Why first mothers walk away from their children after reunion

Jane

"Why do first mothers cut off communication with their relinquished children?" a reader emailed us recently. I can only answer from my own my experience, and that of mothers who have shared their experiences. While the facts are different in every reunion, the problem often lies with miscommunication at the outset. Ironically new technology--iPhones, text messaging, Facebook, email--may exacerbate poor communication because they provide quicker--and thus more impulsive--exchanges.

In a relationship as fraught with risk as the one between first mother and adoptee, faulty communication can lead to doubt and distrust, which can lead to anger, which can lead to the suspension of contact.

DASHED EXPECTATIONS
When children--of any age--search out their mothers, we often are both frightened and thrilled. We hope for a belated mother-daughter/mother-son relationship. Somewhere in our consciousness comes the feeling, "my child has come home to me, her real mommy," the soap opera scenario.

But they dash that illusion by telling their mothers that they searched because they were merely "curious," or "needed medical information." It may be self-protective to say that, for that implies the lost child, now grown, is asking for nothing more than "information," they they do not want to barge in on the mothers' lives, or be a part of it. Jenessa Simons, who made news recently when she found her mother through Facebook, told ABC that "at the very least she had hoped to get in touch with her birth parents to thank them for putting her up for adoption."

I'm sure Jenessa and others who tell us that we made the "right" decision intend to comfort us and reassure us that they're not trying to butt into our lives. The message comes across, however, as "I don't care about you as a human being. Thank goodness you didn't raise me."

After I lost my daughter, I hated to read or hear the word "adoption" even when it was used in a legal context such as "the state agency adopted a new rule." Our daughters' attributing their good life to an institution which caused us so much pain can throw us into a rage.

Initially we may ignore, or try to ignore, the adoptive family. When our re-united children talk about how wonderful their adoptive parents are (and implicitly how much better parents they are than we could have been), we feel diminished in their eyes, because we know we are not "wonderful," because we gave them up. Feelings of jealously, irrational or not, can arise. If our daughters resist invitations (or entreaties) to come fully into our lives, insisting "I don't need a new family," we see ourselves as the odd woman out, after opening up all the old wounds and hurt that has been festering inside.

DOUBT AND ANGER
We begin to question our importance and feel used. We feel like we have given all that is possible, that we have accepted what is, but now we are being shoved aside. We may become angry that our daughters do not understand, or even try to understand, that we didn't make a sane, calm decision to give them up, but were coerced into it, often through direct and forceful pressure from parents, the baby's father, clergy, social workers, or the social norms of the day. We were told what we were doing was "best for the baby." We were told we were "making the brave, loving decision." We hope for empathy from our found children. Instead, they seem unsympathetic or even oblivious to our pain. "It's not about you!" we hear again and again, while we are hurting all over again. But reunion is about two people, child and mother.

We begin to question our children's every action. If we don't get a Mother's Day card, we're sure they don't care. If we get one, it's just pro forma. If they don't return a telephone call, we think they don't want us to call ever. Sometimes they go in and out of our lives without a word, and then come back, expecting the same excited and warm reception they got the first time. It feels as if we are being tested over and over and over again. After a while, it is exhausting and we assume we will never have any kind of relationship that isn't based on their doubts and desire to hurt us in some way.

Many of us still live with our shame. We don't want to think of ourselves--and we don't want others to think of us--as immoral or careless enough to have gotten pregnant by a man who wouldn't or couldn't marry us. We begin to think, "should I upend my life to continue this relationship--disappointing those who love me, becoming the subject of neighborhood gossip and perhaps condemnation--for someone who thinks of me as a suspicious outsider, who doesn't care about me as a human being?"  Doubts send us into deep depression. Increasingly, it looks easier just to shut our children out and go on as before, suppressing our grief and anger.

UNAWARE OF HOW OUR ACTIONS AFFECT OUR DAUGHTERS
Since we've become convinced they don't care, we don't expect our actions to impact them. In fact, we are likely to think we may be doing them a favor backing away. It's likely they never intended the relationship to go as far as it has gone; they said they only wanted to thank us and obtain some medical information. Now they find themselves stuck with us, and they'd just as soon we be gone. Plus by disappearing, we've removed a cause of conflict with their adoptive parents.

We've all heard adoptive parents say something to the effect, "my daughter met her birth mother. Afterwards, she told me 'I was just curious about her, but you're my real mother.'" Recalling these words from adoptive parents reinforces our belief that finding us was just a passing fancy. Like our daughters, we need to move on. We need to get walk away from a relationship that seems to bring more hurt than salvation, particularly if we have a family that is urging us to do so.

As long as the parties are alive, however, no reunion is ever truly over. As adoptee Betty Jean Lifton wrote: "Yet, even when a relationship seems terminated, there is still a connection, just as a connection remained when the mother and child were separated from each other originally. Sometimes a relationship that disappears over one year springs to life a few years later as mother and adult child grow individually and are ready to come together again."* This time with openness and honesty. We need to tell each other we matter to each other, again and again.--jane

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* Page 171, Betty Jean Lifton, from Journey Of The Adopted Self: A Quest For Wholeness

SOURCE
 ABC News Women finds birth mother through viral Facebook photo

From FMF:
Telling your Birthmother She Made the Right Decision is Wrong
Thank you Betty Jean Lifton!

Recommended READING
Journey Of The Adopted Self: A Quest For Wholeness  "For people adopted in the era after books like The Adoption Triangle and The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child were published, this Journey may seem like wallowing or old hat, but this book was invaluable to me. Reading it and dealing with the feelings it provoked was step one on my journey to healing. This book gave me the courage to find my birth mother. If you read this and feel it doesn't apply to you because being adopted doesn't matter, please leave a little space in your head and heart to consider that it just might matter a little bit. Try reading it again in a year or two. If it still doesn't apply to you, count yourself lucky, and have compassion for those of us who feel we were traumatized by adoption."--Laurel Jenkins-Crowe at Amazon

Reunion: A Year in Letters Between a Birthmother and the Daughter She Couldn't Keep An excellent guide to creating a positive relationship by adoptee Katie Hern and birthmother Ellen McGarry Carlson. After decades of separation, 26-year-old adoptee Katie Hern writes to her birthmother, Ellen McGarry Carlson. Written over a course of one year, this book follows the women's progress - from elation to understanding to accepting - and efforts to create an honest relationship. After several months, mother and daughter finally meet face-to-face in an emotional and exhilarating reunion.