
Adoption, foster care, and anything similar can be either a rewarding experience or a total nightmare. One person who was given up for adoption as a baby found the latter to be true. Sadly after being adopted as a baby after being given up by two 19-year-olds, the Redditor was put into foster care at age 11, and remained in the system until they graduated.
However, when they turned 18, they found their biological parents, but were met with disappointment.
"When I turned 18, I was given my mother's contact information by someone. I found out she was married to my biological father," the Redditor wrote.
The parents had public profiles on Facebook and Instagram, so the adoptee ended up messaging the mother, who never responded.
"I then tried to message my father who basically replied saying that he's sorry but they would rather not have me in their lives," the person elaborated. "That it took them a while to grieve over giving me up and that they don't want to go through all that pain again."
Upset, the adoptee sought out other family members, which was easy to do given the public nature of the parents' social media profiles.
"I ended up messaging my grandmother (my mother's mom) who was actually happy to know me," they wrote. "I met her in person and we really bonded. I also have two younger siblings but I didn't contact them after what my father said."
About four months ago, they saw their father post of a picture from a church event with the caption "My beautiful wife and our two amazing kids."
"Don't you mean three kids?" they ended up commenting.
"I didn't really expect the amount of people responding to that as I did. There were a bunch of people my parents knew that started asking questions. I freaked out and deleted my comment. Then I started getting DMs from people, including people I was related to. Later that day, my grandmother made a post confirming I was a child given up for adoption."
The adoptee began making family connections and was even invited to a few parties -- events their parents weren't welcome to any longer.
"The whole drama has kind of messed with their lives and business," confessed the adoptee. "My parents are now apparently separated. I don't really accept that as my fault."
But still, they wanted to know — were they wrong for what they did?
People were flabbergasted they even asked, as almost unanimously everyone concluded they were in the wrong.
"You intentionally disrespected their wishes," one reader blatantly put it. "I get it, it sucks. I was put up for adoption myself and even went through a failed adoption too. But that doesn’t mean you get a pass on [expletive] on their wishes like that. That was pretty much the worst way you could have gone about things. You could have quietly started reaching out to people who seemed related to them through private messages."
And others agreed that OP went about it entirely the wrong way.
"You know they do not want to engage with you. You got the relationship you wanted with your grandma, she could have put you in touch with more extended family. This was just to needle them."
However there were a few folks who empathized with the adoptee, saying the parents were in the wrong.
"I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the parents if they had married other people and had families with different spouses," said one user. "Giving OP up for adoption when teens and not wanting to go back to that child when they have a new family is one thing. But they ended up marrying each other anyway and now have two more children — those being the only ones they are prepared to acknowledge and OP being the one they aren't when it is hardly OP's fault that his mother was young when he/she was born."
Whether or not the adoptee was in the right or the wrong, it can be agreed that they should consider going to counseling to deal with their trauma.
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