Adoption Tragedy

My mother told me a really depressing story about adoption a few weeks ago. It just came to mind, for some reason. I've heard lots of positive stories about adoption from foster care, and seen great parents at my classes, but it's important to think about the worst possible scenario as well.

All of this must have happened more than 70 years ago. A friend of my mother's -- I'll call her C - comes from a very wealthy, old money family. C's grandparents had one daughter, C's mother, but couldn't have any more children after that. They decided to adopt. They could easily have adopted an infant, but instead took in a ward of the state (I don't even know if family foster care existed so long ago) who was the same age as C's mother.

C's grandparents treated the girl very, very badly. She was supposed to be a playmate for C's mother, nothing more. That was her role. They didn't formally adopt her until she was much older, and they held it over her head throughout childhood that they wouldn't adopt her and she wasn't a real member of the family and was less than them.

C's grandparents died and left a small trust for their fostered/adopted daughter. She moved away from them and never kept in contact with her playmate/sister. C's mother married and had children, including C, but her life didn't turn into a bed of roses... she was an alcoholic.

One day, C asked my mother to come with her to meet the aunt she had never met. They found and visited the aunt, who welcomed C. The aunt was a solitary and unhappy woman who wasn't taking good care of herself, and she was eaten up with bitterness against C's family. The anger just poured out.

I hope that woman is still alive today and has found some measure of peace in her life. It's horrible what she had to go through. She was treated like an animal.