Re: I found my birth mother!

Well last Monday my husband left her a message saying he was doing a genealogy research for his wife and wanted to confirm some info. No call back.

So Tuesday morning (we still weren't sure) I called and left a message coming clean and saying that we were looking for confirmation or denial. No call back.

On Wed I found out it was truly her. There was a record about her daughters birth, and her maiden name was a match. Bingo.

I have non-identifying info, and my adoption angel sent me her D.L. application, and it was a perfect match, down to the green eyes (which my son has). Double bingo.

So I sent her a three page handwritten letter with pictures last Wed. It was from the heart, one draft. Before I over thought the darn thing I shoved it into an envelope an sent it. I assume she will have it by today, or possibly the beginning of next week.

I've opened a pandora's box of emotions. I apparently have three half sibliings (I was brought up an only child). Of course I know nothing right now. They are on facebook and one of them looks like me.

I feel like I'm on a roller coaster. I'm totally distracted from everything and everyone. This waiting sucks like you wouldn't believe. I still don't know what I want from this woman. At the very least respect, getting my biological and ancestral history. At the very most, a friendship. I feel like I'm in terrible turmoil. I've been shocked, elated, confused and angry this week. I've gone through every emotion you can think of. My friend tracked my ancestral history to the Mayflower. I've never had a history before. I really didn't even know what nationality I really was, and still some of that puzzle is missing. I know nothing about the birth father. That place was blank on my birth certificate.

The thing that is really killing me right now is how all these well meaning friends of mine say I have no real rights to this information if she chooses not to contact me. She had rights. My adoptive parents had rights. Why don't I have rights? I don't expect anyone to understand this if they were not adopted. It's like a big empty hole. Who am I?

Everyone that has at least one biological parent and perhaps siblings takes this for granted. They may not like their family and could care less where they came from or where their family came from. For an adopted child there were no choices of acceptance and connection. No one looks like them. Mannerisms, talents, ethics, ideals and history. It's like you were an alien dropped down from the sky.

And in the end, you belong to no one. You love your adopted family, but there is really no "connection". You also don't really belong to your biological family you didn't grow up with and full of half sibling. At the end of the day, you still don't belong. It really messes with your mind.

For a long time I just said, it's OK, I'm OK, I'm happy with my life, I'm happy with my situation. Once that box is open, truly you realize that you are NOT OK, and have never really been OK.

Little things in life always reminded you. At school you are supposed to bring in a history of ethnicity, like a food dish or whatever. My Mom always made Boston Baked Beans for me because that is where I was born. Or you are constantly asked by Doctors if you have a family history....each an every time you are one big question mark. Once my grandmother, a fairly clueless and funny southern lady, told one of my male cousins that we could be married, after all we were not "blood".....criminy. That was embarrassing, and in the south, sometimes the blood part did not matter that much LOL. Then there were the well meaning people that would tell you and your Mom, oh yes, I see the resemblance, when there clearly was none at all.

So here I sit waiting patiently for this very important woman to contact me. It's a killer. And I don't know if she is in shock and processing, or if she intends to continue to pretend I don't exist. Or is scared of me, like some criminal that means to do her harm. And at some point I have to decide, should she not contact me, whether to go to her kids and tell them who I am. They are all on Facebook, it would be very easy. I don't know how long I'll give her to contact me....two months, six months, a year before I do something that provocative? But damn it, I still have a right to know. My birthright, my inalienable right to find out my genetic memory, my biology, my ethnic identity. The government has kept this from me for years and years, it's within my grasp now.

I'm impatient, I freely admit it. I am writing all this to try to wrap my brain around it and distract myself.

Before anyone adopts a "baby", remember one day they are going to grow up with all these questions, and possibly become slightly damaged adults. You need to support them with as much information as you can get, and listen to them, and when the time comes, stand by them while they search for this information. I can't stress this enough right now. I feel so sorry for all those chinese girls coming to the US. You might think that it's admirable that they are being "saved", but at the end of the day it's a recipe for some pretty messed up women, especially when they realize that it was the government, or possibly their parents that sold them off and shipped them overseas, all so Mom and Dad could make room for a "boy". I can't even imagine.

Well I think I've gotten enough out of my system this morning. I think I'll go get my hair done now....

Molly

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