Reunion – “If you want a happy ending, it depends where you stop your story”

For many adoptees, reunion with our biological family should bring us full circle – from surrendered baby, to reunited adult. Of course, never think it’s the end of the journey when we reunite, it’s only the beginning.

Sometimes and desperately sadly, reunion can leave us wanting, further traumatised and wholly dissatisfied. One thing we have to be is prepared for secondary rejection and if it does happen – what happens to us?

I was rejected by my birth mother after a year of our original reconciliation. The trauma that caused me is irreparable and I don’t believe I’ll ever recover completely from the cruel and heart-breaking way she ‘dumped’ me (for want of a better word)

What adoptees who are rejected twice need to understand (I certainly didn’t at the time) is that we are not rejected because of who we are as people – we are rejected because our mothers simply can’t handle us being present in their lives again. They were told after relinquishment to go on and to forget they had had a baby that their lives would “go back to normal” Some mothers need to protect that belief so much, that they have to repudiate anything that threatens it. “Moving on” & “going back to normal” often means telling no one about the surrendered baby, especially not new husbands and subsequent children. More reasons piled on to protect, deny and reject.

When secondary rejection happens, and despite us understanding on a philosophical level that it isn’t about us, the pain and devastation means that we are never able to convince ourselves of that truth. We can usually comprehend the original relinquishment but to be rejected twice? And this time as a fully grown adult, not a baby from an unplanned pregnancy? It’s something hugely and cripplingly different.

We may never know why our birth mothers choose to reject so abruptly and finally. All I can say is I know how it felt to me. It was so much worse than simply being placed for adoption. It was cruel and heartless and made me feel worthless. The majority of adoptees searching do not want a “new mummy” or expect the slaying of the fatted calf, what we want and deserve are our questions about where we come from answered. What I got was a door slammed shut. Worse actually, as she did see me a couple of times, so she opened the door a bit then slammed it firmly closed. Which only made me feel like it was something I did, something I said, something I must be that made me unworthy of the same basic rights – identity & heritage – that other people take for granted. Tell a rejected adoptee “It’s not you, it’s her” all you like – our ears hear it but our hearts never will. We get it on the philosophical level but not the emotional level.

I am unsure how we ever can – despite over 30 years of trying psychotherapy, drug therapy and reading a mountain of books on the subject, I don’t think I will ever recover fully. Maybe it’s the irreparability of the mother and child bond being broken? Once you break a plate you can use the best glue known to man but you’ll always be able to see the cracks and the repair becomes very fragile.

We have to deal with issues of rejection and abandonment every day of our lives. Being rejected twice by our mother seems to confirm our fears that there is something wrong with us.

I wish I could talk to every birth mother and say “If you are considering refusing contact – please don’t do it. It breaks us”

I guess they don’t realise that all we are looking for is validation of our existence and some questions answered. Showing compassion works both ways in adoptionland.

The good thing is that people can change their minds, my mother did. Mind you only because I contacted my sister after 25 years and she had to admit to who I was. She has told me that if I hadn’t have done that, she would not have looked for me and left instructions for her family to be told about me after her death.

So there has to be some faint hope. But I know a lot of secondarily rejected adoptees don’t hold out any. If a woman is in such a state of denial that she simply can’t accept her child’s existence without her entire world falling apart, it’s going to be a tough one to crack. By pretending that you didn’t have a baby or have it adopted just moves the pain along further and heaps more of it on your child.

I so want to say there is salve to this but there isn’t. We are always at the behest of our birth mother. All we can do is try to prepare ourselves for a negative response and ensure the first contact letter is well written and handled appropriately. But, the birth mother still holds all the cards and we just have to hope that she is as ready and prepared for reunion as we hopefully are ❤️