Dear Adoption, Three Days
Three days. Three days is time frame for the birth mother to change her mind. Mine had no intentions of keeping me or my other siblings. Off to foster care I went where I would live for the first 3 months until my adoptive family picked me up. I don’t like being adopted. There’s a void and hurt that never really go away. Being denied at birth is painful, being rejected twice is the most painful. How can you not want to get to know me? You really would like me.
I found her after 2 weeks of hiring a private investigator. She sent photos, emails, and a few letters. She wouldn’t tell me of any medical history, my birth fathers name, not even a first name, or that I even had 2 half brothers that she gave up after me.
She strung me along for over 20 years. She’d pretend we would meet someday and have some sort of relationship. That never happened. One day, she finally told me everything I “wanted” to know. I cut ties with her and I felt free. I searched for my half brothers and found them both. Plus a couple other half siblings on my birth fathers side. See, my birthmom was having an affair with a married man with a baby girl, got pregnant at 19 with me. She said she never wanted kids, she doesn’t like them.
My wife and I unknowingly had our wedding day on my birth mom’s birthday. We also met on one of my birth half brothers birthday.
My adoptive parents lost their baby so they adopted my brother and I from different birth families. They told us we were adopted when we were young. Never to be mentioned again. Like everything else with them, swept under the rug like a dirty little secret. She always told us we were “special.” So as a child, I always thought something was wrong with me.
My birth father passed away when I was 17 years old. The same year my adoptive dad passed away.
Living with a narcissistic adoptive mother was no walk in the park. Always being ignored, disrespected and mostly dismissed. And my adopted brother and I never got along.
I’ll always have issues with being adopted. They never go away…
dearadoption.com 
Dear Amy,
Your story is, like mine and so many others, what adoption agencies, advocates for adoptions, and couples who cannot -or think thy cannot have children -do not want the public to read or to hear or to know. Keep telling it. for yourself and to the world. We as humans have little control over what others do or do not do, but we certainly do have control over our responses to our own sense of self and to our own lives. We may not be able to change the past, but hopefully we can make it better for future generations.
When a state takes a child’s identity away and attempts to give it another, there are always going to be problems-immediate for those adoptees like myself who were old enough to have some knowledge, and latent for those like you who were relinquished by parents who clearly did not want their child— or for some, those whose circumstance precluded keeping their child (but who hoped that they would be re-united in the future). Sadly, it appears that your birth mother was a repeat offender … the serial ‘mommy dearest’ who must have enjoyed the moments of passion but wanted none of the responsibility for the creation of the child-to-come.
I too had issues of the adoption and the parents who adopted me. But that is for my own submission to come. However, I can relate this small bit of my own battle for survival of me: My adoptive parents presented the classic outcome of adoption-the arrival of their own child (and others who followed). With their son’s arrival came my second abandonment without actually giving me my ticket-of-leave. I was forced to call this new arrival my ‘brother’ just as I was forced to be called a name not my own.
My whole being filled with outrage and indignation at being made to cal this baby a brother, and I took every opportunity to deny him in no uncertain terms: HE IS NOT MY BROTHER! Later I learned to add to this pronouncement: YOU ARE NOT MT PARENTS (grandparents, aunts, etc.) The reality was and is, I had my own siblings (my younger sister and brother) who- though vaguely- I remembered.
Your memories, as you have mention, will not ‘go away’ but don’t let them rule your life. Allow them instead to help other adoptees to know that they are not alone in coping with pain, anger, sorrow, or isolation, etc.
Thank you for your narrative. May your life become one of far more happiness than grief, and may your pain lessen as benefits replace it. Good luck!
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Thank you for sharing your story! So happy you found love after all. :)Teresa
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I really appreciate your straightforward frankness. You could deny the lived truth of your experience? Only someone in denial. Relinquishment and closed adoption is not a walk in the park. When asked, I say that abortion might have been kinder, yet here we are, bravely making our way in a world that didn’t want us. It’s good to be alive and adult today. Thank you for sharing your story.
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