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Has anyone had the experience of searching for birth family with all that entails, finally getting the EUREKA! experience of finding them...and then getting stuck in limbo as to the next step? Let me explain a little about the situation I'm in with both my birth mother and birth father. They are not married, each has their own situation, so each will have their own paragraph. :)
Mother - in the two years since I located her, we email pretty regularly but have only spoken by phone twice. During this span of time I have asked on at least 3 different occasions how she feels about a face to face reunion. On every occasion she either seems to avoid the question entirely or her reply is something to the effect of "it'll happen whenever it's supposed to happen." I don't know what that means. I try to put myself in her shoes and think of the things she went through, the stigma of being pregnant and unmarried in the early 1960's, how my birth father cut and ran just about the time of my birth never to be seen again etc. I know that even though I have no direct responsibility for the pain she went through that I do represent those pains and may very well be a walking, talking reminder of feelings that she tried very hard to deal with and repress. All that said, and even trying to take my obvious bias into account, I have to wonder why she seems so reluctant to discuss the subject of face to face reunion. There are a lot of things going on that she's dealing with with other family members at the moment, and those demand a lot of her time and attention. Yet during those times I know my half brothers have visited on several occasions, so it isn't impossible. The best word I've yet found to describe her attitude towards face to face reunion is "ambivalence" and in some ways that hurts worse than outright rejection. Am I wrong to wonder "what the heck?"
Father - two years ago an intermediary found my father for me. At my instruction the intermediary relayed a message for me that included all my contact information. As I understand it he married another woman about the same time as I was born, never mentioned anything to her about the son he fathered, and they've been married 48 years or so now. He is also almost if not completely blind and is very reliant on his wife for day to day living. As mentioned above he has not always conducted himself as he might be proud of, and somehow I wonder if he is now embarassed by that. He was receptive to the intermediary's message, but very non-comittal about contact. There's the problem: his being non-comittal. He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no. He never has contacted me, and I feel hamstrung by not knowing if further contact is a possibility or not...and if so, how to go about it with his wife apparently not knowing anything about me. Either yes or no is an answer, while I've just been in limbo for a couple of years, having an ongoing argument with myself about whether I should invest any more thought and effort into contact with him and how. I'm open to suggestions on this one as I'm kind of torn either way. On the one hand I don't feel right in walking away from the situation and my birth father. On the other hand, pursuing it further would probably mean finding another intermediary to make another "clandestine" contact to get the yes / no answer. I really don't care for feeling like being told yes or no should have to involve the family level equivalent of a black op, but there you go.
I appreciate anyone's thoughts and feedback on either of these situations, or both. :confused: Thanks all!
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Quick update to the original post:
Mother - it finally got to be a bit too much to just sit and take one day so I found a softer way to ask my b-mom the "what the heck?" question. In some ways I kinda wish I'd just kept my mouth shut, but as I've continually told myself and others on this site, an answer is at least an answer even if we don't like it.
Her reply was along the lines that I'd outlined in my original post...too many other things going on, including "needing" to be with her own mother almost every moment of the waking day. In a nutshell, I was told that my b-mom can't think about a face to face reunion with me as long as my grandma is still alive. And then, the capper of the whole discussion, that my b-mom feels that she will be too old to travel by the time my grandma passes, and how much different things would have been if I'd only searched and found her a few years earlier. Ummm...ouch. :eek:
While I can see the literal point she's trying to make, in other ways, I don't need to be made to feel that how this has all unfolded is in some way my fault. Sure, in 20/20 hindsight we can always easily identify the little turning points along the way...Monday AM quarterbacking is simple.
So as I'd said in my original post, I appreciate anyone's thoughts and feedback.
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PADJ, I'm afraid I can't offer much advice but perhaps you could ask the birthmothers on this site?
Do you know if her mother knows about you?
Also she says that she would be "too old to travel", have you offered to go to where she lives? Have your half brothers said anything?
Also, a lot of these elderly birthmothers don't have anyone to talk to, perhaps you could give her some info about her nearest CUB chapter.
[url=http://www.cubirthparents.org/home/]Concerned United Birthparents, Inc.[/url]
Hopefully, someone else will be more helpful.
Caths1964,
Thanks for the idea of asking the birthmothers on the site. Maybe I should move the thread over to another forum board?
To answer your questions:
1. No, her mom doesn't know about me. I'm a big secret all the way around.
2. I am very open to the idea of going to where she lives. We're about as far apart as two people can be in the continental US (Washington and Florida), but I'm fine with going there. That said, her reply was phrased in such a way as to make it sound like perhaps that wasn't high on her priority list.
3. My half brothers haven't said anything. In fact there's been very little said from anyone on my birth family's side. What's the old saying..."the silence is deafening"?
I do try not to read too much into it, but at some point it has the effect of making me think that I'm not all that welcome. I hadn't thought about it before (because why would I?) but I've come to realize that even if I ever do get to meet everyone face to face, I will never have the kind of "family" connection that those who have known about each other and had the years of experience together will have. Yes, I will have a birth certificate, but it's different.
PADJ
Caths1964,
Thanks for the idea of asking the birthmothers on the site. Maybe I should move the thread over to another forum board?
To answer your questions:
1. No, her mom doesn't know about me. I'm a big secret all the way around.
2. I am very open to the idea of going to where she lives. We're about as far apart as two people can be in the continental US (Washington and Florida), but I'm fine with going there. That said, her reply was phrased in such a way as to make it sound like perhaps that wasn't high on her priority list.
3. My half brothers haven't said anything. In fact there's been very little said from anyone on my birth family's side. What's the old saying..."the silence is deafening"?
I do try not to read too much into it, but at some point it has the effect of making me think that I'm not all that welcome. I hadn't thought about it before (because why would I?) but I've come to realize that even if I ever do get to meet everyone face to face, I will never have the kind of "family" connection that those who have known about each other and had the years of experience together will have. Yes, I will have a birth certificate, but it's different.
As a natural mom who just lost her elderly mother a couple days ago, I can tell you that your mother may have a LOT on her plate right now. The emotional toll that the past few months has taken on me is tremendous. I vehemently disagree with the previous poster who said that it's a weak excuse. Until you've been there, done that...you just don't know what it's like.There had to have been a reason that your mother didn't feel safe enough during her pregnancy to turn to her own mother for help. She may very well have some resentment towards her mom because of this, and she may know on an instinctual level that when she sees you face to face, those feelings are going to come smashing down upon her. She may be waiting until her mother dies to process all her emotions and the experience of surrendering you so many years ago. It's overwhelming at times when you're dealing with an elderly mother...throw in the emotions and memories that come flooding back during early reunion, and it can be daunting and overpowering.I don't know how to advise you. I can share via Private Message some of my own experiences if you'd like. (I am no longer posting anything of a personal nature about the relationship between my son and I because the things I've shared in the past have been used against me off-site in recent days for the sole purpose of hurting me.)ETA: Do you know if your mother has read The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler? If not, I highly recommend that you send her a copy. Many mothers of the Baby Scoop Era feel alone and helpless with their memories. It will help her to realize that she has millions of sisters who went through the same experience. The book will also help her to begin processing some of those emotions and memories...
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At Ravensong, Guess it was a poor choice of words on my part "weak excuse". I wasn't meaning about her dealing with her mother and taking care of her now." I do understand that and have done it twice. Never would have had a problem with adding to my plate though.
What I meant was that to quote PADJ
" my b-mom feels that she will be too old to travel by the time my grandma passes", I don't know anyone who literally couldn't travel physically, if they wanted to, unless they were homebound or hospitalized. That's what I meant.
You can't put an exact timeline on your parents life, what will she say if her mother (the grandma) passes tomorrow, is she too old then? More sort of what I meant. I just think there's more to it.
So sorry to hear about your Mother Ravensong, I know it's very hard.
Baseball & Raven - thank you both for your insights. My b-mom did share with me a while ago that the reason she didn't turn to her mom for support had to do with the times. She had become pregnant, wasn't married etc, and those were things that just were not supposed to happen. I believe at one point she said that she "just couldn't do that to her parents." I have come to realize that my b-mom is one who specializes in carrying around guilt. She has said several things about different topics that made me realize this, and there is a very real possibility that I represent the living, breathing embodiment of some of that guilt. So there probably is not a huge motivation to stay in touch.
Raven - very sorry for your loss, and it is very difficult. I may take you up on the PM offer.
As for my situation it has sort of devolved into really not much being said by either side. My b-mom is apparently hugely busy with her mom so instead of daily or weekly contacts, it has become more monthly or longer and when there is contact it's about how busy she is.
I am also revisiting the prospects of getting ahold of my b-father (not good odds) and working on my half-brothers, but in the meantime I have become what I really was hoping to avoid. In some kind of odd self defense, after years of thinking and dreaming and months of searching and finding, I find that I have arrived pretty solidly at being apathetic. I don't like this for myself, in part because it just sounds whiny and juvenile, but my attitude has become pretty much "meh...if you have no time for me then I have better things to do with my time too."
I don't know...I think somewhere along the way I must have done something terribly wrong...this is kind of playing out like someone's bad idea of a cruel joke.
Enough for today. Next time, I will post more intelligently and with less self-pity... :prop:
Reunion isn't always easy. There are times when either party might be overwhelmed, and times when either might want more than they feel the other can give, and at the same time feel embarrassed for expecting too much. Relax, communicate in some neutral but positive ways for a while, we can't always be on high-level emotional contact! Let it be a little bit normal. If it's obvious your birthmom is busy and stressed, offer your emotional support and just let her know what you're up to. I can identify with the guilt! Not so much about having gotten pregnant, though that's part of it, but over having allowed myself to be persuaded to give my child up. For everything I've heard that was hurtful in his family, though all families have their problems... Birthmoms may alternate between wanting things to be as they should have been and needing to express their pain and guilt more than the other party can handle. At different ages, different things come into play. The stage in life where an adult loses a parent, and before that, facing having that parent be helpless, that's a big deal. It isn't easy to work through that as well as reunion feelings. And no, you haven't done anything wrong! This is just life. You have time to work all this out. The natural events of real life get in the way all the time; that doesn't mean rejection. Good luck to you both.
Give them time. Dealing with caring for an elderly mother can be all consuming. It's hard to hear but the reality is those secrets are kept alive based on a desire to protect or fear of having the past come back and not knowing how to deal with things. My birth/natural mother (what is the most acceptable term?) is so sensitive about insuring that she protects everyone that it makes me crazy. I don't really know how she feels because I haven't walked in her shoes. I can tell you that pushing won't help. I talked on the phone many times to my birthfather before my mother got on the phone and spoke. The weird thing is she says I sound exactly like her younger sister who died. She says that her sister being still in high school was a major factor in why she was sent away or chose to go away to have me and give me up for adoption. Small town 1956. I get it. So they had a conversation before my Aunt's death and my Aunt said "When are you going to go and find that girl". It led to an argument. Shortly after her death just a month later, during the week before Christmas and New Year's it came to me. I called a friend of my adopted mother's who gave me my other Aunt's maiden name and disclosed that that woman might have been related to my birth parents. It was my mother's father's sister. It was an epiphany. One phone call....information with the last name I got two listings. I called the female my cousin who called my Uncle who then told me my birth/natural mother was always a little strange and may not want contact. I waited 24 hours and got a phone call from my natural father. They married each other. My birth/mother was hesitant and spooked. I had called almost to the day of the anniversary of my conception. So here we are 15 years later. The dilemma women found themselves in is hard for us to understand now. You mother may believe that opening the door now may be too much for her.
You birthfather is likely trying to avoid emotional upheaval and figures it will cause strife in his relationship if he never told his wife. Hard to say
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Murphy,
"The dilemma women found themselves in is hard for us to understand now. You mother may believe that opening the door now may be too much for her."
Yes, I've considered that. You are correct in that I've not walked in her shoes, and never will do so. The times are different and so on.
I know this is not a constructive frame of mind, so I vent it here online and not to her, but if that is really what's going on...that I represent something that is too much for her...then I would rather hear that outright and understand the truth of the matter than to continue to wonder what's going on because of manners and trying to be polite.
I know that sounds harsh...just the current state o' mind I guess.
Best all,
PADJ