Adoptees, Friends of Adoptees, Birth Parents and Adoptive Parents - Check In Here

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79. No worries! This was GREAT!

And in the two weeks since, we've been in communication with each other frequently. We have a relationship now. I heard from my other sister that meeting me made it all very real and a very positive experience. Made me feel so great! Now that my adoptive parents have been gone for a number of years, I suddenly find myself with a whole new family to be part of. It's pretty cool! I don't want to think of the grief I would have gotten from my adoptive mother if I did this while she was still around, though. Knowing her, there would have been all kinds of sturm und drang about how horrible this was to be done to her and what a selfish ingrate I was. But that was the lens through which she viewed and processed EVERYTHING that happened to her (and about 99% of it was somehow my fault).

She'd had many crosses to bear in her own life and came from a generation (as my birth mother did, too) where you did not seek counseling or psychological help. You didn't dare. It was considered some sort of MAJOR failing and said all kinds of terrible things about you to your friends and neighbors who'd all be busy whispering viciously about it of course. And of course, even going so far as to admit to something like this - well, sometimes that was just not considered. Just not even on the table. You not only didn't talk about this with someone who might help you, you didn't talk about this within yourself, or try to look beyond or look deeper. Sometimes I felt really bad for her because of the few things she admitted to me about abuse she'd endured. She was pretty badly damaged by some of those closest to her in her youth. I can see how that affected her. She went through life with an attitude that someone needed punishing for all that. Such a damaged generation in so many ways. Of course, not that our generation is without its issues!!

It's made me appreciate so much more deeply how we are damaged, fallible, vulnerable, and SOOOOOOO fragile. Coping mechanisms have become fascinating to me as a result, the hows and the whys and the whats. What makes people do what they do and react the way they react.

Just a whole lot more to think about. I'll be processing this for years.