I wish it would get easier

I know how you feel. My reunion has been very positive but it's still very hard and, as you say, it really does magnify all the feelings that are already there. Does he know how you feel? How did your previous meetings go? Could you plan a trip to his city or invite him to yours?

Firstmom47 and Mom7123,I am on the other side of a reunion as I am an adult adoptee. The descriptions of your feelings you write about, are as if I wrote them myself. It's my birth mother who creates a wedge. I find myself wanting to spend more time with her but she says she's busy with her husband and his children (all grown adults as well). She has said on a few occasions that "maybe I expect too much from the relationship" and I guess maybe she is right. I think I somehow long for the closeness between mother and child but I get the impression she feels more comfortable at a distance from me.My adoptive mother passed away about the same time I reunited with my bmom (about 20 years ago) and we have been playing this push-pull relationship thingy all these years.I am slowly giving up hope that she will ever come around and be in relationship with me in the way I had always imagined a reunion between us would be.Time and time again, I read and hear of stories where the reunion consists of one party really wanting the connection and the other being somewhat ambivalent (to various degrees) about it. I wonder why that is?

Hi Belonging. It really is something, isn't it? I really wish it was easier for all of us. Your birth mother probably wants very much to be close to you but maybe she's afraid of all the feelings that come with that. There seems to be a common theme with birth mothers shutting down their feelings and then the floodgates open with reunion. Of course I can only speak for myself but maybe your birth mother is going through something similar. I can't tell you what these feelings are but they sure aren't pleasant. Apparently it's grief still working its way out. I've had contact with my child for about 6 years and we've had 3 face-to-face visits. I spend several months crying after our visits and it's pretty uncomfortable. No matter how positive our contact has been and how wonderful our relationship is, it leads to incredible pain. Someone in another thread once said "I can't even buy milk without crying" and that's how I feel. All I can do it hope it gets easier with each subsequent visit and eventually reach the point where it's no big deal, if that makes any sense. I hope your birth mother comes around. Maybe she needs some gentle pushing. It's really hard to 'go there' and volunteer for the pain no matter how great the pay off (you!) is. But try not to mistaken her distance for disinterest.

Mom7123, Thank you for sharing your feelings regarding your reunion and the pain you feel. Do you find that experiencing the pain has made you want to back away and create a sort of "wall" to protect you from those feelings? If not, what (if you even know) gives you the courage to continue on in the relationship with your child despite the pain? I agree with you that my bmother probably has buried her feelings very deep to a place she'd rather not revisit. There are significant parts of my birth, for example, the name/city of the hospital where I was born that she cannot recall. The only sense I can make of that is that she buried that information along with most of the other details regarding my birth because remembering them brought her pain. All my life I grew up thinking about her and dreaming of the day we would be reunited. Well, we did indeed reunite but it's not quite the fairytale I dreamed of. I would like to think I have turned out okay and would be someone she could be proud of (and I do think she is down deep) but at this point I fear the only relationship in our future is a sort of shallow one where we "connect" maybe a few times a year as a formality more than anything else. I just haven't figured out yet how to make peace with that reality :(

This is a hard thing for both sides. My son says he isn't close to his family, but even if that's true, it may be he protects himself in any relationship. I do that too, I think. I find it hard to let family members know how much I need them. I have let myself admit to more about how I feel about my first child, who can't be mine. I don't know how much he knows. It's pretty obvious, I guess, but then guys can miss a lot. Or, he doesn't want to know? He tries to keep things light, except for the first time we met. And we've only met twice. Of course one of the reasons for moving was to be at least within range of traveling to his area, or for him to come to us. Thanks for all your posts. Good to know others feel this way, and I hope it gets better for all of us.

I'm so sorry you lost your adoptive mom. I'm glad you could find your birthmom. Pressures within the family may affect what she feels she can do. I bet she wishes it were different. Lots of siblings and husbands feel jealousy, and also it contradicts the person she seemed to be to others all those years. Years of pretending are hard to crack. There's this past, and the life you've made since...I think it's hard to integrate it all. Aside from shame, guilt, secrecy. There are the natural feelings, with no one to apply them to in practice, and then you meet the actual person and have to retire the "fantasy image" that you have had to build to assure yourself the child was ok. It's not that the real person is worse or better, just REAL and the result of other people's care and love, not your own, which you want for him, but still hurts. Partly, we all just don't know how to act normal in an unnatural situation, and having given up a child is unnatural. In our case, I eventually married the father, so when he found us, he found us together, and our 2 children are full brothers.

When I first knew we were going to meet, I did some research and found a blog by a young man who'd met his birthmother. Gradually they got to know one another, and eventually he began to feel he loved her. It took 20 years. We met when I was 59, he was 37. We really don't have time, do we?Keep in contact with her, tell her about your life, ask about her and the family, see each other when you can. It's hard to start out as strangers, despite that shock & awe of recognition the first time.