I almost grew up in Lebanon...

Christmas of 2021 I found out the truth about my birth, before being adopted.   I have found both sides of my adoptive great grandparents families in Lebanon.   I mainly used social media to find the families as all Lebanese records are not on Ancestry or any other search engine.  I have met so many of my Lebanese relatives its hard to keep track of all my cousins.  I have really gone out of my way to work on my birth family tree, and I have really succeeded.  My birth woman did not know where her grandparents even came from, or her own grandfathers first name.  Nor did she know what town her grandpa came from.  She had many old photos of her Lebanese family and she had no idea who any of them were.  I was also given copies of some of the old photos.   The birth woman knew literally nothing about her Lebanese side, as her grandmother died when she was just turning 11 years old.   Her mother was American, and her Lebanese grandma did not approve of her full Lebanese son marrying a Non-Lebanese.  

My cousin Susan and I are related because her grandmother and my great grandmother are first cousins.  She is in contact with most of her family in Lebanon.  They knew about me being born, and they knew that my Lebanese grandfather did not want me given away.  The story goes that he was planning on leaving his family and taking me back to Lebanon to be raised by him and his extended family.  He supposedly had it all planned and was ready to leave the USA until his wife, my grandmother had another plan.  

I have to go back in time for a minute and tell you about something I had found accidentally while searching.  I found two birth records for myself from the State of California.  One shows my name as if I was not adopted,  my now known birth father's surname with my name being "Tina Marie" which was originally Athena Marie, changed by the nuns because it sounded too ethnic.  Then my birth woman surname as the mother, which is an unusual surname because it is a Lebanese name.  I also have a second birth record showing my adoptive parents surname and the name I was given by them.   This pretty much proves they kept me and took me home after I was born, and it makes sense the stories I heard from my own birth woman that did not make sense until finding the second birth record and hearing this story from Lebanon that I was almost raised there.  

I was shocked to learn this, the thought of being raised in another country when I didn't even know I was part Lebanese to begin with.  That I was kept by my own birth family only to be dropped off later on and placed in the adoption pile, sickly and distraught as an infant.  What kind of person does this to their own, and by the way first grandchild?   My own maternal grandmother, when my grandfather was away at work, took me and dropped me off I was told, to be given away to Holy Family Adoption Agency.  

Can you see now what you've done mom?

Can you see how much pain you have caused me ?  Can you now see that your  silence and  sweeping all the abuse and dysfunction under the carpet did not work out in the long run for your family?  By never standing up for what you believe to be right,  has permanently divided your family.  You wanted your daughters to be best friends after you are gone from this earth, however what you did while alive, made that absolutely impossible.  Never telling your birth daughter she is wrong and asking her to behave or at least be decent , by giving her the power to continue to be a controlling and miserable person has absolutley backfired   Can you see that favoring your birth daughters children has forever damaged my family?   At your funeral I had someone say they could feel the divide  and actually see it in the photographs.  

My sister and I got together to make a collage of our photos for moms funeral.  I brought about 20 photos, and my sister must have had at least 100.  As we laid the phtos out on the table, I was  in shock, seeing the actual proof, the evidence was hard to deny.  Photographs prove the lack of involvement my mom had with my family.  She never showed up for my daughters college granduations, she had 2.  She never made the trip up to Northern California to even see her college.  She did however travel to Arizona and Northern California to see both my sisters children graduate college.  My dad was so sick for my nieces graduation but they made the trip anyhow.   Last year mom didnt come to my daughters wedding either.  I guess it was too much work for my sister to travel with her.  I can somewhat understand that, however going back in time, and seeing the photos strewn all over the dining room table as we assembled the photo collage and hearing my niece and nephews eulogy at moms funeral just about stuck me in the heart with an arrow, I could feel the piercing of that arrow as they spoke their truth.  And I was in a trance as I pasted photos on this giant poster board I bought to make this collage for everyone to see at moms funeral.   

Because I am older now and have learned that being quiet and saying absolutely nothing is much more productive than speaking my truth to these people I call my family, I went through the motions, helped my sister as she froze not being able to cut up the photos for the collage, I did the job, but I did not enjoy this project as I found it heartbreaking to see how involved my mother was with my sisters children.  I was there but my heart was broken, seeing the undenyable proof in front of me.  

Adoption, in my case, is a four letter word.  The gift that keeps giving exclusion.  

Lets face it...

 Let's face it...."My Son" was mom's favorite,  my sister tells me.    My sister and her x husband came to see our newly remodeled home, we took them  for an early dinner and we had a good time. We both had a small drink,  and I chose each and every word that came out of my mouth, very, very....carefully.  I listened more than I spoke.  I am always cautious about what I share with my own sister.  She still, to this day, shares pretty much nothing of importance with me.  I guess I always find that to be an untrustworthy trait, for a sister at least?  I used to share way too much with her, and got tired of her sharing absolutely nothing with me about her life.  My husband, for years, urged me to stop telling her about our life, it took me many years to finally stop.   She waited six months to tell me that she and her husband divorced and he had already moved out before I was told.  We live 19 miles from each other, not 19 hours, and we've always lived very close to one another our entire lives.  Our families shared almost all Holidays together, mom & dads birthdays , anniversaries, you name it we were all together.  

My sister, feeling brave after having a drink,  goes on to list all of the things her son did for our mother.  A list of reasons in her mind, that made her son, our mother's favorite grandchild.    

I was at such a loss of words , I stood there, almost frozen by her coldness and listened as we walked to our cars.  As the words were coming out of her mouth, she was speaking it seemed, in slow motion.  At one point I couldn't hear her any longer, I could hear my heart beating in my chest, and I felt myself floating away, thinking I couldn't wait to get into the car and leave, and what seemed like an eternity as she told her story about her angelic son.  I was bargaining with myself, very quickly...do I shout at her and tell her to shut up, or maybe just punch her right in the nose?  Instead I stood there, with my mind contemplating all of the horrific things she's said and done  to me while our mother was slowly slipping away as she tries to prove to me that she and her son did more for our Mother than it seems, anyone else.  I chose to say nothing, and to be honest...after her first few sentences, I have absolutely no idea what she said to me as we said goodbye.

Let's face it, I was nobody's favorite, how could my children be "Our Mothers" favorite I thought?  How can she say such ridiculous things to me?  After all that has been said and done, she still feels the need to "One up me" or to hit me below the belt.  She still, after both of our parents being gone now for years, feels the need to flaunt her superiority,  proving that "She" is the important birth child and that her children still are our mothers favorite, and how she feels about our Mother is much more meaningful than how I feel about her.

Lets face it,  my sister feels that because she is our Mothers "Blood Relative" that her feelings, her regrets, her sorrow and grief are more meaningful and more important, than mine.  With her cunning words, she downplays anything and everything that I shared with our mother,  the time and precious moments we shared together.  

Lets face it, my sister still feels threatened by me,  as I wipe the tears running down my face as we drive home, I will always be my Mothers daughter and as much as she hates that idea, she can never change it.  Adoption, is a four letter word, it is the invisible abuse, the life altering decision nobody wants to talk about.  The others want to pretend that it's "My fault" - never wanting to own their part in the dysfunction and feelings they have about the fact that I was not born to my mother.  But trust me, at age 59, I can hear that pain in my sisters voice  and her lack of really saying to me..."She was MY mother not yours" and telling me that her pain, the loss of our Mother is much more meaningful to her than it is me.  If she could, I think she would say I have no right to anything that belongs to her.  

Let's face it, adoption doesn't always work, and I have to find a way to live with this reality.  

I miss Mom

With all the exclusion, the dysfunction, heartache and sadness, I still miss mom.  

Im sad she never got to meet my granddaughters, her great granddaughters.  

She never got to tell me how she felt inside,  for the rest of my life I have to sit and guess how she really felt about me and a lot of other unresovled feelings I still have.  I have to investigate every moment we had together.  Maybe the truth is waiting for me to be found, somewhere?  Some days I can feel the burning inside of my chest, the tears well up in my eyes, and I have  the deepest, most unbearable ache I have ever felt, knowing I will never see her again.  

I did find voicemails mom  left on my old cell phone.  When I accidentally stumbled upon them I felt absolutey sick to my stomach, I felt hysterical inside.  She left me a lot of voicemails as her memory became much worse.  She would call me when I was on my way to see her as she  would forget that I was even coming.  I played the voicemails, I heard her voice,  and it was the most painful thing I've done since watching her take her last breath.   I listened to all of them, one by one, hoping to find the answers, maybe she said something of importance?   When alive, I kept waiting, day after day, for her to say something special to me, hoping she would give me the anecdote for the years of abuse I endured.   A secret I never knew, or something so earthshattering that I would be able to say, "I understand" and not feel this way another moment in my life.  

What did my life mean to mom?  Did she  find it hard to feel the same way for me as she did her own birth child?  It sure felt that way to me, and I was like a  little child, waiting on each and every word that came out of moms mouth.... up until she passsed away.   My heart wants to believe that she loves me, but the reality of it all was that she struggled to have those feelings for me, I felt it, my husband felt it, as well as our grown children.   They feel as though they grew up without a grandmother, and feel mom had no voice, no opinion,  and sadly...she did not.  She sat and allowed a lot of unfavorable things to happen,  to be honest there was a lot of things she did not do that hurt just as much.  These unfavorable things continued to happen up until she couldnt remeber much due to dementia.    

My sister had said to me before mom passed, that I had the issues regarding adoption, insinuating that I had the problem.  I stopped her in her tracks, I told her very bodly, that NO...I did not have the issues, it was moms and the rest of the family that had the issues.   Why else did all this ugliness  happen over the years, up until our niece got married recently?  After her weddding,  I checked out, I distanced myself from all of them both physically and emotionally as best as I could.  I had to see mom at my sisters house until she passed away,  so I had to keep things somewhat mellow.   I have to say here, that regardless if other family members refuse to recognize what they are saying and doing , exclusion stinks, its paralyzing, its past devastating.

I see what it's done to our grown children, they have endured more than their fair share of disappointents with this family.  They have all become so used to behaving this way, that it's normal to them.  And sadly I blame my parents for this.  Mom never had an opinion about anything and would say, everyone is different.  That was her way of saying she refused to step up to the plate and make things right within our family.  I still cant believe my nephews eulogy stated that my mom never did a wrong thing in her life.  It was then that I fully understood he, my niece and sister  did have a different grandmother/mother .  How do I continue within this family when I feel so deeply different than the rest of them?  I cant speak the truth around any of them.  I have to listen and keep quiet and have little to no words from my mouth.  I feel like this adoption sentence may last a lifetime if I don't find a way to unbury myself from the emotional wreckage I have been left with since mom has left this earth.  

Am I still your daughter?

I had this thought pop into my head.  I wonder if I am still her daughter now that she is gone?   Does she still consider me her daughter in the afterlife?  Or now that she is gone and Im without a mother, am I still a sister and an aunt?  While she was alive my sister had to deal with me, have me around because mom wanted me to be there for special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries and Holidays.  However now that mom is gone, I wonder,  am I still part of this family and do I still hold the title of daughter, sister and aunt?  

I felt the separation years ago, when my niece was married.  We were excluded from a lot of the festivites with regards to her wedding.   Our family took photos together, with the exception of me and my immediate family.  I am the only sibling and person that was excluded from this.  As well as our daughter was not invited to her only female cousins bachelorette party.  Even though they spent ever Holiday, birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas together their entire lives and they are so close in age.  They even went to high school together.  

Going back years when our kids were young, I accidentally ran into my sister and her family with my parents .  Shocked to find out they had been in town to visit "My sister and her kids" -but not me, I figured out...the hard way.  The moment I got out of the car at the grocery store,  to find my parents getting out of my sisters car, all dressed up.  That awkward and embarrasing moment when they realized they got caught.   My mom not sure what to say to me, and I felt sick to my stomach.   I got into my car, drove home in tears.    Why didnt they tell me they were coming out to our town, I speak to mom almost every day.  

 The college graduations for our daughter my parents never atteneded, yet they went to another state to see my sisters son graduate.  And yes they did attend my sisters daughters college graduation.  So many years of this heartbreaking exclusion and so many exclusions its hard to even process.  

So many people take for granted the gift of being included.  Inclusion is one of the most important things you can give someone.   I often wonder how my life could have been  if my parents would have included me in so many things throughout my life.  How my childrens lives could have been with grandparents, the type of grandparents my sisters kids had.  

Probably one of the saddest realizations since mom has passed away is that my grown adult children feel the loss of not having grandparents, even though they had them.  My sisters grown children got tatoos in memory of my mother, and when I told my daughter about it, she said..."Makes sense, she was their grandmother."  I felt as though I had been kicked in the stomach, and kind of literally shaken up.  I really question if she was ever my mother or my childrens grandmother.  Time keeps passing by, without you mom.  And each day I find it harder to believe that I will never have closure, and have to find a way to accept that I will never have the answers to these heartbreaking issues.  I have to somehow find a way to be OK with the fact that I may have been a child you could never truly love but just tolerate.   Love Cathy

Im the stranger

 Im 57 years old, and here I sit blogging about my feelings now that my mom has died.  I write about this to somehow free my mind of the thoughts that plague me daily.  The thought that I am still the stranger within my family.  At least that is how it feels to me.  I have felt this way as far back as I can remember having memories.  I would say before turning 2 years old I can remember feeling alone.  Feeling like I had been left at someone elses house, and was waiting to be picked up.  I spent most of my childhood hiding, in the closet, under furniture, and looking back now, I truly was hiding from the sadness of feeling like I was amongst strangers.  Analyzing this now, knowing what I now know, since moms death,  I have confirmed this because nothing earth shattering happened to make me feel differently about my position in this family before mom died.  What I felt as a baby is real,  I am the stranger and I have never really belonged to this family is how it feels to me.  

My parents were known in the community and they cared what their peers thought about them .  I truly believe that was the reason why I have been given half of my parents estate.  The lack of bond between my parents and I, and how I was treated, should have resulted in me being written out of their estate.  I am thankful for being included in this part of their lives, it will make our lives easier, but I often wonder how it would feel to be loved, truly adored and cared about by my own parents.   To look like them, to be like them, to be part of their family, and to be able to say that our children look like dad, grandpa or anyone in thier family would be amazing.  To never feel the pain of being treated differently because I was not born into the family.  

We went to dinner after moms funeral, my entire family and this was discussed, about how my sisters son looks like dad.  And other similarities in the family.  Here I sat with my husband, and 3 grown children, our daughter has a baby girl, our son is expecting a baby in December.  Do they not see or understand that we cannot really participate in this discussion?  Dont they wonder who my kids look like?  Wouldnt that be amazing for them to be even a bit conscious of how left out we all feel when they talk like this and how strange they become if I do mention who looks like whom in my family?  Why are they NOT interested to know who we all look like, and why would they be so selfish to think we only care about who they look like?  I didnt hatch from an egg, I am not some alien that fell from the sky.  I do have birth parents and many sets of grandparents.  This adoption was not my choice, and I did not choose to be excluded or treated like a stranger.  A stranger is someone who is not familiar, an outsider.  Trust me when I tell you that no adoptee ever wants to feel this way.  I just dont know if it is possible to change this within my family, as my efforts and hard work have not proven to be successful in these 57 years.  I have to admit failure and realize I cannot force others to love and accept me as their own.  

Its over...

Its been a lifetime of trying to win her over, a fight for her affection, attention and love.  Since I can remember, I have been holidng her hand, sitting in her lap,  practically begging for love.  I didnt know I was doing it at the time, it wasnt until much later in life, after I had children and they were grown, I realized I was fighting for something I could never attain.  I kept trying, for the majority of my life, I really believed if I was a good girl and keep trying, that I'd somehow be like her real daughter, right up until the moment she died I believed she would give me a sign.   A sign that let me know my efforts, love, affection, loyalty and devotion to her were not in vain.  I never got that sign from mom, and I cannot explain to you how deeply sad I am about this now.  I will never have another chance to make her mine.  

A few years ago I was scanning old photos for my nieces wedding present, you know making a huge photo album of our family photos and not wanting to use originals.  Since mom has died, family wants access to all the thousands of family photos I've scanned.  Digging deep in my cloud I added thousands of photos to Dropbox, one by one.   

One by one,  I noticed something I had never noticed before.  I’m holding moms hand , sometimes with one hand , sometimes with both of my hands, leaning into her body .  Clearly I was an affectionate small child.  The look on my face in between mom and dad in Christmas photos , I look proud .  I even lean into dad , appearing very affectionate, which I’m sure I was until I reached about 3rd grade and realized what was going on.  And of course I guess I wasn’t as cute by 3rd grade and the novelty of being the baby wore off .  By 3rd grade I must have found my own personality and started to have my own opinions.  Looking back now I realize dad must have not liked who I was even in 3rd grade  or  maybe I wasn’t as cute or maybe it was just because he never wanted to adopt and was forced into it by mom?  Probably a combination of all of these things but I’m guessing my looks and personality were drastically different than my sisters who was his biological child .  

I realized last night while cooking dinner that it’s over , this struggle, this fight to somehow prove to my mom that I am worthy of her love , affection and trust .  This deep desire to belong to this family , is over .  No more trying so hard to be perfect, to cook the perfect dish for birthdays and holidays.  No more trying to sell myself to a family who clearly has never truly accepted me as one of them .  As I cook my creamy potato cheese soup I think of mom , how she loved this soup and how I will never again cook her another meal .  I will never again try to prove my worth to any of them again .  Sacrifice my health and well being to somehow get a smile or the reaction that only in my mind means I am accepted as one them.  Every visit with them results in a score , we rate the visits like the Olympics . Score cards showing how this visit rates and I’m usually saying , oh they seem nicer or kinder this time . Hoping that somehow , someway,  I have managed to convince them that I am worthy of their love and trust . 

A GIANT burden has been lifted off my shoulders since mom has died.  The game is over , nobody won. Truthfully I am the biggest loser .  It is now clear,  they really just don’t trust me as they do their own blood related family .  If you were here and could see the way they acted and looked at me while my own mom was dying you’d understand why I felt I was intruding on their private and personal journey of watching mom die .  I was a stranger amongst them , not even appreciated like the paid caretakers were.  I have never felt so alone and lost in my life as I did in the hours before mom died.   At one point we were all standing around mom and I let my niece find a spot around her bed.  She looked at me and said no, you can stand here...shes your mother.  I paused, and had no answer or reaction to that.  I thought, oh...you really had to say that out loud, that she is my mother too?  Did you just realize that after 32 years of life?   

I realized as I wiped away my tears and served moms favorite soup ( from scratch ) last night, that the fight is over.  My dearest husband said to me "Dear" you have been married to me for 35 years, longer than you lived with your parents.  I am your family and so are our children.  We debated the issue, and it was clear to me last night for the first time, that mom really never was able to bond with me, or have the same feelings about me as she did her own birth child.  She wanted to have those feelings about me, but never could force herself to feel it. Its over now, the fight to try and win her over, to force her to have the same feelings about me, is absolutely over.  I will never be put in that situation again.  I will never feel like an intruder again with their family, the odd man out.   I realized last night that I dont have the same love for my own mom as the others do, not becusae I didnt try, and not because I didnt want that wonderful feeling of belonging to my mom,  but because she has failed me her entire life.  It is my moms fault and no fault of mine, and somehow I have to accept this hearbreaking reality and keep breathing and living each day.  Some mornings I wake up and cant believe I will never get another chance to make it right with mom, but I also have found comfort in knowing the fight to belong to her and the rest of my family is over.