Other Major Life Events: Jiarn Edition

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J

Jiarn

Not a baby, but pretty large in my life I think. I'm going to actively seek out and try and reconnect with my biological mother.

Backstory: My mother was 17-19 when she had me but my father had left when she got pregnant. It was just her and her best friend when I was born and she knew right away she couldn't handle the responsibility. Her best friend told her that she herself had been adopted and that her parents were looking to adopt a boy as well. So my mother and sister came down from Mississippi to Texas to meet up with her parents and work out the details. After all was said and done it was an open adoption and my mother was allowed to visit me whenever she liked.

So a for the next few years, she'd visit at least twice a year. Once on my b-day, the other on Christmas. When I was about 7-8 or so, I was told about the whole adoption situation (which was fairly obvious as I was the only white kid in my family of Hispanic relatives) and was cool with it. When I was 16, I was expelled from my 4th High School (I was a pretty rotten kid) she offered to have me visit her in MS. I spent a month of my summer there and she asked me if I'd like to live there. As I love the gypsy life of moving alot, I agreed.

The next 4 months were hell. She was not ready for a child in her life, much less a teenager. She was constantly over stressed and took it out on me, and I sure as hell didn't make things better with my rebelious ways. After those months, I finally called my adoptive parents (I was already speaking with them weekly) and told them I wanted to go back home. They bought me a plane ticket and I told my biological mother that I was only going down for a visit. I never came back.

She sacraficed alot to move me in with her and I always regretted the stress I caused her. So I never regained contact with her all these years. I had gotten married, had 2 children, divorced, dated someonelse with a child for 7 years and all this time I wonder what she's been up to.

So today, I have no idea what crawled up me, but I decided to backround search her. I've found her email, her phone numbers, her addresses etc. I tried to send an email, but all 3 that I found were returned as undeliverable. I'm considering trying the phone numbers when I get out of work but I'm really nervous.

It's not just her I want to contact though. I found out at one point, that she had another child about 1-2years after me, and gave him up for adoption as well. His adoption was closed though and I never got to find out anything about him. I'm hoping that by reconnecting with her, as much as I would like to reconnect with her, I'd also like to begin the first steps of finding my brother. The real issue I'm having is..... should I?

He's lived his whole life only knowing one family, by contacting him I could possibly shatter his world. That's not my intention. What would be the best course of action to do here? I don't know, but I do know what I would like to come of all this. I'm just torn over it all.

As always, thanks for hearing me rant, all opinions and views are appreciated and welcome.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
As an adopted child, I can see your part in this but I have a slightly different perspective considering I know almost nothing about my biological parents - other than a really great story about who could be my father.

I say contact your mother if you want, but do NOT contact your brother. Give your information to your mother just in case he reaches out to her. You don't know if he even knows he's adopted. If he does then reaching out would have no effect...but if he thinks he's a biological child then this could cause a LOT of problems in his life which are preventable.

No matter what, good luck! It'll be good at least to know if there are any genetic health concerns. I know I'm a Russian Roulette of DNA and I have no idea what I'm in danger of getting!
 
J

Jiarn

Yeah, I can imagine though, if he ever contacted her, she would have let my parents know as I know she has their contact information as it's not changed in 30years. So I imagine he's still under the impression that he's a biological child to his family. Kills me to know that he's out there, but I wouldn't want to cause him any kind of major life issues just to satisfy my curiosity.

I'm still frustrated that the emails I paid to recieve did not work, thankfully I did not pay much. Though I've still yet to try out the phone numbers, but the hour I get out of work is closing in....

I have no idea how my mother will react to my sudden remergence but it's just something I feel I have to do.
 
J

Jiarn

Ha! She's not even aware she has 2 Grand-Kids yet.... or that I followed in her footsteps and had children before I was 20....
 
strawman

strawman

Dave's right. If you feel like reconnecting with your birth mother, go for it. You never know what will happen, and it could be good for you both.

I would not attempt to search out your brother, especially given that it's a closed adoption. Share your interest with your birth mother. Perhaps he's already made contact with her, and if so that's your best place to get information. If not, there's really not much you can do with closed adoption unless they are actively looking for their birth mom.

Either way, good luck.
 
J

Jiarn

Well so far all my leads are a bust. None of the emails or phone numbers I got lead me to her.

I have my adopted (real) mother currently looking through her old phonebooks to see if she still has an old, guaranteed, number saved somewhere.

-sigh-
 
J

Jiarn

Yeah, pipl is how I initially got some information. Peoplefinder/backround search is how I got the addresses, phone numbers, emails and found out she'd gotten re-married again.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Best of luck, contacting her and being civil can be good for the two of you. Just don't hang any hopes of being rather close. But just apologizing to her for being hard to handle, and forgiving her for taking her frustrations out on you could be beneficial.

I'll add to the don't contact your brother column.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

True, it is good to hear that you have a long lost brother, but it is also hard to be 30 and find out that you are not who you thought you were.

It happened to a cousin. He found out that he was adopted in the worst possible way. His birth mother told him, at the moment they were lowering his adopted mother into her grave. He did not react very well to the news.
 
J

Jiarn

That's pretty much how I feel about it. I DO want to find him and find a piece of my family that's missing, but at the same time I would NOT want to destroy his current life by throwing something like this into flux.

However I would be curious, if he knew, why he didn't attempt to find me either.
 
strawman

strawman

sixpackshaker said:
True, it is good to hear that you have a long lost brother, but it is also hard to be 30 and find out that you are not who you thought you were.

It happened to a cousin. He found out that he was adopted in the worst possible way. His birth mother told him, at the moment they were lowering his adopted mother into her grave. He did not react very well to the news.
Click to expand...
I can imagine how it played out...

"Don't worry. That woman who died wasn't your real mother, so you shouldn't, you know, feel sad or anything."

If the adopted mother didn't tell him in her life time, the birth mother had no right to do so. What purpose could it have possibly served to tell him, other than thinking, "well, his adopted mother refused to let me tell him, but now that she's out of the picture I can so whatever I think is best for myself, er, I mean, the kid..."
 
J

Jiarn

I found her.... I had forgotten that the only time I looked for her on Facebook was with the last name I knew her by, but not by the last name I recently found out she changed to.

The profile picture was of two pets, but not a face picture. It was also set to private. What clued me, was that it was located in one of her old home towns. I sent a Facebook message, stating that I was looking for someone with the First and Last name that I did know. If it wasn't her then I apologized for the inconvience. This was at 11pm at night. I had no idea if this was still an active account, or if it was even her.

This morning around 10, I got a response. It was her. She stated that she also had been thinking and looking for me for a while but had lost the only contact number she had a few years back and that there was alot of people online with my same first and last name. She was very happy to hear from me and asked if the girl in my profile picture was my wife and if the children in the pic were her grandkids. (My profile is also set to private). She gave me a number to call her on.

I responded that I was very glad it was her and I couldn't wait to talk to her but sadly I was at work. I would call her later in the afternoon and looked forward to our conversation.

She responded that she couldn't wait.

So now I'm a total freakin panicky mess. I dont know why. I called my girlfriend and told her everything. She tried to calm me down but I couldn't focus. I'm a complete mind mess right now. I want to just leave work and call her right now but there's just no way that's going to happen.

Life is getting kind of crazy......
 
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