HI BIRTH MOTHERS..ADVICE AND UNDERSTANDING NEEDED!!!!

g5

Hi
I am a 40 year old woman,
adopted,five days after I was born.

Let me start by saying I am at a place where I thank my Mother for giving birth to me..

So come to ask for advice from a place of respect..

I need to understand from a Mother who gave up a childs point of view,

I grow up in a family where some of us were adopted and some were not,

I always felt there was something wrong with me but since reading and dealing with these issues understand now this is normal.

As the natural Mother Child bond is one of the strongest in the world...

Belive it or not I still get afraid someone might find out Im a misfit,
my stuff not my Birth Mothers.

Now please tell me the Birth Mums side,
I have put a trace on my Mum and they have found her!

Wow scarey..

On taking the phone call she ackowledged me straight away,
and also said I was always on her mind,
(that felt great)

I was born within a relationship.was adopted and my parents stayed together,for a time after my bith..

She left,met her husband married had no children,he has since died,

This I cant understand she never told him about me,she told nobody only my Dad

How??

Not friends,sisters etc..
So now I belive she is in shock as she never expected for me to turn up now..

As nobody knows it would be easy to keep it all a secret.
Can anyone relate to the time 1968,
and what She is going through.

I need to see her point.

Im here,and she also has two grandchildren,
Its not over yet but Im scared so near and yet so far...
Thanks so much g.

shezzie

am not a birth mother but just wanted to wish you luck in your search and personal closure i can imagine...


though trust me that secret can easily be kept my bm only told my bf and her sister - her sister is dead now and my bf was a married man with 3 children so dont think he was going to let cat out of bag

my bm went to dublin she was from the country - she worked here gave birth and went back down the country

therefore no one else was told even her parents never knew bout me....


anyways if you ever wanna chat you can private message me anytime

best of luck again

g5

Hi.
I sound so silly.Im here reading threads,and wanted to reply to some but didnt know how?
Hope i have got it right now,
I just cant get my head around it maybe its the person I am.
Or the day and age we live in.
But I am so frightened and confused..
I understand she needs to come to terms with it,
But from my life experiences,things you do will always come back..
ps.thanks.

Optimus485

Hi,

My mum was adopted in the 60s. She has found my biological-grandmother. It's very nice to know my grandmother and see parts of her in my personality. I'm very proud of her, and I'm honoured to know who she is. I know her story, and what's most important to me now is spending time with her.

What you need to understand is that Ireland was a completely different world in the 60s. And you can't change the way society was back then. You are, however, in control of the future, so my advise is... make the most of the relationship you can have with your birth mother today and in the future. Don't let what happened in the past control what you can do today. It's difficult to forgive, but once you do, you can maximise the potential that the future has to offer you.

g5

Hi,
thankyou for replying,
I do forgive but cant understand why she may not want to know me.

kathy finn

hi, first of all well done in finding your birthmother, i suppose we are very much alike i am also 40 was adopted at 3 months i also have a brother who was adopted and two siblings who where my adoptive parents natural children.
i am sure your mother will welcome you once she gets over the shock, my mother never told anyone about me only my birthfather, and 2 of her 6 sisters knew. i suppose to understand them we have to understand the generation they came from.in the 60s and early 70s a girl who found herself in trouble had no options the catholic church ran the country and these girls where made to feel shameful they where told it would better for their babies to be reared in good catholic homes without the stigma of being a bastard.
i wish you the best, i wish i was in your position my birthmother died and i never got to meet her, so many unanswered questions.....kathy

Billiejo

Hi
Thought I'd reply not just because in my profession I deal with the pre and aftermath of adoption, but from a personal prospective also. I can see both sides albeit not saying I always personally understand because I have children of my own...And we live in a different era than our elders. Back then unmarried mothers were treated as lepers and their children were stagmatised as bastards.

Personal: After a lifetime -to the age of 50 when my mother died....of 'feeling like a misfit' EG as a child & eldest of 6 always silently asking myself "why am I invisable" I found out that my mother was 8 months pregnant with me when she married my father.
I put two and two together when I found her marriage cert after her death. I pretended I knew all along to my uncle (her brother) and he confessed that he had to search for my father who had been long gone as their relationship had ended when she was only four weeks pregnant.
The whole extended family had kept this secret, because of the SHAME attached within that generation's mind set, & I learnt that I missed being adopted just because my father was found and accepted his responsibility!!!.
I understand now that my mother had been psychologically affected by the greatest SHAME of the day in having me which resulted in her negative behaviour towards me.

I have a close friend (spent all his life in a childrens home) and recently discoverd a sister (same fate - all her life too in a home). They and their families are great friends now and managed to locate their mother, now 80 years old, very respectfully married with five adult children.
She agreed to meet them at an arranged clandestine location and emphtically stated she didnt want to meet them again, nor does she wish her husband or her 'legalised' children to know her secret.
I personally think that we of this generation have moved on a long way from the SHAME mindset of our elders and think that any siblings with the same mother have rights too, and regardless of the mothers wishes blood brothers and sisters have a right to know one another. This is one piece of legislation that needs to be addressed.
In addition I believe that this type of SHAME element has no place in OUR society and elders of that opinion have forfited the right to keep blood siblings apart because of an outdated attitude or faded marriage cert.
Regardless of this there are many women who for one reason or another cannot face the trauma's of their past, as their whole pregnancy experience is tied up with a multitude of difficulties. The psychological trauma of being single and pregnant was incalculable and the psychological trauma of giving a baby away was a million times worse and they all very rarely suceed in forgetting.
So G5 your mother will undoubtably be in shock. Give her time, and try to see the situation from her viewpoint. Dont forget she will have spent a lifetime thinking of you as 'her baby'.

MaryMagdalene

Hi G5

I am a birthmother.

First of all why do you think she should have told people?

I am only your age so times for me were more 'progressive'. I have told my husband. However only because my family all knew as I was a minor. If they didn't I prob would not have told him unless I felt sure that we would be reunited - in 1985 I had a glimmer of hope. I was still sent away to the nuns. I wasn't beaten but I was locked up.

In 1968 reunions were unheard of and your Mother never for one moment thought you would be reunited. She was told that you never could be, to forget you, to live her life and never to speak of you again - she may not ever have even been allowed to hold you/see you. So she protected herself by continuing to live her lie. What can anyone say? There are no words of comfort? There is no mourning allowed? We never had the funneral, the cards, the closure and believe me we never got any smypathy for our loss. So she tried to forget. What else can you do? Surrounded by people who can't possibly understand your loss. Many who would disown you if you even told them.

Even I was treated and called a 'whore' a 'shame' a 'disgrace' and that is only what was said to my face by my own family!!!

I am now reunited with my daughter but I still haven't told everyone (that doesn't already know about her existence). Why? I am dreading the look in their eyes - the same old looks and whispers. Even typing this I feel sick thinking about it - my in-laws, my work colleagues, my friends etc.

We are who we are because of what we have lived through and its not always easy to ignore what others think.

I wish you the best of luck and from what you have said your natural Mother loves you very much. It's hard for others (and maybe even you) to understand how we can love you when we don't know you but we do.

I hope that my ramblings may somehow be of help.

MM