It's hard to know what to expect when meeting someone for the first time. In this case, it's even more complex when that person is their birth parent. People open up about their experiences meeting their biological parents for the first time.
She Feels Abandoned Again
“My birth mother was always talked about as an amazing, mature, beautiful and strong 19-year-old that gave me up because she knew she couldn’t provide as a single college student. I ate it up like candy. There was always this horrible fear of being abandoned throughout my entire life. And I became prone to depression and anxiety.
I had a wonderful loving family but I always mourned the fact that no one understood my tendency towards anxiety and depression. I wanted to know what I would look like and became a bit obsessed with games that allowed genetics (like the Sims games with hair color and body shape, etc.).
When I was 18 I was going through a lot, but I found her with some poking online. I freaked out and pushed it aside.
Just recently I contacted her. I collapsed in tears on the floor. She sounded so familiar somehow. I called her and we talked and cried and she sent me pictures. I had 3 wonderful half-siblings who didn’t know of my existence. Everything seemed good. She even had the same tendencies!
A bit ago she stopped talking to me. There was no more mention of me meeting her kids at all when I did manage to get a text out of her. Eventually, my world came crashing down as she abandoned me AGAIN. I hate it. I don’t like the trigger she has caused of being abandoned and unwanted. I wish I hadn’t contacted her.”
It’s Unlike Anything He’s Ever Felt Before
Uber Images/Shutterstock
“I’m a 24-year-old male, and I just recently met my bio-parents this summer.
For me, it was a great experience. My adoptive parents aren’t really like me at all. I like heavy music, art, and tattoos. My biological parents, however, are exactly like me. So meeting these people that I’ve never known, and watching how they act, what they like, and the overall sense of feeling like I’m home is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. When I visit them, we both notice the little similarities we share. That feeling is indescribable.
There’s an opposite side of the coin for some adopted people though. I can’t imagine having the constant curiosity of who these people are, going through the legal process that some have to – only to find out that those people are addicts, in jail, or even dead. It would break my heart
I consider myself lucky. I now have a brother and a sister that I never knew about. I have a relationship with my bloodline that I’ve never had the chance to until now.
It’s bizarre, how can I have the same mannerisms and outlook on life as people I’ve never met?!”
She’s Just Like Her
“It was a very intense/emotional experience and I am really glad I met my birth mom. She got in touch with me through the adoption agency when I was 19. I didn’t have direct contact with her at first, and the agency told her a little about me, and vice versa.
I was at work when I received a call with the finalized plans for us meeting for the first time. I wanted to meet her but the realization that this was actually going to happen was overwhelming. I went to the bathroom and cried because it was too much to process.
The adoption agency suggested a restaurant for us to meet at. I first saw her in the parking lot. We hugged. She had my hair. She had my eyes. She had my laugh. It was surreal. We got food and she told me about how I have two half-sisters. She had letters for me from both of them.
I now am good friends with her and my sisters. I see them around the holidays and a few other times a year. My real family comes first always but I am so glad to have met my birth mom because I am just like her!”
Her Twin Initiated Contact First
Andrey Arkusha/Shutterstock
“I have a twin sister who initiated contact with our bio mother and pressed for us to all get together. I was not ready for it and had no need for any of it at that point in my life. I already had a mom. Nothing was missing from my life. Moreover, I didn’t want to have her ask about how my life had been and either tell her the truth and make her feel sad (or worse, guilty) or lie and feel like a crappy person for doing so. But in the end, I worried most that BioMom would be hurt and/or assume that I was angry at her or resented being given up if my sister showed up and I didn’t. So I went.
It’s a very strange thing to have a complete stranger brought into your life who simultaneously has the strongest, closest bond possible with you (biology). BioMom was very familiar to me from the moment I met her. Our similarities are almost unsettling. We have the exact same handwriting. I’ve seen pictures of her as a child, and she looks more like me at that age than my identical twin sister did. SHE looks like my twin. I’m her doppelganger. We have the same personality, the same interests, and hobbies, very similar paths in life. It’s quite strange being your own nature vs. nurture experiment!”
There’s No Room For Her In His Life
sanneberg/Shutterstock
“When I was 18, I suddenly had a really strong urge to know ‘who I was and where I came from,’ so I signed up on this website where you put in your date of birth and where you were born, and if somebody came along who put in the same information for when they gave a child up for adoption, it would connect the two of you (my adoption records were sealed, so there was no way for me to request the information). I promptly forgot about it 2 weeks later.
Flash forward to when I was 24 and had completely forgotten about this thing, and I suddenly get an email out of the blue from someone saying that they found me through the website I had signed up for 6 years ago and that they’re pretty sure they’re my biological mom. We talked for a bit over email and on the phone, and then she wound up flying down to visit me where I was living at the time.
It was interesting to see what we shared both in terms of physical traits as well as mannerisms, and to learn a little bit about how I came to be born, why I was given up for adoption and the like, but it also quickly became clear that part of what she wanted from me was for me to become a part of her life again.
She had this son-shaped hole in her life that had been created when she had to give me up (and it was good that she did, she was way too young to have raised a child), but I already had a mom who had literally been there from the day I was born to feed me, change my diapers, take me out to get embarrassing haircuts when I was a toddler, take me to the eye doctor to get my lazy eye fixed, for me to get all angsty and angry at when I was a teenager, to tell me how proud of me she was when I graduated high school, and then college, to congratulate me when I got engaged, and then tell me the smartest decision I ever made was to break up with that girl and nobody in the family had ever liked her.
There was no room for her. And it felt like a disservice to this amazing woman who had been there for me my entire life to try to make her fit. I still hear from her occasionally, usually on my birthday, and I bear no ill will or animosity towards her, but I just don’t want her in my life. There’s nothing malicious about it, I just don’t want or need her around.”
She Will Probably Never Want To Meet In Person
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“We haven’t technically met yet, however, I did end up finding my biological mom and siblings online when I was at the tail end of my middle school years. I think my older sister (we are biological sisters, she was adopted first and a year later I was adopted from the same family into the same family as my sister) struggled more with her identity about being adopted than I did growing up, so she was actually the point of contact between our biological mom and me.
I chatted briefly on AIM with my biological grandmother before she passed away from lung cancer. She held out hope that she’d meet me before she died but I wasn’t ready. It didn’t take too long to realize that our biological mother was a bit unhinged, which killed any desire to meet her in person.
She apparently called up our adoptive mom out of the blue and complained to her out about her being a bad parent and lying to us about her problems (my adoptive mom came clean and admitted to me around that time that my biological mom did some illegal substances and smoked heavily during my pregnancy which may have contributed to some physical and cognitive problems I have), basically made her seem like a bad person.
We were way too young to be in contact with our biological family and it was a negative experience to go behind my adoptive mom’s back and talk to our biological family members. Legally it was a closed adoption, but our bio mom and adoptive mom stayed in touch with pictures, cards, letters, and phone calls.
I was given a shoe box of letters sent from my biological father while he was in prison when I was around sixteen. I tracked down his inmate ID number for the federal prison he was in, articles about his crime, and some basic information on his record that I could pull. I’m a good little investigator. He went away for robbing a freaking Wells Fargo. He made off with like three grand and recently died of AIDS in prison brought on by getting HIV by sharing needles. I never spoke to him. He was a bad person.
Recently my adoptive mom and dad have opened up a bit more about our adoptions. It was truly a scummy situation that they took us away from. The other four older kids that my bio parents kept were sleeping on lawn furniture, they couldn’t afford beds. My adoptive mom went out and bought them all beds and bedding while waiting for me to be born. My adoptive dad bought our bio dad a new engine for his car because he couldn’t take our bio mother to doctor’s appointments. Only two of their kids finished high school, one now has an associate’s degree. Both of the girls got pregnant in high school. The kids our bio parents kept ended up pretty messed up.
I’m so grateful that my mom and dad love me unconditionally. They are my true parents, regardless of blood and genetics. I might have people running around out there, spread across the country, that share my nose, my awkward laugh, my diminutive stature, and my propensity to get sunburned easily, however they are not my real family. My real family keeps my bedroom like I never left, just in case I want to come home to visit even though we now live hundreds of miles away.
My real family sat through thousands of softball games, tutored me in math, celebrated my high school and college graduations, hugged me every night and tucked me in, sends me care packages and wacky cards out of the blue to brighten my week, and are the ones that I immediately call whenever anything happens in my life. My dad will be the one walking me down the aisle someday and my mom is, and always will be, my anchor and best friend even though we fight like cats and dogs sometimes.
I still creep on my biological family’s Facebook’s these days. They are okay. The kids made it, they have kids and families and jobs and lives. My bio mom is still kicking, she looks like a wrinkled, little old gremlin from smoking too much and being out in the Nevada sun her whole life. I hope my smoke-free, healthy living, sunscreen-wearing, east coast upbringing will thwart me looking like that in twenty-five years.
Being adopted is just part of who I am. I love my parents and they have given me the best life possible, a life my biological siblings never had the opportunity to live. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet my bio family, I guess I passed that wondering stage and just really don’t care anymore. Maybe if I’m ever rolling through their area I’d meet them, but it’s not on my bucket list. The only family I need are only a few hours drive, a quick phone call or text, or Skype away. They’re always there for me and I love them for that beyond what words could describe.”
They Met Their Birth Mother In Unfortunate Circumstances
“I was adopted by my parents at the age of 1 and I didn’t meet my biological mother until I was 16. I had learned at an early age that the reason I was given up for adoption is because my mother was an addict. She had used while pregnant with my 3 older brothers and my 1 older sister, which caused them to have mental disabilities.
The way I met my birth mother was actually a horrific story in itself. I was sitting on the couch in my house watching television when a story came on about a mother who was sad about something. I didn’t pay attention and thought it was just another sob story. A little later in the day, the same story played and it showed the mother’s name, which was fairly interesting. I then told my parents about the news story and that the mother has the same last name as us. My father after hearing this from me immediately told me to say nothing to anyone because he was going to contact people.
A few days went past and my dad gathered myself, and all my siblings to the living room. He told us to watch the recording of the news story I told him about and to take some time to understand. As the recording starts playing the news station starts by saying a little girl has been beaten to death by her babysitters, and they have been put in jail for a long time. The story followed with talking to the mother who says she had put trust in these people to look after her child, not kill her.
Midway through the mother’s speaking, my father pauses the screen and told us who she is. He said ‘That is your mother and unfortunately that is your younger sister. The funeral is this Friday and we are going.’
After asking him how he found this information, he told us that after I told him about the news story he contacted everyone to find the truth. Turns out he not only contacted the adoption center, but he contacted the police, the child’s lawyer, our mother, and funeral place to check. That Friday we went to the funeral, it was the saddest moment of our lives and at the same time a happy moment. We didn’t get to see our sister in her casket, but instead, we were led to a special place in the church to wait for our mother. My sister who is the oldest waited outside smoking to calm her nerves, but in no way was she prepared. I remember hearing a loud scream and then uncontrollable sobs coming from outside. At which point I see my sister walking inside the building clutched to a woman I didn’t recognize.
At first, I thought it was someone helping my sister to stop crying, but turns out it’s our mother holding her up. We were led into a room where we could all talk one on one and find out things about our mother we never knew. Our mother enjoyed dancing, singing, helping the community, and spending time with her friends. At this moment I was stuck in two thoughts. How do I relate to her, and why don’t I feel anything towards her?
At the very end of our conversation, we were told by our birth mother and my parents that no one can know that she has more children or that we exist. At first, I didn’t understand, but my father pressed further. ‘If people figure out that you exist not only will they bother our lives, but your mother’s life will be put more unbearable pain.’
My brothers and sister all agreed, and we prayed. In the moments from watching the television to being at my sister’s funeral, it felt like an unreal dream, like something I will never understand. After the service, we went to the graveyard to say our goodbyes, and at that moment my birth mother hugged me the tightest. It was the shock of a lifetime, and then I felt the utter sadness overwhelm me. Not only had my mother lost her youngest child, but her second youngest child she won’t see again.
After my sister was lowered into her grave, we talked to our mother for a bit and gave her a hug. I remember leaving her at the gravesite as we went home. I will never forget seeing her lifeless face. It looked as if her life came crashing down in front of her, as her daughter was laid to rest and seeing her other children. I felt horrible as we left and to make it worse the reporters had been following her the whole time, from the church to the grave.
It’s been awhile now and although I won’t see my birth mother again, the pain has passed. I feel closure after meeting her and now felt that a part of me has been found. Although that part of me was only my heritage, my history belongs with my real parents, the ones who took care of me because my birth mother couldn’t. In the end, I am happy with how things turned out. I met my birth mother but I never felt closer to my real parents.”
They Can’t Image Life Without All Of Them
“I am in my mid-20s and was the first open adoption (meaning, I grew up with contact with my birth parents) in the region where I was born and raised. I have always known I was adopted, have always had full contact (letters, phone calls, visits, etc) with my biological families, and have never had any restrictions about communicating with them. I cannot imagine life any other way.
My birth mom was a young teen when she had me, with dreams of graduating high school, going to college, and becoming a nurse. She’s from a conservative Catholic family, so she was/is very pro-life. However, she was able to recognize that, as a single teen mom she would not be able to provide the things she felt I deserved– a two-parent family, a Catholic education, extracurriculars, etc. She was also not ready to completely give up her dreams, but she was realistic about the likelihood of actually seeing them through to fruition in a reasonable amount of time as a single mother. College is hard enough without the energy and expense involved with raising a child. And even though she was and is one of the most responsible people I know, she still wanted the things most teenagers want — to live away from home in a dorm, to go out and party and act a bit rebellious, to casually date and have fun. Fortunately for both of us (as well as my adoptive parents), she made a choice that benefited all of us.
She lives nearby, attended every one of my birthdays, came to watch me at sporting events, and visited on holidays. We’d have sleepovers, I’d hang out with my extended biological family, and we did volunteer work together. She got married when I was 12, and I was a bridesmaid at her wedding. She was my Confirmation sponsor, and her son was the ring bearer in my wedding.
My birth dad lives 1,200 miles away, but he’d call and write regularly and visited frequently. We’d take family vacations to see him when I was younger, and when I got older I’d fly there solo to spend a week or two with him and his younger daughters. He’s getting re-married at the end of the month, and I just booked my flight to attend the wedding.
I have very large extended families on both the adoptive and biological sides, so it’s really cool having literally a hundred-plus first cousins. And I’m actually close with all of them (even though they span about 30 years, I’m right in the middle), so no matter which side of the family I’m with, we always have a great time.
I freaking love my family (adoptive and biological), and cannot imagine life without any of them. Completely positive experience for me.”
She Turned Out To Be A Terrible Parent
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“I was adopted from birth and went on to meet my biological mother at 17. I learned many things about her and her family over the past 5 years. My biological mother is a crazy, pathological liar and claims to have been taken advantage of and therefore had me. No one in the family believes this to be true. After getting to know her and catching her in several lies, I don’t believe it to be true either. She says that my biological father is dead but it’s hard to believe and after doing my own research I cannot find any trace of him. I’m not sure she even knows who the father is because at the time she had me/got pregnant she was an addict and very promiscuous. I worry I will never know him because she will not reveal his full name.
The family is from a very small and rural town while I was raised in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the states. I also have a brother who is 5 years younger than me. He was raised by our biological mother but has anger issues, learning disabilities, and health problems. My biological grandfather is illiterate and my grandmother was a stay-at-home mom. She is a very sweet lady and I stay with her when I go to visit. My grandfather is a sour old man but he likes me quite a bit. I think it’s because I’m successful and I work hard for what I had like he had to. He has disowned two of his three children (including my biological mother). The dynamic of the family is very, very messed up.
All in all, I’m so fortunate to have been adopted out of that family. My biological mother turned out to be a terrible and abusive parent. However, when I go visit, I feel at home. I’m not the odd girl out, I fit into the redneck lifestyle that they live. I am not crazy like they are and always seem to be the voice of sanity when I am there and everyone is fighting. Going there reminds me just how lucky I am to have gotten out but also that a part of me will always be from that type of life.”
She’s So Glad They Got Together
“I met my birth mother this past spring! She added me on Facebook and quickly chatted before calling. She lived close so we talked and made plans to meet. She brought my half brother and sister. There was no doubt we were related – such similar mannerisms and we looked so similar!
It wasn’t that she didn’t want me. She got pregnant on birth control, and my birth father cheated on her, she was 17 and knew she couldn’t provide the kind of life she wanted me to have. I was always told that she had to give me up because she was too young. I never blamed her for ‘giving me away,’ I can’t imagine how hard that choice is for a mother.
I have great parents who raised me, who taught me well, and now I have a whole new wonderful family! I grew up as an only child, so having younger siblings is great! My sister is just like me at that age, and my brother is the most mature young man I’ve met. My stepdad is a hoot and I adore my mom. She tells me she gained two kids, since my boyfriend has been there all this time.
She actually met my adoptive father (my mom passed), and stepmom. She told him he was her hero, and my siblings call him ‘grandpa.’ He was so happy meeting them. I think he now knows where I get my craziness from!
This whole meeting played out like a quirky movie, and I’m so glad we got together. How quickly we just settled into each other was just mind-blowing. I loved my family at first meeting, and I can’t wait to have them meet my boyfriend’s family next.
Funny, growing up others teased me if they knew I was adopted. Even some family did, but now I know I have this giant loving family and a woman who never stopped loving me and thinking about me, since the day I left her arms.”
Prison Did A Number On Her
“My mom was on trial as an accomplice to murder when I was born so I was taken straight from the hospital to a foster home. I spent 8 years bouncing from foster home to orphanage and back again. At 8, I was adopted by my maternal grandmother and was introduced for the first time to my brothers and sister. My grandma was only interested in the adoption assistance checks, so by age 14, I was on my own again. This left me once again with no family as no connection was made with my siblings.
Fast forward 10 years and I find out via Facebook my mother had made parole. I decided to go meet her on the off chance of making a connection. There was none, prison had done a number on her and she had the mind of an institutionalized prisoner. I found out from her who my biological dad was and that he had died in prison 4 years earlier.
My mom gave me two hundred dollars as an apology I took it and blew it on drinks and gas. I never spoke to her again. I did go visit my dad’s grave. I cleaned it up and pulled all the weeds away from it. I left a letter I had written under a rock by his tombstone. Then walked away and never returned. I didn’t get any closure out of meeting her, I didn’t really get anything. Not having any family is something one gets used to. In some situations, it’s better this way.”
She Feels Complete
“I just met my biological mother yesterday and she’s still in touch with my bio-father! It wasn’t awkward at any moment and she was absolutely everything I could have hoped to find, it has completed my life and shot my confidence up to know I’ve inherited looks and traits from both her and my bio-father.
My adoptive mother has been fantastic and is the one who contacted her. Meeting my bio-mother turned out to be a Lifetime Movie instead of a Jerry Springer episode.
I’ve been messaging her all day just getting to know each other and I’m going to meet my bio-dad when he’s most comfortable with it.
I’m 17, and I was put up for adoption because she was still in high school and knew it would be best for me in the long run.
I’ve known I was adopted since a very young age and my adoptive mom has made sure every step of the way that I’m comfortable and understand how to handle things. I’ve wanted to meet my bio-parents since I’ve found out and I’ve been told little things about them every year until I recently started opening up to my adoptive mother about wanting to meet them more.”
He Will Only Ever Have One Dad
“My biological father left me and my mom when I was 10-months-old. He signed over custody to my real dad when I was 3 when Jim (real dad) married my mom in exchange to not have to pay any back child support payments that he never paid when he skipped out on us.
At their wedding, they had a little segment when Jim made a promise to me that he would always be there for me and be the best dad he could be.
When I turned 18, my biological father called my house wasted to say that ‘Now that you’re 18 and your mother can no longer control your life I would like to be apart of it.’
I met him shortly after to tell him that I had no hard feelings toward him but that I didn’t need him in my life because this world decided that I needed a better dad than he could have ever been and that’s why Jim will be the only dad I ever have. That was 10 years ago and he has never contacted me since.”
She’s A Little More Attached Than Her
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“I’m adopted and I met my birth mother about 2 years ago. It wasn’t a priority to me, I waited until I was much older than legally required. I had felt complete, my adoptive family is great. It wasn’t until I’d had kids of my own that I understood a bit more what she went through and I ended up looking her up.
She’s a lot like me, we have similar interests and we look alike. She’s not really like a mother to me, more like a friend who is a little more attached to me than I am to her, which was awkward at first. I’m not a hugger, for example, and I can tell there have been many moments where she wanted to hug me and I hardly knew her and it takes me a long time to warm up to hugging people.
I like her a lot, she’s cool and she did a great thing for me. (She was 14 when she had me) to her, I am her daughter, but she’s not really a mom to me. That sounds cold, I guess.”
They Don’t Really Share A Bond
Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock
“I was born in Oldham, England to a lady with an older son already. By the age of two, I’d been adopted into a family living about 60 miles to the west, on the coast.
Those people are my parents and my sister. They’ve been my family since always. I don’t ever recall a time when I didn’t know I’d been adopted – the social services people prepared a book for me with pictures and the rough, understandable-to-a-five-year-old outline of the details of what happened.
At 24, having left home and started my own family, I found my biological family through Facebook. We talked, met up, reunited a little, and things were great for a while. The thing is, we’re distinctly different people, with very different upbringings – even the five biological siblings I have, we share no real bond.
Now at 26, yeah, I’m happy I met her and got her side of the events which fundamentally steered my life down the path it has followed. I got my answers, but, beyond that, I don’t think we need much from each other.”
She Became Even Happier
Daxiao Productions/Shutterstock
“Technically this isn’t me but it’s quite an impressive story nonetheless. The sister’s best friend was an adopted Chinese girl flown over to Western Europe after being dropped off at a foster home in China. We’ll call her Emma. She had always had difficulty living with the idea that her biological family lived miles and miles away and so she gathered the little information she had about her birth mother (she had left a note in Emma’s clothing pocket with her name, date of birth, and saying she was sorry) and started looking online. She knew what foster home she was from and so she knew the general area.
Even though she didn’t find her mother on there, she found a friend of her mom’s that promised Emma for them to meet up. Emma flew out with her adoptive parents and visited her mom. Her mom was a poor Chinese woman that worked on a farm and wouldn’t have been able to provide for her family. Furthermore, she was a drinker, which explained some of the mental difficulties Emma faced while growing up.
Emma came back home happy she had met her biological mother but even happier that she was adopted by two very loving parents that provided for her like they did. She really did become a happier person and many of her questions are answered now.”