Posted on 01/15/2016 7:00:26 PM PST by EBH
OK, the only thing I can tell you is my own experience with a sister that discovered us about 23 years ago. Seems my Dad was a rake, and the young women he met before my mother - she took herself off to one of those unwed mothers homes.
Fast forward, she ferreted out *our* dad and presented herself. She had been adopted, had gotten married and had three children. My dad was delighted to know her.
We all went out for a big dinner (her idea) and things were kind of weird. I tried to get her to open up a bit on the side - she admitted to me that she had secretly hoped *our* dad was wealthy or famous - you get the picture. I could tell she was struggling with disappointment. After a few more contacts with my dad she drifted on out of the picture. We never heard from her again.
I say, be honest, but gently. Hold back the worst, but don’t paint a false picture. The first visit should be the most neutral. If more visits happen, add a little bit of reality each time. If she seems nice, and err, sane, and wants a relationship - take it sensibly and slow.
He must have had something wrong inside.
I grew up with a dad with PTSD from being on the front lines in Korea. My parents have just now realized what it was and called it by name. But growing up was not pretty. I have no doubt that he loved us but he was mentally sick for much of that time. I’ve had to deal with the emotional fallout from that. So I feel for where you’re coming from. You probably have fallout from having that terrorism in your life too, and though it’s no good to make excuses for people there are some brain conditions that contribute to people doing crazy things, and realizing that can help us make sense of what has happened to us.
If you’re having PTSD-type issues from the past, I encourage you with the knowledge that it can help to know what you’re dealing with and call it by name, and it can greatly diminish over time. Also, you’re not alone. And the hurtful things in our past eventually serve some greater purpose - often to help us show compassion to those suffering the same way. But until you feel strong enough for that, please realize that God was with you, holding onto your through the fearful and crazy times, and He still holds onto you.
This girl will also be held, until she can come to terms with the reality that life very often is not pretty, at all. But we’re never alone. There are people and a Father who suffer right along with us because they love us, and that love can help lighten the burden.
The second was a woman who contacted me through Ancestry.com, claiming to be my mother's cousin and illegitimate daughter of my mom's uncle. We met with her and my mom told her everything she knew about him, no holds barred. There was no doubt she was related because she looked exactly like the picture I had of my great-grandmother. But after that there was no communication with her, even though she tried a few more times. It just seemed weird and uncomfortable. We gave her what she asked for, it doesn't mean there is automatically an emotional connection. After a while, she stopped contacting us.
I completely agree.
I am not adopted, but there are things that happened in my family that I haven’t been able to find out the truth about, and it bothers me. Therefore, as I try to imagine what it would be like to be an adopted child, it seems to me that the unanswered questions probably bother them too, no matter how wonderful their adoptive parents were.
With that in mind, I agree with many others here that the right thing to do is to answer those questions, within reason . . . but OTOH it’s not at all necessary to go into personal detail about how *you* or others in your family felt about the deceased. If you give the daughter the information about exactly how he died, I think that one thing will answer many questions for her about why she was given up, and what the father was like, without you having to really say much. If you happen to have a newspaper article you could copy and give to her, or if you can give her the date it happened and let her do the research, that would probably be really helpful and let her do as much or as little “digging” into the past as she really wants.
I think Attention has the right idea also about holding this first meeting OFF your premises, instead at a restaurant or coffee house where you can sit and chat for a while — if you wish to do so — or keep the meeting brief if you feel too uncomfortable. (Even if you have already agreed to have them over to your house, please feel free to call them or email them and just tell them that a meeting at your house isn’t going to work this time, and you’d rather meet them at X coffee house at X address at X time. It won’t hurt them any. They don’t have to come to your house. Please do feel free to exercise control over all this so that *you* feel comfortable!)
I also wouldn’t bring the whole box of photos to the meeting, since that sort of thing can take hours to go through. I’d grab a handful of photos, ten or 20 maybe, and take those to the meeting. (If you feel up to it, you could go to Kinko’s or somewhere and make copies to give to her. Otherwise she may want to take the original photos with her, to make copies, and you might never get them back.)
I just want to say that I admire you for trying to help out these people, even though it sounds like the prospect makes you uncomfortable. Remember, they are probably perfectly nice people, just looking for answers to questions that niggle away at them. Bless you for trying to help out your fellow humans!
Your brother died. It would be good if you could let go of his sin. Forgive him. Think about him before he wigged out and you had to get your house alarmed.
If I was as freaked out as you seem to be, I would excuse myself from the lost family introduction thing. Lord knows, you don’t want to hurt the daughter or her birth mother or her brother.
You could write her a short letter explaining you are not ready to talk about her dad because you did not get along with him and you do not want to hurt her feelings by saying the wrong thing. Enclose a nice picture(s) of her father and tell her you love her because she’s family.
Truth, with a wrapping of love, can be a powerful thing. She's curious and deserves some answers. On the bright side, she probably ended up better off without her birth father (I pray she ended up with a Daddy instead).
Two words: Jerry Springer
She should know the medical stuff related to her biologicals.
Any family cancer?
Heart problems?
Mental illness?
Etc.
And let her know the family stories,
I am not sure I would agree with that assessment. While certainly painful and extremely difficult, often a choice of last resort, sometimes even a desperate choice, giving up a child for adoption out of love, rather than say aborting (murdering) that child or not being able due to the circumstances at the time of his or her birth, being able to give him or her a stable and loving home or even basic care and safety, is actually quite a loving and beautiful thing to do.
Her birth mother once rid of my brother went on to raise a beautiful family. My brother's first born son served in Iraqi Freedom and Fallujah. He broke the mold into which fate caste him. His sister is the one given up for adoption.
It almost sounds as if you have a positive image of or perhaps even a relationship and contact with your brother's eldest son - "he broke the mold into which fate caste him" and your former sister in law's subsequent children from her next marriage.
Then why not at least try to do the same with this woman? Are you afraid that she will remind you in some way, too much of your late brother? And who BTW just because she was given up for adoption, she is no less your biological niece than your brother's son is your biological nephew.
Keep in mind that she didn't have any say or choice in the matter.
She might also have questions and lingering concerns as to why her mother didn't give up her eldest son, her older brother for adoption but decided to give her up, and especially since her mother went on to have other children. She might think deep down that there was something "wrong" with her and she might actually benefit and heal from knowing, not that your brother was "evil" per se, but that he was deeply flawed, sick and a destructive force in not only her mother's life at the time (and would have been on her had her mother not put her up for adoption) but also on yours. Your prospective on what your brother was like at the time and why her mother gave her up for adoption may help her understand that it wasn't her fault and it was the best and most loving thing that her mother could do at the time.
I am NOT happy about revisiting the circumstances or the results and demise of my brother, her father, with her.
You are under no obligation to meet with her but you might both benefit and heal from the experience of talking about it. You may find that she is a wonderful person and that her children, your biological great nieces and nephews, that they make a great addition to your extended family.
Keep an open mind and an open heart.
Thanks so much for your kind words! There’s a lotta that NOT going around these days.
I wanted to expand a bit on my #48 to you. It’s my reco that you seek to change how this situation exists in your own mind and emotions away from encountering or confronting or having to confront am amorphous mass of stuff that is unmanageable and unknowable.
1: Once you give away a secret, you cannot get it back.
If you think about it, you’re really at a 100:1 disadvantage in this situation. And again...sorry if this seems clinical or manipulative. I believe you will come out better if you move to “think” rather than “emote” to the extent you can. For you, this a situation you are content to have buried in the backyard and have essentially zero interest in digging up. For her, worst case, this could be a lifelong, nagging core of psychological issues that could motivate her to press you for answer after answer with no definable endpoint. There are people who like to do that, they do not like pat answers, they have to run this stuff over and over and over in their heads and your interest in being a part of that is, I take it, zero. To be crass, she could be a psycho. She could also be a wonderful person you’d be happy to have as a friend or pseudo-relative. Unknowable. I think you give the situation better odds of the second possibility if the two of you are not awash in longstanding emotional chaos.
Did you ever find a childhood friend on the ‘net and propose “wow let’s get together and hang out for a weekend!” I’ve done that, some number of times. Never again. And the people turned out be in all but one case utterly uninteresting (as I was, to them, I imagine) and the time spent wasn’t even kind of sort of fun. That there is this family connection between you is meaningless in terms of how you might get along or even wish to get along today.
So giving away your “secret” might be a casual toss-out for you but it could be a crucial triggering event for her. That’s my point. You have no gauge of how much of an interrogation you’re in for and how uncomfortable it might make you feel. That’s the reason for the off-turf meeting. That’s the reason to give up a few pix, not the whole box.
And another part of that secret is the comfort you feel in your own home.
2: Do not open conversations whether to convince or weigh political issues or sell somebody something without qualifying them.
I have some liberal friends (very few) with whom I can discuss our disparate views. Every time they ask my opinion, even if I have done it before, I requalify them with a comment like “well, you know I have conservative views on this and many other issues that I accept will probably differ from yours and I am happy to reveal them and discuss why I feel they way I do, as long as we can do that openly and without insult and offense in either direction. I’ll not try to convert you or anyone else. Otherwise, I’d prefer to maintain our friendship which I value and let this topic sit outside of what we’re OK talking about. And then the qualifying question: “can we do that?” The answer is absolutely critical. It is either “OK” or “yes” or....”I’ll bet you’re going to spout the same old lines you got from Rush Limbaugh and you neanderthals are always repeating because they have no minds of their own. If #2, shut up, smile, and change the subject.
3: If you are not used to having these types of discussions (whatever that means to you) and are concerned about doors you may inadvertently open, then it’s my suggestion that you imagine the situation and rehearse some lines. I am very serious about that.
If you are not naturally glib, your convo is bound to be infused with your concerns which are unanswerable and you yourself admit they are unmanageable (else you would not have posted your original post) WITHOUT your qualifying them and you’re almost sure to give away something that will trigger exactly what you fear. And then you’ll realize you’ve overstepped your own limits and create snowballing discomfort for yourself.
I am really not saying to be secretive and defensive; I am advocating “rehearsing” the situation so that the unforeseen does not throw you into the morass of your own fears. From there, things will go downhill, fast.
Set some limits, in advance. That way, you’ll have an idea of when you are about to exceed them, should your meetup go that way.
If forced to confront the matter, keep it truthful but as nonspecific as possible. He was a troubled man at the time and just not cut out to be anyone’s father. Minimize the pain and potential embarrassment, be as kind as you can given the circumstance, and leave it at that. Tell her you lover her if you do, and wish her nothing but the best. Beyond that lies a family rift.
Why did you keep the pictures? This and God sending her into your life sounds like he’s really trying to heal you completely.
She wants to know, and it'll feel good to tell her.
Annnd, you can rid yourself of that box of photos which are rotting in the basement, instead of rotting in a landfill somewhere.
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