My mum put me into care, then rejected me years later
You wrote a detailed email (three times as long as I have room for) which left me feeling desperately sad, yet full of admiration, too. And honoured that you wrote.
there’s a quiet strength in the telling of your story that belies the emotional weakness you describe.
truly, it’s quite impossible for me to make sense of the way your mother treated you, or why the sister (ten when you were sent away) should have no vestigial feeling at all for the six-year-old boy doomed to feeling abandoned for the rest of his life. How can that ever be understood?
sometimes, seeking reasons condones wicked behaviour. You didn’t actually ask me for help, even though the act of writing reveals how you still feel excluded from your own life — yes, in spite of your happy marriage and beloved (now married) daughters.
Your sincere intention is to warn others who grew up in care: ‘Just because you desperately miss your family, don’t be too sure that they miss you. Be very wary before you make contact, because you might just be giving them the opportunity to reject you all over again.’
Wise advice springing from the deep wound. I knew someone who found his birth mother again after being (happily) adopted and found the experience sad and rather disappointing.
the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ is relevant here, isn’t it? I hope readers will think about that and realise how your counsel is relevant to all those wistful for a fantasy, alternative life.
But let us just contemplate your life now. the unnecessary cruelty of that solicitor’s letter, arriving after 25 years, has set you on the old rack once again. But you will survive this as you did all the rest. You are the same amazing, strong person who survived rejection, instability, loneliness.
You studied hard with no help, gaining qualifications and a good job; you overcame selfprotective wariness to fall in love and marry; you fathered three lovely daughters and created a happy, successful life.
once you were rejected, yes, but now I am asking you finally to allow your blessings to outweigh the pain. Just add it up: two women, mother and sister, were loveless, hard, cold, cruel. But four women (your wife and daughters) are brimful of love for you.
those first two show as nothing on the scale. the second four (and their husbands, and — hopefully — children) represent riches piled at your door. Embrace all that, Aidan — and be proud.