Why is it so hard growing up away from your parents even if you have loving foster parents?

[confusedemotions]

I'm wondering if anyone has links to newer research that looks at what happens when mothers and infants are separated, or can shed any light on this, and how to solve it.

I feel so pathetic and ashamed that I carry these hurt, confused feelings. My teenage mum gave me to a very loving and nurturing family member to raise and visited me basically every weekend. She had a lovely new family and we got along well.

My mum died recently and I can't explain how bereft I feel about this. It is something to do with not having had her as "invested" in the daily minutiae of my life or feeling very alone and something? So much shared mundane stuff with her "real" family that I wasn't a key part of?

Therapy has not helped me at all. It simply made me feel more alone. How can I fix myself permanently and process this and FULLY stop being hurt by it?

AIBU and ungrateful? Like I was part of her family just not a typical relationship between mother and daughter - am I just being unreasonable to not be content with not being as "important" as her husband and other children?

I need to make these feelings go away. Please help.

That sounds really hard. I don’t know much about adoption but I have read all of Cathy Glass’s books. She has fostered for about 30 years & I know from her most recent book that a lot of adopted and fostered children have contacted her in adulthood for advice. You can contact her through her own website and she also says she’s on SM, maybe Facebook?
I hope you find some answers and resolution.

My dad was absent for all of my childhood, I first met him properly in my late 20's. He was in my life for about 12 years when he died last year.
All of those feelings of abandonment came straight back. It was like ripping a plaster off a very old and deep wound. It passed though, and I'm left with fond and happy memories.
Your not being ungrateful OP. Grief is terrible, be kind to yourself

I'll try and find the research but I think it is widely understood that a separation of a child from their mother is deeply traumatic even if the child is a newborn handed straight into the arms of a loving adopter.

I think you need to feel these awful traumatic feelings, with a supportive therapist on hand.

I'm so sorry you're suffering.

Here is some research

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115616/#:~:text=Children%20who%20experienced%20a%20separation,at%20age%203%20(β%3D%20.

Thank you, I haven't heard of Cathy Glass I will look her books up.

@BrummyMommy It's hard isn't it, I hope you are ok now.

Thank you for this. I think it's still quite novel for people to discuss the effect separation from the mother has on a baby. I think we're discovering more and more about how it shapes a young brain.

I’m sorry for your loss and how distressed you are feeling. One thing is I think that you sound like you are telling yourself you shouldn’t feel how you feel, which never really works to change feelings, maybe they get buried successfully for some time but they pop out if so.

I think your experience is consistent with decades of research into attachment theory. You probably know but this indicates that our early experiences create a ‘working model’ within us about relationships. Perhaps you don’t know a lot about your experiences in utero but they are part of shaping this model, then being separated as a newborn from the only mother you know is a significant separation that again adds to your model of what happens in relationships. You don’t sound ungrateful to your foster mother. I wonder if you are aware much of the growing field of an infant Mental Health? This link could be worth a read, not for an easy fix to these feelings but to help you at least accept yourself a bit more, that the way you feel is valid. https://parentinfantfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PIF-NHSCC-Briefing-1.pdf

As an aside, your experience is exactly why surrogacy is a terrible practice that is not to be normalised.

There's a lot of research about the impact of trauma on brain development, you could also look at anything on attachment theory. If you google Beacon House they have some brilliant resources that you might find really useful. As an adoptive parent I find them really helpful in understanding why my children find some things really tricky.

I’m adopted and when I decided to search for my birth family, the social worker involved told me that the text they rely on now is called The Primal Wound. I read and it resonated from the first page xx

I have read quite a bit of Winnicott and Bowlby, are there any more current key theorists writing on attachment?

I had a good, secure attachment to my foster mother. Felt very loved and loved her so much, although she was ill with life threatening issues throughout my childhood and I wonder if that made me a little anxious as I worried a lot about her dying.

Now I think of it, I don't actually remember a time when I wasn't worried about her dying, at some level. I simply assumed that was a normal part of child development, as a small child becomes aware of death. Is that right? I don't have kids myself, so I don't know how concerned very little ones are about their loved ones dying.

I have heard of this book, and thought I wasn't the right audience as I was never formally adopted. I'm curious though and might give it a go as so many people have good things to say about it, and feeling understood.

I am sorry op.

Did you post about this before? There was something very similar not long ago. I think there was a suggestion that it must have been very traumatic to see the mother visiting but going home to her 'new' family. If this is your experience then it is very understandable why you would have even more complicated feelings than someone who was adopted/fostered but their mother didn't go on to manage to keep and take care of other children.

Do you think it's different for mother than for kids without fathers? My son is almost 18 and hasn't seen his dad (who is a waste of space TBF) since he was a baby and so far has shown no ill affects. I have always kept an open dialogue about his dad and he says that he has no interest in him and isn't bothered. I'm aware it might change as he gets older. He does have a very strong bond with my own dad, his grandad, who has been a very positive male role model in his life so this might have helped? I'll always support him as he gets older and continue to hope it doesn't affect him a serious way but it does play on my mind.

West wishes OP, I can't imagine how hard it is for you 💐

Yeah I think it can be normal for kids to obsessively fear a parent dying. Not saying it's healthy, but it's not uncommon. Probably not helped by the fa that so many kid's films start with a parent dying in a car crash and the child being sent to either a boarding school or mean foster parents.

The pain will probably never leave you, but I think it's like grief, it gradually fades, occasionally resurfacing when you're having a hard time

I agree the primal wound is very interesting and I am going to be honest, a really hard read for an adopter like me. My DD was fostered by my partner and I from birth and we went on to adopt her. She is loved and secure but there have been huge impacts on her. She had a stressful pregnancy and with that has come the change in brain development that means she has little impulse control and her fight or flight response is incredibly heightened. She went through a stage last year where she was so angry all the time. She is through that now but I doubt it is dealt with forever. Much love to you, I hope you can move on with your grief not being so painful

Yes, I wonder this too and think generally mothers get a lot of flack.

I didn't really know my dad and it is painful in a general way to not have a dad, but somehow I never craved my actual dad's love. It's different.

He behaved like an absolute shit and I am full of contempt for him but he has no emotional hold over me. I don't care about him. Maybe it's a bit like that for your son, and he has the good relationship with your dad so perhaps that fills the gap for him? I'm sure he will be ok with your love and support.

There is a huge body of research around this and the brain and attachment and how from inception trauma is recorded.

Read the body keeps the score.

How you feel is deep rooted, valid and in the real sense of the word very normal. You need relational therapy to help you heal the wounds of the acute stress of being separated from your birth mum.

Lots of love

I'm so sorry for your loss OP. Look into Matrix birth reimprinting, it's based off EFT and really fascinating for connecting with parts of us from utero and birth and healing them xx

Forgive me if I'm way off the mark but it sounds like you did see your birth mother and you probably felt eager to please her and like you shouldn't be jealous of her having another family, but actually, it's normal to feel that way. She went home to other children and she left you behind. You need to allow yourself to feel how you feel about that - sad, upset, jealous, cross etc.

I think children can have a very primal connection with their birth mother that's unlike any other relationship.

I am not trying to belittle any adoptive parents bonds with their children as in any way lesser - i am simply reflecting on it as different.

Its something quite basic and instinctive, an infant has very primitive responses to particular physical stimuli, the voice and heartbeat it has heard in utero, a sense of familiarity of smell, the rhythm of motion, cadence of breathing and timing of body clock - sleeping, eating, using the loo, from having grown inside the mother.

I do think being removed from all that in infancy must be very difficult to tolerate.

Don't know if this is relevant/helpful but I had an elderly and often unwell father who always actually used to reference the fact he would die sooner, this definitely had an impact on me and I was also constantly quietly worrying about him dying.

I guess this is natural if you have a very unwell parent/carer?

My experience is the same as yours, except I was lied to and told my real mother was my sister.

I always felt jealous of her new family and wished I belonged with them.

I also had awful.obsessive thoughts about my Foster mother dying. I had OCD as a child, from age 5 and although 'cured'of it by 12 I've suffered from various obsessions all my life.

Both my real mother and Foster mother are now dead.

I don't know what the answer is, but I just keep on keeping on.

I was in care for the first 11 years and saw my mum a few times. She died when I was 10. It wasn't that hard because she wasn't in my life. It fucked me up when she died though.

You will be obsessed with your relationship to her for quite a while, Even if you'd spent every day with her, you would still be feeling like it wasn't enough right now. Grief is obsessive.

But I'll be blunt I doubt any of those studies about parental separation, would include your situation. You went to live with family members you already knew and she remained a constant figure in your life throughout the 'separation' process, you saw her more often than some kids see the parents they live with and you say you had firm attachments to everyone else as well. You were in no doubt that you were loved and you could rely on her.
So, why are you looking for evidence that you were somehow 'permanently broken' as a baby?
That won't explain away your grief.