Adoption Reunions: Secondary Rejections & Why Things Go Wrong

1) Find appropriate outlets for your "adoption crazy." Adoption reunions can bring out the nutty in the best of us. Adoptees and first parents may both enter the reunion process with wounds and scars created by their separation from each other.

Hearing the Rejected Adoptee's Pain I hate this conversation. In my opinion, I have it all too often. I hate it when one of my adoptee friends have come out of their adoption fog, gone through an adoption search, found their personal Holy Grail- their very own long lost mother- only to have her send that adoptee away, denied.

Ask yourself, honestly and truthfully, are you thinking ” I will be happy when my birthmother/ adopted child/Bio sibling accepts me?”
Can you be happy even if that never happens?

What do playing Angry Birds and struggling with adoption reunion have in common?

Truthfully? I have no idea. What works for one reunion might not work for another. The measure of what makes an adoption reunion successful really does depend on the parties involved and how they measure that success. Are they both satisfied with the measure of contact?

When the media has asked me about reunion outcomes I always tell them that just like all other interpersonal relationships, they run the gamut from great to awful and everything in between and many - as we all know - can go back and forth and back again.

If you find yourself rejected during an adoption reunion, the facts and numbers of whether it is "rare" or common will not ease your pain and heartache.

If you find yourself rejected during an adoption reunion, the facts and numbers of whether it is "rare" or common will not ease your pain and heartache.

What does an adoption reunion look like when it works? What works in an Adoption Reunion and makes it successful? How come a good reunion relationship is so hard?

A birthmother in adoption reunions can make some wrong moves that make an adoptee feel rejected. Avoid these common reunion pitfalls that can emotionally hurt an adoptee in reunion.

In an adoption reunions,an adoptee can make some wrong moves that make their birthmothers feel like crap. Avoid these common reunion pitfalls that can emotionally hurt an a birthmother in reunion.

Secondary rejection happens. It's one of those things adoption dissolution (aka the "returns department") that the adoption industry doesn't want to admit.The truth is, adoptees often feel rejected, no matter how good their adoptive circumstances are and no matter whether they eventually reunite, happily or not, with their original families. We have to deal with issues of rejection and abandonment every moment of our lives (and no, I'm not saying first mothers abandon, I'm saying this is how adoption makes many adoptees feel). Getting rejected twice feels like a confirmation of all those bad feelings.

It ain't easy. Nothing about reunion is easy.

How many adoptees who have first Mothers who want nothing to do with them are friends with first Mothers who have a surrendered child who wants nothing to do with them? Too many. Not gonna lie...many of us joke and say "Why can't SHE be my Mother?"

I have been reunited with my first families for over 20 years now. At the beginning of the reunion, I was emotionally numb and unable to truly connect ~ still worried about "pleasing" everyone and so fearful of what others thought of me. Even though my ENTIRE family of birth welcomed me with huge family parties and open arms, I couldn't receive it internally.

I tell them that they have every right to feel angry and confused- not just at their first Mothers, but the entire industry. Again- some of us listened and believed the lie of "She loved you so much she gave you away". To find the one who "loved us so much", only to find that she really DOESN'T, is crushing.

After a reunion with my birth mother when I was 28- we muddled our way through what was a wonderful relationship.... my kids were young enough that it did not seem anything out of the "norm" for them..... we just became one huge blended family.... I later found relatives on my biological father's side, met many siblings, some we have not found yet, but for my birth mother I was her only child....just as I was an only child in my adoption...Unfortunately the blending of my family began to unravel...

Statistics show that 95% of mothers who relinquished a child to adoption are happy to be found and welcome the contact and further connection with their son/daughter. I happen to be in the rare category of 5% of adoptees whose mother did not want to reunite.