Not my intensions…

I have wrote a lot of things about Sam (and Will) and their families and I just write as I think and feel, I am not so good about filtering my thoughts.

I still love Sam, very much. I think about her all the time. I wonder how she is doing and having gone over 3 weeks without talking to her has been torture!

I don’t mean to make all birth parents look bad. Some are great people, some are bad people. Some are very trust worthy and you can have a very open adoption with and it can be a great thing. Some are bad people who you do need to protect your child from.

I hate when other people say negative things about Sam with Emma around! I do NOT want my daughter growing up hearing that her mom is a bad person. I don’t think Sam is a bad person, I think she had made some mistakes and bad decisions. I don’t know Will so I can’t even had an opinion about him, except all I have heard from Sam and Kay are mostly negative things.

2 months ago I trusted Sam 100%. She was welcome in my home any time. She occasionally even baby-sat Emma. I would drop everything I was doing to go help out. Then things came crashing down. I found out our whole relationship was lies. I’m NOT implying that birth parents are bad people. I’m simply blogging about MY experiences!

Should I sugar coat things and leave out anything bad or negative? “So we just found out Sam isn’t pregnant. But we still trust her 100% because she is such a wonderful person. She created my daughter and gave birth to her and decided to do what was best for Emma and place her for adoption. So that means all positive and greats things being said about her. Investing emotionally and finically into this fake baby has been no big deal. Who cares Sam lied, she’s still GREAT! I’ll let her come over and baby-sit Em again any time, even though she has told me she’s still addicted to drugs, I don’t care!” No, because I don’t feel that way.

Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes people make mistakes. I am in no way implying birth parents are bad people and shouldn’t be trusted. Just personally, my daughter’s birth parents are emotionally un-healthy.

I thought having an open adoption through foster care and I still do think it can be, a great thing. That is was totally safe because I trusted Sam so much!

AND even after all of crap Sam has put us through, we STILL want to maintain contact with her (and Will) because she did create my daughter and I love her for that (and many other reasons). Even though my daughter’s birth parents aren’t the safest people we still believe it is in Emma’s best interests to know them. My husband and I have both agreed that if Will were ever to contact us and want visits with Emma and pictures and to know how she’s doing, we are open to that. As we are also to these things with Sam.

Before we found out Sam was lying about the pregnancy, I only had positive things to say about Sam and our open adoption. I am still hoping to have a (healthy) open adoption in the future.

Even though I blog how it is, the good, the bad, and the ugly, I do not sit down and tell my daughter bad things about Sam. Well, let’s face it, Emma is only one. Growing up I got some experiences with having a birth father that wasn’t around. I LOVE and appreciate the way my parents handled the situation. I didn’t ask a lot of questions about him. I don’t remember how I found these things out, but I always knew: he was raised LDS, served a mission, he and my mom got married in the temple, but for some reason after their divorce he left the church.

The first memory I have is my mom sitting me down and showing me their wedding pictures. Then at 13 he made contact with me for the first time. My parents sat my sister and I down and explained we had received letters from him in the mail that day. They read the letters first to make sure they were not inappropriate and then gave them to us. I don’t remember much of what he said. It was a few days later that we met for the first time (well, that I remember. He saw me a few times between birth and I don’t know when). My (grand) parents didn’t tell us he was good or bad, they just let us form our own opinions of him.

I thought he was harmless. As we e-mailed back and forth (without my parents supervising the e-mails) I willing shared with him as many details as he wanted. Then one day I got an e-mail from him saying I was his daughter and I was not meant to be with my parents and he was going to take me away. I was smart enough to take to my mom and decided this guy was a creep and I dropped contact.

I came to the conclusion on my own that I did not like the guy. He gave me the creeps and I didn’t like him being around. After I expressed my dis-like for him (I was about 14) my mom shared 1 story with us that were partly negative, but the truth of what kind of person he really was.

I always respected the way my parents stayed neutral about him until I decided for myself I didn’t like him. I tried to regain contact with him a few years ago and my parents supported whatever I wanted to do. It did not go so well and I saw that he really was a horrible, bitter man. I have since then asked my grandma more questions about him and have found out other negative things.

I’d love to know the whole story about my birth father and the things he has done. Unfortunately, my birth mom is deceased and I will never get the whole story.

My point in this story is that I plan on letting Emma form her own opinions of Sam. I am NOT going to sway her either way, but telling her Sam is great and she should trust her or that Sam is bad. I will tell her how much Sam and Will and their families love her. I will let her figure out for herself (but make sure I don’t put her in danger in doing so) how she feels about them and the contact she wants to have with them.

I still love and respect Sam in the way that most (if not all) adoptive parents feel about their child’s birth parents! Even though I am no longer showering her in gifts for all occasions like I used too, I am still making the “brag book pages” that go to Sam’s album I gave her for her birthday. That in addition to keeping her updated on how Emma’s doing and current pictures.

Also I have never used Sam’s name, or posted pictures or posted her letters to me without her permission!

I have edited some post to not share so many details or negative things and I will continue to censer my thoughts on here! Some of my friends (nicely) pointed out that I do need to not post certain things to protect my daughter.