Too much to hope for?

Reunions are positive lots of the time!

"Hope for the best but prepare for the worst." ^^^ I think that's probably the best approach to reunion. I've heard stories that range from wonderful to mediocre to terrible, and you never really know what's going to happen. So I wouldn't go into a reunion thinking, "This is probably going to be awful" or "This is going to heal me!" - but rather, "I am open to whatever I find in this experience, and I will find the good in whatever is."

I think people too often hope for a happy or healing reunion, when- more often than not- they get let down, if not completely rejected.Happy reunions are very incredibly rare, nearly slim to none basing it on the overall odds, despite the popularly viewed happy posts on forums like this.People wanting to establish contact with some long-lost biological link should expect to be let down, if not far worse (completely heartbreaking). If it actually is a successful search and a successful reunion, they'll be abnormally lucky.

What I never see expressed is the negligent/unfit parent who HAD to give up children. In the early 50s my baby sister and I were placed in a state orphanage because my desperate, immigrant Czech grandmother, who could speak no English, could not convince her four married sons to take us in, even temporarily. So I have 66-70 year old cousins, who still blithely accept this as normal. Somehow everyone just referred to us as "the 2 girls who were adopted" (from the bad sister who was rejected by all). No one questions this.I have memories back to age 2, the neglect, searching for food for me and my sister after being left alone. I remember the orphanage very well, separated from my sister, no contact allowed, for a year! I remember the day I was rescued and my sister and I were taken to a home in the country away from city tenement life, and that grey state orphanage..So when a long lost half sisters, born to my mother sought me out they were shocked I was not warm to the idea. Now I offended them by even bringing up why no one ever thought to ask questions. Appears my birth mother never spoke of us, not even on her deathbed? But my half sisters knew we existed, probably due to our shared grandmother. I can understand being defensive to protect your 'mother' but they both know better, she was a poor , 'mean' mother, from all they tell me. I asked if either of then would have given up their first born for convenience or temporary troubles? I can't move forward if I am forced to pretend we're all one big family. I wanted to go slow, but after a whirlwind 2 weeks I can see they lost momentum.What is worse for me is having absolutely nothing in common tho I have searched for something. The older sister has already told me off in an email. I am having trouble with even finding superficial interests, my life has been so very different! I can talk with anyone about anything, but they will remain strangers if there is no acknowledgement of a painful history. My real mother, the one who adopted and raised me taught me not to imagine a 'magical family' that wanted me ...she was correct. She spared me years of grief because she told me the truth. She also did something wonderful, she stayed in my grandmother's life, after the legal adoption, we visited her, reassuring her we were being raised in love. They both spoke Polish, it was a comfort to them both. The one I feel affection for is my grandmother, who arrived in 1911 to a strange new country, and tried to keep her family together. I believe these sisters are shocked also that their reunion fantasy isn't realistic for me. I do not reject THEM, their children, or their lives. I am simply apathetic at this point to engage when there is little about me that they will like.