Meeting ‘mom’ underscores love for adoptive parents

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/03/2021 (2001 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I just had the painful experience of meeting my birth mother — the long-ago “girl” who gave me up as a baby, and thank goodness! My birth mother turns out to be a messed-up woman with a big drinking problem, and I’m not the only baby she gave away, she told me — way too casually.

I’m embarrassed to say I made a big fuss about finding her over the last few years. I caused a lot of pain and unnecessary fear to my adoptive mother, whom I will forever refer to as my real mother from now on. She is a wonderful woman who wanted a baby desperately, as did my dad. So, they got me.

I wish I’d never found this birth mother, who is an active drunk who had no real yearning to meet me, unless there was money involved. No such luck. I am a perennial student. I was warned it might not be a good experience, and there certainly wasn’t anything good about it I can see yet, unless you can think of something?

— Regretful Adopted Son, Winnipeg

Dear Regretful: The best thing about meeting this birth mother is you can put that quest behind you. Now you can totally get into enjoying and appreciating the loving set of parents you’ve had as long as you can remember. Adoptive parents can feel pretty insecure when their child is on the hunt for a birth mother, who might turn out to be more loved than they are. Your parents don’t have to fear that anymore.

Tell them how you felt about that disappointing meeting, how much you love them, and that you’re sorry if you made them feel less important than they are to you. Thank them whenever memories pop up from your happy childhood with them.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Believe it or not, I met a wonderful new woman during COVID, and we are having a different experience than ever before because of the virus threat.

For one thing, there’s no competition. We’re not out at bars meeting other people. For that matter, we’re not out at social events of any kind.

Other than our families, we really just see each other, and we both work from home. We get lonely working, so we really treasure seeing each other after the work day is through.

The fear at the beginning was what would happen when things opened back up again. And then they didn’t. We fell more and more in love, and I really think we will get married one day.

It used to feel like there were so many choices I’d never be able to settle down — and now I have. But will that change when we finally get back to normal socializing?

— Not Wanting a Change-back, Fort Richmond

Dear Not Wanting a Change-back: Nobody knows, but the threat of severe illness for ourselves and fear of getting other people sick sobered up a couple generations of people who were feeling pretty entitled to changing partners and not caring much about the welfare of strangers or even neighbours they bumped into.

We were pretty much taking our own lives and those of our families for granted.

Many people were used to travelling, heading off to sunspots instead of engaging with winter and relying on outside forces for entertainment instead of creating it.

Frankly, I like the kinder and deeper people we have become during the pandemic. Life is a gift we may not all get to keep, and now we are aware of that.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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