What advice would you give to a woman who has no desire to meet the biological child she gave up for adoption.
This is the question asked of Reddit users recently when ‘adoptivethrowhelp’ posted her dilemma.
She explained that as a teenager she fell pregnant, despite using protection with her boyfriend at the time. She says that she knew immediately that she did not want to keep the baby and wished to have an abortion. The situation became tricky as she was already 21 weeks along when she found out she was pregnant. Her boyfriend and her family were both against an abortion and urged her to proceed with the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption.
The woman explains that this was never what she wanted but being a struggling student reliant on her family’s financial assistance, felt co-erced after her father threatened to cut her off if she proceeded down the path of termination.
With pressure from both her family and the baby’s father, adoptivethrowhelp went through the rest of the pregnancy and put the child up for adoption.
She says that she wanted nothing to do with the baby and while she realises the child is not to blame, says she feels nothing but resentment towards her. The poster describes how she has never really forgiven her family for pushing her into having the baby.
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I don't know specifically how an adopted person feels first-hand but second hand, I do. I also have a (late) bitch of a grandmother who had affairs. That's not why she was a bitch, BTW. I had nothing to do with her in the last 5 years of her life and she was biological. In a twist of irony, I liked my stepgrandfather more than her and he raped my mother for almost 10 years. That says something when you like a rapist.
That said, her two sisters and her never spoke to one another in adulthood. Hence my mother and half-uncle never knew their aunts and uncles, cousins.
However, like adopted children, they eventually wanted to meet the family they never knew. And they tried. They had a right to speak with whom they pleased and those that disagreed had the right to terminate contact with the person for disrespecting their wishes. It's perfectly fine to say, "It's me or them.", but you may end up the one chopped. You can also say, "I can't stop you, but I don't want to hear about them. Ever."
Again, you can draw this line and not respond to questions, though they may find out something painful and unable to speak to you, feel like they have no one in the world, and give up both parties. Likewise, you as the one with a foot on both sides of the fence and not wanting to give up either person, may struggle to remember not to mention anything about one to other and vice versa. You will likely grow tired of. having to remember that you can't talk to your half-sibling about your mother or father, theirs too, about stuff you're dealing with.
These two options are neither good nor bad. Those are subjectively what we make of things in life. I come from a family riddled with abuse of all kinds, neglect, abandonment, rape and molestation, alcoholism and drug use. It is only ending because neither my brother or myself are going to have children. It's for the best if the family line dies out. It's heartbreaking in its own right. I would love to have one or two sons but I know I'd be cold and distant to a daughter. I don't need to fuck up someone else's life, too, and I'm too proud to go to counselling and be emotionally vulnerable. I don't want to talk about these things with anyone but my two best friends and they can't do much more than listen.
I don't give a rats ass to know these bastards and when I was forced to write a letter to my great-aunt, as a teen, I told her as much. I don't harbour anger against them, They're strangers I am not related to, in my mind.
Ultimately any form of rejection by someone you desperately want to meet and who you desperately want to return your affection back to you, is hard. The advice is always the same:
Don't let dead limbs keep your tree from growing.
If they're not interested, if they don't love you and if you are left feeling hopeless, bitter, resentful or just stressed, trying to keep up with them and forge a relationship, who's benefitting? They're not suffering, mostly likely. They just ignore your letters and phone calls.
You are torturing yourself. You wouldn't stay in a one-sided or abusive relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend, so why do so with a biological parent who gave you up?
Your medical. history isn't that important unless it has some rare disease or defect. In which case, just ask them for that type of information.
If you are the biological parent who gave up a child, you have a right to not have contact just as much as they have a right to find you. You can make it clear using many different tones that you are not interested. You could go in the way I would, much like The Butterfly Effect, where at the end he tells that girl that, "I hate you! Never talk to me again or I'll kill you." (sans the threat to kill, replaced with, "Go away, bitch!") or you can write a letter in a much nicer way. I'm a Scorpio and we aren't known (along with Virgos) for beating around the bush or hiding our feelings in cases like this.
p.s. great movie!
IF you had great adoptive parents, then you don't need them in your life to ruin that. If you had terrible adoptive parents, you don't need them in your life to make it worse. Life isn't fair. Life is hard. Sometimes families are shitty and other times they're great. Some people lose their entire family early in life. Some have to make their own families out of close friends and chosen people who you view as parental figures and grandparents.
I had no grandparents after 1999. (the three remaining were not quite "grandparents" in my mind). I was better off without them than with them. I didn't know any better so I didn't miss them. My uncle, adopted, refused to find or talk to his birth mother, based on this logic. Another lady (old) was adopted and her adopted mother ended up hating her. She cut off ties to her at 18. My cousin's mother checked herself into a psych hospital for depression immediately after his birth, for 8 weeks, to avoid being home for 8 weeks. She never bonded with him and when she died, she died. He has never been able to let go of this, always has denied her lack of love.
My half-uncle was born out of an affair. His biological father bragged about making another boy but never came forward as a parent. My dad's cousin found out about her late father's "other family" when she was doing research a decade ago.
Human relationships are complex and fragile. An umbiliical cord doesn't equate to love. Don't let a dead limb obscure the view of the healthy ones behind it.