Ambivalence

The Power of Unprocessed Feelings

Photo by Uday Mittal on Unsplash

It was July 10, 2005, my 46th birthday. I received a card from my mom and dad, which pleased me. I also received a card from my birth mother referring to me as her daughter. The simple use of that word stirred complicated feelings in me.

It felt strange. I felt resistance as I read the card. The first thing I identified was that it felt like a boundary violation. We were only one year into our relationship, and it felt too soon for her to be sending me a card calling me her daughter without qualifying that. It was the mirror image of my need to always qualify her with the term birthmother.

I felt that by calling me her daughter instead of her birthdaughter, the card was negating my adoptive parents, who had earned the right to refer to me as their daughter. They were the ones who had raised me, the good with the bad. How can I be her daughter when I didn’t know her until I was 45 years old? How can I ever be the daughter of two sets of parents?

This was my first hint of an underlying anger about my adoption. There is much research on how adoptees respond to the fact of their adoption throughout their childhoods and adolescence. The need to mourn is often discussed, as well as acting out the underlying anger about being abandoned at birth. I couldn’t say I consciously felt any of this as I was growing up, even though I was exhibiting many of the traits that researchers have found to be overrepresented in the adoptee population, a topic I will write about in the future.

Deep in my psyche are the original feelings from the prenatal experience through birth and the first six weeks after. These emotions are preverbal and challenging to access. As they were never processed when I was growing up, they were still infant-like.

The only way I could identify my feelings about my birthmother was by observing the reactions I had when things happened in our relationship. The first of these was my reaction to getting the first birthday card in which she called me her daughter, but it was not the last. There are a couple of other things that come to mind.

During one of our monthly phone conversations, a couple of years into the relationship, she mentioned getting her life organized to move into a new place with her husband. They were at the stage of life where they were downsizing and moving into a senior community. I suppose she was looking at her things and thinking about what to leave behind and to whom.

She mentioned a favorite ring that she would like to leave for me, if I were amenable to that. I recall giving her a lukewarm response, something like, “Sure, whatever you want to do.” I’m sure she picked up on my ambivalence. Why did I feel that way? It was objectively a nice gesture; not too big, and not too small, and something meaningful to her. It was actually a lovely gesture.

I remember thinking that I didn’t want anything from her. It felt vaguely like I was a child having a temper tantrum. “If you didn’t keep me, why should I accept something from you now?” I’m sure she was trying to leave me something that would be meaningful to me, but I couldn’t get beyond the resentment I obviously felt about the adoption.

A few years later, after her husband had died, and she was thinking about her obituary, she hesitantly mentioned that she would like to list me as a “special friend.” I was immediately offended. Here’s what I wrote in my journal at the time:

I feel like this is a lie, and I don’t feel good about it. I don’t know why she can’t be honest about who I am. She will be gone-why does she care so much about what other people think of her?

My response to her was “Whatever you want.” I’m sure my reaction was related to the invisibility complex I described in a previous post.

Even as I reacted, a part of me felt it was childish. It was blatantly passive-aggressive. It’s as if I were regressing to a younger age, unable to bring a mature perspective to the feelings I was experiencing. For her part, she did not attempt to explain her reasoning. I didn’t ask, and she didn’t explain. Ugh. I’m sure she felt uncomfortable about the conversation, but we never talked about it again. (In fact, we only had one conversation after this. I wonder now if this was just too much for her, or maybe for both of us.)

Upon further reflection, I believe her decision had nothing to do with me and was more a result of the dynamics within her family. But it took years for me to clear out the emotional fog and consider this.

I have regrets about the way I handled the relationship. She might have felt at times that no matter what she did or said, however sensitive and well-considered it was, it wasn’t enough. I was in this childlike stance psychologically, and I couldn’t see my way clear to bringing a more emotionally mature response. I couldn’t really see through my responses until years later, when it was too late to discuss them with her.

I have read enough adoptee memoirs to know that ambivalence is a common experience in relationships with birthparents. These three instances are examples of why it would have been beneficial to have emotionally frank conversations if either of us had been able to do so. We missed out on understanding each other.

I did receive significant benefits from the relationship with my birth mother. I now know my origins, and I see that she was a kind person whom I enjoyed getting to know. However, the limitation of our abilities to really understand each other feels like yet another loss from the adoption. I would bet that she experienced it as much as I did.