Consequences of Closing an Open Adoption

I gave my son up for adoption and I want him back. His parents don't want him to stay in contact with me. Do I have the right to be in his life when he wants me to? (Question first answered by me on Quora)

When you give up a child for adoption, the adoptive parents become his legal parents forever. They get to choose who he is in contact with, who he phones and writes to, who he lives with, who he visits with, until he’s 18. At that point the child is an adult and can choose for himself who to have in his life.

That being said, it is almost always in the child’s best interest to have their birth family in their lives to some degree. My older child was adopted at birth in an open adoption. We had planned to have his birth family involved in his life regularly for all of his years. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way.

His birth mother was struggling with mental health issues and not taking meds. She was making wild accusations against me which was seriously messing with my self-esteem. I was having a hard enough time as it was trying to parent a child who never slept, constantly screamed, and kept getting expelled from preschools.

In my state of chronic sleep deprivation and absolute frustration combined with defensiveness from being constantly attacked, I made a decision that permanently, negatively, effected our lives. I told his birth mother that she had to start going to therapy and get back on her meds before she had contact with our child again.

She reacted by getting even more crazy with her accusations. I can see now how devastating it must have been for her to be told she was too unwell to be allowed contact with the child she’d entrusted to my care. I should have found a better way to handle the situation. I have no clue what it is I should have done, but locking her out of our lives was most definitely the wrong answer. I didn’t see that, though, until he was completely gone from my life.

When he was 15, my son ran away from home, got on a bus and headed out of state to be with her, his birth mom. It did not go well for them. She did not have the skills to handle such a seriously psychiatrically unstable young man. Of course, it must be said, neither did I.

Looking back, I wish I’d been more accepting of his birth mother. Maybe, together, we could have found a way to better parent this very difficult child. I messed up big time in throwing her to the curb, and it’s something I can never take back. I can only hope that someday they can both forgive me for this awful mistake.

Psalm 31

I took a class tonight, learning about Psalm 31. It was not at all what I expected. As I listened to the words, and the translations, and the teaching and the explanations, I felt a little bit of the heaviness in my heart start to lift away. I made a commitment tonight to try to love and forgive myself. I did everything I could possibly do and I did it all with every bit of love and caring that I had inside of me. I deserve love and forgiveness. I deserve to stop beating myself up for not being good enough.

"I seek refuge in You, Shekhinah; may I never be disappointed; as You are righteous, rescue me. Incline Your ear to me; be quick to save me; be a rock, a stronghold for me, a citadel, for my deliverance. For You are my rock and my fortress; You lead me and guide me as befits Your name. You free me from the net laid for me, for You are my stronghold. Into Your hand I entrust my spirit; You redeem me, Shekhinah...

"...I trust in Shekhinah. Let me exult and rejoice in Your faithfulness when You notice my affliction, are mindful of my deep distress, and do not hand me over to my enemy, but grant me relief. Have mercy on me, O Shekhinah, for I am in distress; my eyes are wasted by vexation, my substance and body too. My life is spent in sorrow, my years in groaning; my strength fails because of my iniquity, my limbs waste away.

"Show favor to Your servant; as You are faithful, deliver me. O LORD, let me not be disappointed when I call You; ... How abundant is the good that You have in store ... for those who take refuge in You. You grant them the protection of Your presence... You shelter them in Your pavilion... Blessed is Shekhinah, for you have been wondrously faithful to me, a veritable bastion. Alarmed, I had thought, “I am thrust out of Your sight”; yet You listened to my plea for mercy when I cried out to You. So love Shekhinah, all you faithful; Shekhinah guards the loyal, and more than requites him who acts arrogantly. Be strong and of good courage, all you who wait for Shekhinah."'

July 12, 2014 Sarah to Michael

On Saturday, July 12, 2014 9:47 PM, Sarah wrote:

Dear Michael,

I have already made it clear to you that I am sorry I was not as good a mother as I should have been. And I cannot apologize to you for things I have not done. Sadly, sweetheart, you were the one who has been delusional, not me, hon. You have been diagnosed by many many psychiatrists and psychologists as having various psychotic disorders. They have almost all said that there was hope for you to get better, but only if you made the choice to get the help offered. I tried over and over to get you that help. You promised me over and over that you would accept that help, but you continue to run away from it.

Joey was taken from me for a few weeks this summer because I did not protect him from his father and from you. The judge gave him back to me as soon as he heard the case. I promised to get help to be able to be more protective of my children, and I have gotten that help. I have been in an intensive therapy program that has taught me to be more protective of Joey and of myself. It has also taught me to understand you and the dynamics between the two of us a lot better.

You needed help from a very young age that I was not yet able to give you. I tried everything I could think of but it wasn't enough. I understand that you cannot see what went on between us objectively. If you want to try to talk it through, I would be happy to do so, so long as you can stay calm and respectful. One of the many promises you have made to me but not yet kept, was that we could be in family therapy. I am still willing to do this.

I have had to make a lot of difficult decisions about my responsibilities towards you. One of the most difficult of these decisions was the choice to allow you to stay with your birth mother, in her home, and not in an inpatient facility back here. I made this choice because I'm hoping as an almost-adult you'll make the choice to get yourself the help you need. I cannot control your choices, your feelings, or your behaviors. I can only control my reactions to them.

I will always love you, Michael. I hope you can hear this letter with the love and caring that are meant to be its intent.

Love always,

Mom

April 19, 2024 Update, 15 years later

My Rachel goes by Michael now. The gender story is for another day. Michael made it out of the facility he was living in when last I wrote and made it up to Boston to live with his birthmother. She tried. She really did. He wanted money so he shot up a store, got one guy in the back. He went to jail, then longterm in an adult psychiatric lockdown, then halfway house after halfway house, getting kicked out of one after another. Then hotel after hotel, getting kicked out of one after another. He's still refusing to take meds. I don't have any idea how to help him. At this point I just have to try to keep myself safe.