It's really hard sometimes to read about happy reunions between birth parents and their children.  I mean, it brings me joy to hear about it, but it also brings me great sadness, too.  But more so, when you see it on a documentary or show, it can be excruciating to watch.   Especially when the birthmother is in tears, showing she obviously loved her baby once, and still probably does.

Today I watched the seasons finale of "My Unorthodox Life" which is a show about Julia Haart, who used to be an Orthodox Jew who left her community and religion and is now the CEO of Elite World Group (a modeling agency).  I really hate reality TV, but this show is interesting because I am an atheist, and I like to see other people who were strongly religious and have also become atheists.  Her two sons are still Jewish (her youngest still orthodox) which I also think is interesting, because I came from a very strong religious background myself.  And not the one I grew up with.  No, my parents were....well, fake Lutherans.  I think we only went to church together a few times when I was little.  But eventually alcoholism became their Sunday church of choice instead.  So when I turned twelve, I started learning about paganism.  And I stayed a pagan until around, I don't know, like 2015 or so?  Maybe before that, but not much more.  I was super into my religion and I really loved it.  I still have spiritual values leftover from all of that, but I don't believe in a creator anymore, as that part never really was what spoke to me about paganism.  So I like learning about Judaism from the show, because I've found more ideas I can pull from (like practices and whatnot--not orthodox practices that undervalues women, but regular Jewish practices) that interest me.  And I've had such a horrible view of orthodox jews (and still kind of do), due to how they treat their women.  So I love that the show depicts people who have escaped it.  

Anyways, so that's not my point.  Julia works with her close friend, COO Robert Brotherton, who happens to be adopted.  And the show followed his journey to meet his birth mother.  At first, his family was dead against it, which made me super angry, because mine were too.  Except my mother went as far as lying to me and saying that my birthmother "Wanted nothing to do with you, if she saw your picture on her mother's fridge, she'd got into a rage and tear it down and throw it away."  This was a lie, confirmed both by my grandmother and my birthmother.  But I will say that my grandmother most likely did shame her for giving me up.  Which at first, I thought was so very wrong.  But then I found out something.  

I was abandoned at six months old.  Until that point, I had a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, and two uncles, all who lived with me.  And then at Christmas, my grandmother told my birthmother to leave but she had to leave me there with her.  Mostly because my birthmother was neglecting me.  So my birthmother, in a fit of defiance, said "Nope, you can't have her!  I'm going to give her away!".  They even went to court about it.  And by the time I was eighteen months old, I had lived with four families.  

When I was seventeen, I informed my mother that for my eighteenth birthday I was going to look up my birthmother, as a gift to myself for my birthday.  That's when she said that about the picture thing.  I was devastated.  She said in a nonchalant voice, as though it wasn't a big deal or anything.  Saying "She didn't even want to know you still exist."  I think I cried for a week over that one.  

Turns out, what I didn't know at the time, was that both my parents wanted me to have ZERO contact with my birthfamily.  I had no idea, as neither one ever said anything to me about it.  So when I did go to meet her when I turned 23 or so, I was so excited and thought everyone was on board.   But when I got back, both my parents laid into me and guilted me and made feel horrible, as though I had just broken their hearts and stomped all over them.  

I was so freaking confused.  

I am a very emotional person.  When I feel big feelings, I normally show it.  Not always, depending on the situation, because I am not embarrassing or rude or anything.  But I feel everything with my heart.  And in the past, I was so very big-hearted.  As I've aged, I've become more closed off in some ways.  Not getting in touch with my feelings, because I am more in touch with them than ever.  But more so, I am not as naive anymore.  Since 2013, when I started this blog, I've learned some valuable lessons about who I show my heart to.  Before, I showed it to everyone, and always got myself hurt.  But learning about narcissism has helped me to be more selective in what I share with who.  

So when I met my birthmother, I wrote her a poem.  This was before I knew about who to show my heart to.  It was my way to express how thankful I was that she gave me up because now I had a kid (though I have two now), and blah blah blah and this and that.  She read it, with zero facial expressions, and then put it down and said a cold "thanks".  And then she got up to get more food, leaving me there to wonder what the fuck just happened?

I felt as though I had been punched in the gut.  I wanted to cry.  I almost did.  I hated baring my soul to people who didn't give a shit that I was doing so.  But then again, her letter to me two to three years prior when I was 20, was just as cold and a-matter-of-factly written.  "I had a boyfriend.  He had a best friend.  I was a virgin.  I slept with his best friend for my first time.  I slept with my boyfriend a little bit later.  I ended up pregnant and didn't know which was the father."  The end.  Well, not the end, because thenshe told me about how she got thrown out and whatever else.  But there was ZERO feeling in it.  ZERO emotion.  

At first, I didn't let myself feel my feelings about it.  In fact, I didn't know what they were, really.  Rather, I just knew there was something off and I wasn't sure what.  Time went on, and she showed me just how codependent she was, yet also how non-empathetic she was.  Even after she learned of all the abuse I endured at the hands of the couple that adopted me.  Not a single "Sorry, I think I made a mistake giving you up" or "Sorry that happened to you!  I wish I could have chose your parents instead!" or something of the sort.  Nothing like that.  It was always "buck up! you're good now, right?".  Not really something you want to hear from the person who birthed you and gave you away.

My aunt once told me that my birthmother had a hard time connecting with humans.  She was better with animals.  But that's not true.  She was in love with her boyfriend, the one she thought was my birthfather.  Like, completely in love with him.  She only gave me up because he left her (because she cheated on him--something she still has no explanation for).  Otherwise, they would have raised me together.  Not a good thing, since both have/had pretty pronounced aspergers and had a hard time being normal emotionally (I have it too, obviously, but I have no issues with my emotions).  But would that have been worse than my parents?  I don't know.  I mean, I may have still been abused, but in different ways.  I am not saying she should have kept me.  I would have felt just as unloved with her as I did with my own mother.  And that's not the point.  The point here is that she abandoned me with strangers at six months old and I was adopted into an alcoholic abusive family, and she could care less and acts like she has no remorse or even sympathy for me.  And she has ZERO guilt.  I would say maybe behind closed doors she does, in her own way, but what good does that do me?  Sounds selfish, but for real.  How can I process what I don't see?  And no, I do not blame her.  But she has no sympathy for my life whatsoever.  Which really hurts.

Anyways, so on the show, Robert meets his birthmother, who is in heavy amount of tears the entire time, and I can think of is "Why wasn't my birthmother like that?  Why does she not ever speak to me unless she gets a hair up her ass to text or message me?  Not even during the pandemic?"  All the woman asked was if she had made the right decision and if he was okay.  My birthmother knows I was so very not okay and she doesn't even give a flying fuck.  

One thing I know is that my birthmother doesn't really like me because of my personality (she's basically told me that before).  She's intellectual and snobby and lives in her fantasy dream world (in real life and online) and I am intellectual yet a little more trashy than she is, and I live in reality.  I say "fuck" a lot and she likes to spend most of her time in Second Life, with other intellectual and snobby people.  We do not match.  I look like her.  I am artistic and musical and am a photographer.  She is all of those things, too.  But emotionally we are opposites.  Personality-wise, we are also very opposite.  During all of 2020, I never even heard from her.  So I messaged her one day asking if she was doing okay in late October, and she replies, just like my mother does, "I was just going to contact you!" as though it explains why she never did.  "Oh you cleaned this?  I was just going to do that!"  "Oh, you did this or that?  I was just going to do that!"  My own mother says these things as a way to a) take partial responsibility for whatever it is I did so she can feel like she did it too, and b) alleviate her own shame or guilt and responsibility for not doing whatever it was that needed to be done.  My birthmother is the exact same.  

When I was adopted, my birthmother and her mother went to court for custody of me.  And my birthmother won, with the stipulation that my grandmother has to get twice yearly updates on me, and eventually letters from when I was old enough to write.  So I've "known" my grandma my entire life.  Kind of.  But eventually, after actually knowing my birthfamily as a whole, I found out that my grandma has NPD.  And so does her other daughter, my aunt, and at least one of her sons, my uncle.  My other uncle, I assume is a scapegoat, since he's been MIA since 18 (well, MIA in his mother's life).  And my birthmother seems to be a severe codependent, yet also narcissistic.  Not a reverse narcissist, though then again, I do not know her well enough, but I can say that she's severely fucking selfish.  She will message me out of the blue, after two years of ignoring me and say "Here is my number, I am going to France.  Here is where I am staying, and blah blah blah" like I give two shits.  Another vacation she took to the Grand Canyon that I was completely unaware of was when she just messaged me pictures of herself having the time of her life, after another year of not talking to me.  I said "Um, what are these pics?"  She said "Oh, I am on vacation and I thought you'd love to see what I"m up to!"  

Eyeroll.  She forgets I exist, and then later remembers, which makes me feel so good inside.  Yay.

I get it.  She's autistic.  She has no self-awareness.  She lives inside her head.  She's ridiculous with the way she sees the world.  She has no idea how to have relationships with other people.  Each year on Christmas, my grandma would send me a box of fun stuff when I was a kid.  Like, stuff she picked up on her travels and other neat stuff.  So one year, out of the blue, my birthmother started this with us and our kids.  She'd buy us journals and cute things and fun stuff for the kids.  She did this for about three to four years.  Then I never heard from her on Christmas again.  We were so confused.  It wasn't the stuff we looked forward to, it was a connection to her.  Just like it was with my grandma.  Then she started sending me birthday cards.  Then she just would forget for years at a time.  She's completely stopped sending cards to my kids and my husband.   My 40th went by and I didn't get a single card from anyone that year.  Who forgets shit like that?  That birthday was my all time worst. Well, since childhood.  As my parents super fucked up all my birthdays when I was a kid.  So much so I learned to hate my birthdays, which didn't stop until a couple years ago (though, now back with mother, I am beginning to not like them again). 

So watching this man's mother on TV bawl her eyes out, out of love for her birth son, I was so very jealous that I didn't get that.  I didn't get anyone saying "I missed you all the time!" or "I thought about you all the time!"  Nothing like that.   I wanted to bawl my own eyes out watching it.  But my hubby was with me and I don't cry in front of people (something I carry from childhood).  Had I been alone, I may have cried myself into a migraine.  

When I see people who want to meet their birthparents, I always say to do it.  My story sucks.   but so many turn out good.  But even if it does suck?  Do it anyways.  Because it's worth knowing, rather than not knowing.  Meeting my birthfather was pretty fucking terrible.  But in a way, it was better, because I could see his insanity right off the bat (he's got paranoid personality disorder) and I had to exit his life shortly after we were in contact because of that.  That sucks too, but I knew right away what I was dealing with.  So I didn't get sucked in and hurt.  I mean, it still hurts.  I wanted that fucking fairy tale, like in August Rush (fuck you writer's of that movie, you give us all such false hope LOL).  When you're seventeen, you think someone out there loves you and misses you and is wondering about you.  Then you solve the Scooby Doo mysteries of where and who you come from and find out those people are just regular people who suck, like everyone else in life.  And no, I never expected them to be perfect.  But I did expect more than just "thanks" and being ignored most of the time.  Or having a father who only rants and raves about how Microsoft Encarta 95 translates the bible for him so that he can figure out "the truth about the world".  I know he can't help it.  But what a fucking let down.  Then again, his brain is a fucking let down to his life---I am sure if he could choose to not have a brain like his, he'd rather be normal.  So he gets a pass.  

I could say that my birthmother was only twenty when she had me and that she's autistic.  Those two things could give her a pass, right?  But I was twenty when I started my family and I am also autistic.  And when my first child was six months old, I didn't just think "Oh, I am really not a mother, goodbye baby!"  I was responsible and if I didn't think I could have been a mother I would have gotten an abortion or give up my baby up immediately.  I wouldn't wait until that baby was attached to me and my family and rip it out of the only home it's ever known.  And if I had given it up, found out later that my child was abused?  I would do whatever I could to make up for it.  It wouldn't be my fault, but my choices did lead that kid to end up in that position, through no fault of it's own.  

I mean, didn't ask to be born.  She chose that for me.  Abortions were legal back then.  Condoms didn't cost much.  It's not that hard not to get pregnant.  I was told by my OBGYN I am the most fertile person she'd ever in her practice, and how did I only have two kids?  Because I knew how how no to get pregnant, that's how.  But she did get pregnant, and I was born and then through series of bad choices in her life, I was put into a the home of two violent abusers.  I don't want to her to take responsibility for that, but I'd like maybe a little sympathy from her.  It doesn't feel right for someone in her position to not be sorry about what happened to me. 

So she doesn't get a pass.  I know we're different.  And I get it.  But that doesn't negate how she treated me in the past or how she still treats me today.  I've talked to her about it before, too, and she's nothing but cold.  Maybe she doesn't want to access her feelings.  But my own mother doesn't want to access her feelings, which is why she lies all the time.  We can give excuses for our behavior all we want to in life, but there has to be a point where we just take responsibility for it.  She's 64 years old.  She can take responsibility for how she makes other people feel in life.  Because by 64?  No matter your excuses, it's who you are now.  And maybe you can change.  But most likely, you won't.  Like that movie, Hillbilly Elegy, where the scriptwriter tried to make excuses for the main character's mother's behavior, like she never had a choice to be who and what she was.  No, sweetheart, she chose that.  She chose to be an awful mother.  We all chose who we become.  Every single one of us.  No matter what happened to us a as kids.  No matter what happened or who did what to us in life.  The excuses fall away when we become grown.  We either change as we grow, or we don't.  It's as simple as that.  We can look to others and understand the reasons other people did what they did to us, but that doesn't excuse what they did.  It doesn't excuse what they still are doing or what they will do in the future.  It just gives us insight into their toxic or negative behavior. 

I love hearing about good reunions, though.  I do get a twinge of sadness when I read about them or see them in a show.  But the raw emotion that Robert's birthmother was displaying really got me in the gut.  I wish I would have had that.  I hope Robert realizes just how lucky he really is.  I mean, I get his life probably is and was not perfect.  I get so much of his life may have been hard for him in ways life wasn't hard for me (though I was a fucking little weirdo as a kid, so I got it at school as much as I did at home).  But his birthmother loved him when he was born.  And not all of us get that.  Some of us only get taken home for a few months because someone else tells them to do it.  And then they fight like hell to be able to give us up for adoption because they cannot find a way to love them.  

Whatever the real reason she had for doing what she did, she never missed me.  She said so.  Even though a day never went by when I didn't wonder who or where she was, and if she was thinking about me.  Turns out, she wasn't.  And I have to find a way to be okay with that.