An Unexpected Abandonment

By Brad EwellThere are many NPE/MPE (not parent expected/misattributed parent experience) stories with one if not multiple layers of abandonment. It seems as if for many in this community it’s a fairly common part of the experience. I don’t believe my story is different from many others, but I only recently realized how much it’s still affecting me.

A week ago, my wife and I were sitting in the living room talking about a problem I was having with my adoptive mom. My adoptive dad had passed away about six months ago, and my mom has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She’s still in the early stages, but she calls multiple times daily wanting me to come over and help with various things or just keep her company. When I tell her I can’t, I often hear her sad voice saying, “I just wish you could help me.” As I was telling my wife about the latest call, I said, “All I really want to say is, ‘do you mean how you helped me after I found out that y’all adopted me?’”

My wife looked up at me and asked, “Do you know how bitter that sounded?”

“Yes, because I’m still bitter about it.” But it really wasn’t until that moment that I realized how it’s been eating at me for the last few months.

About a year and a half ago, after having taken an Ancestry DNA test, I learned from a biological family member that I’d been adopted at birth. I reached for confirmation to my mom and dad, who only then I realized were my adoptive parents. When we met to  talk though my discovery, they offered the standard responses most of us have gotten at one time or another: “Nothing has changed; we’re still your parents; what mattered is how much we loved you; we didn’t tell you because we didn’t want you to be hurt”—all of the things NPEs/MPE’s love to hear. I told them as far as I was concerned they still were my parents because they were the only parents I’d ever known, but that literally everything had changed. We talked for a while longer but never moved past the “nothing has changed” point.

After this conversation, things took an unexpected turn. I left believing our talk had opened the door to the truth and that now we could talk about it openly. Looking back, I see this was naive on my part; my parents had been secret keepers most of their lives and they managed to keep a pretty big one for 48 years. My parents decided after I left that they’d had enough of that unpleasant conversation and we would not be talking about it again; the only catch was once again they’d forgotten to tell me.

A few weeks later I began communicating with some of my biological family through text and Facebook Messenger. I typically talked to my parents about once a week, and whenever adoption came up they changed the subject. I did my best to not bring the topic up, but discovering I’d been adopted had been a life-altering experience, and keeping these contacts secret from them made me feel as if I were being unfaithful or disrespectful to them. I wasn’t trying to replace them, but I was feeling the strong, inalienable pull of biology; I wanted to know where I came from. So in order to keep the peace while I continued on my journey, I continued avoid the topic when talking with my parents.

A month later I made arrangements to meet a half-brother I’d discovered. As I was on the way to see him, my dad called me and asked what I was up to. I told him I was driving to meet a friend for dinner. When he wanted to know what friend, I told him it was someone he didn’t know. When he asked again, I mistakenly thought he’d changed his mind and wanted to know things. So I told him the truth. There was a pause, and I waited for any questions he might have now that we were going to talk about things. But all he said was, “Man it sure was hot today.” That really stung. But I agreed it was hot and told my dad I was almost at my destination and had better get off the phone. I still had a ways to go, but I just wanted to end the conversation.

That was first time I felt abandoned in my adoption journey. It wasn’t when I’d learned that someone had given me up as a baby and wondered what led to that choice. I’d learned the complicated story of my conception, and at 48 years old I could see the logic of and necessity for the decision. Instead, I felt abandoned by my adoptive parents when they refused to have anything to do with helping me navigate the mess they’d created. I know many NPEs and MPEs have had their parents reject them or their biological parents refuse to acknowledge them when there was infidelity in the story, but I didn’t anticipate that type of abandonment in my case. My parents just adopted a baby. One of my closest friends growing up—our whole families were friends—was adopted, and his parents felt no reason to hide it. To this day I just don’t get why my parents did.

My wife was wonderful and continues to be my rock through this journey, while my parents—who did a great job raising me—completely bailed on me when I needed them most. The hardest part about this was that it left a dirty feeling every time I met a biological relative. Since my parents and I weren’t going to talk about it, each time it felt like I was sneaking around and betraying them. Then, when we would get together, it was the elephant in the room. For months, I carried the guilt along with all the other new feelings.

Fortunately, this story has a somewhat happy ending. About a week before my dad passed, he’d been in the hospital. My mom and I would alternate nights staying with him. Once he woke up in the middle of the night and told me he thought he was dying. I asked if he meant soon or now, and he said now. I asked what he wanted to do, and he said “let’s talk.” After we talked for a few minutes he asked, “So what ever happened with the whole adoption thing?” I was completely caught off guard and told him I thought he didn’t like talking about it so I did my best not to bring it up. But now he wanted to know everything. For the next hour, I told him stories of the meetings, showed him pictures, and answered his questions. He seemed genuinely pleased and at peace with the information. At one point, after I talked about meeting my biological dad, he said, “Well you finally got to meet your dad … that’s good.” Hearing that broke my heart a little, and I told him I would always consider him my dad. After a while, he became tired and dozed off.  After that, we never talked about it again, but I finally had what felt like his blessing to continue on my journey and I was relieved of the huge burden I’d been carrying for months.

BEFORE YOU GO…

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