Reunion. will it be a blessing or curse?

OK... officially, I have no right in talking about adoption reunion... as I'm not in reunion with my son...but technically... I'm in a reunion... with my husband's family.  So, having read what others are going though in their adoption reunions made me think.... I have said it before, it is a dangerous conception.. me thinking ;-).

However, I think my experience in my little reunion might shed some light on what some people might go through in an adoption reunion.

Firstly, the reason I lost touch with Radouane's family was two fold... I'm lousy with calling people...so is Weird  Brother and Middle Brother... as they were the only ones in the UK at that time... secondly, I do not have a bad habit of cutting people off if I'm the one who makes all the effort... I actually have a three call rule... if I leave you three messages and you don't get back to me... I never bother again... awful of me you might say.  Thinking about it... it is, I have not considered if the other person is busy, have other stuff going on etc... what if the reason someone have not called me back because a significant person in their life is dying (extreme thought but must be considered).

By the time, I got back in touch with the Family, I had realized that I'm the person to make the effort... in their eyes, I'm the one who turned my back on them.  A pivotal point was when Yima died... I felt left out of the whole grieving process... I felt like I was not included... which was very hard for me... as it was her I missed the most during life "without" the family.  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks...  I had not been in their lives for many years... during those years... the Family had moved on without me (so had I) but my feelings had not... my feelings for them remained the same but I forgot that I had not been there in their lives... so what right did I have do demand that they acknowledge my feelings for them.. they did not know how I felt, I hadn't told them, still haven't actually.  And for the record.. I'm still lousy with calling people... I do like the concept of seeing people when I talk to them.

So, reading about other reunions made me wonder...is the reasons reunions fail because both parties expect the other party to "feel" the same about their feelings?  Personally, I think this is true, us First/Birth Mother's have overwhelming feelings about our child.. in most cases, it is an unconditional love/bond that cannot be broken...so we forget that our child.. when the time of reunion comes, forget that this person has had a life... good or bad, where they might even not know we existed.  As for the adoptee, and from my experience with the family (not the same but it makes me understand the adopees prospective) feels that their place in the "family unit" should have been preserved... what both party forget... our lives have moved on, we have built our lives without each other.. but what we often expect is to slot into each others lives no questions asked...OK, the adoptee have lots of questions they want answered and the birth family wants the hole in their life filled... that is not what we should expect.

In my case, in anticipation of any potential reunion with my son... I have come to terms with the person I one day hopefully get to meet, is a grown man who I do not have a right to expect anything off... I can hope that he wants a mother/son relationship but the only thing I have the right to expect is a friendship, if he would allow me.

The main thing, is to remember that is that if the day I (hopefully) get to reunite with my son, I'm getting to know a total stranger... yes, the feelings I have for him will be there but he will be a total stranger to me and I to him... and there is where our relationship must start from... not from where I feel he belongs in my life... I also have to consider that if he does not call/text/email within my acceptable time constraints, I will have to make an effort... without being to aggressive... (I respond to texts/emails/phone calls straight away, but  will not normally initiate a texts/emails/phone calls after my thee strike rule) my reunion might be a blessing rather than a curse.