When it’s time to let go in adoption
February 13th, 2007 by janetAdoption reunions are so complex. Sometimes they run smoothly, sometimes they don’t even start. At other times, one party is desperate for connection while the other is reluctant. When the relationship is like this last example, when is it time to let go?
I read a great post by Mia
Mia (an adoptee with a reluctant birth mother) talked about not liking the term “letting go”, that she didn’t want to let go. What she says makes sense, and I have no problems with it.
My perspective is different, though. My birth mother “rejected” me in our first and only meeting. She said things like, “you’re nothing like me”, “I never thought about you”. Now I know these are all defensive comments, her way of coping, but they hurt. When I was reunited with her parents and sister - my birth grandparents and aunt - I always wondered if they might be able to make her change her mind. It took many years to finally see they couldn’t, that my birth mother would never change her mind.
I don’t think I realised that I’d actually let go of that hope until speaking with someone recently who has worked with many adoptees in counselling. She said, about my birth mother, “there’s still time”. I then realised that I wasn’t hoping or waiting, that I just knew nothing would change, and that I felt no anger towards my birth mother.
So for me, letting go has been the right thing to do. It had to be my decision, no-one else’s. Letting go has helped me to feel more settled in my life. But it is a long road before you get there!
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February 13th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
This is a really interesting post.
Do you think there’s a distinction between your “letting go,” which I take as acknowledging your lack of control of the circumstances and finding peace despite the pain of apparent rejection, and Mia’s “letting _it_ go,” by which she seems to mean refusal or denial of the pain (usually advocated by people who haven’t been in similar pain). “Letting go” of an unwilling mother seems an almost impossible but perhaps necessary task, almost a second traumatic separation (this time from an idea or hope held dear) but letting it go seems to me to mean deciding that the pain was insignificant, afterall, which denies the necessity of grief and grieving. I don’t know if that makes sense, but how freeing it must be not to be waiting or hoping for your birth mother to change!
February 14th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Abebech, this does make sense. I think you’re right. The pain of rejection cannot just be ignored or just put aside. It is real pain and it needs to be acknowledged. I had to have my pain acknowledged for a long time before I could let the situation go. As you said, it was/is out of my control. Thank you for bringing that up.