After Reunion: Figuring It Out

Suz, in a comment to my previous post, asked some important questions from the perspective of a mother in reunion. She also said something that I've thought a lot about. From her perspective, lack of feedback (silence!) after reunion feels like punishment (being doled out by her daughter). Suz, I'm sorry.

It got me to examining my own silence: eleven days.

Am I trying to punish my mother?

What am I doing? What do I want? Do I want continued contact? Did I accomplish what I needed with one meeting?

Not sure. Just not sure.

It's sooooo BIG.

Today was a sad day. A really sad day. A "how could you have left me? day. And an angry one, too.

My adoptive Dad has been especially whiny/complainy/needy the last couple days. Nothing new. Just his old narcissistic self multiplied by age/dementia.

My mother intended for me to have a better life. That's what she wanted. Instead, I was placed with a low income family without a value for education and with a long, rich history of neurosis.

She says she marched into the public adoption agency intent on adoption from the first. She received financial aid in exchange for her commitment to surrender. She says she refused to hold me because she didn't want to get attached. She had no idea I was placed in foster care for a month. She asked few questions, trusted the system. She did not call the social worker to inquire after my welfare. I DO feel abandoned and not surrendered or relinquished.

My mother is a sweet little old lady. She also showed no emotion during our meeting, not to say that she felt none. I do believe she "split off" that dark period of her life. I can feel it. She talks about that time - and me as an infant - as if it happened to somebody else and that baby is not me.

Intellectually, I understand why she does this. It is how she has coped.

But from my perspective, post reunion, it feels like I have been split off. That I am not real. A nonperson. And while she has been entirely agreeable in meeting with me and reaching out and answering all my questions (except the last name of my father), because she is so detached, it feels like another abandonment.

My silence is probably more about self-protection than punishment. All mothers are different. This is one adoptee's reaction to a particular mother who is much older and in a much different emotional place and stage than many first mothers. Maybe this reunion suffers from bad timing. Really bad timing. Maybe I should have done this sooner when we were both younger. Maybe there's such a thing as leaving something too long.