I was 38 when I adopted my daughter Richa in 1997. Richa’s birth mother was 18 when she gave her up in 1996. I have often thought about the loss this woman (child, really) must have experienced, and have felt so much compassion for her situation and gratitude for her choice.
Richa has always talked about her birth parents, primarily her mother. Sometimes it was to say she wanted to write them letters or set up an apartment in India so they could live there and she could visit them. At other times, she cried bitterly that they didn’t want her. She wrote in a school diary in 4th grade that she wanted to run away and find them. My daughter’s pain was heartbreaking for me. I would try to acknowledge her pain, let her cry and then distract her, and ensure that I never made it about us. In fact, she is totally bonded with everyone in the family, so I never felt her need to know her birth parents meant she didn’t view us as her parents.
We survived some tumultuous teenage years. We had a letter from her birth mother (let’s call her K) and a photo of her holding Richa as a baby (back view, so face is not visible). We gave these to Richa when she was 16. When she was 19, she wanted to try to find K. I wrote to her orphanage several times over a period of 3 months, without hearing anything. Finally, I just told them that the two of us were going to be there January 8, 2016, and hoped they had some information for us.
On January 7th, I got an email from them saying to come in the next day to talk about meeting Richa’s birth mother. We went in, and the director called up K in front of us, and set up a meeting for the next day! Apparently a social worker had gone to a 19-year old address they had where her mother and sister still lived, and the sister agreed to put the social worker in touch with K. K’s situation was that she had got married without telling her husband about the baby she had conceived out of wedlock and given up for adoption.Thus if her husband found out about her meeting, it would have been dangerous for her. Nevertheless, she agreed to travel to a different location and meet us.
I don’t think I have ever felt more anxious or stressed as I was in those two days. Even more than the day we went to meet Richa for the first time! My stress was completely about making sure things didn’t blow up for Richa, leaving her more scarred than helped by the experience. I worried that K would agree to come and then back out, or come and demand money. I worried that Richa had woven these fantasies about her birth mother, and that the reality of a rural, Maharashtrian woman would be completely alien to her.