met. He was all I could think about for months, and he felt the same way about me. But things settled down and we have a great relationship. My abrothers think my bbrothers are fine and have welcomed them, in their low-key way, into the family. Part of this may have stemmed from the way we were raised. Anyone who was at the table was considered family in one way or another ... it was very inclusive and accepting, so when I began to find various members of my bfamily my afamily just set another place at the table. Let your bfamily work its own dynamics out in its own way. You can't change anything in any case, and you don't have to apologize for existing. Take it slowly, let them make their own decisions, and don't agonize over it. It's not your doing and you have nothing to feel guilty about. Some people can't stand a little rocking of their personal boat. Others welcome the change. Either way, it's their choice, not your responsibility. Jane

I am the other side of this coin, and I don't mean to be antagonistic in any way, but I want to give you my perspective as one of those siblings who never knew about a sibling relinquished. I have known about the birth and subsequent adoption of my older half-sibling for about 7 months and never had an inkling prior to that. I was raised as the first born in my family, first born grandchild...the whole ball of wax. My grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles knew that my mother had given birth to a child before me but no one ever told me. To say that I was shocked to hear of all of this is the understatement of the year! I am shocked to this day just thinking about it. I have 2 things to get used to at once: 1) that there was another child born before me and I was never told (the betrayal) and 2) now she is here and she wants my mom. I don't really know what her long-term expectations are for a relationship with my mom, but from my mom's behavior, she is very much like your biomom in her fascination with you. I have struggled mightily to understand this situation, and have felt a great deal of loss and pain in my relationship with my mom. She has not been particularly reassuring to me and my younger sister, and in fact has at times been very dismissive of our fears and our anger. (If you are interested in reading my story, I have my own thread in birthfamily support.) As a birth sibling, I have felt marginalized by the "adoption triad". I'm not really allowed to have my own process in coming to terms with this huge shift in my family and my relationship with my mom. I'm expected to just go with their flow and welcome this new person as my sister when she is a stranger to me. I find this task too difficult to do, when I am still struggling to figure out what all of this means. I have asked my mom not to tell me any more about her relationship with her other daughter while I work on processing what I already know (a temporary measure). I don't tell you these things to increase your feelings of guilt. What I want you to know is that I don't blame her daughter for doing anything to me. My problems are with my mother and my need to feel secure in my relationship with her before proceeding on to knowing another person. Her fascination and obsessiveness with her found daughter are confusing to me, as I need her very much to help me in my own understanding of what is going on. From my perspective, I just need more time to get to the point where I can fully accept my mother's daughter as any kind of relation to me. I have to feel secure in my relationship with my mom before I can proceed. I know that this has made her other daughter feel rejected, but it isn't about her....not yet anyway. She has her own needs, one of which is to know the person who gave birth to her. My mom has relayed information to her other daughter about me and my wishes not to have contact at this time. Due to her misunderstanding of my issues, I'm sure that much of the information that she provides is incorrect and probably more hurtful to her other daughter than the truth. I am struggling with how to address that as well. As one of those siblings from the other side, I don't think that you hold any responsibility for taking care of the relationship between your birth mom and her other children. That is HER job, and it can be overwhelming for her to take on so many roles all at once when she is feeling emotionally vulnerable too. I know that I need my mom to help me feel OK with all of this, but I don't necessarily expect to get it from her (yet). It is hard to watch her give her support to another child whom I never knew existed while I feel so needy myself. I don't really have any advice for you here. I can't tell you to stop feeling guilty any more than I can stop feeling hurt (again, I don't feel hurt by the adoptee, but by my mom). I wish that my mom and her other daughter had taken things slower between them so that I could adjust at my own pace. Things have been very rushed between them and that has contributed to my feeling overwhelmed. I guess what I want now from my mom's other daughter is time and space to deal with this on my own. For me, any contact now from her feels intrusive while I'm trying to feel like my mom and I are back on solid ground. I hope to get to a place where she and I can have some kind of relationship, but I'm not ready yet. But that doesn't mean that there is something wrong with her.....it's just too raw for me right now. I hope that hearing my side of what sounds like a very similar story is helpful to you. Write me any time. Knittygirl

You can't always make EVERYBODY happy. Somebody always gets hurt - it's just not you this time! Take heart and enjoy your time with your bmom!

I am surprised your bsiblings are acting in this manner. They should be happy to have a new sister; they sound very selfish. Anyway, it sounds like ur bmom wants a good relationship with you and thats something thats good because not all bmoms are like that.

You have nothing to feel guilty about. Perhaps you should replace the word guilt in this situation to feel bad for the others in this reunion. Feeling bad about another's pain is normal, feeling guilty is wrong because you did nothing wrong. I wish you could connect with birth siblings on this site so perhaps both sides could find solace and peace by learning that their pain is also your pain, it's just the flip side showing. Kind regards,Dickons

wrgamom....you have done nothing wrong. It is your right to find your answers. I am sorry that your bsiblings are finding this difficult. Your existance didn't hurt your siblings. Please don't feel guilty about that. It is their responsiblity to work through this....this issue was always here, it's just that it wasn't brought to the surface until recently. It was not your fault that your bmom did not share this with your bsiblings. I hope that your bsiblings can see that getting to know you isn't the same thing as saying that your bmom was right in keeping you a secret. Perhaps they feel that acknowleding you would be saying that what your bmom did to them was "okay". Chin up!! You deserve good things!

Hello: I don't think you've hurt anyone in the way you think - adoption IS at it's very core founded on pain and hurt - it isn't YOU or WHAT YOU DID in searching - it is the pain that everyone was feeling fromt he very beginning when your adoption materialized - IT"S NOT YOU _ IT"S ADOPTION - I can't stress that enough - the pain was a consequence of your mother and father losing you to adoption - the pain of your a-rents is the inability of them to resolve the loss of their own heirs and thinking they could fix that by taking another's child to raise as their own - your aparents thinking they can run from theor own pain by adopting and completely ignoring the very fact that you and your natural family need one another to be whole - I wonder if you need "TO FIX" things as you were once expected to do at birth by your adoption - I don't know and only woner this, but I do know that you can not carry the weight of everyone's unhappiness without great cost to you .... take this time with your natural mom - you and her have been separated way too long and need to know one another in ways you have both been deprived - everyone else WILL SURVIVE - I PROMISE - best to you, fallen child

I wish people on this board wouldn't use words like "selfish" when talking about feelings of reunion. Just as someone who can't understand an adoptee's need to look for the b-family should not call the adoptee names, neither should any other members of the b-family or a-family be called names because their feelings can't be understood.

Follow your heart. It matters how you feel, too.

Wrgamom,First, congratulations on finding your bfamily. Even the most "successful" reunions are rollercoaster rides. A couple thoughts... first your bsiblings problem is with your bmom, not really you (except that you exposed what they see as your bmom's deception. If she didn't tell them about you, what else has she hidden from them. It becomes a trust issue.) It is your bmom who will have to work this out with them. You can simply make it clear that you are there when they are ready for a relationship. (And then let it go for now.) I don't know how close you live to your a and b families. My bson D simply invites all of us to all birthday parties,etc. On Saturday, I will be there for Z's second birthday party. D's parents will be there; as well as his friends. My kids probably won't although they were invited, but they were altogether last Sunday evening and Monday for cookouts. We have been in reunion almost 3 years. It took awhile for his amom to be comfortable with my being in D's life. As his bmom, I have repeatedly tried to make it clear that I'm not interested in taking her place. I love being part of his life and having a relationship with him that is unique to us. The relationship he has with his amom is unique to them. We are not in competition. I guess what I'm saying is continue to love and treat your (a)mom as you always have, and get to know the woman who gave birth to you. See it as an opportunity to grow relationships. Try not to beat yourself up! You are not trying to cause pain to others and you do have the right to find the answers to questions surounding your birth and your genetic heritage. Choosing to have a relationship or even just to find out about your birth family does not mean that you are rejecting your aparents. Sometimes I think we all need to remember that none of us owns another person (parent or child). May your reunion journey smooth out!