[jsg36007]

Hello everyone, just signed up yesterday for this forum and wanted to share my story. I'm an adult adoptee who has always struggled with me being adopted. seems many of us adoptees have this at different times and cope with it differently. My feelings were always that i was some sort of a throw away and felt abandoned. This led me to search for my birthmother and father about 7 years ago. I can honestly say i regret this decision to the hilt. and again i regret it and wish i could have left that door shut and kept moving but as human nature is curious i couldn't. the short side of it, i finally met my birthmom and was overjoyed at the sight of seeing someone related to me. oh what a feeling that was! Not long after i met my biological father and found out he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. i went to go meet him and he was ok with it at first. he wasn't very emotional nor did he say much. anyhow my relationship with my mother was progressing, and i found out that she had terminal cancer also. what a blow in the face that was, oh man! after three months she wrote me a letter telling me not to see her or her family again. I had no choice so i abided by her wishes. a month went by and then my father died. i felt like i hit rock bottom then. death around and being rejected for a second time and none of the other family members wanted to speak to me or return phone calls. About 7 months later i got a call from my grandmother telling me to go to the hospital to see my mother, the doctors had said she wasn't going to last the night, the cancer had overcome her and she didn't have long. i mustered up my courage and went to see her for the last time with her family in the room and my newly found brothers and not long after that she expired. what a horrible feeling that was, it still haunts me to this day. Since then i've moved on and tried making things better, it's very hard to forget things like this. The moral of the story is if your an adoptee searching, be ready for anything. as you know you can walk into any set of circumstances or any part of peoples lives and there is no telling whats next. Be prepared when you enter into the whole process, have counseling available and have experienced people that can walk you through the whole thing, it's very difficult and stressful if you go in alone. be emotionally ready for all things. i hope this advise helps somebody. thank you for taking the time to read this.

[Sniffles]

Welcome to the forums and thanks for sharing your story. My heart goes out to you for finding both of them then losing them. I myself have searched for my b-mom and she has denied contact with me. It does hurt that she does not want to see me, but I do realize that it was her decision to make and not mine. I am blessed to have contact with my b-grandparents. Are you in contact with any of your b-family? I noticed that you mentioned a grandmother and brothers. I know at one point they would not speak to you, but what about now?

[jsg36007]

No, haven't had any contact with any of the family members for quite some time. it just didn't work out at all for me. I'm sorry to hear your bmom doesn't want contact with you, you truly can understand that awful feeling. hopefully it will work out for you someday.

[c3636]

Hello,
Welcome to the forums, wow what a story, I can just imagine what you must have been going through. Maybe at some level you were shocked. I know at some level I wasn't prepared fully for everything with my birth family. I was a teenager when I located my birthmother. I always new I would. I kinda thought I had the right, and I really didn't like the era of so many secrets. I thought in the beginning that I was on a roller coaster. With ups and downs. I started posting earlier this year because this is a way of communitcating things others don't experience. I'm at a better place of acceptance with my birth family today because I've let go of some of my expectations. Part of my story is here. A part of my research project is on adoptees finding their birth families and the struggles they go through. It's an area I feel really strongly about. Luckily I found a professor that I believe is really sensitive to adoption issues, I didn't find all of them that way. I somewhat wonder if adoptees experience some level of trauma in their search. I think it's really great that you are sharing your story. I tend to think this site is very helpful in bringing people together in the adoption triad to discuss areas of adoption I hope it is really helpful to you. It would be interesting to hear more of your story. I give you a lot of credit, you've lived through some really hard stuff.
Alex

[gayle23]

I feel so badly for you in finding your b-parents only to lose them so quickly and that it hasn't turned out well. I am a b-mother who recently made contact with my daughter and it is going well. What i wanted to say to you is don't be so hard on yourself. Your b-mother may have been like I was and that was the old school thinking that I had no right to try and find my daughter. i don't remember seeing an age or time frame but if this happened in the 60's or 70's you are not alone. There are so many children that were placed for adoption in that era and we were told to never, ever discuss it with anyone. We were told to forget that it ever happened. This may be the way your b-mother was feeling. My prayers go out to you and i hope that you find peace.

[kakuehl]

Another Birthmom here... My heart hurts for those of you whose dreams of reunion don't go as planned. I've been thinking a lot about this since I've been a member on these forum and it occurs to me that sometimes the problem is each of us approaches reunion with our own set of dreams and expectations. Adoptees sometimes see it as their right to find the birthparents and are hurt/devestated/angry (the emotions vary) when the response from the birth family isn't what they expect. Some birthparents count the days until their children are 18 and are devastated/angry/hurt when the teen is not ready for a reunion. Sometimes it's just a matter of finding the right time. Alex, I think it would be interesting to be able to contact birthmothers who refused contact and find out how many of them had kept the adoption secret from their families.

We think of the "secret" era as being past, but there are expectant mothers today who are trying to keep their pregnancies secret from their parents and families. It seems to me that the longer something is a secret, the harder it can be to talk about it.

For every birth mother that doesn't want anything to do with the adoptee there is another who is desperately wanting contact. As you read these threads you will find adoptees who want nothing to do with birthparents as well as birthparents who refuse contact.

Another problem that happens in reunion is that each of us enters it with certain expectations. There is often a deep connection that we feel and it's easy to forget that despite that connection we are still strangers to each other. I read threads where the bmoms assume they can act like the parent who raised the achild and are hurt and taken aback when their "parenting" is rejected. There are also adoptees who feel they have the right to make certain demands and end up feeling rejected by the bfamily when the demands aren't met.

I am a year into my reunion with D (This is our second Christmas.) and overall it's going well. There are still places that are awkward in the relationship, but D has come to recognise that I'm an emotional person who will tell him how much I love him! (He goes to his siblings to check out if this is my normal behavior!) And so we muddle on in this journey of reunion.

I wish you could all have wonderful reunions, but obviously that isn't going to happen. Recognise that this is your bfamily's loss. I believe that our lives are enriched by knowing each other.

This has turned into a long post. Please know that your are in my heart and prayers.

[Queenie312]

Hi and welcome to the forum. I am also an adult adoptee who has struggled all my life with the adoption issue. Still do to this day. I myself have always felt like I was and am second best. Second choice. My bmother gave me up and the only reason my parents adopted me was because they thought they couldn't have biological children. Turned out after adopting my older brother and me my Mom found out she was pregnant and ended up having 6 biological children. I had an absolutely wonderful life and the best parents I could have hoped for so I have no complaints whatsoever and it's not that they made me feel the way I do. They treated my brother and I no different than the other 6. It's just something I carried. If I wasn't the perfect kid they'd send me back. Stuff like that. I met my bmother and although she welcomed me with open arms I sometimes wish I had not searched. She had had me then a son she kept, another girl she gave up and another son she kept. They are a very dysfunctional family with a capital D. Both sons are recovering drug addicts and alcoholics and both were molested by my bmother's brother. She has welcomed me to the point that she wants me to be a part of their family and I just don't feel that connection with them. I am so sorry for what you went through with you bmom and bdad losing them. And I agree with what you said about being prepared for anything and everything. That is very important for anyone searching. Take care and hang in there and if you ever need to talk we are here.

[c3636]

Jeff,
Thanks again for writing, I know when it comes to post adoption issues, like dealing with meeting with your birth family, that their can be a lack of counseling available or even knowledge amongst professionals, and I'll speak to my own state, where I'm adopted from and have researched agencies, and professionals and I remember not any post adoption services at the time when I located my birth mother. Nice bike also.

Kathy, I would find it very interesting to research more on other members of the adoption triad, I do believe that more information needs to be out in the adoption community.

I know for me, I believe we have an ethical responsiblity to adoptees, in gathering more information, which, once again, in my state they are doing as to prepare an adoptee in the future.
I also was from a place where few men talked about adoption issues, in the military at the time I found my birth mother, sitting down and talking about adoption wasn't an option, and the internet wasn't a thought, so I do try to encourage conversation.

And again Jeff, it would be interesting to here how you are coping, whether you are reading from this site, or books ex...
Thanks
Alex

[jsg36007]

thank all of you for your nice comments and listening to my story. I hope it helps someone else out in their time of need. As alex had mentioned above, i also have noticed that other men that were adopted don't seem to want to discuss it.

Talking about it sure helps out. it's even better to be talking to so many different people here that have had so many different experiences and are willing to share them.