Thanks for sharing, Cheryl! I hope that I manage to be impressively self-possessed tomorrow!
It's interesting that you mention how well N set boundaries with her bio-family - I would say that I am historically just ok at setting boundaries to protect myself, not the worst and not the best, but I suddenly became an excellent boundary setter the moment i made contact with my bio-family! I haven't offered a single centimeter more of myself than I was sure I could handle sharing, and that's not typically my best trick. And, it isnt even that I have any specific reason to believe my vulnerability wouldn't be safe with my birth-mom, so far she seems like a thoughtful, self-aware person with appropriate self control. There is simply some intuitive part of me that knows she and I are not meant to process each other's emotions in any direct way.
I'm sort of terrified that I have absolutely no sense of how it will feel or how I will react to being near the body that birthed mine. I like to know what I'm getting into but I have no frame of reference for this. I've gotten really good at coping with feeling like an alien most of the time, so the possibility that I won't feel like that anymore is just as scary as the possibility that I still will.
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