' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: January 2015

Thursday, January 29, 2015

After reunion, birth father rejects returning daughter

Lorraine
Dear FMF: 

I am a 44-year-old adoptee who found my birth parents this year. My birth father had listed himself in a mutual consent registry in California 15 years ago, but I didn't find out until I spent a year getting my non-identifying information. He stayed with his teenage girlfriend while she was pregnant with me, and when he married (someone else), he told his wife he had a child who might show up one day. Through him I was able to meet my mother, and that is going well. 

My birth father and I had a warm and emotional first meeting in a local park, and met there again two weeks later with my two-year-old daughter. He did not invite me to meet his family, he said, because of upcoming surgery.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Orphans in film, literature a universal: Now playing at your local miniplex

Lost Boy "Eggs"
Three films now playing, The Boxtrolls, Paddington, and Annie, reflect our endless fascination with orphans. The Boxtroll tells once again the story of a child separated from his real family who becomes a hero. The Boxtrolls are quirky, mischievous creatures who live underground among the trash and wear discarded boxes, take in an infant boy. He is called Eggs because that is the label on the box he wears. When an evil human devises a plot to destroy the Boxtrolls and replace the human king, Eggs ventures above ground,

Monday, January 19, 2015

Telling your children about their adopted sibling

Jane
When my lost daughter Rebecca contacted me, I was faced with telling my other daughters, ages 25, 23, and 20 about their half sister. I could have not done so of course, but I wanted to have a relationship with Rebecca. I recognized how awkward it would be to keep her a secret. How to explain long telephone calls, hours on the computer writing emails, trips out of town. If she remained a secret, she would not be able to visit. More fundamentally I realized that it would be unfair to Rebecca to keep her a secret as though I was ashamed of her.

She asked me several times during our initials correspondence if I had told my daughters about her. She was curious about them; perhaps her interest went beyond curiosity reflecting a natural desire to connect with those to whom she was related biologically.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Korean adoptees are returning to their native land

After the separation: the persistence of roots
Stories about adoptees from other countries often talk of corruption in the system, of mothers being scammed into giving up their babies, of the angst of individuals raised in a culture not their own. But they seldom actually mention the grief of the birth mothers--or how the adopted individual might process it.

But a single sentence in a New York Times Magazine piece did it for me: "My life in the United States, no matter how good it was...never made up for my omma's grief."

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Downton Abbey: Once again dealing with the scandal of a 'bastard'

Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith Crawley in Downton Abbey
Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith                 Photo: Nick Briggs
Today we go from reality TV (trash or not, that's for you to decide) to midbrow Downton Abbey. The story line is going further and further into the Lady-Edith-had-a-bastard-baby thread, and they are doing a bangup job with it.

For those who don't follow this highfalutin' soap opera from BBC, a primer: The not-beautiful middle daughter ends up with somewhat of a job--writing columns for a newspaper--instead of a husband. But an affair follows with the editor of the paper, who is unfortunately married to a mad woman locked up

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Second daughter brings joy to Catelynn, Tyler

Happy mom Catelynn
"I actually get to feel happy about leaving the hospital," Tyler Baltierra tweeted as he prepared to take his new daughter, Novalee, and her mother, long time girl friend, Catelynn Lowell, home from the hospital last month according to E News. "Crying happy tears instead of sad ones feels amazing! I don't have to be heart broken this time."

Tyler, you didn't have to heart-broken when you left the hospital after Catelynn gave birth to your baby five years ago. Then Tyler and Catelynn handed their daughter, Carly, to adoptive parents Brandon and Teresa Davis, an affluent couple who lived in North Carolina, far from Catelynn and Tyler's home in rural Michigan, making visits difficult and costly. Surely there were willing parents not several states away.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Contacting siblings when a woman denies she is 'the' first mother

Diving in the unknown....                      photo by Ken Robbins
What do you do when a first mother denies she is your mother, but the proof that she is seems irrefutable? What do you do about siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, other family members? Do you contact them?

The question comes up often because it happens all too often. Recently I met a woman in her sixties who believes she found her natural mother, but the woman, now quite elderly, wrote back that she was not the person being sought. However, if the woman is the birth mother--as the records obtained by the adoptee indicate--the adoptee may have full siblings. And she would love to know them.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

When a first mother decides to search

First weekend Lorraine and daughter met
To search or not to search--that is the question. Some first mothers were told they have to forget and get on with their lives as if there is no child out there. Some were told they would never forget, but that they "cannot ever find" their child. In one's head runs society's admonitions: Searching would be unfair to the child. To the adoptive parents. You can practically twist this around to tell yourself that only a bad, selfish person would search for the child she gave up. Malarkey to that.

Adoptees fear searching because they were schooled in the thought that their birth mothers (who are mothers for all of their lives, not just at "birth") have put the child they gave up "behind them" and made those "new lives" for themselves they were urged to make. They might have been told by their adoptive parents or friends or relatives that contact by their child would just open old wounds.