Are they strapped for cash and financially struggling themselves?
Or
Are they wishing that you wouldn't look into it, so aren't happy about paying for it?
Ordinarily, I would guess that adoptive parents wouldn't hesitate to pay $30 to help their adopted child pursue a matter like this, if it was really important to the child.
I know adoptive parents who fly their children halfway around the world to help them meet their biological parent(s) and are happy to do it. But some adoptive parents probably wish that they didn't have to "compete" with biological parents in the minds of their adopted children and may deep down inside resent it (or feel a bit jealous) when an adopted child becomes obsessed with developing a relationship with a biological parent.
But the bigger issue is that a $30 fee for information that is very important to you was a steep hill for you to climb. If I were in your shoes I would look into acquiring skills that would pay you a living wage, where you didn't have to worry about covering an inconsequential bill.
It's selfish of your adoptive parents IMO. It should be a gift to you especially if you were having financial difficulty at the time. After all, you were a gift to them.
$30 is a token. If they wanted to help, why make that an issue? It should be a non-issue.
If they're withholding your biological family relationship info because you cannot pay them, then that is indefensible. I hope for your sake that they were forthcoming about that.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2018 05:42AM by Amyjo.
I'd send Adoptee the 30 dollars if I thought it would help. I don't believe it's only about the money though. As Adoptee has stated, it's also symbolic.
I suspect your adoptive mother might already know who the biological mother is and may not want to admit it. If it was done through Mormon connections, they might know who they worked with.
Isn't there a website for adoptees or biological relatives to find each other? My sis found her adopted daughter that way.
In the big picture of the discovery of your biological parents, the $30 is pretty small and insignificant, keep your part of the bargain, and payback the money when you can if that's what's needed to get the journey started. I did the same and payed my own way( without the knowledge of my legal parents), since I felt it a private thing and didn't want my legal parents to feel any less special. Understand also that many adopted people have never been told they were adopted, some find out by accident with some traumatic results, some leave contacting biological parents too late. I sincerely hope that you get identifying information, find firstly your mother and that it goes as well as you hoped for. Please be open minded as to her and the circumstances of your birth.
Please share your story of finding and meeting your birth family, if you have yet. I would love to hear it. I was a birth mother myself and have yet to meet my adopted son because his adoptive mother flipped out when I located him. As a LDS woman she really tried to erase every vestige of his birth family. My finding him wasn't written into her manual of instructions. She became irate and furious when I did.
It's a sad cold day in hell for the adoptee when his adoptive parents make it a big deal to meet the birth family. That is where and who you came from. Many of your unanswered questions might be found just by making their acquaintance and finding people who look like you, think like you, share similar traits, etc.
Best wishes to you! Sure the $30 is a big deal if you don't have it to give. Meeting your birth family is priceless. When you get to know them, all that other stuff will seem like small peanuts in exchange. :)
I'd like to hear your story too. I too am adopted. Always knew I was but didn't find my birth mother's family until 4 years ago at age 66. My mom gave me my adoption papers on my 40th birthday. That was pre internet.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2018 11:48AM by Lethbridge Reprobate.
I wish my birth son was more like you are about meeting his birth family. Mine has met his half-brother when they both worked in the film industry in Hollywood.
He has yet to meet his half-sister or myself. His half-sister would love to meet him also.
My mom never stopped counting him as one of her grandchildren. He was her first, as I had him when I was 16. My oldest sibling was at that time on his mission to Paris, France. My adopted son was given zero information on his ancestry. He had no knowledge at all of where he came from or from whom when I found him.
For a cult that teaches "Families are forever," that is one of the biggest lies it has ever constructed.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2018 12:32PM by Amyjo.
I know at least two very prominent Uber TBM families in my old ward that adopted boys. One didn't tell the kid he was adopted until he was 17. F***ed him up when he found out. The other family treated their adopted son like second hand goods and when he strayed it got even worse.
The whole adoptee/birth family situation is complicated. Each person in the equation has their own deep feelings regarding the matter. I would never judge neither your adoptive family nor you over the $30. I would not presume to assume anything about anyone's family with only that much information.
The $30 is only a symptom of something much bigger that needs to be looked at in your relationship. Some honest loving talk between you all might be a good thing. Lead with love. Some people may be feeling fragile and everyone's feelings and emotions should be met with understanding.
My issue is the idea of why my adoptive parents wouldn’t naturally help me find info or reunification as a part of their adoption responsibility. The only reason the 30 dollars is a big deal to me is because it is symbolic.
I would be hurt to have you call it a responsibility if I were your adoptive parents. Talk to them. Get to the heart of what is really going on here.
Maybe they are cheap. Maybe they are afraid they will lose you. Maybe they are afraid you will bond with you birth family and be gone. Maybe they adopted you from someone who doesn't want to be found. Maybe they want you to pay for your own way for everything to teach responsibility. Maybe they feel this is your journey not theirs Maybe they have a reason that only they know and scares them to death.
Talk to them with love. This is deep for most people.
I have always seen empathy for both so I can't agree. I actually see more empathy for the adoptee most times in my life when I have known someone in this situation. I do totally get how deep this is for you and how important and wish you all the best above anyone. My own family has some adopted children. One family included the birth parents to be part of the equation the whole way through. The other family did their best to keep the birth family cut out who happened to be a teen father that wanted the child. It hurt to watch that.
If your parents are against your finding your birth parents then that is sad. Sometimes initial reactions change once people have a chance to digest it all so there is always hope. I hope your birth parents become supportive if they aren't now.
At any rate, whatever the real situation, I hope you find what you are looking for with both families. Good luck to you.
Why should you have to pay at all? You didn't ask to be adopted. It wasn't your choice. You were subjected to something wholly beyond your control.
It's something you will deal with for a lifetime. Maybe your adoptive parents aren't as intuitive about these matters as you are.
There are people who understand. If you look around there are support groups for adoptees, birth families, and members of the Triad. Including the adoptive parents. They tend to be more exclusive, whereas the adoptees and birth families strive to be inclusive because they recognize those bonds don't go away because of a separation that was forced by adoption. Sometimes those were beyond the control of the birth parents, due to circumstances beyond their control, and the times they lived through.
You don't understand, Tumwater, the biological need was/is has always been present in an adoptee's life to want to know where they came from. It may be suppressed, but it is a longing that never goes away or is extinguished by time.
In closed adoptions, finding an adoptee is often impossible to do. Or vice versa. It's gotten a little easier in this day and age, but there are some closed adoptions where the adoptees or their birth families never find out what happened, because of the sealed records.
The LDS adoptions are by far the worst, I was told by the social worker that helped to facilitate my reunion with my birth son. Most, if not all of her referrals were from LDS birth families and adoptees. That is because the Mormon church deliberately with intent tried to destroy and erase the birth family as though it doesn't exist. BUT WE DO EXIST.
The adoptee has as much right to know where they came from as you or I do. One of the best books on the subject is, "The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child ..."
"In this classic work, Nancy Verrier examines the life-long consequences of the 'primal wound' - the wound that results when a child is separated from his or her mother - for adopted people, as they grow up & into adulthood. It provides information about pre- & perinatal psychology, attachment, bonding & the effects of loss."
The Triad consists of the biological parents, the adoptee, and the adoptive parents. They are each important in helping to develop the psyche of the adopted child. When one aspect is ignored, it is the child who suffers.
The child has had zero say in his or her adoption. Finding their birth parents is about their right to know where they came from, and from whom. It's as inherent to them as it is to anyone else.
I wish my birth son had your compassion and empathy for me. He is angry at me like he used to be angry at his adoptive mother. When I found him he wasn't speaking to her. Now it's my turn.
She has threatened him and cajoled him to not have any contact with me, out of jealousy and insecurity.
At least your parents were/are willing to help you find your birth family. I hope you do and are able to meet them.
I don't look like any of my sibling, am I adopted, I don't know.
Do I care, maybe.
For a good part of my life, be it family, work, school, I've been told to be proud of my heritage what ever it may be.
To me, 'what ever it may be' was the key. I can't do or have any influence of where I've come from, the thing I have control is where I'm going and what I do in this life.
If I came from a rapist, murderer or other low life, would I be proud or disgusted? If I came from royalty, vast wealth and power, would I be looking for my share?
Who knows, but I doubt I'd ever benefit or suffer from whatever happened in the past.
ADOPTEE, I wish you the best and that you find what your are looking for.
Tearing a baby away from the mother is barbaric. Adoption should only happen in extreme circumstances.
If at all possible, the birth mother should receive community support so she can keep her baby.
What the Mormon church is doing is disgusting and deceptive. We adopted an infant and I can tell you that all the other couples who adopted when we did are now divorced.
This idea that the birth mother should give up her baby so it can "have a better life" is a fairly tale promoted by unscrupulous people.
I was lied to by TSCC. My son was adopted into a family where he became a servant and a common laborer on their farm from an early age on. He didn't get sent to college. But went on a mission. As soon as he returned he went A-Wall, and revolted. Can you blame him? He'd been lied to his whole life by the cult.
And his adoptive parents. They hid his lineage from him, his ethnicity. They even lied and told him he was something else he wasn't. He was sent to a country on his mission so he would blend in with the people there because he was "one of the natives." That was part of the lie he'd been fed his entire life. His parents were dishonest that way. His mother wasn't going to tell him he was adopted if not for his dad who insisted he needed to know. So he was told.
He told me he always felt like a fish out of water. He stood out. He was/is taller than his adopted family. Of darker complexion. Of a deeper intellect. He has talents none of them had, but my family does. He works in the movie industry. The son I raised, his half-brother, worked near him for a few years out in Hollywood. They have met.
It's a shame what his adopted family did to him to make him feel less than a person. It may take his lifetime to recover from his having been both Mormon and adopted.
The older my kids get the more I want them to support themselves. I want them to learn the skills necessary to exist without me. It isn't dissimilar from me wanting them to wash their own clothes and keep their own stuff organized and clean.
Just a devil's advocate thing here but could it be that your parent's are just trying to inspire some independence in you?
One last point, the fact that you are iffy about their actions tells me that the relationship is a bit strained already. I suggest that if you want to maintain this relationship you take your concerns about this to them not us.
RfM is a place to vent our frustrations. I know I have at times, especially when it comes to family matters.
Like my brother's recent funeral as one example.
One of his TBM children went out of her way to make my planned visit out-of-state to attend his funeral uncomfortable and alienating. Why would she do that?
I could have asked her what was wrong, but that would have been beneath my dignity to do that, or the fact it was my brother's funeral I was there for. She is a RM with problems. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I was there for my brother, not for her.
Adoptee can discuss this with his parents perhaps. Getting feedback on a sounding board such as RfM provides is something he will never get from them. Sometimes it just helps to hear what others have to say to get a better perspective ie, handle on things.
This is obviously important to them, and I would assume on very deep levels.
Were I in your position, and even if I did not agree with them (because, if it were me, I would not agree with them), I would pay them back--and I would also say some sincere words of thanks--acknowledgement for what they have done--throughout your life, to support you (emotionally and physically).
Be the Big Person here--even if it seems that they can't.
Down the line, you will be glad that you went the extra distance for them, as they (undoubtedly) have probably repeatedly gone the extra distance for you since they chose you as their child and their family.
I’m so tired of people to tell me to be grateful for my trauma. I did pay them back. Did you have to pay to find your relatives? It was their responsibility to care for me because THEY CHOSE to take me. I am grateful for things but angry and hurt by just as much. Why the hell is it always the adoptee that has to shut up, be grateful and be the bigger person?
I've read this whole thread, and I get the sense it's really not about $30, symbolic gesture or otherwise.
Do you have issues about being adoptee? Are their issues with your parents?
I say this in all kindness. Get a good therapist. What you are dealing with is some deep woundedness that is knawing at you, which is ok, and natural for many adoptees.
Can I ask how old are you? Have you always knowns that you were adopted? If not, was it a traumatic experience to find out?
You don't need to answer these questions to us, but I think you need to have a good professional explore what is really going on here.
Adoptees will ALWAYS have issues about being adopted. They are the most misunderstood of the Triad (parents ie, birth and adoptive, and adoptee.) They had no say at all in the interruption of their lives, the disconnect between their families of origin, and the loss of personal history.
The loss of the birth mother is the most traumatic thing they have ever experienced, even if it occurred at birth. It will always be a sub-conscious loss that they cannot identify that stays with them their entire lives. Getting to know their birth families is only helpful, and helps put salve on the wound/s that never truly go away. It is healing to a degree, but the damage of severing those ties between parent and child is never fully resolved.
Adoptees understand this. Therapists understand this. Some birth parents and adoptive parents understand this. Then there are some who never really get it, or don't care enough to understand the trauma involved that lasts a lifetime.
Science has also shown that our personalities and temperaments are influence by our DNA. Some adoptees feel like they don't "fit" into their families, and a lot of that can be traced to the DNA difference.
Adoptee Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Did you have to pay to find your relatives?
No, not with money--but I DID lose the college education which had been promised to me since I was a toddler. Once I realized the reality (that my parents were not going to use that endowment policy to pay for my college education), I got married instead (nine days past my 17th birthday). Does a college education that a person had been promised all of their life, ever since they were a toddler, count?
> It was their responsibility to care for me because THEY CHOSE > to take me.
And from my perspective, I think that regardless of the biological facts of my paternity, my father's and mother's repeated PROMISE to me, every month when they made the payments on the endowment policy that was supposed to pay for my college, should have been honored, and not taken away because my father who raised me was jealous of his brother (my biological father), and he made the decision to punish me forever because I did well in school (which my father interpreted as an insult to him), and my father did not want his brother (via his brother's sperm) to "win."
> I am grateful for things but angry and hurt by just > as much.
Me, too.
> Why the hell is it always the adoptee that has to shut up, be > grateful and be the bigger person?
Because these are the realities of life. Why should you decide to be the LESSER person? Why not make the adult decision to be the better person in a situation where the others involved have done the best they knew how to do?
These are the times and the situations where you get to decide how you will deal with what you feel is injustice.
These are the times when you have the opportunity and the power to decide how YOU will react....and that decision will reflect your own deepest values and priorities, a juncture in time where you will then decide, for yourself, what "grade" OF yourself your personal evaluation of yourself is equal to.
Be a mensch. Not only is being a mensch better for the planet and every living thing on this planet, but it is also better for you, too. Being a mensch leads to a much happier and more satisfying life than the alternative.
[mensch: someone of noble character; someone to admire and emulate; a person of integrity, honor--and empathy]
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2018 04:55PM by Tevai.
Adoptee Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I’m so tired of people to tell me to be grateful for my trauma. I did pay them back. Did you have to pay to find your relatives? It was their responsibility to care for me because THEY CHOSE to take me. I am grateful for things but angry and hurt by just as much. Why the hell is it always the adoptee that has to shut up, be grateful and be the bigger person?
No one here has told you to "be grateful for your trauma." I specifically said that your parents should have forgiven the money they gave to you.
But it's clear to me that you are using this $30 as a way to express anger toward your adoptive parents. The people that you should be expressing anger/upset to are not us, but THEM (or failing that, a therapist.) We don't know why they are acting the way they are. We can't get through to them. You might be able to. Or not. People are on their own journeys and how they respond often has more to do with them as opposed to us.
Tell them that you are upset that they have not given you support as you seek out your birth family. Tell them that while you appreciate the fact that they raised you with love, a part of you is missing that you need to fill out. Tell them that while $30 is a small amount of money, their failure to provide it for you signifies a lack of support to you.
They are NOT mind readers. You will have to tell them all of the above.
But also keep in mind that sometimes people (i.e. YOU) get hung up on small things ($30) that in then end are inconsequential and don't really matter. (I've done it myself, so I do get that.) The cure is to have a blunt, honest conversation with the people that have hurt you. You may or may not get what you want, but that conversation will enable you to move forward.
It could also be at this stage in their lives they're living on a fixed income.
My parents were on a tight budget for as long as I can remember. They didn't have much. When I went to college it was with their blessing, but I did it on my own. Same for each of my siblings.
Amyjo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It could also be at this stage in their lives > they're living on a fixed income. > > My parents were on a tight budget for as long as I > can remember. They didn't have much. When I went > to college it was with their blessing, but I did > it on my own. Same for each of my siblings.
Agreed. We dont know the age of the OP, or the ages of their parents. Are there other siblings? There are so many other possibilities out there that have nothing to do with it having to do with the fact that their relationship came into being due to adoption. We know nothing of the parents thoughts or feelings on this matter. All we have is the OP's.
Big hugs to you. And don't lose sight of the big picture. Your family is just getting bigger, not smaller. It's always better to have more people who love you, instead of fewer.
If you have siblings or half-siblings out there, you'll want to find out. Some may or may not want to meet - but nothing ventured is nothing gained. More birth families want to meet their next of kin (based on my observance,) than not.
Embrace it all. You're on a journey of exploration and personal growth. Be gentle with yourself and others. Be prepared for disappointments, but don't let them rule your heart. Accept your birth family's limitations and shortcomings, as your adoptive family's. We're all only human, and despite our shortcomings there are stories there waiting to be told that will connect you to your past and who you are today.