I had more then a year of birth mom support group therapy and almost 9 months of private adoption/birthmom therapy. We did talk about GSA and I read about it. Better to know what emotions might pop up and be able to put them in the right place then go ignorant into a reunion. The emotions are stronger then any I have ever experinced before or since. The repressed emotions from when I was 15/16, hurt, pain, love, anger, intense loss. All that had been walled up for 33 years.. it comes out in a flood, sweeping everything before it. Including if you are not very, very careful, your common sense.

What I felt when I found my son, and after our first meeting. It felt like all those "new mommy" switches that should have been switched on when I was 16, started firing on, one after the other in rapid fire succession. I "felt" 16. It was like being two people in one body, me the adult, and me the hurt teenage girl. She wanted her baby back, she would never have him.

But since it isn't likely that you change a 33 year old diapers or give them a bath, you have to find acceptable ways of fulfilling those emotions or needs. You have to know what they are and why they are.

Hugging works, holdings hands, sitting close.. talking, laughing, getting to know each other. There was that feeling for both of us, of "knowing" each other. So much about us was the same. Yet I know bmom's who never felt this, who yearn for it and do not have it.

Birth son felt that he knew me enough to trust me, immediately. We had talked for the first time on Wednesday three days later on Saturday I was holding him for the first time in my life. He had me stay in his home the second night. Much to his wife's cringe. She didn't understand the feelings. He felt that he was so much like me, that to not trust me would be like not trusting himself.

It is 10 years later and we still have a great reunion. The trick is to walk around the pitfalls, not fall in the pits.

My emotions are very close to the surface right now, his birthday is in 5 days.. I still get touchy, weepy this time of year. After 33 years of no emotions about it, some days they are right there ready to spill, even after 10 years of reunion.

Teri

I watched a snippet of the show only to see Joe Soll on TV, but the overall sensational idea of the show irritated me. I understand the theme of the show is 'Outsiders' but can we please for ONCE have a newsbroadcast surrounding the issues so many of us face - without sensationalism.