After Finding my Son on Social Media Into MySpace and the future I went. And I found..nothing. No response, no message, no signs, BUT he had added me to his Friends list..so what did it all mean? Back into chat, we went over what we knew and what I had sent in the first message. It was decided that it was just too cryptic and that he didn’t put it…
I had asked to have Max be my Friend, but he had to approve before we would be on each other’s list. She had called to tell me that he was appearing on my list. That meant that he was online and saw my message. He had approved me. I was Friends with my SON!
My eyes stare into the camera as if saying “Mine, still mine.” Then I put those maternal feelings aside and took on the mantle of being a good birthmother. I look at this face of my own and think, “How could anyone not have seen it and not felt the absolute cruel injustice of separating me from this babe? Why did no one say ‘just don’t'”
And then April came around and MySpace had a new feature. You could look up kids by their school listing. So of course, I plugged in his High School. At this point, I had trouble understanding WHY this kid was NOT on MySpace when it seemed like half the world was on it.After finding tons of kids, but no sign of my own, I decided to see who the kids had listed on their friends list. I think it was the second kid that I looked at..and BOOM! I almost feel off my chair. There he was.
At this point, my dearest and greatest wish was just to have a picture of my son.The waiting was, completely, making me crazy.After I looked at the return address, it registered what I held in my hands. Pictures of my son..the face that I had not seen in 16 and a half years, my baby, grown man/teenager /son.
Three days after starting my adoption search, I was able to go to bed that night knowing for the first time in 16 and a half years that my son was alive, that he was OK. I knew his name, I knew where he lived, I knew what he did, I knew what school he went to. It was the most amazing feeling on the face of the Earth. For the first time in sooo long I felt some peace.
Before I knew anything really about adoption searches and reunions, I had adoption fantasies about his 18th birthday and the telephone ringing, or the door knocking and tried to imagine how it would feel.It was pretty obvious that I knew little about adoption for real. I knew nothing about what an adoptee really could feel or think and my closest foray into a real reunion was watching Lifetime Movies.
It worked out reasonably well until it all fell apart. I am not going to name names but our constant adoptive moms from Anti-Adoption Insights ended up getting fed up with feeling defensive about their positions.In anger, they created Evil Adopters Haven on MSN to kind of mock the attitudes of the hard core anti-adoption folks on Anti-Adoption Insights. It got pretty ugly, pretty fast.
About 14 years after the loss of my son, I was still a “Happy Birthmother”. I was still under the belief that adoption was a great option, my son was having a great life (though it was traditionally closed..so what did I really know), and it was all my supreme choice that cause the typical “no regrets”.
I dream big. But I want change dammit!! I want change bad enough to DO something about it. It’s great to talk to people and I know that I have helped some, but talking a woman or two a year into being a mom is sometimes just not enough. So many are still lost and it breaks my heart. Sometimes I just can’t even go there.
I have come, over time, to embrace the one real meaning of my name. I am broken. I am disabled. I am different and injured. And while the obvious and usually most predominant reason for thus is because I am a mother who lost her first child to adoption, loss and being broken has been a constant theme in my whole life.
I’d like a gift, too, for those who think they have a right to the children of others. I’d like their present to be a nice, big reality check and ability to see through their own propaganda. An unselfish conscience in their stockings also would not be amiss.
The tension and disappointment from that begins to coil around me like a spring. The longer the time frame, the tighter I am wound.
Instinctual knowing your child cannot be replicated in Adoption. It must be really scary to an adoptive parent. For the natural parents have the one thing that they cannot ever have; the true cognitive, cellular bond.
And it is just not any fun. Rye had a cold and thankfully, it was not that bad for him. I am selfish and do not say thankfully for his benefit, but for mine, as he becomes the most miserable man child on the face of the earth when he is sick. The cold made it was though to both Garin and Tristan and myself. Garin did OK and Tristan…