[cindyleigh]

Thank you for your words of kindness and I guess just validation of my feelings. I just want to do the right thing for her. I truly and sincerely hope that someday she can come to peace with my existence. I hoped that meeting me and seeing that I have had a blessed and happy life would help with that. I guess all it did was make me real to her and force her to think about the events of her past and me as a real person instead of an unacknowledged pregnancy that went away over spring break 28 years ago. I think that maybe she feels some guilt that she is projecting onto me because of my illness? I don't think of it that way. Just something I have and have to deal with and that she needed to know for her other children.
I don't know how I would deal with it either if I had no one to talk about it with and not even my husband or if I couldn't read about other's thoughts and feelings on this site.
I haven't responded to her in 3 weeks since she told me the bdad's name and said so many other mean things. I've written so many draft letters but just haven't been ready to send them. But then I read from so many bmom's that not responding is so much worse because it makes you doubt. I don't want to do that to her regardless of how she treats me.
My husband and I have talked it through a lot and I do think I have to go my separate way from her. It is not healthy for me. I have become consumed by it.
But I guess I just feel like I am giving up on her. And she hasn't lived a life (i.e. the small rural town where she lives) that has allowed her to get help with her emotions or understand how to learn from life's hard experiences. I just wish I could help her.
My husband thinks that this is the time and relationship to break that lifelong cycle I have had in always, and often to my detriment, putting aside my feelings and best interests to potentially help someone else or make them happy at all costs to me. I know he is right. It is self-destructive and fatally optimistic (i.e. magical thinking that I can come in and get her to break down 30 year walls). But boy it is hard to do.
And honestly, aside from her best interests, it makes me terribly sad for what I am losing - getting to meet my brothers and sisters, grandmother, uncles, and cousins. All because of her choices. It is very frustrating. How can she be so sure they would hate me?
Thank you for listening. It helps to say it out loud to people who actually understand! I can say things to you all that I can't to other people. I truly appreciate that.