Adopted

          Meeting my birth parents last night feels like a dream, one that feels real one moment and far off the next. I definitely feel a new sense of identity,  moving from my inauthentic, adapted self to the "forbidden self"- as BJ Lifton describes the adoptee's sense of who they'd have been had they not been adopted. It is a sense of limbo. I had to create all these fake emotions and ways of coping as an adoptee, and I saw it clearly when I was around my birth parents due to feeling like their child- an exhilarating feeling of having been born and real. The fake persona was sticking out more, like a peeling mask being beaten away by a cold slap of air, or reality. I was awkward, but not hiding anymore because I no longer needed to. These people know me.. And want to know the real me. Their daughter.. With no expectations. So here I was, years of broken dejection and pain etched in my body and soul, ready after 25 years to meet my parents in reclaiming. An awkward

        I realized something that was deeply imbedded that was itching in me. I feel so lost and disconnected. I am a walking contradiction, yearning for a deep spirituality yet feeling like I don't belong in my own skin, how much more so to G-d. I am so confused this leads me to cognitive dissonance every day, as I try to balance looking obviously orthodox religious in a world were it is so rare, with feeling deeply ashamed of myself within my psyche like I don't belong in this world or anywhere for that matter. I try to hide my feelings everywhere I go, but spending the entire day out in the public eye really got to me. The inevitable judgement of others and the true way I felt inside was screaming contrasts, and I felt myself melting away like a cheese string being eaten. I had a long deep thought and recognized the problem.          I read in the adoptee book by Betty Jean Lifton a few days ago something that hit me as profound and true. Adoptees are the furthest from

          Seeing my husband talk so freely with the narcissistic owner of the little shop we were buying snacks in for a late supper, with no open insecurities, made me realize what different worlds we come from. Although he was damaged deeply as a baby, he did not display obvious hostility towards anyone like I do when I feel threatened, a c-ptsd trigger that causes me to clam up. I admire that about my husband, and find it refreshing about him. His ability to engage conversation with anyone about mutual interests without it coming off as creepy or needy. I am learning a lot about us on this trip and it's good to get away. When I entered the small, but charming hotel the desk manager was the friendliest I've ever seen and I realized that having a rich hotel has nothing to do with how one treats customers because this one is obviously cheap and I've never been greeted so warmly before. I almost did not know what to say and he smiled at me caringly. I tried to loosen up but

           I woke up today with memories. I was reading my adoption book called Coming Home To Self by Nancy Verrier, and she said that it is time for the adoptee to wake up and see that they are not eternally doomed just because they were adopted, and they need to be in the present more, the abandonment of their mother is over and can never happen again. They tend to act like they don't have an impact on the other person, and have a double standard in relationships where the other person is always at fault but they are not. Also, on page 305 she says that being raised in a family that is genetically different from you may seem emotionally abusive, but it is not, and adoptees with normal parents have had the same upbringing as everyone else. This is unfortunately not true for me, my parents were more abusive than not and hid behind their tempers to get us to listen. It's interesting, I have met other adoptive mothers and they tell me that they see their child is not bonded wit

            Sometimes I feel numb, and blank inside. Okay, maybe daily. I wake up unsure of who I am or what I want to do, and I feel forced to do the chores of getting dressed and going out. I realized that is because of the people I am around- you can only grow as much as the people around you are growing. I guess I feel like a lone sheep (If that is the right expression) in this neighborhood. People see me as unrelatable, because I am not so stuck with doing what everyone else is doing. I am not into shopping and other every day activities, I am focused on figuring myself and life out. Sometimes, I attract overly religious people because of my hair-covering, and I do not feel comfortable with them.             So I drown in my own misery, without anyone to share my day with. I feel crazy, and like I'm doing something wrong in my parenting. I start to doubt my daughter loving me, and I think she is damaged beyond repair. I liked seeing her act bubbly on the bus the other day, a

      The way I see it, in my town, everyone thinks nobody cares about them. They all have to force people to pay attention to them, believing they have to take what they want or else no body will give it to them. I am not imagining it. Perhaps they felt only cared for when they were doing for others, so they need to assert themselves in order to survive . Being "kind" means losing themselves to the other person. They all answer with fronts in their voices, toughness that will not peel away ever. It is stuck there. The minute you assert yourself, they either respond with respect or annoyance. I did not have my credit card with me when I went to buy some vegetables, and not enough money to pay, and he already grabbed all my items to check them out. I told him no, I did not have money. He was very surprised and edgy for that. It was not my fault, I did not mean to forget my money. It happens. But I felt judged and affronted.        My father sat in his hospital chair huffily,

         By knowing our natures and not beating ourselves up for it, we can accept ourselves and move forward in life. I used to feel guilty for a lot of my basic needs, because I was trained to feel shame for who I was, thinking everything about me was flawed. Therefore I do not let myself go when I have pain from my needs being not met, such as wanting time to myself and my daughter not being able to fall asleep. I get so frustrated, because I feel so undeserving of having needs, that I get annoyed at her for not being good, when really I just need to see that the reason I am nervous is because I am not meeting my own needs. Once I am able to see that, I am calmer and can listen to her. I put my needs aside momentarily and focus on the task at hand- being calm and collected so she can feel loved. When I saw my frustration, it made everything make more sense, and although I was still angry, she sensed that I was more in control and was able to sleep. And I got my time to myself.  

           We subconsciously recreate situations that we had in our childhood that was not healed in order to resolve it. The more we resolve, the less we bring those situations back. That is why I used to have such low expectations of myself that I did not feel that anyone could be there for me in my problems, so I hid myself and pretended to be normal. I only attracted people who could not love me in my life, and I felt more myself because I was used to being discarded and ignored by my mothers. It hurt so much, but who I was, my identity, was to be hurt. It was the core identity at the center of my hurt childhood self, the baby that was emotionally murdered in me. That was why it made me feel the most alive. Richard Grannon says it is very hard to change your brain, and it is called neuroplasticity. That takes changing your outer experiences. It makes you feel unsure at first. It makes me doubt my husband's words of affirmation, my belief that my baby loves me for me. The strugg

                      I used to feel so crazy every time I spoke to someone. That was because I was so beaten down and learned to doubt myself always. I learned that I had to cater to everyone's needs in order to be a person. I could not ever feel worthy of being heard otherwise. It was embarrassing and exposing every time I spoke to any friend or neighbor or human, I felt who I was inside had to be covered and say "the right thing" and not "mess up" by showing my insecurities. Now, I feel equally exposed when I am myself, but I am no longer ashamed about it so it makes every conversation an intimate dance where I sometimes have to censor myself just because I know that not every one I talk to is understanding and sensitive to my low-self-esteem. When that awkward, overly caring feeling comes out, and an awkward pause because my mind is a million miles away due to the way an intonation made me feel. Or my triggers of feeling guilty for talking too much, or tryin

          I read in The Aware Baby that parents can have flexibility in rules with their toddler with aware parenting, because toddlers need to be given more independence in their life to feel confident. Therefore, a parent can have certain rules that the child learns to obey such as not coloring on the walls or other extreme things, but with less in-stone rules the child can feel more important in making impacts in his life. I like this idea because it means that children are smarter than we realize, and they can pick up when we are being too rigid and untrusting of them to listen. I notice that I can feel this need to do things in certain orders that are too rigid, such as singing with her in the morning, and I get annoyed when I don't continue it, but now I see that I can be more flexible and she understands. She can pick up on my moods and that is the main thing. 

           I realized how important it is to keep going, to keep showing love to my child even when I don't feel anything. I don't feel any love inside, and excitement in life at times. She still needs me, and I can't give up though. It affects her. I heard an Ollie Mathews' video today about how this man had memories of his father yelling at him as a 2 year old, and Ollie said that makes sense because it was when he was broken, and he learned then to stay hyper-vigilant to the environment and EXPECT it to happen again. This hurt me a lot by realizing that I did that to my daughter too, and I vowed to never "break" her like that again, even when I feel like garbage. I even took a video of myself pushing her and her crying, just to show myself what I was doing. She was screaming and trying to catch her breathe, it must have hurt her so much inside. She is a small vessel, and cannot understand that other people have feelings outside her, and so feels rejected fo

            The goal in life, I believe, is to go through the hard times without getting torn apart. To see the good in it. When you get to the depths of your despair, whatever that might be, you need to pull yourself up with the tools you have learned to help you. For example, my weakness is my negativity that I get dragged into, feeling like there is no way out of my pain. I need to see how I am triggered, and how to pull myself out of this reality to know that it is not so. I am not truly drowning, it is just an illusion. The pain I feel is really just from my past of losing myself to other's rule over my life. Feeling powerless.           When we can love ourselves despite our feelings, despite the situation, we have won. We can control our emotions and not let them take over us. Knowing that it is not real, just "In your head." When we can ride the waves. Sometimes, the blessings are there but we cannot see it because we are in such despair. It is hard, I know, to

      I think seeing her cry gives me satisfaction because my mother abandoned me too so I like seeing her react when I push her away from me. It's like I'm saying " you don't need me because I was okay with not having my mother raise me. I managed so why do you need a mother? Why are you so weak." I can't stand seeing her need me so much because I never had what I needed. I resent her needing me when I have no stamina to be there Emotionally.         It's 3:33. I've done it now, the fire is over. I feel shame and relief that I'm back. I hurt my daughter deeply, in ways I don't know if will ever be able to reverse. I've learnt a valuable lesson. That I don't want to be that way ever again. The pain I felt was excruciating, a sick exhilaration at seeing her suffer. Just as I did inside. I felt good about it, like my revenge on the world was justified. But it wasn't. It was doing harm and not good. As much as I wanted to relive the

          I read that toddlers when they need to cry, may recreate situations where they get punished because they need to cry to heal their past hurts, so they misbehave in chapter 6 of The Aware Baby . They are trying to release their pain in a backhand way, and it works. Children can heal in their own ways, and just because they are really upset and you feel angry at them, they can overcome their pain. I spiral when I think that my daughter is damaged, but kids are more resilient than we think. It is just projection from my own pain.           This is interesting, because grown-ups do this as well to relieve their pain. Teal Swan says in her latest video about how people do not want to be self-destructive, that sometimes when we cannot get things done even though we want to, it is because a part of us is scared and unsure so does not want to take a risk of failing in it. This is what happens to me a lot, why I was never able to get into normal healthy relationships, and always fel

      Being a codependent, I used to be scared that other's didn't trust me when I said I loved them or they were family so I was supposed to love them, and used to think every action I did had to be perfect. But since it was not coming from me, it was only to prove myself to the outside, I was unsure of it so I felt others were unsure of it too. I got very sensitive when people I was attached to told me they didn't think I cared, because I missed a phone call or did not initiate enough. Now, I have more confidence and how I feel is key, so if I know I love someone I don't have to prove it to them, I just do things nice or loving for them for myself. This way, I am less insecure and I know it is an action I took part in, and am confident they see that. Such as with my husband, I know he knows I'm there for him, so I feel comfortable taking times to do things I need for myself without worry that he will feel unloved. This is how we need to feel to get places in life

          When my daughter just would not fall asleep, I had an emotional breakdown. I was trying so hard to be good and perfect, that it all fell apart. I tried lying down with her because I was too tired from the night before, but that didn't work. I wanted to scream. My husband told me, remember that the abandonment is not happening now, it is over, as he read in Joe Soll's adoptee book. I tried, but the feelings were too strong and I was angry because I was severely lacking sleep and was repressing my needs for her. She wouldn't even go to my husband, and shrieked for me. This went on all afternoon. I was tense and irritable, and angry that I had no time to eat for myself dinner because I had to put her to sleep again. I read a book for a while, but she was still there needing sleep. I did not want to go out because I was too tired. I read in The Aware Baby by Aletha Solter that toddlers go through a stage where they need to feel autonomous, so they throw tantrums, an

        I am starting to integrate my weaknesses into my personality as accepted. I used to be embarrassed of people seeing my pain and deep shame of my emotions, but now I see them as deep and more beautiful. I like to listen to deeply emotional songs that have despair in them and I see how these feelings are acceptable for others by me, so what's wrong with having them myself? Nothing. Also nut husband used to annoy me for enjoying himself instead of being productive, and now I see it as normal instead of awful, so I accept myself too for letting myself go sometimes because I understand how I needed out from real life at that time because it was too much for me. As long as we are trying to see why we do the things we do, we are getting healthier. It is the worst feeling to shame yourself because of something you have no control over. It's CPTSD, and the only way to conquer it is with love and understanding. Otherwise we are not really living, merely repressing our selves. Don

          It hit me what I was doing to my husband when I got mad at him. I was not seeing him for who he was, and was only seeing what I felt about what he was doing. This was separating myself from him, and making him feel lonely when I yelled at him or acted cold towards what he was doing. It was projection.             I got angry when he was on his phone 24/7, because I do not allow myself to do those things anymore and I "got over it." I work hard to not do it anymore. And I see him doing it and feel responsible for him, too. But I am not, he is his own person. That released me from my annoyance and anger towards him. I am not him. He does things with his own consequences. I used to think he dragged me down, and now I realize that I am only responsible for how I act. So I concentrate on myself at those times, and even have compassion for him. He is stuck in his own hell that he is having a hard time releasing from.              When parents project on their kids, th

            I am really frustrated at the moment. I am repressing certain feelings. My daughter needs my attention and I do not have it in me to give it to her. I had a hard morning, wanting to shop but my daughter wanting to stay home. I ended up forcing her to get dressed and going out, holding her so she wouldn't be too annoyed. I bought food, and had to carry it all a mile while holding her too. I was like what was I thinking, my stomach was growling but I hadn't wanted to spend money on lunch so didn't buy anything to eat. I got home, annoyed and hungry, ate some healthy food, and still feel annoyed and tired. Have no patience for her again. I was all big-shot this morning about how she knows I love her, but now I feel ordinary, stressed and confusing in this deep pit. It feels really painful, because my heart is pulled in two directions and I feel like splitting. I baked a cake, am waiting for it to be done, and am waiting for her to be tired so I can chill and be hap

         I realized that when someone loves their child, it is felt by the child all the time even when they are not with them or seem upset at them. The child will get confused and scared when the parent screams at them or hurts them, but the love they felt will still be there. They will just feel their ground shaky. Unless there is ongoing abuse and no apology or reconcilation, in which the child will feel very low about himself and take in the shame that the parent thrusts on him. I noticed that when I am tired and ignore my daughter, out of stress, she feels it and gets scared but she still loves me. I guess because I never felt connected with my parents, I think that she doesn't feel it with me. But we have a deep bond. I am so lucky for this. It can teach me that love is possible. I think all the people who are chasing what they think love is, are really disillusioned because love is how their parent was supposed to feel towards them. They just need to realize what they lack

                 We are attracted to what we repress in ourselves in relationships, Teal Swan says in Fragmentation and Relationships - LA Synchronization Workshop - Teal Swan. She says that when a person represses anger in himself, he will automatically attract a person who is full of anger, because that is the part of him that he cannot own. Therefore, it will be his "opposite" manifesting in the outward reality. People who are extreme in one way usually repress the other part of themselves, but they still have it in them. When they walk away from a relationship because they cannot take the other person's extremeness, they are rejecting that feeling in themselves, so it will get worst and separate from them further.             I see this in how I reject my daughter's neediness, because I have it in myself. I am hoping that I will be able to love her despite her neediness, and accept all the sides of her. She says that relationships do not have a spark or magnetis

          Babies need to be mirrored in how they feel, and this is hard when the parent does not want to accept that feeling, or is blocking it in themselves. I do this when I get upset at how my daughter is acting, and try to push off the feeling, distracting myself. It is when I am most disconnected from her. It seems like being a mother is impossible at those times. She is a handful, and I complain to my husband about it. It is because she is not doing what I want, being okay with things. She is in stress, and I cannot deal with it so I do not mirror her properly at all and she feels alone in her pain. It sucks.

       They don't want you to love yourself. They want you to be beaten down until you have no self-worth. They hate spontaneity. They hate feelings. They want everything to be predictable and orderly, so they can CONTROL it all. They are terrified of their own pain. They think it will kill them. So they do everything to pretend they have control. But it's all an illusion. The truth is that we are not in control. We do not even know what our lives will bring tomorrow. We do not know when we will die. All we have is ourselves, our unconditional love. We have G-d and an ability to turn to him. We cannot do it alone. But we do have a right to love ourselves, and listen to our soul's music. Even if that means it is in pain and shackled. We can still follow it and live in light. The narcissistic predators of the world will always try to make you feel bad about yourself and dead inside. You are alive, so shine your light. Whoever is reading this and wants to be free. No body has

          I did my own thing today, and it had great results. I got up, even though my daughter was screechy and only slept 9.5 hours with breaks all morning to nurse, at 9. I played and did my own thing and was happy to notice that she also was focused on playing with the pampers and her sweater on the bed. I put on a YouTube video by Ollie Mathews and enjoyed his sharp wit and intuition, showing the woman how her borderline ex husband was gay all along, and how not to take the haters seriously at all. When you get free from narc abuse they inevitably appear and how you treat them will show how weak you are with your own past narcissists who try to gas light you back in their lives. They always smear you when they lose you, and when the mask comes off. I have seen this again and again. They pamper you with fake attention as long as you are meeting their supply needs, and the minute you have your own opinion they become cruel, hateful little monsters. It just reflects how they feel ab

       Wow what a eye-opening conversation I had with my husband. When we talk about our true feelings, things make more sense. I explained to him my repressed feelings from him telling me I was much better than him at mothering our child, and he told me where his feelings behind saying that came from.           I said heatedly that he made it sound like I was better than him and it gave him the right to feel bad about himself and put me on a pedestal. Not really seeing me. He said he was just saying the truth, that he's a more nervous person than me. I disagreed, and retorted that we were both equally nervous just it seemed I wasn't because I pretend that I'm calm when inside I am a mess. It all comes from our childhoods, I noticed with amazement. I grew up having to fake that I was okay all the time because of adoption and having to be the savior to my whole family, making everyone feel good. That's why I am triggered to act that role and fall in it when I see my

       I spiraled today. I think I was on a tight ship the entire day, because my husband had overly praised me last night about how much he admired and appreciated what a "good job I was doing with our daughter." He said it was really hard to do what I was doing, and he'd never be able to do it because he was so nervous. I agreed, and said it was in my nature so not hard for me to be kind to her and want a loving relationship.        So, today he came home early because of a stressed and tired mood, and I had it in the back of my mind that I was his "savior" and perfect with my daughter. This caused me to put pressure on myself to be perfect. I made him a soup, and took my daughter to the library and watched her run around because I felt so much guilt at her not being paid attention to. When we came home, my husband annoyingly said, " does she need a nap now? Because she looks tired." I said no, and please  don't pressure me about this. I hate w

         Growing up religious did a lot to me. A lot of what I heard was to not give in to your desires and not focus on pleasure, or else you were bad and not spiritual. Also, dressing provocative in any way was deeply shunned, as well as listening to rap music or rock. We did it all anyway, and got into trouble all the time. But it etched something deep on my soul, that who I was was unacceptable. I see now that a lot of the communities and irreligious people we looked down on are much happier than us in a way, in not repressing themselves. They are more open and accepting of others, not jumping instantly to make judgements on them based on how they dress, what they eat, how they are acting. There is more acceptance and tolerance of certain things, like dancing and laughing in public, showing affection, being kind to strangers, and any way others chose to dress. They have less restrictions, so are understanding of other's behaviors, whearas by us, there is more expectations and

           I used to abhor my insecurities, thinking it meant something was wrong with me. I hid how I felt because I didn't want to scare off other people. Now that I know were those insecurities come from, my birth and adoptive parents rejecting and neglecting my emotions and shaming me for having needs, not letting my anger or sadness be allowed, so I repress them until they are inappropriate for present situations, such as when people don't listen to me, when I can't get my way, shame myself for not being perfect, etc, I let myself feel better about them. All that energy I used to expend on hiding and running away from them is able to flow, and my happiness and relief is ever-strong now. I no longer have much to hide, and I look people in the face without cringing. I let them see me, and show my good assets. My love, strength, and ability to see the good in things. This is no longer an act as much, because I used to fake that I was happy all the time and did spiritual

           People are confident when they are doing things they are good at, and it is nice to watch and learn from. I was watching someone singing a cover of a song, and the joy they felt inside at letting out their ability and energy into something that made them shine was beautiful. You can tell it was just them in their sincerest form. I guess when I let myself go and do things my heart wants, it makes me happy. I am more joyful and confident. When I am not trusting my ability and feel like I am doing things that are not "me," I am nervous and insecure. People notice it and withdraw from me. That is my fault. I did not shame myself for being insecure today, and let myself go and feel good about buying some healthy cookies that I wanted to taste. I felt much better, and was able to be myself again.

         This is a weird phenomena. I realized when people leave me physically, I don't feel connected to them. That is why I sometimes go on and on trying to please people. I want to feel accepted by them. The thing is, I am already connected for being human whether they like me or not. Being close is a choice, and that is why we cannot see exactly what people are feeling all the time and communicate by choice. I used to have no boundaries and think I had to open up to everyone, because I felt so unworthy of existing. Now I know I have the choice, but I still fall for niceness and when narcissists sugar me up I comply, putting my judgement and boundaries aside sometimes. It is annoying, and I need to work on keeping things in. 

         I realized that I have to make my own fun sometimes, when I in a down state. So today I woke up and decided to spontaneously meet my husband during his lunch break in the neighboring area, a bus ride away. We got up, got dressed, ate breakfast and listened to some Ollie Mathews The Narcissist Resistance channel videos. He said some things that were profound, like how narcissists get worst as they age. In The Narcissist Will NEVER Validate You , to a woman who was hesitant about leaving her mother out of her life because she wanted to take charge and embarrass and minimize her all over again by saying she was a messy kid, and the woman realized that she still based her whole self worth on how her mother saw her, he said that she better lock this woman out of her life. I agreed fully, when someone is so detrimental to your feelings of happiness you need to listen to yourself and what you need. These days, I listen more to my intuition and when something hurts me I don't ig

       A mother is supposed to love her biological child. If there is a disruption the child will feel it. And not know how to love himself unless he faces it, validates it. Either gets remorse from his parent, or separates from them until he forgives and accepts that they are flawed and narcissistic if can't admit their wrongdoing. I realized this after waking up from a dream where I was trying to get my adoptive mother to own up to her emotional neglecting me. I was shaking her and she was a baby at one point, and wouldn't show any expression as I cried. She was so numb. I told her about how she didn't respect her husband, never showed love, never tried to be there for my brother. She just said "What can I do now?" and didn't want to apologize. She had too much pride. Maybe it was overstepping her boundaries to scream at her about the pain she caused, if it was too much for her to hear. But it hurt a lot. For some reason she is emotionally blocked from taki

      Written yesterday.           I had a really hard morning as the pstd symptoms hit hard. I had to put my daughter to sleep but was irritated because it meant not enjoying a lunch meetup with my husband, which I was pumped about since I opened my eyes this morning. The night before was rough because I was stressed about her falling asleep next to me, and we were so exhausted we all went to bed a bit after 11. I woke up at 3, 6, and then nursed her 3 times every hour until I woke up for good at 9. She couldn't stay in a deep sleep for long and was wide awake against her sleepy body's will at 9:30.        I had to make due with what I had so decided to meet my husband at 1:15 and we'd go out somewhere for fun with homemade lunch. But my daughter was resistant to any attempts to get her dressed or put her back to nap, and I ate my breakfast miserably trying to appear normal. I was disappointed again at her disinterest in breakfast, and I ate a lot to cover my mood.

           I realized today how toddlers who push and pull to become their own person need their mother's love more than anything, to know that they are constant and will not be abandoned if they go out on their own. I was reading about adoptees in reunion, how when they find their birth mothers they can regress back to that stage of toddlerhood and push and pull with the mother in order to become their own "self." In this time, it is detrimental for their emotional development that the mother not shame them by rejecting their actions. This will cause a split in their minds about their mother, that she is either good or bad depending on the actions, and they will not be able to integrate good and bad both being in her. They will have to fantasize that she is good, and ignore the bad because it caused them to feel so shamed and like a part of them is flawed. The truth is, good and bad emotions are natural and not bad to have. When the mother shows she loves her child wheth

         I see with my own daughter how my lack of love from my birth mother caused me to shut down with her sometimes. Like, seeing her crying can make me numb as if I don't care. Lifton says that often adoptees feel like caretakers as parents, and not really in it emotionally. They do it more out of obligation to raise kids. I feel this sometimes, but know that I love her so much inside. I care a lot, and my heart hurts when she is hurt. I think she knows it because she seems attached to me, even when I ignore her she still comes back to me, running around for attention. She has the same happiness I feel inside about living sometimes. I see my effect on her emotions by how I treat her. When I am nervous, she watches me and makes little yelps just like I feel like doing inside. I get nervous because she sees too much. When she giggles nervously, I feel the same way, and try to calm myself down and ask what's bothering me. I can't ignore my feelings with her around. That&#

          I am amazed and happy about things I've learned in Betty Jean Lifton's book, Journey...  She says in chapter 12, The Painted Bird, that in reunion often the birth mother does not want to meet their long lost child because she cut off emotionally when she had it, or was pregnant, due to the feeling of shame or it being wrong by society, a "bastard." Many adoptees who had mothers like this say that they have this feeling in them of being a dead baby, unwanted and unloved. One even said she must have been born early because she knew her mother was thinking of aborting her, so she left to escape. Or they felt a cold deadness inside in the womb. Lifton says that prenatal studies showed that children who where desired and loved in the womb have a better feeling about being alive, while unwanted or rejected babies in the womb feel a drawing to death and unworthiness all their lives. This makes so much sense to me. Ambivalent feelings in the mother during pregnancy