I have been writing about our domestic adoption of two older girls and the challenges we have had in regards to the relationship we have with their birth mother. I am sharing this story because I am sure that we are not the only domestic adoptive family in a difficult situation, and I hope that maybe our story can be of encouragement, support and help to other families in challenging situations.

In my earlier posts I wrote about how we had high hopes for a positive open relationship with my girls' birth mother and then I wrote about the challenges and struggles that came when it became clear that an open relationship was not going to work. Things were going well until they changed, and that is a constant in human relationships. Things change.

One day, a good two years or so after our girls placement with us, we got a letter from the girls' birth mother (who had previously disappeared and not left a forwarding address). The letter showed up addressed to the girls, and was filled with in inappropriate things, and there were some pictures of family members (that had been promised years ago). I put the letter away, but then wrote an update on the girls and included some pictures and sent them to the agency (I had been sending them every six months as I had agreed, even though I didn't know if/when she would get them). In her letter to the girls she asked that they "write back", which of course they didn't do.

Six months later we got a letter from an "aunt" of the girls stating they she found our contact info on a paper that the girls' birth mom was throwing away, and she was hoping to get in touch with the girls because the whole extended family missed them.

This was tough for me because we had been told that the extended family had not gotten to say goodbye to the girls, but that when the birth mother had asked for help and support in caring for them, no one was willing to h help. I thought of loving aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents who had never gotten to say goodbye to the girls, and felt very torn over the right thing to do.

I created an email address just for the purpose of emailing this "aunt" back. I told her our entire adoption story/experience, start to finish, including the difficulties we had had with the girls' mother. I told her why it had been decided to put off any future contact until the girls were older. I stated that I was very open to the idea of building a relationship with this aunt, however I also said that at that point I had no way of knowing if it was an aunt acting without the mother's knowledge as I was told, if the mom was reading over the aunt's shoulder or if there was no aunt and it was the mother. I made sure that I did not include anything in that email that I would not tell the birth mom, or things that she wouldn't already know (because she had done them). I made sure I said that we always talk about the girls' birth family in a positive way, that the girls remember and love them and that they are in our thoughts and prayers often.

I included pictures of the girls, an update on how they were doing and also reiterated that I would not be putting the girls in touch with their birth mom at this point in their lives, because it was my job to protect them and do what I thought was best for them, and she had not acted in their best interest in any way.

I never heard back.

Continued in next post.