Nature vs Nurture
It is said, by people who are supposed experts, that two of the most important aspects determining who we become are nature and nurture. Obviously heredity is an important factor, and it comforts me to realize that my birth mother provided me with enough positive traits to help my nature overcome the total lack of nurturing I received.
I've never really given much thought to searching for my birth mother. I occassionally give in to the "what-ifs", but not in any serious way, certainly not in any formal manner. I've given zero thought to finding my birth father, which seems to be the norm for most of my adopted friends and aquaintances. I grew up being told that my birth mother was 17, and I was born as the result of a rape. This could be true, and I certainly believed it when I was a child, which caused me no end of self-hatred, but as an adult, I have come to doubt the "facts" of my conception. She probably was 17, and as a Jewish teenager in Newfoundland in the mid sixties, being 17 must have been hard. She may have been raped, but she may also have just had casual sex with some boy she knew. In a "good" Jewish family, in Newfoundland ( seems oxymoronic, I know) in the sixties, being raped was far more acceptable than screwing with some local and getting "knocked up". He must have been a Gentile (like 99 % of Newfoundlanders were at that time) because I have brilliant blue eyes, unlike any of my siblings (all Jewish, all adopted) or any of my adoptive mother's people (all "pure", as I was often reminded, unlike me).
She hasn't tried to find me, I haven't tried to find her, and I can live with that. My sister found her "real" mother, and it was an unmitigated disaster that nearly destroyed my sister's fragile psyche. I have questions, of course.....health related, history, the usual stuff, but what I really want to know, what would really fill the empty spaces, is "why?" She would never be able to give me a satisfactory answer of course, and no response would truly make a difference, except for maybe a measure of comfort, knowing that it wasn't my fault I ended up where I did. I have to believe she felt she was doing the right thing, although in reality she probably had no voice in the decision to give me away. I have to believe that she hoped my life would be better, easier, bigger than hers. I have to believe, in order to protect my own sanity, that she had no idea she was sending her newborn into hell, or she would have found a way to stop it. I don't so much need to know if she loved me at all, but I do need to know that she didn't hate me.
The mother I ended up with should never have been given a child to raise. She couldn't take care of herself, and being burdened with other womens' unwanted offspring just made her problems deeper, darker and more acute. My brother once considered launching a lawsuit against the agencies that gave several babies to a couple who were woefully, obviously and horribly ill-equipped to care for them. They gave a sexual predator trapped victims, they gave two survivors of vicious childhood abuse, two people who never got help, never thought there was any other way of life, helpless babies who became the means for them to carry on the cycle of victims becoming perpetrators.
It stops here. I would no more harm a child than I would suddenly sprout wings and fly. There is no excuse for victims who become abusers, and I have no tolerance, no empathy, nothing but disgust for any survivor who harms children. Judgemental? Yeah, so? Child abusers are scum, they deserve to be judged, and until every member of society demands that abusers be stopped, more and more terrorized kids will grow up to be disfunctional adults.
Until every child is a wanted child, a loved child, a protected child, we must all take responsibility.
I've never really given much thought to searching for my birth mother. I occassionally give in to the "what-ifs", but not in any serious way, certainly not in any formal manner. I've given zero thought to finding my birth father, which seems to be the norm for most of my adopted friends and aquaintances. I grew up being told that my birth mother was 17, and I was born as the result of a rape. This could be true, and I certainly believed it when I was a child, which caused me no end of self-hatred, but as an adult, I have come to doubt the "facts" of my conception. She probably was 17, and as a Jewish teenager in Newfoundland in the mid sixties, being 17 must have been hard. She may have been raped, but she may also have just had casual sex with some boy she knew. In a "good" Jewish family, in Newfoundland ( seems oxymoronic, I know) in the sixties, being raped was far more acceptable than screwing with some local and getting "knocked up". He must have been a Gentile (like 99 % of Newfoundlanders were at that time) because I have brilliant blue eyes, unlike any of my siblings (all Jewish, all adopted) or any of my adoptive mother's people (all "pure", as I was often reminded, unlike me).
She hasn't tried to find me, I haven't tried to find her, and I can live with that. My sister found her "real" mother, and it was an unmitigated disaster that nearly destroyed my sister's fragile psyche. I have questions, of course.....health related, history, the usual stuff, but what I really want to know, what would really fill the empty spaces, is "why?" She would never be able to give me a satisfactory answer of course, and no response would truly make a difference, except for maybe a measure of comfort, knowing that it wasn't my fault I ended up where I did. I have to believe she felt she was doing the right thing, although in reality she probably had no voice in the decision to give me away. I have to believe that she hoped my life would be better, easier, bigger than hers. I have to believe, in order to protect my own sanity, that she had no idea she was sending her newborn into hell, or she would have found a way to stop it. I don't so much need to know if she loved me at all, but I do need to know that she didn't hate me.
The mother I ended up with should never have been given a child to raise. She couldn't take care of herself, and being burdened with other womens' unwanted offspring just made her problems deeper, darker and more acute. My brother once considered launching a lawsuit against the agencies that gave several babies to a couple who were woefully, obviously and horribly ill-equipped to care for them. They gave a sexual predator trapped victims, they gave two survivors of vicious childhood abuse, two people who never got help, never thought there was any other way of life, helpless babies who became the means for them to carry on the cycle of victims becoming perpetrators.
It stops here. I would no more harm a child than I would suddenly sprout wings and fly. There is no excuse for victims who become abusers, and I have no tolerance, no empathy, nothing but disgust for any survivor who harms children. Judgemental? Yeah, so? Child abusers are scum, they deserve to be judged, and until every member of society demands that abusers be stopped, more and more terrorized kids will grow up to be disfunctional adults.
Until every child is a wanted child, a loved child, a protected child, we must all take responsibility.
posted by Alphamutt at 3:17 PM
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