Hi,
I'm not originally from the USA, instead, I come from the UK, and this was the only site that I found to be promising real support and the fact that it was free helped alot.
I'm a 32 year old Adult Adoptee and this is the first time I investigated on getting support. Unfortunately, I seem to be having a problem with getting support in the UK and feel like I'm looking for a needle in a haystack. I think the geniune consencous is that once your adopted the buck stops there (so to speak!).
I'm currently having problems both at my adoptive family's relationship and I've had disasterous atempts at getting back in touch with my birth family. I hadn't got in touch with my birthmom for 24 years and then this year I got in touch but realised how difficult it would be to keep up the meetings when I noticed how bad her Mental Health was. I had two meetings with her over two months and then never got in contact again (both meetings were supported physically by an ex-foster mum that I kept in contact with from my teens, and who my birthmom had a positive connection with during the handover process at the childrens panel back when I was 8yrs old, hence the reason I thought it to be more logical than taking a complete stranger with me for support). I feel awful for ceasing the contact but for my own mental health, I thought it to be wise.
My ex-foster mum (efm) had noticed how history was repeating itself, when I suddenly became the parent to my birthmom and my efm had to tap me on the shoulder to calm me down. Obviously, the meetings HAD to come to an end, because, not only was it stressful for my efm but also for me and it really needed a professional mental health worker to intervene. How do you convince your birthmom you haven't seen for 24 years to get help, in order to help our relationship, when my birthmom consistently has said she doesn't need help. Many of you think she probably doesn't, but my sister (who wasn't adopted) has been consistently going to see her, to buy her food, etc and often discusses with me how difficult it seems to communicate with her and the fact she keeps trying to persuade her to get help, so it becomes really quite distressing for all involved. My birthmom has always said that she doesn't trust the government and the social care system, and I can only assume that she's been deeply scared in the way I had been split apart from my birthmom but the full story never seems to surface.
I feel very isolated at the moment with nobody physically I can talk to about having been adopted at the age of 10, and the feelings I have about my adoptive parents don't seem to be there. I feel like my adoptive parents are there for me financially but nothing is there emotionally and it's very difficult to convey these feelings when nobody I know has been through a similar feeling.
At the moment, I am on the verge of completing a Theraputic Community of being a patient of for 15months and feel I've gone as far as I can with it and it now feels that the feelings I have about being adopted have opened a new crossroads in my life and is a completely different issue to what I deal with in the TC. I believe the group have given me certain coping strategies to deal with every day life, but it seems, that since I investigated a support group for adoptive adults, about 150 miles away from my home, there is a sense of want to understand and accept being adopted and rejected and I seemed to get more out of that group than the group I currently get therapy in. I'm very confused and not sure what way in life I need to go. Trust is a very big issue for me so it's been very hard to trust this TC I'm attending when not a single patient in the group is adopted themselves so I've noticed I isolate myself further because of it.
If anyone has any contacts to the UK that might be able to help me I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm having a nightmare with these feelings and really don't want to make more mistakes, regrets etc for the next 10 years and just desperately alone with how I feel.
Snoopylou
