Found my birth mother !

KayBur

GBNI said:

OP, your birth mother could not make it any clearer she wants nothing to do with you. How would contacting her to say you don't want another toxic mother help with this situation? She doesn't want to be involved, so there is NO chance you could have another toxic mother.

I have read parts of your threads that you have going and genuinely I hope you are getting professional help for your feelings. 

Perhaps they can make you come to realise and you will stop harassing your birth mother before she goes to the police, which she would have every right to do.  

Yes, rather than being torn between two fires, it is better for her to live and not try to prove to toxic people that they are wrong.

tooldle

There are a lot of assumptions in your reaction. It is perfectly possible this lady, like many others, does not have an eye for detail. She simply may not have noticed the value of your stamps. I find it hard to read detail without my glasses but can certainly address an envelope and apply a stamp without them. The same might be true of the lady. Equally, its possible she was distressed and this was sufficient for her to have missed the detail you are fixating on. You have no insight to what this lady was thinking, feeling or experiencing. Don’t assume your projections and assumptions are reflection of this lady’s intent.
whatever went on between the three adults and the adoption society is irrelevant to your current situation. You can’t change what happened all those years ago. You can change you and your responses / behaviours,  in the here and now.

I agree with the posters above that you should not respond in anyway, nor should you attempt any additional contact.

swingaloo2

MrsStepford said:

My birth mother ignored the adoption society's rules and colluded with a friend for him and wife to adopt me. My adoptive mother took me as a toddler, to her workplace but wouldn't tell me whether my mother was there. I don't know if my adoptive father and birth mother kept in touch after my adoption but there are earlier letters in my adoptive mother's garage, which I haven't been allowed to see. 

This happened many years ago and you have no idea about the situation for your birth mother at the time. She could have been terrified, heartbroken, distraught and in a state of extreme panic.  You see her actions as 'colluding' with a friend. Perhaps the truth is that this friend kindly helped out someone who was pregnant, scared and panicing and perhaps your birth mother though that what she was doing was the kindest thing she could possibly do for you. There were many young women who had a very traumatic time having to give up children, I have family members who had experience of this and it is a terrible thing for a woman to have to do and lives with her for the rest of her life. 

Posters keep saying it's a rejection of me, without thinking about the shenanigans the adults got up to. I know the story told to the adoption society by my mother and her employer. That doesn't mean it's true. 

'Shenanigans', wow, you have no idea abvout the circumstances so thats a very judgemental stand to take. Maybe the story told to the adoption society is not true. Perhaps your mother wanted you to go to someone she thought she could trust rather than a stranger, perhaps she was doing her utmost to help you.

Yes, spiteful, because she mailed me the fresh chocolates which need refrigeration and were delivered.  Secondly, she knew how much it had cost us to send the letter from the stamps on the envelope, but only put one First Class stamp on the new envelope so I had to pay £.

Did you not put the chocolates in the mail to send them to her? So why is it wrong for her to return them the same way. I know of a lot of elderly people who dont even know that Royal Mail have differing sizes for letters, they are just used to 2nd class and 1st class.

I am going to tell her that I am not going to put up with her spite. Whatever she feels about the past, it's not my fault. I was a baby. I don't need another toxic mother. 

For heavens sake, she is not being spiteful. If anyone is behaing in a spiteful way here it is you. You are upsetting an elderly lady who is clearly wanting to be lefty alone. Please listen to what other posters have said and back away. This lady does not need a toxic daughter.

Please take everyones advice on board before both of you get hurt further.

KxMx

I realise MrsS that you have had a very abusive upbriging and normal family relationships are something which you have sadly not experienced.

Your hurt and anger towards your birth mother needs to be talked about to your husband or a professional, instead of replying to her action, she has made it very clear she does not want any contact from you.

That you are behaving towards birth mum the way adoptive mum has behaved towards you as mentioned by another poster here is very true.

You have been in birth mums shoes with unwanted contact why would you even consider contacting her again? 

MrsStepford

If my birth mother had written and asked me not to contact her, I would have respected that, end of story.

She didn't do that, she mailed me a small box of fresh perishable chocolates which were delivered  not posted to her with a message from me. That she mailed them to me, showed me that she was back in her home town and had received my letter in April. She would have seen how much the postage cost us, but she put my letter in a fresh envelope and put one first class stamp on it and would have realised it wasn't enough. I had to pay the postage £

Whatever her actual circumstances, I know a lot about her family and what she told the adoption society. The adoption society had rules to ensure that the child wasn't brought up by people who knew the birth mother and pre 1075 it was supposed to be a clean break. 

Presumably she thought she was doing the right thing or was persuaded to do it. I was born in another town and registered by her three weeks later, in that town. My adoptive father was certainly wealthy enough to pay for her to stay and have a rest. If money/benefit in kind happened, my adoption was illegal.

My original birth certificate was removed and I got a copy of a printed one, with the details but marked adopted, six months before it happened. There are no court records of the adoption. 

I will never know the full story. If my birth mother and my adoptive father hadn't decided to ignore the adoption organisation rules, I might have been brought up in a normal family. 

I don't blame her for getting pregnant, accidents happen. I do think she should get 50% of the blame for putting me in the situation with my abusive adoptive parents. My adoptive parents spent lots of holidays in the county I was born in. They may have known each other well, before she even got pregnant. 

It took effort to track my baptism down. It took place at most four days after my adoption certificate was issued. No photos, no party, no guests and my adoptive father didn't tell his mother that he knew my mother. 

I just want her to know that I don't want to hear from her again. Looking through my letter it's out of order and some photos appear to be missing. 

I'm never putting myself in the position where another spiteful woman can try to hurt me. 

It ends here. I will carry on with my family tree research and will interact with the family members I had discovered previously. They have all been really lovely. 

olgadapolga

MrsStepford said:

I just want her to know that I don't want to hear from her again. Looking through my letter it's out of order and some photos appear to be missing. 

Your birth mother is not going to contact you again, can't you see that? She returned your letters and chocolates. As harsh as it seems, she clearly doesn't want anything to do with you, that's why the letters, etc., have been returned. I don't think that getting hung up on the nitty-gritty if what was returned and how, is going to help you. Writing to her again, when your previous communications have been so obviously rejected, is totally pointless and really does come across as rather spiteful, a bit like a petulant child taking his games home because the other kids wouldn't play the way he wanted.

Believe me, I totally empathise with you. You've had a bad/abusive  upbringing and no-one deserves that. There are many of us who've had poor childhood experiences, many of us who've had poor family relationships as adults. There are better ways of dealing with the pain you're experiencing than what you're planning to do. 

Counselling can be good and I sincerely hope that you get some organised soon. I've been through counselling a couple of times for different reasons  and have come out of it stronger and better able to cope with the rubbish life has thrown at me. 

sheramber

the chances are she will return any letter you send.

Why do you think she will contact you again. She had made it clear she does not want to have any relationship with you. You are the one wanting to prolong the correspondence.

You say you will tell her you will not stand for her spite. What are you going to do about it? Writing to her will just bring you more aggravation.

Accept that and get on with your own life.

One of the hazards of delving into your family tree is the skeletons that come out of the cupboard.

Personally, i would just have posted the chocolates back to you if I did not want them.  Whatever way they were sent they would have been wasted by the time you got them.

You are hurt that she has rejected your letters and present.  You were so convinced that she would welcome you. That you were right and we were wrong.

What happened before or after your adoption is history that cannot be changed and there is no point in dragging it all up again.

if she had welcomed you would you have brought it all up with her? 

[Deleted User]

MrsStepford said:

If my birth mother had written and asked me not to contact her, I would have respected that, end of story.

She didn't do that, she mailed me a small box of fresh perishable chocolates which were delivered  not posted to her with a message from me. That she mailed them to me, showed me that she was back in her home town and had received my letter in April. She would have seen how much the postage cost us, but she put my letter in a fresh envelope and put one first class stamp on it and would have realised it wasn't enough. I had to pay the postage £

Whatever her actual circumstances, I know a lot about her family and what she told the adoption society. The adoption society had rules to ensure that the child wasn't brought up by people who knew the birth mother and pre 1075 it was supposed to be a clean break. 

Presumably she thought she was doing the right thing or was persuaded to do it. I was born in another town and registered by her three weeks later, in that town. My adoptive father was certainly wealthy enough to pay for her to stay and have a rest. If money/benefit in kind happened, my adoption was illegal.

My original birth certificate was removed and I got a copy of a printed one, with the details but marked adopted, six months before it happened. There are no court records of the adoption. 

I will never know the full story. If my birth mother and my adoptive father hadn't decided to ignore the adoption organisation rules, I might have been brought up in a normal family. 

I don't blame her for getting pregnant, accidents happen. I do think she should get 50% of the blame for putting me in the situation with my abusive adoptive parents. My adoptive parents spent lots of holidays in the county I was born in. They may have known each other well, before she even got pregnant. 

It took effort to track my baptism down. It took place at most four days after my adoption certificate was issued. No photos, no party, no guests and my adoptive father didn't tell his mother that he knew my mother. 

I just want her to know that I don't want to hear from her again. Looking through my letter it's out of order and some photos appear to be missing. 

I'm never putting myself in the position where another spiteful woman can try to hurt me. 

It ends here. I will carry on with my family tree research and will interact with the family members I had discovered previously. They have all been really lovely. 

Jeez Louise. Your birth mother didn’t want to write to you. She doesn’t want to have to contact you full stop and wouldn’t have contacted you at all if you hadn’t pushed, and pushed and pushed with the second letter and those bloody chocolates.  There is absolutely no reason on God’s green earth to write to someone who has no intention of contacting you to tell them not to contact you. 

Draw a line under it, get some therapy and get on with your life. Focus on you and your husband, not your birth mother and not your adoptive family. 

Jude57

Like other posters, I'm sorry that contacting your birth mother hasn't had the outcome you wished for, OP.  But what concerns me just as much is your total lack of empathy for a (presumably) elderly woman, about whom you really know nothing, other than what you've been told by third parties who may have their own agenda.

Like other posters, I had a difficult childhood and had no peace of mind until I decided to leave it behind and live my life without having any contact. Several decades on, I have no regrets about my decision and counselling helped me know that I made the right decision for my own wellbeing.

I hope you find peace.

seven-day-weekend

I'm sorry that your birth mother wants no contact with you.

But that is her choice, and one you must respect.  She has made it abundantly clear that she does not want a relationship with you.

Let it go, move on, get on with your life.  Do not contact her again.