At 30 years old, I found my birth mother. In all the years that I wondered about her, she had achieved celebrity status, in my mind. I always looked at people closely, because she could have been anyone.

At age 7, my hairstylist told me I had Cindy Crawford hair, so for a very long time I decided my birth mother was Cindy. Of course she wasn’t. Instead what I found was a weathered woman who has had a rough life that etched lines of misery under her eyes.

It was never a secret in my family that I was adopted; from a very young age my parents told me that I was chosen and therefore special. When I was 18, my mom took me for lunch and handed me the adoption file, which included a note from my birth mother, a baby sized bracelet, and handwritten notes made by my adoptive mom. She made notes about the teenager who gave her a chance to be a mother by giving up her baby. My birth mother had been 17, with brown hair and hazel eyes, just like me. She loved football, singing, and was bad at math, just like me. There wasn’t much about my birth father except that he didn’t know about her pregnancy and that he was from a well-to-do family. My mom, the woman who raised me, then dropped a bombshell. She handed me a bottle of baby lotion that was sent home with me from the hospital, labeled with a last name. My original last name.

13 years later, I sent the most important Facebook message of my life–ironically on Father’s day. The night I found her on Facebook, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was my birth mother. The pictures that she had on her profile were a mirror image of myself.  I told her that I had reason to believe that she was my birth mother. She responded the next day asking for the time I was born, off the birth certificate. The time I gave matched the time that she gave birth to a child she wouldn’t keep.

The first exchange between the two of us happened at 8 am on a Monday morning. We chatted via Facebook messenger for what seemed like hours. Exchanging bits of information about ourselves. I got to ask questions of her, questions that I had dreamed about having answered. Who was responsible for my size 11 feet? Did her left eyebrow get crazy like mine did if I waited too long between waxing?

Did she remember me on my birthday? My birthdays have always seemed a little bittersweet, especially since I have gotten older. Did she scan the faces of little girls in the grocery story that would have been the right age, wondering if that could be her child? I asked if she had other children. That question was hard for me to formulate. She told me that yes, I have a half-sister. I was overjoyed. Since I had no siblings growing up, it was like receiving a wonderful gift.

She shared something else that I already knew: she was also adopted. So she knew what it was like to grow up an adopted child, never truly feeling like she belonged. As I did.

If I were her, I would be pretty bitter too if my Baptist preacher father dropped me off at the hospital to have a baby–a baby that I wasn’t going to be taking home from the hospital. I guess he couldn’t miss choir practice.

At age 17, she walked into the sterile halls of the local hospital and gave birth to me, via c-section, alone. She was to call her father when she was discharged so that he could give her a ride home. She was told to stop crying when she got into her father’s car and to get over me. That was the last time I was ever mentioned among her family. Selfishly, hearing that hurt me so badly. A lifetime of feeling rejected and unwanted surfaced yet again. Can you imagine going through such a huge thing alone at 17? The physical scar faded over time, but I doubt she has ever really gotten over the hurt she experienced. She was never offered therapy or even given the luxury of acknowledgement of what she had just gone through. Keeping a secret that big for 30 years would cause a person to become bitter and unable to feel.

Still, I can’t figure out why she has been such a bitch to me.

She made a decision over the course of her pregnancy that I am both very grateful for and at the same time it makes me very sad. She never told my birth father about me. The high school football star charmed her with a trip to Kings Island, never knowing that he had fathered a child in the process. She was afraid that at 17, and as seniors in high school, my biological father would make her do the “right thing.” After all, it was the early ‘80s. His life wasn’t an easy one either.

In June of last year, at 30 years old, I made the choice to contact them both. Their reactions were as different as night and day.  She was happy and accepting at first, until I wanted more. I craved a deeper relationship with the woman who gave me life, and an introduction to the sister I have ached for my whole life. I knew that a deep connection was off the table with her even though I desperately wanted it.

When I told her that I was going to contact my birth father, she lost it. In her extreme anger, she went so far as to tell me that she didn’t have to tell me his name. That she could have left me wondering who he was, just as she did the doctors and nurses so many years ago. In a calmer moment, she asked me if I ever stopped to think about how telling the father of her first child would affect her and her daughter. She didn’t mean the daughter that she gave birth to 30 years ago, but rather the teenage daughter she was currently raising–the one who knows nothing about me. I was cut to the core yet again by her callous and cruel attitude.

Her acute reaction was like a challenge to me, a challenge that I accepted. My need to be connected to someone biologically related to me was strong. My biological father wasn’t easy to find, despite the fact that he graduated in the same high school class as a co-worker of my husband, a fact I found out by pouring over yearbooks in search of any small clue I could find. I had made the decision to have his former classmate contact him first, after all news like he was about to receive is better coming from someone you know. The digging began, I found YouTube videos of news story clips. Sadly, they weren’t happy stories. As it turns out, he was a victim of sexual abuse by a priest.

At that point I was stumped. Do I contact him? He had such a rough life that this might send him off the deep end. I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for that, plus I really didn’t think I could handle much more drama.

In the end I contacted my birth father via his attorney, who then sent him an email and conveyed my story. It wasn’t long before my phone rang. He didn’t remember my birth mother’s name, and was doubtful at best, until I sent him a picture. Plans were made for a paternity test. He wanted to meet me there, but after all, he was a stranger who might not be related to me. I joked that I would owe him a beer if he went to all of this trouble for nothing. 3 days later we had our answer, 99.999998% positive.

Ironically the copy of the results that were mailed to my home, were addressed to Allison Tucker. His last name.

As much as she was indifferent, he was elated. He passed out “It’s a Girl” cigars to everyone he knew, telling his mother, my grandmother about me on her birthday. His elation also came with less than attractive attributes: he’s an alcoholic who lost his car in a poker game, and he’s living in a shitty apartment with other less-than-savory men his age.  He divorced 3 times–none of those marriages resulted in children.

Our relationship is one sided for sure, he wants a lot more of a relationship than I ever wanted with him. Sound familiar? But I didn’t want his love. I want hers. I told her very early on that I loved her. She told me that she hoped I didn’t expect her to love me; she didn’t know me.

I often wish that I hadn’t gone down the road of discovery, feeling like I have opened Pandora’s box which in the end, didn’t contain much love or family. On the flipside, I am glad I have made the discoveries that I did. Those findings about how my life could have been make me grateful every day that God gave me the family that I ended up with: the parents who adopted me.

I do wish that things had turned out differently. I had envisioned a dramatic tearful reunion with lots of hugging but instead got dysfunction and sadness. I had hoped that reaching out to these people with whom I share DNA, would bring some sort of benefit to my life. It was never my intent to replace my parents but to enhance an already beautiful life.

Coffee once a month with my birth mother just doesn’t seem to be in the cards, so instead I will take coffee with the woman who raised me, and loves me. She is my family. 

 

Allison is a mother of 2 small boys, who works full time while also writing for her on blog. Family Vacations U.S was started in hopes that family vacations would be just a little bit easier with tips and tricks along the way. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Wannabe's are Guest Authors to BLUNTmoms. They might be one-hit wonders, or share a variety of posts with us. They "may" share their names with you, or they might write as "anonymous" but either way, they are sharing their stories and their opinions on our site, and for that we are grateful.

7 Comments

  1. I read every word, that’s how interesting your post was to me. While I’m not adopted, my mother was a foster child and I know that whenever she saw an older man smile at her or be nice she would wonder if that was her father. Thanks for sharing your story and sorry you didn’t have a better reunion, but very glad you have a loving adopted mother.

  2. What a thoughtful and moving post. I’m glad you have the mother who raised you, who loves you, who wants to have coffee with you every month. Glad for your children too, that they have a loving grandparent in their lives.

  3. Thank you for sharing this story! I want to scream at your birth mother, hug your real mother and smack your birth dad. Actually that sounds like every family : ). Hugs to you. And I will have coffee with you any time you want. I don’t want to miss out.

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