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Post by homebird on May 12, 2014 7:29:45 GMT
Its that time of year when we start to arrange contact. For 10 years I have begun to compose our letterbox and chivvied up the other siblings to write their letters for me to send with ours. I start off saying all that I really want to say and then weeks later it will have changed completely before printing off. Last year we had our first face to face contact and I was asked to still do the usual letter. It was a happy upbeat letter with one or two questions. No reply. We met again in October but after a cuppa together we left the children to their own devices as they are old enough to look out for themselves.
Now I am thinking about what I'd like to ask adoptive mum - do the kids actually want to meet up with my daughter? They snub her the rest of the year. Will the oldest adoptee ever want to get to know her little sister? She has rejected her after their first meet up. What happens when they turn 18 - the girl this year, boys next year? Will they bother to keep in touch?
So much I want to talk about but as always I will not rock the boat. I will dance to their tune. Its not for my sake but for my daughter. As the youngest (13) she has never lived with any of her siblings but is very keen to build up a relationship. I admire her so much for coping with it all and still staying positive. I know from their earlier letters that the children missed their siblings very much and I feel that if we'd had face to face contact then they would have grown up in a comfortable relationship. But it seems to be too late.
Oh well, here I go, time to write down what I really want to say, it will never be sent but its therapeutic to get it off my chest.
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Post by mayan on May 12, 2014 18:24:14 GMT
Sending hugs Homebird - can empathise with the amount of emotional energy all this takes!
If it is any small consolation to you - don't beat yourself up with the what ifs - we did face to face contact regularly for our children and their half sibs and notwithstanding our ds has moved in with his BM and three sibs - none of them are close in the way that the siblings are within their respective groups - for all the trauma stuff between my two - they still have a real bond which draws our ds back. Our dd very much wants a relationship with her sibs but the reality of their dysfunction in the birth family makes this impossible - as much as she longs for the carefree days of holding hands and playing with them at contact. Even for our ds - he feels the lack of shared history, (the daily squabbles' family experiences etc that just bind people together ) in respect of his other sibs so whilst he is living with them, also spends a lot of time in avoidant behaviour - as much as he needs to experience the reality of living with his family it is emotionally challenging for him. I know of siblings that have subsequently overcome these difficulties but I guess it depends on the family circumstances and history and the personal abilities and motivations on both sides and not least a lot of maturity, courage and inner strength to confront and overcome deep emotions to build relationships on painful foundations. I hope that the contact we enabled for our children will yet allow them in time to take something from their complex relationships - I think it is still early days yet in many ways but all those letters you have written may just keep the door ajar for when they are ready to explore this further on their own terms.
Stay strong!
Mxx
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Post by kizim on May 13, 2014 7:59:04 GMT
Well done you homebird....hard not to rock the boat when you can forsee the problems that may be waiting. Enigma is 18 this week and, like you, İ supported and assisted her contact with her younger and older brothers. Yboy has ADHD/ASD and she finds it very difficult speaking with him. Oboy has always been her focus but he lets her down again and again - seems to only contact her when he has no gfriend. Have tried to explain that he is not able to form relationships in the way she wants (he has been in care most of his life and is a heavy cannabis user). He was planning to come and visit after her birthday (she asked for it to be just us for her birthday itself) ...but she has not heard from him for a month now.
Like Mayan wrote - Enigma has happy memories of contact days - but she has had to change her focus from looking out to bfamily to looking in at her family and her relationship with Whizz grows ever stronger - but İ know it has broken her heart over the years and has affected her relationships. Take care of your 13 yr old homebird...what they want is not always what is best for their emotional health.
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Post by moo on May 14, 2014 6:00:13 GMT
Hugs homebird.... I think you are amazing....
xx. moo. Xx
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Post by homebird on May 14, 2014 7:52:07 GMT
It makes me so sad. Our daughter is very close to our birth children but has great capacity for love and would be so happy to make her adopted siblings part of one big happy family. I do try to remember the trauma the children have been through and their feelings of rejection. I do understand how they need to feel secure and safe in their own family. But.....we were encouraged to maintain contact and its hard to be so "cold" when we write. I stand back at face to face contact.
Mayan, I am hoping that when they are ready, they will go through their files and see that we have always written. I wonder if they will see that we've had letters rejected and had to be rewritten because their sisters were not allowed to tell them they loved and missed them? SS explained why the girls shouldn't say these things but I wonder if the adopted siblings needed to hear that?
Kizim - made me laugh about the brother who only makes contact when he doesn't have a girlfriend, seems we have one of those too!
Thanks Moo, hugs gratefully accepted
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Post by mayan on May 14, 2014 9:46:14 GMT
Hi Homebird Sending hugs.
I guess we are a bit unusual in that despite a contested adoption and all the difficulties around that and then managing direct contact without ss with BM etal - we did our own thing with our children's individual needs at the heart of that.
Our children have always had letters and cards signed by their mum saying she loved and missed them which went through ss postbox service to us and we were happy to receive them - as much as she is able she does love and miss them after all and mine needed very much to know that but it is a delicate thing and for some children can undermine their attachments or make them feel they have to choose a side hence ss caution on this - mine have had no confusion in this respect but they also had to understand why they couldn't live with her (especially when other younger sibs were not removed) and also understand as they have grown up the many interpretations of love so they could make their own minds up about the truth of their own respective complex situations.
From the other side of the fence writing letters to BM and grandparents and interacting with them over many years I can understand the constraints - at one level we are trying to have some kind of a relationship for our children's sakes but there are so many things to consider. Letters are really hard - so many times I have written letters put them away and come back and thought just a turn of phrase might be taken wrongly or not been understood due to BM difficulties or cultural interpretations within the family (especially grandparents who were very vocal and weren't ones initially to stand back and needed to reinforce the children's sense of security with us which to their credit they did albeit BM hasn't been able to do so)and had to rewrite. From our perspective I have always said to my two the fact the BM has been able to organise her chaotic life to have the money for a card , stamp or letter is a sign she cared enough to think of you - and yes there were times she couldn't get it together and we grieved and worried about that together - they are not the same as letters I would write to other people and yes there is a clinical nature to them as a result. Equally direct contact was an uncertain dance and it was not perfect in terms of making everything better and happy - again they would grieve a little more' understand a little more, feel a little less anxious about what was going on for their birth family especially their sibs but we couldn't fix the rupture that others had created or prevent some of the pain or grief they have endured.
For all our difficulties with BM - I remember sitting and chatting with her after we resumed contact (she'd done a disappearing act which was devastating for us all - the pitfalls of contact being such fragilities) and talking about how hard it was on all of us and her saying how many of her friends had given up doing it as a consequence. So it may not be perfect and we may not on all sides be able to say or do what comes naturally to others but commitment can show the love unspoken in words sometimes too - goodness knows there are plenty of examples here on these boards each day.
As we were and probably are still in a bit of a minority - our circumstances made our issues a bit isolating so it was hard to know what to do with all the feelings our contact was throwing up and to process them objectively particularly at times for the grief I felt for my children somehow not being able to glue elements of their lives/ identities/ relationships back together with this thing called contact which is so unique to each family's circumstances and level of real and present and future risks.
Have you thought about having some counselling for yourself as there is a lot of stuff we all carry with contact and it must be hard attending direct contacts and having to stand back as you say. For me it was always really hard to walk away and see the sibs left behind with their mum and witness some of the not so good care they received, knowing we could have taken two more.
It is really hard doing this stuff whatever path brings you here - be kind to yourself along the way - even if we can't make it all better and sometimes just have to be incredibly patient with circumstances - comfort yourself by knowing you are giving her golden moments that do last (while you are feeling like you are standing back and perhaps feeling like you can't do more) and may yet offer possibilities if and when the adoptees are receptive - my ds was 25 before he started living at his mums and exploring his relationships with the sibs that remained. He stopped all contact in his teens btw - but he is doing this as an adult now so we have to give them space and time and support as they negotiate this and empower ourselves so we can be their support and constant whilst they do so.
Sometimes there are just no right options for everyone only the least worst at best.
Thinking of you.
Mxx
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Post by homebird on May 16, 2014 18:06:06 GMT
Hi Mayan. Sorry for the delay in responding to your post. I am busy looking after mum at the moment but will read properly when I can spend more than 10 mins on internet. Thank you so much for your thoughts.
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Post by homebird on Jun 3, 2014 13:14:32 GMT
Hi Mayan, I've finally been able to read and digest your post. I haven't thought about counselling for me, I'm old fashioned in that I feel I just have to grin and bear it. I have been fortunate in having found an internet buddy who is adopted and she kindly helped me when I was struggling with the secret facebook contact and composed a wonderful letter for me to send to the other adoptive parents when I felt they needed to know what the children were doing.
I have texted adoptive mum to ask whether our annual newsletter will be welcome and am waiting to hear back from her. We have arranged a date for the childrens next meetup. I think that although our daughter is ready for a full on relationship with her siblings, they will not be ready for some time. I guess I need to stop thinking about it so much and just go with the flow.
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