Birth Moms Should Come With Warning Labels

Julie McGue

Author

‘What I wished I’d known’ sums up the three years it took to locate and connect with my birthmother. Before I decided to launch the search for my birth mom, I did some research. I borrowed, perused and ordered a slew of books, all dealing with adoption and adoption search and reunion. My copies of Ann Fessler’s, The Girls That Went Away, and Betty Jean Lifton’s, Lost & Found, are so dog-eared and marked up (see other suggested readings on my Resources page) that I refuse to lend them out. The time I spent reading and processing information was not just about how to go about locating birth relatives. It was also about evaluating the costs of each search alternative, the expected timeframes, and the likely pitfalls I’d experience during the course of finding my first mother.

Besides the stacks of help books on my desk and bedside table, I sought advice. The social worker assigned to my case through the confidential intermediary program at Midwest Adoption Center in Des Plaines became a trusted friend. In addition, I became a regular at the quarterly post-adoption support group meetings offered to me through Catholic Charities. These marathon round tables were comprised of adult adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents. The whole triad or triangle was represented and moderated by a licensed social worker. We listened to one another and shared our vulnerabilities: giving up/placing a child for adoption, what it feels like to be adopted, parenting an adopted child, the pitfalls and peaks of searching, and the successes and failures of reunion. Drained is how I felt upon exiting these events. With all that prep-work, I still missed valuable cues offered by the birth mothers in my group. I neglected or glossed over vital, imbedded warnings in the literature. Perhaps in my defense, no amount of reading or therapy can prepare an adoptee, birth or adoptive parent for the rigors of adoption search and reunion. There is no typical search, no prescribed reunion, no right or wrong way to find the folks you want to include in your life. Your route is your own and often you must craft it as you go. Often, I felt like I stumbled through mine. In particular, I wish I’d been warned about the intense anger a birth mom might express when found. When that unbounded, fear-laced anger was directed at me, I felt sucker punched. I’d been harboring a fantasy about being the lost-girl-found while my birth mom lived in fear that her secret would come out. When my birth mother placed my twin sister and me for adoption, she’d been told her privacy would be protected. Adoption rights advocates succeeded in changing Illinois’ adoption statutes to benefit adoptees right to information in 2011. This law allowed me to access my original birth record and to locate my birth mother. I was thrilled to have gained this right while my birth mom was appalled to learn her privacy had been breached. Once my birth mom came around to welcoming me into her life, we had other issues to address. It became apparent that protecting my birth mother’s reputation was a higher priority to her than developing a healthy relationship with me. One time in a public restaurant, she chose not to acknowledge me as her daughter. Instead she introduced me to the waitress as a “friend visiting from Chicago.” This didn’t sit well with my ego. Intellectually, I was aware that she was transferring her shame about being an unwed mother onto me, but her attitude was nonetheless hurtful. It made me feel unappreciated, that she was embarrassed to be seen out with me. After a sustained cooling off period and many painful conversations, our reunion is back on track. This incident and others highlighted that my birth mom’s shame had led to a life where keeping secrets and harboring half-truths was acceptable. Her ease in providing mistruths and misconceptions was unsettling and it prevailed well into the years of reunion. She derailed my search for my birth father by two years when she gave me an incorrect spelling of his name. Once I located him through another source, she admitted that she had lied out of fear. She did not want my birth dad back in her life nor did she want him in mine. Since becoming pregnant out of wedlock, shame and fear controlled her relationships and the result were lies and secrets. Before my search I would not have believed that anger, shame, lies, rejection, disrespect, and repeated lack of acknowledgements would color my adoption search and reunion. Sadly, I had to return to the social workers for advice on how to move past it. All told it took eight years to complete my adoption searches and get the reunion with my birth mom in a comfortable place. Besides meeting my birth mom, I’m grateful for the medical and genealogical information she passed on. Having a clear sense of why I was placed for adoption and where I came has always been a desire of mine. I am proud to now know these details. Also high in the success column of my adoption search is the meaningful relationships I’ve developed with two siblings I never knew existed. That discovery eclipses the angst and setbacks I experienced in connecting with my birth mother. Adoption is complicated. I knew that before starting my search. The research and prep work I did prepared me in a small way for the twisted course of my probe, but not for all the outcomes. I realize that the woman who brought me into this world, the life she led, and the social mores of the 1950s deeply affected her unpredictable behavior. I couldn’t have known what I was walking into eight years ago, but I sure wish I could have been more enlightened. Perhaps, we all wish we could see into the future so that we could be better prepared for the road ahead.

“Perhaps, we all wish we could see into the future so that we could be better prepared for the road ahead.”

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