Mother May I?

No, I may not....and to be honest, it's one of those days when I don't even know if I want too.

See, I have a birthmother. She is out there. But she chooses to not respond. I guess she feels like she has given me whatever it is that she owes me and giving anything more than that would infringe on her comfort level and expose her to friends and family. So she is out there and I am here and there is no meeting in between.

I also have siblings....some I have made contact with and some I have not. They are all older than me and all raised by our mother. I was the "lucky one" who was given away after our mother got divorced, had a relationship with a married man and then got pregnant with me. The strange part is that I haven't made contact with several of my siblings because both my birthmother and the older of my biological siblings that I have contacted don't want me to do so. According to them, contacting the younger siblings (older than me) would be "unfair and embarrassing to do to her". And like the ever-obedient adoptee, I find myself respecting (obeying) the wishes of a woman who, herself, refuses to have anything to do with me. How twisted is that?

I also sit and write...agonizing over every word I write to the siblings I have contacted. Hoping something I say doesn't get taken wrong or cause a rift in a relationship that has barely begun to even exist. And, on evenings like tonight when it has been an unusually long time without any response from my siblings, I sit and worry that the last email may have really been just that...the LAST email.

So tonight, if I were to sit and have a come to jesus meeting with myself, I would have to admit that I'm tired of this endless agonizing because the reality is that it is a self-inflicted agony. I can't count how many times I have heard it said that it is so ____________ (fill in the descriptive word... wrong, sad, terrible, selfish, etc) that a birthmother would not be willing to open the door to a relationship with an adult adoptee out of fear or shame of what others might say or do. And yet we, adoptees, do exactly the same thing. We sit frozen by fear... afraid to make a phone call, make a contact, make a move because we are afraid of what others will say or do. Afraid we will be rejected...afraid we will damage one relationship if we try to create another by making contact with a different family member. And as strange as this might sound, I think I'm at a place where I am ready for rejection. It is time...time for me to either walk away from all of them and close this door for myself...for my own sanity...or push open every door and let whatever rejection may come just come.

It's time to quit asking Mother. may I?