The
reunion path is pitted on the one hand with the emotional
pain of an adopted child’s first mother, who has tried
to cope with her grief and loss by burying the experience
in the ‘getting on with life’ recipe dished out
to her by well meaning social workers, family members and
friends, and on the other hand with the insecurity of the
lost child, now found.
Shock is always a factor in reunion because there is always
one party who did not know the other party was searching for
them. Thus one person is always better prepared than the other.
Because it is usually the adopted person who has been engaged
with the process of searching for their first mother it is
the mother who is most often shocked when the first contact
happens. It is so sudden and comes without warning. Buried
feelings surface and can overwhelm her.
Fear
of rejection is the main emotional ingredient suppressed beneath
the adopted persons search for their first mother. They search.
They find. They meet her. The early stages of reunion are
often described almost as a love affair, when the euphoria
of meeting takes precedence over every-day, entrenched emotional
coping strategies that have developed over time to deal with
mutual loss. The key to understanding the extreme emotional
see-saw often experienced by the lost child, now found, lies
in their own issues of bonding and attachment to their adoptive
parents, especially when that attachment was weak or did not
happen at all. The lack of emotional attachment to substitute
parents and the resulting insecurity that may have been a
major factor in driving the search to find the lost mother,
is most powerful after reunion and when the ‘honeymoon’
period is over. The fear of rejection that originated in the
adoption itself, returns with a vengeance.
The
found child, now an adult, cannot cope with feelings of old
loss coupled with an intense fear of new loss. The solution
is often found in a withdrawal from the forming of the new
relationship. Old insecurities are revisited - ‘why did
she give me away’ - and can be strengthened by their
first mothers own emotional pain that follows reunion. The
insecurity of failed adoption entrenches itself in a lack
of trust in others and in a self-doubt so strong that the
lost child cannot believe they are wanted; having searched
in the belief they are will find a self of identify, they
can be blown away by the love and the welcome that they did
not expect. They cannot respond. They don’t know how.
They panic. They run away.
Upon
reunion a mother’s old grief and loss washes over her
in a way she could not previously have imagined. Sometimes
she too withdraws from reunion contact, needing to distance
herself from an emotional turmoil that threatens to swamp
her. Often her child does the same. Adopted people have described
how they became trapped in what they experienced as an emotional
dependency on their first mother so strong, so frightening,
that they could only withdraw from contact, for fear of losing
themselves. They return to their old coping strategies, their
own adaptations to growing up in a family where they may not
have felt they belonged but where the dysfunctional relationships
at least provided the comfort of everyday familiarity. With
their new world turned upside down, they run back to the old
- it hurts too much to stay.
The
lost child, on being warmly welcomed back into the first family,
also has to cope with half-siblings who have clearly had the
affection they themselves have lacked. This is very, very
hard for them to accept. This hurts. Adopted children have
no political understanding of the framework of the social
engineering policies that drive adoption. This makes everything
they experience personal, and only about them. Thus they blame
themselves for their lack of worthiness that determined that
they were not loveable, and hence not loved. It can make sense
to them that they were given up whereas the next natural born
child was not - such is their sense of unworthiness. Unwanted.
A mistake. This is what they believe they were, what they
believe they are.
Adopted
people who were loved and did attach to adoptive families,
display much more emotional stability throughout the reunion
process. They find it easier to bond and have no need to run
and hide from the affections of the found family. Rather,
they revel in it, and are able to do this because they have
found themselves in familiar territory. Their search was based
in a need for identify, the need to know where they came from,
rather than driven by an unfulfilled need to be loved. Consequently
they accept new affection with a graciousness that originates
in the confidence of emotional security, as if it is their
right. They display the self-esteem that originates in self-love.
They are unafraid of rejection - they don’t know what
it is.
The
lost-found child who is insecure will not risk the new relationships,
and so they cannot risk conflict. They find it easier to slip
away, unable to ask the questions that could damage this fragile
new friendship with a mother. It is easier to return to the
old life where there is no longer emotional distress, just
an acceptance of a place in a family and a community that
has become familiar. They do not ask the question ‘why
did you give me away’ for the reason they already know
the answer. Or think they do.
The
found mother who must now reclaim this child a second time,
has to apply a tough tenacity to the task ahead. First she
needs to learn to understand the dynamics of any rejected,
damaged child practiced in the unconscious art of ‘testing’
out all new relationships, with the primary goal of finding
themselves wanting, unworthy and thus safe in the place where
they are always rejected, safe from a need for the love that
they know can only bring pain. The answer is for the mother
to prove to this adult son or daughter, that her love is unconditional,
regardless of what that lost-found-lost child does to reject
her affection.
To
achieve this the first mother must deal with her own pain
in another forum, by entering into therapy, by talking to
other women who understand, by kicking holes in a wall, by
doing whatever helps. This is a big ask. She must separate
out her own second loss from the baby she lost so long ago
and see that child clearly and separately to herself, her
own needs, for although this child may be an adult in terms
of years, inside them is a sad, rejected child desperately
wanting the love they have never had but are now too afraid
to accept. Thus this failed adoption goes on and on, overlaying
the reunion process and interfering in it. Adoptive parents
threatened by the reunion often actively sabotage the process,
thus identifying themselves as selfish adversaries to their
adopted child’s well-being, and against the driving need
for emotional health to be found in a first belonging. When
adopters choose to see the natural mother as their natural
enemy, they turn the reunion process into a personal war.
There
is only person motivated enough to reach the hurting child
and change that destructive process - the mother whose love
was so great at their first parting, that she sacrificed her
own needs in the powerful, if mistaken belief that adoption
was a choice for her to make.
She
must now make another sacrifice, for that’s what real
mothers do in the natural order of things - they put aside
their own feelings of rejection in order to reach their hurting
child, and they never concede the power of their own unconditional
love. No surrender, no defeat, and only one rule of engagement
- remember, it is always ethical to lie to the enemy - and
the spoils to the victor of this particular battle are surely
worth the struggle.
