Dear Knittygirl:
Oh my! I can hear your pain and I'm so sorry this is happening to you. I wish I could tell you that everything will be better soon, but I can't promise you that. It sounds like your mother is in the throes of wrestling with ancient and entrenched feelings of anger and pain and injustice and loss, all tatooed upon her heart long ago. Anyone who has relinquished a child, especially during the closed adoption era, knows these feelings well, and I can see how you are doing your best to be empathetic and supportive of her. But it's impossible for you to fill her need at this time. She has to find her own way. It is so painful for you to be left out of this, or to be permitted to only deal with it according to your mother's prescribed process. It is a fact of reunions--we cannot understand how the other person feels, because I think in this situation, only those who have experienced it can understand it and each point of view is different. In time, your mother may become as sensitive to your perspective as you seem to be to hers. But this will take time and there will be emotional and psychological carnage in your family in the meantime, I'm very sad to say...
I think it is unlikely that your mother wants to hurt you in the way she is hurting you. I think it is more likely that she is trying to protect her other daughter, and her new relationship. While it's impossible for me to speak for your mother, experience has shown that three months is still the very beginning of the reunion process for almost all of us. At that point in my reunion, it was not at all unusual for me to find myself suddenly gripped by feelings of terror that my son might tire of me and leave me and that was something I was pretty certain I could not survive. I had feelings that were much stronger and more confusing and more "raw" than those I had even at relinquishment. And whenever I got the feeling that someone--even my own children--might do something to hurt him, my protective feelings were almost primal. I would have done almost anything to protect him from the threat of rejection by any family member, all of whom I loved. This was mostly an expression of my own guilt and shame that I had failed to protect him when he was born, and in all that followed, especially as his history began to unfold before me and I knew it was nothing like what I had hoped or expected for him. He was NOT protected as a child; he was hurt and rejected and damaged and grew up to experience more pain and sorrow than anyone could wish on a child. I've had to learn to live with that and my part in it. But even without this particular history, I think most first mothers feel this almost overwhelming need to protect our found children from anyone we perceive might hurt them. Again, we carry so much guilt and it takes time and really hard work to let go of it and move on...
The way we first mothers behave in reunion can be a mystery in so many ways. But I'd like to quote shadow riderer; I think she hit the nail on the head...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by shadow riderer
Something I noticed with my bio mom and I think it occurs quite often in reunion, is that Bmoms sometimes regress back to a younger age when maybe they were not so mature. It's almost like they go back in time to that time of relinquishment. They, for lack of a better description, forget what is in the present and sort of go back so that they can redo or undo the past. It's all new. They have their baby back, and nothing else matters...Bio parents are no longer the mature adults their families know them to be.
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We become other people, people we don't recognize ourselves, people we sometimes don't even like, when we enter into this crazy process of reunion. I could say so much more, and if you want to PM me, I'd be happy to share whatever you think might be helpful. But for now I guess I want to offer this:
What your mother is doing is NOT a reflection of a deficit in you, or even a deficit in the relationship you and your mother have shared all your life. It is nothing but an expression of where SHE is in her reunion process. I can't emphasize enough--even though you report that she says she's all through her process--that it is still very, very new. While it may be impossible for you not to take what is happening personally, I urge you not to take that on yourself. Your mother seems cold and hard and unyielding to you at this time. It sounds to me like she is processing in a particular way and is finally exercising her own agency and responsibility in taking care of the child she may feel she failed to care for when that child was born. As ridiculous as it may sound, and as profoundly as this is impacting you and everyone you love, your mother's journey at this time is NOT about you. It is not even really about the child she placed. It is about your mother, HERSELF, and her need to find her own way. If the two of you had the relationship you have described, I think it's safe to imagine that that relationship can weather this. Try to avoid taking on responsibility for what is happening to your mother right now. If you can, try to step back, take a breath, let go of as much as you can. The less the two of you engage in angry exchanges, the less you will both have to feel guilty about later. And if there's anything the reunion process doesn't need more of, it's guilt. There's already more than enough to go around.
You didn't cause what is happening to your mother and you can't fix it. You can only be there waiting when she is ready to re-engage with you as her daughter. If you can't bring yourself to talk with her about her new relationship, then don't. Step back and wait it out. Again, I'm sorry to say that there will be carnage, but there can be healing on the other side of it. I know...
Those of us who have been reunited with our placed children do not love them more than we love our kept children, but at least for a time, we often do have to love them differently--more intensely, more passionately, and most definitely more insecurely. It may be that your mother is trusting that because of your history together, the strength of your relationship can withstand this firestorm and come out healthy and whole in the end. It may be that the power of this experience will not end your relationship with your mother, but grow it and enrich it in the long run. I would not presume to predict what lies ahead for you in your particular situation, but can only speak from my own experience.
Stay in touch, and again, I'd welcome your PM if think it would be helpful to you.
Hugs,
Susanne