[mn125]

Hey Mark

I just ran across another of your posts.......
Are you searching Maryland???

*posted and Pm'ed
mn

[mxdad418]

Md. is a dead end except for my OBC (waiting 3 months). I have most everything else. I lived in Md. for the last 49 yrs. and now live in Pa. Thank you mn for the thought

Mark 08-17-53

"Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for." -- Chief Justice Earl Warren

[Prichard]

To Katrina,
Don't let the negative responses in here get you down. You have not been committed to a life of secrecy. If an adoptee views bearing their birthmother's secret like a badge, then so be it. That is their choice. I did it for nine years too. But don't let your decision be determined by the guilt trip some people try to cast on us -- we are somehow different and if we don't accept this then we are ungrateful or unhappy or maybe we even have a vendetta. If you don't think this occurs, try to use guilt to convince a non-adoptee that they shouldn't have contact with one of their relatives and see what happens.

Whether you had a happy or unhappy childhood is irrelevant. Such personal attacks are uncalled for, especially in here.
You are a human being like everyone else.

I for one am grateful that I was adopted. I support adoption, both open and closed, and I have no moral difficulties in contacting any of my biological relatives. If you feel the same way, please know that you have the support of at least one other person in here.

[RiverGal]

I for one am grateful that I was adopted. I support adoption, both open and closed, and I have no moral difficulties in contacting any of my biological relatives. If you feel the same way, please know that you have the support of at least one other person in here.

Make that at least two.

[shirleyville]

Make that three.....
I didn't intend for any of the things I spoke about to be construed as "unsupportive" or "negative" --- rather just the way I, personally , chose to handle a similar situation. Icertainly wasn't pontificating my own choice as a "be all and end all" guideline for others. If it came across that way, then I sincerely apologize. The journey for those of us who have been denied contact is as unique and individual as any others, and should be dealt with likewise.

If an adoptee views bearing their birthmother's secret like a badge, then so be it. That is their choice.

I have never viewed myself as "bearing my birthmother's secret like a badge." I simply have tired to apply the same principles in this situation as I try to apply in ALL the situations in my life. I try to never make any sort of decision without first "walking a mile" in someone else's shoes. If the tables were turned, and she had located me, and I were unable to emotionally accept contact, for whatever reason, I would want her to respect me, and respect my wishes. If I had said "no"......if I didn't want her to "out" herself to my family.....then I would want her to give me that respect. For me, and me alone, this is about basic human compassion.....respect......and intergrity. It's a personal thing for me --- these are the values and morals in my life that are important to me .......it's certainly not something I advocate for everyone, and everyone's situation and mindset are different.
I support each and every individual choice in matters like this.....no one can know what the "right" thing to do is, except the person facing the decision. Believe me....in the last year and a half, I have placed myself in every single mental scenario possible, from going to my birthmother's door, to writing my siblings, to putting up a billboard in the town where my birthmom resides, saying "If You Slept With "XYZ" in February of 1964, YOU Could Be My Father -- Please Call "XYZ-XYXY". I've gone from the tender and touching approach to the outlandish, extreme and ridiculous, as far as my thought processes go. I have "tried on" a million different scenarios, but the only one that "fits" for me is the one that has "compassion and respect" on the tag. I wouldn't expect anyone else to "fit" in it, tho......
I wish Katrina all the luck in the world in her journey, and I support her, as well as her right to chose what "fits" best for her .
Hugs,
Sally

[Prichard]

There are some very wise and insightful people here. Thank you for considering different viewpoints while not being judgmental.

[RiverGal]

By reading and taking to heart the words and ideas that have often differed from my own, I have learned one big lesson...that I am NOT too old to change my viewpoint.

Education is a wonderful thing.

~Deb

[FL_GirlByProxy]

Here, here!

I don't think this lesson has been taught so well to me, so poignently (sp), in any other place but here. I learn so much every day, and I'm so grateful.
Peace,
LeeAnn

[dl]

I for one am grateful that I was adopted. I support adoption, both open and closed, and I have no moral difficulties in contacting any of my biological relatives. If you feel the same way, please know that you have the support of at least one other person in here.

Make that four!!!!

[mxdad418]

Well, you all should know how i feel about this. But i'm really only posting NOW because the #5 is my lucky #.... I'l take that 1 thank you very much....

Mark 08-17-53

"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." -- Isaac Asimov

[thesearchguru]

"Why Won't My Natural Mother Meet Me?"
by Carole Anderson

Why did your birth mother refuse to meet you? There are probably as many answers as there are birth mothers. From some of my own feelings and those of other birth mothers, though, I do have a few possible themes to suggest. Maybe some of the possibilities are behind your birth mother's refusal to meet you.

Your birth mother lost a great deal when she surrendered you. She lost the chance to give you all of the love she felt for you, that all mothers feel.

She lost the opportunity to share in the important and the humdrum events of your life. She lost all the joys and problems of raising you, of guiding you from infancy to adulthood.

She may feel guilty that she was not there. She may feel cheated because she was not allowed to be there. Either way, loss is both painful and unnatural.

In addition to the pain of the losses themselves, there is the additional pain of feeling different from other people, outcast from society. Often there is the pain of feeling that the loss was unnecessary and that the separation need not have occurred "if only..." If only her parents had helped her. If only the social worker had told her what adoption would really be like for you and for her. If only society had supported single parenthood at the time you were born. If only she had not believed she was unworthy of you. If only she had had the money to support you. If only she
had somehow found a way to keep you. If only she had believed in her own feelings instead of in what others told her would be best for you. The list of "if onlies" is endless.

Knowing you could make her losses more real to her, and thus more painful. She may have worked very hard at denying her feelings, at convincing herself that your adoption was necessary, at telling herself that giving birth does not make a woman a mother, at pretending that she was not a mother and so did not lose anything. She may have denied to herself that it ever happened.

If she has succeeded at numbing herself to the pain by clinging to such beliefs, knowing you would remove the blinders from her eyes, exposing her to the full impact of all the years of loss and pain.

She may have coped with losing you through fantasizing about what might have been. She may see you over and over in her mind just as you were when she last saw you, see herself raising you, see what you would be like at different ages.

If your birth mother has other children, she may be terrified of losing them, too, if she had not told them about you. Many birth mothers were rejected by their children's birth fathers and by their own parents during their pregnancies. If the people she loved and trusted and whom she though would always love and help abandoned her when she most needed them, she may be unable to trust anyone now. She may regard all relationships as fragile, and fear that she will be abandoned again if she disappoints the people who are now important to her. Having already suffered the pain of losing one child, the fear of losing her other children and suffering that same pain again may overwhelm her. She may also fear losing you a second time around, if you want to see her only once. Many birth mothers have internalized others' rejection of them and believe they are unlovable. Not loving or respecting herself, she cannot believe that others could care about her if they really knew her.

Suspecting that adoptees who search will ask about their fathers after they have satisfied their curiosity about their mothers, her rejection may be tied to her feelings about your birth father. If she loved him, accepting you could mean reopening the deep wounds she suffered in being rejected by him. IF she did not love him, she may dread having to admit that fact to you. She may not want to explain her relationship with your birth father or her feelings about it, and fear that you will reject her if she does not answer your questions about him. She may fear that you would prefer him to her and she could not bear to lose you to the very person whose abandonment made your surrender unavoidable. She may believe that your birth father is a terrible person and feel shame at having had a relation with him, fear that you hat her if you knew him. She may fear that you would be upset! or would think less of her or of yourself if you knew him.

Mothers want their children to be happy, but they also want to feel needed and important to their children. They want to be the ones who make their children happy. Generally, a mother's needs and her child's compliment each other, so that both are satisfied by her raising her child, with each needing and receiving the other's love. The special situation of adoption, though, assures that the birth mother cannot win. If she believes your adoption was the best for you, she may feel worthless or useless as a mother because you did not need her. If your adoption was not the best, she may feel guilty that she did not protect you from whatever happened and she may therefore feel she failed as a mother and as a woman.

Your birth mother's image of herself as a mother, a woman, and a human being may be at stake. If she has internalized society's judgments that "nice girls don't" or that only an "unnatural woman" could surrender her child or that "any animal can give birth but that doesn't make her a mother", it will be difficult for her to acknowledge to herself that it is she who is that bad girl, the unnatural woman, or only an animal in society's eyes.

Subconsciously, some mothers feel that their babies abandoned them. Mothers were often repeatedly told that their babies needed or wanted more than they could give them, and that surrender was necessary for the child. Many mothers were told that to keep their children would be selfish, that they had no right to satisfy their need to love and nurture by raising their children, because the children deserve and need more. Other people spoke for you, telling your birth mother you wanted more than she could give. To your birth mother, this may have been experience deep within as a rejection by you, as her baby's deserting her for other people. Even though she knows on an intellectual level that this feeling is not rational and she may feel guilty for it, on an emotional level what she feels may be that, although she needed and wanted her child, her child was not there for her.

Closely related are the problems of competition and sacrifice. Just as she may have felt that she was in competition with unknown couples for the right to raise you, a contest in which she was the loser, she was also placed in the position of being in competition with you. She may have been told that it was her life or yours, her needs or yours. Because you were not aided as a family but instead treated as individuals whose needs were in conflict, she may have felt that she was choosing between her own happiness and yours.

If she wanted to raise you but believed that your surrender was necessary for you happiness, she may feel that she has sacrificed her life for yours, her happiness for yours. All people want happiness, everyone wants her own needs to be met, and there is usually anger toward injustice. She, however, cannot allow herself to feel or express her anger and resentment, because it was your birth mother herself who decided that you were more important and mattered more than she did, she herself who chose your needs above her own.

If that choice was made by others such as her parents or by her situation instead of by your birth mother, there may be even more anger. There can be tremendous guilt involved for feeling anger, because we have been taught that parents gladly sacrifice for their children. Her anger may therefore be threatening to her, for what kind of person can she be that she could feel anger toward her child?

Yet other parents, other people, do not make sacrifices of this magnitude. What society usually calls parental sacrifice is really more like an investment or a trade-off of some current comfort in exchange for other regards. To give up a full night's sleep in order to tend a sick child carries with it the benefits of holding and comforting that child, feeling necessary to the child, receiving the child's love and gaining society's approval. What most parents think of as sacrifices are small and temporary inconveniences for which they receive personal satisfaction, the child's loyalty and affection and societal sanctions. The sacrifice of a birth mother's life for her child's in unique.

Rather than compensations, the sacrifice is generally answered with guilt, pain and emptiness. Society's reaction is most often condemnation rather than approval. The birth mother's sacrifice is unnatural, unrecognized and unrewarded.

Some birth mothers felt less than human during the pregnancy and surrender experience, and may have felt they were regarded as subhuman by society. Just as infants have a need to be nurtured, so every mother has a need to give nurture to her child. You were placed with people who could meet your infant need for nurture, but your birth mother was given no substitute for you. Her need to nurture was not met.

Understandably, many adoptees explain that their adoptive parents are their only real parents and they love them dearly, but that they searched to gain information about themselves. Newspapers are full of articles about adoptees saying that they are not looking for a mother, but for themselves or their own identity.

Your birth mother may feel she is again being reduced to a data bank. Just as she once surrendered you to others while her own needs went unmet, she may feel she is now being asked for information but that again her feelings
and needs will be ignored. She may feel she has given everything without receiving anything in return, and will be reluctant to give still more if she fears that you too, will take what you want from her and then abandon her with no thought for her needs.

Even if she is able to struggle through the many pains and losses that have already occurred, your birth mother may fear that there are more to come if she accepts you now. It may hurt her terribly that she could not mother you.

Opening her heart to you would make your birth mother vulnerable to a later rejection by you. If she welcomed you as the beloved daughter or son she lost, how would she feel at being only a friend or acquaintance to you? To what extent would you accept her? Would she be asked to your graduation or wedding? Would you want to spend Christmas or Passover with her? Would you regard her as the grandmother of your children, including her in events in their lives? Or would you want to see her on rare and secret occasions, carefully hiding the relationship from others? She may feel that not only have adoptive parents taken her place in your life as a child and in raising you, but that by accepting you now she would lose you again, this time by inches, by being relegated to a lowly and insignificant place in your life, if she were included at all.

As an adult, you are unlikely to want your birth mother to be the mother she may, on some level, still want to be. Your image of motherhood will always be that of your adoptive mother, not your birth mother. You cannot relate to your birth mother in the same way you would have if she had raised you, nor can she relate to you in the same way. Neither of you are the people you would be if she had raised you. Although the similarities you are likely to share would make her keenly aware that you are her child, the differences resulting from your growing up in your adoptive home would make her painfully aware of the distance between you as well.

Because meeting you requires facing all her feelings about your surrender and loss, it may also challenge your birth mother's beliefs about the value and meaning of life, the importance of family ties, religion and other basic concepts on which she has built her life. Many people want to believe that the world is fair, that everything comes out even, that people get what they deserve out of life. Adoption issues do not fit into such tidy categories.

If the world is fair, what has she done that is so terrible she deserve such pain? If life is equal why did other people who expressed their sexuality before marriage pay not price for it? If this is justice why did her subsequent children have to grow up in an incomplete family, without their brother or sister. IF families are of primary importance and should be kept together why was her family separated? How could her church have told her God wanted her child to be adopted or that God created her child for other parents? How could a loving God want this pain for her? If she allows herself to acknowledge her experience, how can she reconcile it with what she believes about life? If the foundations on which she has build her life do not match her experience, it will be difficult for her to face her feelings and risk losing those foundations. Facing you may mean reconstructing! her entire view of life, rethinking all of her values.

The issues a birth mother must face before she can accept her adult child are not simple ones, nor are they obvious to her. Often there are conflicts between what she thinks and what she feels or between her feelings and those of the people around her. Few birth mothers were told to expect these problems or prepared to deal with them. Since little or no hope of a future reunion was offered to surrendering mothers, there was little motivation for attempting to deal with them. Many were told that they would be abnormal if they did not forget about their children, that they should go on with their lives as if they had never had their children.

Most birth mothers, despite the enormity of these issues, do face most of them in the years following surrender. Most people cannot sustain the fantasy that their loss was a nightmare and not a reality. Most people find the strength to face the truth of their own lives, but growth can be a slow and painful process with uneven progress characterized by temporary regression back to suppressed feelings.

To some people, it might seem pointless to attempt reunions when so much pain, conflict and confusion seem to be involved. Reunion, though, does not cause these difficulties. Their source is the birth mother's unnatural separation from her child. The feelings already exist, and leaving them buried beneath denials and fantasies cannot resolve or eliminate them. However painful the separation experience may be, it is her experience, her life. Attempting to suppress the most profound experience of her life separates the birth mother from herself as well as from her child and is not healthy for anyone. It requires that much emotional energy be spent on denying or numbing feelings, limiting emotional growth in all areas.

Your birth mother's fear and dread are evidence of the intensity of her feelings for you. If she had no feeling for you, you would be no more frightening to her than a store clerk or a stranger asking for directions.

What she feels may be an overwhelmingly intense but undifferentiated fear and she herself may not understand the reasons for it. Her reasons are her deepest emotions, hidden under so may layers of intellect, rationalization and denial that she is unaware of them. She may try to give sensible reasons why she cannot see, understand or articulate the real reasons without much self analysis.

You are offering the opportunity for your birth mother to grow by facing herself and becoming reconciled with her feelings about herself. You are offering the gift of knowing the person her surrendered child has become. These are enormous gifts and you should be proud for offering them to her.

In order to accept them, though, your birth mother must climb a painfully steep and rocky path through her many feelings about your surrender before she can move forward to reconciliation. Her ability to walk a part of that path or all of it is not a reflection on you or on your worth or on your importance to her but on how well she herself can deal with the fears and pains that your loss and society's attitudes about the surrender have caused her. With time and support your birth mother may grow to accept the gifts you offer.

by Carole Anderson
Copyright 1982 by Concerned United Birthparents, Inc.
2000 Walker Street, Des Moines, IA 50317

[cday]

so much hurt on both sides of the fence... I did locate my birthmother but she wishes no part of me and said my curiousity was morose. All the years I spent longing for her felt that she must surely be thinking about me on my birthday were for nothing. Adoption haunts me. I am in counseling now and I am sure it will be the center of each session even though that is not the reason I sought help. My husband says I have to get over it. I don't know if I can or even want to let go. How do you let go of the person who gave you life? I have almost come to believe this is how I am to feel forever. I drift through most days and pretend to be content when I have to. I would be satisfied at this point to just see a picture of her.

[dl]

Thanks for sharing the article "Why Won't My Natural Mother Meet Me?" by Carole Anderson. Each time I read it something different strikes a chord with me. I personally feel the statement:

As an adult, you are unlikely to want your birth mother to be the mother she may, on some level, still want to be. Your image of motherhood will always be that of your adoptive mother, not your birth mother. You cannot relate to your birth mother in the same way you would have if she had raised you, nor can she relate to you in the same way. Neither of you are the people you would be if she had raised you. Although the similarities you are likely to share would make her keenly aware that you are her child, the differences resulting from your growing up in your adoptive home would make her painfully aware of the distance between you as well.

is very true. However, I have read many times where an adoptee has expectations of finding the mother they fantasized about and are dissapointed when that is not the result of their search.

Realistic expectations are so very important, IMO.

[dl]

Adoption haunts me. I am in counseling now and I am sure it will be the center of each session even though that is not the reason I sought help. My husband says I have to get over it. I don't know if I can or even want to let go. How do you let go of the person who gave you life? I have almost come to believe this is how I am to feel forever. I drift through most days and pretend to be content when I have to.

Your post reminded me of an article I read this weekend. I've always turned to books to help myself understand my own behaviors and hopefully change them in a positive direction. I've copied the article below. Perhaps this might be a book that could help you, in addition to counseling.

Being miserable can become addictive

It's rare to find a person who doesn't want happiness. And yet, we may be unaware that we're maintaining patterns in life that keep us miserable.

In her book, "When Misery is Company," (Hazelden), psychotherapist Anne Katherine suggests that misery can be an addiction. But it's different from an addiction to alcohol, drugs or food because in misery addiction, "the manner of living" is the problem, according to Katherine.

Misery addicts are addicted to a system of living - including behaviors, thoughts, attitudes, actions and lack of them - that enables them to survive from day to day.

This crutch can include self-sabotage. We find the negative in a positive situation. We are indecisive or ambivalent. We feel incompetent or unworthy. We refuse to deal with our own behaviors from the past. We always have an excuse. And when others try to help us, we alienate them. We might be attracted to unavailable people.

These patterns sometimes are rooted in childhood experiences, when parents or caregivers acted in ways that left a profound imprint on us. A mom or dad may have withheld love or affection, abandoned a family, inflicted verbal and physical abuse, or failed to protect us. Sometimes, a loving parent may have died.

Sometimes these patterns are a result of poor choices we made when a young adult. Again, we always have an excuse. It wasn't really the result of our own choice, someone else "forced us". We blame our parents and alienate them ~ and then continue our self-destructive pattern by blaming them for the alienation.

It's crucial to understand these beginnings to deal with and overcome misery addiction.

Katherine suggests borrowing principles from the 12-step program and applying them to misery addiction. This can include being part of a recovery community and abstaining from the habits, behaviors, thoughts and actions that keep you trapped in the box.

Some personal questions to ponder to start to recover:

If something feels scary - a friend's reaction or a new task - what do I do?

In what ways do I protect myself from feeling afraid?

What do I do to keep from feeling uncomfortable?

How do I handle tough personal situations?

Were one or both of my parents or parental figures in my life mean, abusive, critical or harsh toward me?

What did I do to cope?

Am I being absolutely honest by accepting responsibility for my own choices that led to unpleasant consequences? Or, do I find an excuse by blaming others for the results of my own behavior?

Do I hide my feelings of inadequacy by fabricating my own importance in certain situations such as my job or my role in a group?

What are 10 experiences that I would like to have in my life?

What steps am I pursuing to have these experiences?

What slows me down or stops me from having these experiences?

If I could get help, would it be possible to have these experiences?

What steps can I take to get that help?

[radiodoll]

I haven't been watching this thread for awhile, but to me it's about open adoption files for adults. Acceptance, contact joy, saddness......whatever. "Kept" children have access to the history of their face and their family - a unique identity and a heritage.

It's about rights, not reunions.

Just an opinion
Radiodoll