[HalfAdopted1970]

OK, so first off, I haven't had the classic adoption reunion experience, since I know who my birthmom is and was raised by her (with my step-father) for most of my life. But from what I've read in the forums I'm going through a typical adoption reunion experience in many ways. So here, is my story.

Among my earliest memories was my mom making a point of explaining that she knew who my father was, but that he wasn't interested in being in my life. She made a point of telling me I could ask about this more in the future. Score 1 for my mom. I'm guessing I was about 5. I instinctively understood that it was some terrible, shameful secret and we proceeded to never talk about it for the next 30-some odd years. Not good.

My step father was and is in many ways a magnificently angry damaged person, who I love dearly, but who did a lot of harm to me as a child by endlessly yelling and inflicting shame on me. In a lot of ways my relationship with him was the externalization of the negative feelings I harbored for my mom, but couldn't really express because she was the parent I felt more connected to.

We had moved from one city to another when I was nine, and somehow I ended up in an elite private school (supposedly for my welfare, I'm not sure about that one), and by the time I was getting into adolescence I was descending into a chasm of depression, risk-taking, acting out, getting arrested, drinking, doing drugs, sneaking out, you name it.

I had seen a psychiatrist initially as a 10yo and then again as things fell apart in my mid-teens he picked up some more work with me, eventually sending me through a cycle of anti-depressant meds and seeing me twice a week if I could manage to get there (he charged my family either way). I eventually stopped going to school regularly, but if you are going to pay for an elite private school, you can get some slack in that area.

At 17 I got in some real trouble from some property crime against a business and a new professional team was mobilized to figure out what was wrong with me and we all agreed that I should go to boarding school. I really feel that I hit rock bottom in some important ways at that time, and once I was away from my parents, the school, and the psychiatrist, I really started to climb out of it all.

Later, during my first college experience I started seeing another psychiatrist, and somehow I ended up doing another cycle of psych meds. Luckily I left that alone after a while. Happily, many years later, and at another college, I started seeing a psychotherapist. Psychotherapy is to psychiatry what physical therapy is to chiropractor/surgeons. We started working with hypnosis and I really thawed a huge emotional obstacle that I had been stuck in for my whole life.

During that period I began to understand myself better and developed a greater acceptance of who I am and especially how inevitable a lot of the challenges that I've been through really are. But ultimately I really looked at psychotherapy as just keeping me on my feet and preparing me to go back into the day-today business of life.

Many more years later, I was about 30, had graduated from school, worked for a while, and met an amazing, supportive, healthy girlfriend, and I started doing Reevaluation Counseling (RC), which is a co-counseling movement, where people trade amateur psychotherapy with one another, and try to improve themselves and the world doing it. It was in that context that I really started working on just how un-finished my business with my mom and my biological father really was. I became possessed of the idea that I needed to take control of the situation, have a SECOND conversation with my mom about it, and probably contact him -- my biological father.

So I prepared myself for like 6-months or a year and finally sat down with my mom to talk about things. She saw me coming like 20-years away, we cried. I can't believe we waited so long. Among the things that I learned was how stigmatized she felt as a pregnant single woman in 1969 in rural New Jersey. She came home from college pregnant, and dropped out of school. Later she LEFT TOWN and went to stay in a home for unwed mothers in big city. She asked for my father to marry her, but he refused. So she had me there, possibly alone.

Soon afterward she was struggling with her obligations as a mom, and also trying to catch my stepfather, and also just being 20 years old, and at some point, twice, she surrendered me to foster care for some time, and then later changed her mind. I clearly remember being abandoned by her in foster care one time (although I think I was older than she told me -- there are a few inconsistencies that I still don't understand). The trauma! What a message! What terror! The fear of being abandoned/rejected is something I really struggle with and is part of the core of shame I still feel about all of this.

Anyway, so back to the future: my mom really wanted me to contact my biological father and I knew I wanted to also. But I also didn't want to carry her fight with him to him for her. I asked her to let me contact him and tell me if first if she was going to start some kind of communication with him of her own. Oh, and I forgot the key detail, way back in 1970, when they parted ways, he was under the impression that I was going to be adopted. Conveniently for both of them, they haven't talked since.

So I went back to psychotherapy. Did some more work. Decided I was ready. Wrote a letter (I'd already found him living in his home town, which I had nerve-wrackingly visited on vacation a few years before). And waited. And waited a little more. And then, it started to sink in that he might not acknowledge me, might not write me back. And I leaned as hard as I could on the denial, determined in no way to accept my disappointment. And I was at the dump which can be kind of a stressful situation with people loading and unloading trucks. And somebody did something mildly disrespectful to me and I felt physically trapped, and ignored, and furiously in a blind rage I rammed his truck with mine. A stranger. I'm 37 years old. Professional. Married. Haven't been in trouble for 20 years. I'm trembling with rage. Utterly-seriously, considering killing this guy. 11 o'clock in the morning. Sober.

And really, that's more or less where I am now. That was back in 2006. Now it's 2008. I'm working on what to do next. I'm officially and permanently sober now too. But I'm still me. And I know on the one hand that I can't leave this all bound up in me forever. It's not my fault. All the trauma and shame -- not my fault. My plan is to move forward again this summer. I'm not sure what strategy to use to contact him again. My theory is that he got the letter and didn't know what to do. Caught in a matrix of lies. About my existence.

I try to believe my official explanation for this plan: that I want a medical history and that's the priority. But I don't really know what I want. I try to remind myself that I'm OK already. But I also know deep-down inside that I'm not. I'm still all those versions of me developmentally, from 0 to 38. I wouldn't want to push this if I really thought I was already OK. And yet I feel very unworthy to contact him, disturb his life, traumatize his family, if I'm not perfect. And I'm not.

The trauma of my "adoption", it's still here. I'm still in this process. I want mastery and liberation. But I feel that it's unfair that for all these years it's been up to me to make it happen. I'm trying to accept the lack of control I have over all of it. I can ask questions, I can talk to people, I can go stirring things up. But I can't determine the outcome. It's up to all of us. And somehow, it has to be OK, even if it's not. It has to be.

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So I guess in conclusion I want to say the forums here at adoption.com are an amazing resource. I've spent so many hours learning about myself reading other people's journeys. I always knew eventually I'd post here. One of my main fears was that my mom would read it and feel somehow disrespected. So if you are reading this mom, I love you a lot. Let's talk some more.

Best wishes, everybody! Thank you.