Pitfall

Relating to my first mom is not the easiest thing in the world. Not because she's hard to relate to, and not because we don't relate. I just don't have any examples to follow.

Thinking about how I relate to my adoptive parents, I don't think that's the model I should follow. I love them, and they love me, but it's not exactly the height of a healthy parent-child relationship. I have felt like the parent far too often in those relationships. I'm always protecting them from what I really think, whether I ought to or not. Whether they want me to, or not. I have long kept myself at arms length. So I keep my day-to-day worries and concerns to myself, along with some of the bigger worries and concerns.

I don't want that sort of relationship with my first mom. It isn't worth it to me. I don't need another person I feel I have to protect from me. (Again, to be fair, I don't know that I really have to protect my adoptive parents. But I've felt that way for so long, it's hard to stop.)

So long story short... I don't want to relate to my first mom the way I relate to my adoptive parents.

But then how do I relate to her? This is uncharted territory. We don't have the last 36 years back to develop a relationship. We met, again, as adults, well-established in our lives and our ways of relating to others. But she's not just another adult I've met and befriended. She's my mom. I just don't know exactly how to define that relationship.

I know that I don't really need to define it. But I sometimes find myself wondering what to say to her, what to tell her and what to leave out, how to lean on her or be available for her to lean on. I think I just find it confusing.

I know I over think this stuff. But I keep trying to make sense of this, and I don't quite know how to do that just yet.