Secrecy in reunion: How can I tell my adoptive parents? Or my other family?

Jane

Is it safe to make contact in a way that would protect my MOM, but allow me to know my birth mother?" inquired one of our readers. She went on to tell us:

"I am an older adoptee ... (54) my birth mother is 73 and my adoptive mom is 83. My "MOM" has never wanted me to search for my birth mother and so I didn't for many years, because I'd never knowingly hurt her. I've just recently had the search done and want to contact my birth mother, but don't want my "MOM" to know as this would hurt her very badly. I am an only and have no children, and I'm not sure if I want to get to know my half-siblings. (I have good reasons for that.) There is no way I am telling my adoptive mother about this, (my Dad passed away in 2007.) She'd not understand."

Lorraine

Here's our response:  It's most likely safe to contact your first mother. Let her know that while you're interested in meeting her, you don't want your adoptive mother to know about your reunion because you're afraid of hurting her. Although we can't guarantee it, we think your first mother will respect your request and not make any attempt to contact your adoptive mother. Most first mothers are so elated to hear from their lost child, they'll do anything not to jeopardize the relationship. To give yourself added assurance, you could rent a post office box so that so as not to disclose your address. And of course, you don't need to let your first mother know your adoptive mother's name or address. 

Keeping a secret, though, can be difficult. You have to be on guard all the time. You may not feel comfortable telling your close friends about your reunion, lest they let it out to your adoptive mother.

Since you're not sure about getting to know your half siblings, you could ask your first mother not tell tell them about you. This of course puts added pressure on her. Conversely, you could allow your first mother to tell them but ask her to ask them not to contact you. Be prepared, though, they may not feel the same constraint to honor your wishes and may try to contact you. 

Essays by adoptees

DO WHAT YOU NEED FOR YOURSELF
Secrecy may have a negative affect on your relationship with your first mother. Initially, she will most likely be happy for any contact. After a while she may resent being in the shadows even though she understands your reasons. She may respond by distancing herself. Think how you would feel if your first mother told you that she wanted to keep you a secret. Adoptees have written us on how hurtful that is, and how it ultimately makes a relationship impossible. 

However, we understand that to keep peace in your relationship, to not "hurt' your adoptive mother and father, you may feel that you cannot share the news of a reunion with them. This will especially be true if you feel that your adoptive parents--one or both--have never been to accept fully that you have a family of origin, and might need to connect to them. Do what you need to do to for your own sanity and peace of mind. To not disrupt the harmony of the adoptive parents/child relationship (yes, we know, "adult" but still the "child" son or daughter of the adoptive parents) you may want to keep all of this secret. It is totally your prerogative. So many adoptees wait until both of their parents have died to begin searching, and then they end up with a reunion with a grave. Much better to search earlier, and keep your secrets if you must. But do be aware that your first mother is fragile. She is a person with feelings too. Push her aside enough and she will retreat in order to not get burned. 


Adoptee and author Betty Jean Lifton describes how she retreated from her first mother post reunion. After their first meeting, Lifton did not contact her again for ten years because of "internalized guilt and fear of betrayal of her parents." Lifton's first mother retreated "to a place where she could not be hurt again. Mother and daughter, lost and found, could not hold on to each other in a natural way."* 

FIRST MOTHERS MUST RISE TO THE OCCASION
And to any first mothers who feel shunted aside because of this secret, we urge you to accept that your son or daughter knows what they are doing, and let it be. If they have found you, simply be joyous that they have; if you have found them, willingly accept their wishes. Your relationship is likely to be fragile, and insisting on meeting the adoptive parents, or other demands, may shut down the relationship. Your reunited son or daughter may simply walk away for years. You don't need to accept being treated like a doormat, but do understand that the adoptee is going through an emotional upheaval, and is likely to be anxious trying not to hurt anyone. 

Decades after reunion, Lorraine's daughter once said: Sometimes I feel like a magnet, the closer I get to one, the more I have to pull away from the other. As first mothers ourselves, we know how much it can hurt to feel that you are always treated like a second-class mother, but for the peace of your child, you need to be the understanding mother and step back when it's called for. You need to be the mother who told Solomon not to cut the child in two. In real life, that may mean not going to the hospital to see your new grandchild on the first day, but coming later when the adoptive parents will not be there. Staying in the background at your child's wedding, if you are invited. Going to a grandchild's graduation--on the QT, or deciding to stay home. No matter how it was done, or who forced us, we gave up our child, and to some degree, we lost them that day. 

LIKE A DAUGHTER OF DIVORCE 
Keeping the reunion a secret from your adoptive mother may affect your relationship with her as well. You won't be able to share your excitement or your anxieties although you may have shared all the important events of your life in the past. Adoptee Lynn Grubb, writing on Lost Daughters, likens a reunion where the adoptive mother opposes it to being a child of divorce "where she had to choose between families in order to survive." Grubb did tell her adoptive mother about the reunion:

"Suddenly I was living the loyalty confusions, the guilt, the withholding of information about who I was in this delicate dance I was doing with my mother. I began to tell my mother less and less about my life....She began to fall outside the 'circle of trust' and I realized for the first time that we were operating in two different realities....I was a different person post-reunion. I was no longer willing to twist myself into the person my mother wanted me to be." 

Lifton's memoir

Lifton describes feeling like a traitor to her adoptive parents after her reunion. She initially kept the reunion secret from her children as well, fearful they would tell her adoptive parents about it. Later she wrote, "I saw how playing the Good Adoptee had forced me to lead a double life with my adopted parents....I came to understand how the necessity to live that double life, so as not to hurt my adoptive parents, had the effect of cutting off honest communication with them."* 

Contacting your birth/natural mother can have huge benefits. For the first time, you will know someone who you share physical characteristic with, and possibly your talents and interests. Sometimes the things you find alike are little personal quirks that will surprise you--such as how you fold your underwear or jam bills in your jean pockets. Your makeup shade may be exactly the same. You can learn why you were given up. The woman you meet won't be a mother in many ways, but she may become a good friend. Reunion has it perils. Both first mothers and adoptees might find it helpful to work with a counselor who understands adoption issues, join a group of other adoptees and birth parents, as well as read books by adoptees and birth mothers. The two shown here are a good start.--jane and lorraine
______________________________

(Twice Born, pp. 266, 267, update 1998) 

I Became a Child of Divorce through Adoption Reunion

FROM FMF:

Letter to Birth Mother or Sibling

READING
Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption From a Place of Empowerment and Peace

by several blogger/writers, including Lynn Grubb
Lost Daughters Anthology is a tough book for mothers who relinquished to read because whatever we may have told ourselves about the “good” reasons to let our children be adopted, these poignant, sad, moving essays belie that with the sheer force of a body blow. I found myself with tears in my eyes as soon as I started reading, and they didn’t totally dry up until long after the last page.--lorraine 

Twice Born by Betty Jean Lifton

"At the time she was told her birth parents were dead and she was adopted, Lifton was seven and sick from scarlet fever. The timing could not have been worse. The experience itself caused significant problems for Lifton, and the questions about her birth parents lingered for decades. Finally she found her birth mother was alive and to ease her pain and answer questions Lifton sought and found her. Her search for her birth father had less success, but Lifton found the questions had eased and she was able to "re-enter" life, finally, as what she felt was herself. Lifton...adds new insights from the changes in adoption practices to her 1975 original and makes a case for open adoption records."--Reference and Research Book News