29 years after an adoption

Last week I was contacted by an adoption blog who is looking for an adult adoptee to write about their experiences. She'd seen my posts on my open blog and thought I might have some insight that could be useful on her site. After emailing back and forth I don't think I'm what she's looking for; thankfully she sees this too & we can part as friends with an offer to have me guest blog occasionally.


This is a very pro-adoption website, they want to show the good sides, great results and offer support to bio-parents and adoptive parents (especially the waiting-to-adopt 'rents). She is looking for happy, breezy, supportive people to write ... I am more of the dark, twisty and conflicted style of adult adoptee. I don't quite fit the "happily ever after" image they want to portray.


October 28th will be the 29th anniversary of the day I was put up for adoption. You would think after 29 years I could talk about the birth family without a lot of emotion. Maybe I should be able to, maybe healthy adults can ... but that's not my reality.


I am at peace with the fact that I'm adopted ~ believe me ~ I've seen what I came from & I praise God daily that I was not left in that squalor! I think it's the fact that my daughter is approaching that same age that's bringing a new aspect to my experience. Seeing my sweet innocent girl, knowing that I would stab anyone who put her through those experiences ... I thought I had dealt with my anger, but becoming a mother made me see the bio-mother in a new light.


When I first had the Princess I softened toward the bio, I thought of how she must have loved me, wanted the best for me, had such hopes for me, how happy she must have been to have her third child. I thought of how hard it must have been for her to walk away, how I could never walk away from my baby, how I would never forgive myself and I would miss her every day for the rest of my life.


As the Princess reaches the age I was when that world, that family, fell apart the anger is coming back in different ways. How could she do that to her children? How could she place her children in situations where the state wound up mandating "sign over your children or we will take you to court and revoke your parental rights"?

There is no right way to handle these feelings. I've been through enough therapy to know that all I can do is get them out, face them, accept them and then walk away. It just feels so personal this time - to *know* that these things happened to you as a toddler is one thing - to have a toddler of your own & know that you would do anything to keep her from experiencing that ... I can't forgive her for not protecting me.

I can't forgive her but it's not worth hating her.

I'm not the happy "Yeah I met my bio & we are bestest friends now!" story that every adopted kid wants. That's just not my reality, and I can't forgive her for that either.