Here’s the update that is linked at the end of the OP:
Met my biological dad for the first time ever and I’m very happy about it (update)
Lots of you asked to let you know how it goes meeting my biological dad and to say it was emotional….is an understatement. I’ve been feeling so many things since this all happened. We met a few days ago. Was originally supposed to be almost 2 weeks ago but shit kept coming up. Work and then I got sick (not covid) for days. But we made it happen. Tbh this was more nervous for me because I didn’t know anything about him. With my bio mom it was different because I watched her from far and got to know her a little before it came out. I asked my bio mom if she could be there too just because she knows him better so it was the 2 of us waiting for him at this park.
He was already crying before we even got to him. This guy is strong too so he pulled me in for the biggest bear hug and crying 😅🥲
He told me he wants me to know that they loved me so much and he loves me. I lost count how many times he’d come back in for one more hug. This definitely got to him. And he kept saying thank you God a few times. Looking at my face. The feelings man, the feelings… We had so many of them. Hearing him tell me how much they love me even back then. It meant so much for me to hear that and ngl that had me holding him tight too.
I’m sure to everyone at the park it was weird seeing 3 crying people lol. My bio dad said he cried so many times just driving over here he didn’t think he had anymore tears until he saw us. When we were all sitting down it hit me that my bio mom was NOT lying when she said we look alike 😂 obviously he’s older but still holy shit the similarities.
He brought gifts too which was a surprise. It was really nice he told me I don’t have to keep them if I don’t want it but he felt weird not coming with anything and he’s wanted to give this to me for a long time.
One was a teddy bear holding a picture frame of him at the hospital holding me (he was 15 years old, it’s still crazy to realize that ). And then the other thing was a journal. The journal thing was stuff he said he started writing to me years after I was adopted. He was in therapy and that that helped him to cope thinking he would give them to me one day. His way of still feeling connected to me. I haven’t read everything yet but some of the pages were his thoughts and like if he’s talking to me. How he felt when they found out she was pregnant, then the adoption, everything going on in his mind when he first got to hold me as a baby. I didn’t even know he was at the hospital too.
It was not what I was expecting… it really got me. I read some more of what he wrote last night that really got me crying. I’m sad to think how much this affected them emotionally for years. Also think it’s pretty sweet he wanted to write this for me. We talked about his own life which was pretty hard. His struggles with home life and the feelings he had about giving me up. Then he wanted to know everything about me. Basically with the same questions my bio mom had. I made sure they knew they made the right decision. Because my life was pretty great.
He looked like he wanted to cry when he knew that because that’s all they hoped for and it was something he always wondered about for years. My bio mom left a bit after we were more comfortable so we could talk more in private once it didn’t feel too awkward between us. From there he told me stories about how he met my bio mom. Sometimes he’d point out stuff he notice about me that reminds him of her or me and him having similar likes.
Example: I love eating mangos. I can eat them all day and that’s what I bought when we bought snacks at the park. He told me my bio mom was obsessed with mangos seven before she got pregnant, while pregnant she craved it even more.
Just cool info to know even if it’s random stuff lol. It’s still stuff we have in common and we both have lots. Both like hiking, playing pool, he was a swimmer in college and I was on a swim team in highschool, both love rock music. Especially 90’s. My bio dad was really open about sharing everything. Like he really was getting ready for this meeting. He hoped it would happen and he prayed everyday to see me again because he had so many things he wanted to tell me. Overall really good first meeting. I’m glad how it went. He’s open to the idea of meeting my parents. After I told them about all this because they definitely want to meet my bio parents again if I’m comfortable with that, obviously if my bio parents are too. Let’s see when that happens. Idk how it’s gonna feel for me. They’ve met eachother before I was even born but I never had them at the same place so that’ll be interesting lol.
Me and my parents met up yesterday to have breakfast so I could tell them everything. My mom was so happy how it went. She actually cried too whne i was telling them about both their reactions. My dad was proud because he knew how hard it was the months after finding my bio mom and not really wanting to make contact yet. I’m really happy to have their support because it’s hard not to feel guilty about wanting to know more my bio parents. They gave me a really good life so for a while it’s felt like maybe to them I’m showing them that wasn’t good enough for me and I’d rather have my bio parents. But they told me many times they want me to do this for me and the know how much I love them. And I really do.
Finding them and meeting them was hard. But it was so worth it to me. And seeing their reactions made it feel even more worth it. Still can’t believe it sometimes.
I’m just realizing this has turned into a long post, my bad haha. Writing this has been therapeutic tbh. Kind of thinking back to everything that’s happened. Feeling really grateful. Again wanna say thank you to everyone who has been on this journey with me. Everyone who sent me their own stories, their love, their encouragement. You guys have beautiful hearts and I’m happy I had somewhere to talk about all this and receive so much love back! Just wanna say to all the adopted kids out there, i wish you guys luck and that you find what you’re looking for. It’s not easy at all. I feel fortunate that things didn’t go badly or that my bio parents aren’t bad people. And to all the birth parents out there who made this sacrifice, thank you 🙏🏻 🙏🏻🙏🏻It’s because of you there are kids out there like me who got to have a great life with loving parents ❤️
Wow just wow… I can’t understand how people can be so incompetent at parenting. The girl at least has her mother but the baby of the couple who was taking by CPS will be suffering the consequences.
I'm all about true crime podcasts, and you're not wrong.
However, the giveaway here is "they had to cut the brace off," especially with "they got out quickly" following quickly behind.
If such a thing required cutting off - a process that would be much more dangerous to the child than disassembling it - it would have had to be designed to be permanently installed without cutting. That means welded or padlocked as opposed to bolted or latched. Besides which, building such a thing in that way requires a serious amount of effort and planning. Not to mention this is right on the heels of having had repercussions for doing that exact thing. The steel and fabric one would have had to be designed and built before normal visitation was resumed.
All that indicates an incredibly sick perpetrator, who also lied to a judge when he said he'd learned his lesson - because the thought and design and construction of the second one had to have already been going on. I find it unlikely that, in 2016, in Florida, someone who so grossly abuses a nine year old, and who is found out by their neighbor, a police officer, when said nine year old shows up at the door with the thing needing to be cut off, would be quickly released on bail.
Edit: @Speculater rightly points out that a brace, worn for such a short amount of time, could not dislocate a shoulder.
Rage-inducing stories on reddit are famously fake, and this is one of them.
Also if they had alternating custody what was the plan exactly when custody switched? Especially given that they already got prosecuted for the first time they did it....
Like it required planning and not planning at the same time
It is amazingly uncommon for custody to be shared in that way. Moving house every week, back and forth, is incredibly stressful and disruptive for a child.
And then in the update, it's referring to how that "visitation" schedule was reinstated after the first incident. One, that's not visitation, that's true joint custody - a thing which is also rare in custody cases. Normally, you have one parent who has custody, and the other has visitation. Visitation usually means something like "every other weekend," so the non-custodial parent gets the child two days out of every fourteen. If it was true joint custody, the switchovers would be more like "every other weekend, and all summer," especially with an elementary school aged child.
That's not even addressing the fact that, in the story, the court just went back to that ridiculous arrangement after one parent was shown to have abused the child.
I agree with this take. 99% of those top ranking AITA or RelationshipAdvice posts were fake if you knew what to look for. This has all the rage bait marks.
That is a very detailed explanation. Of course, I hope it is not true and you made it seem plausible that it is not true (which is more difficult than proving that it is). So, that is a good thing.
I think I was responding a bit to the tone in which it was said that it was imaginary. I guess it seemed it was mocking the person who made the comment it replied to. So, I was trying to soften that, I guess.
@holycrap - I absolutely apologize; I intended no mockery of you personally, but I can totally see how my response could have been received that way. It's all too easy to forget that I'm interacting with real human people sometimes, even if I try really hard to remember.
Thank you, @Shelena, for bringing this to my attention. Your responses have been necessarily corrective and gently condsiderate at the same time.
Thanks for your response. I think it shows you have great character. I think it is easy to forget you are interacting with humans. I think we all do it sometimes.
I should have been more directly why I was responding to you in that way. However, it was sort of automatic and I only thought about why I did it later. That would have made an easier discussion.
That’s such a weird thing. I guess the equivalent would be if a company in Europe would want to run a WWII-theme party.
On one hand, it’s dumb in the cultural/sensitivity sense, on the other hand it would be cool if we could leave the past be. Nobody seems to have an issue with throwing a party with the theme of Napoleonic era, or the Victorian era, or WWI, or the French revolution or whatnot.
I wonder what’s needed for these things to also pass into history as “so yep, that’s what happened. Anyway check out these sick uniforms”.
The thing is the other events still don’t hold the sense of evil the Confederacy holds. The CSA was an evil cause with the goal of perpetuating chattel slavery and white supremacy.
Im not sure Europe could have an equivalent unless it was celebrating colonial abusiveness somehow? Maybe the Belgians could do a Congo themed party celebrating their crimes there? Short of doing a Nazi Party themed event I don’t believe Europe has anything comparable.
The difference between Napoleonic, victorian, etc. eras vs. slavery and/or WW2 is that we have a subsection of the population that has been very clear that they see themselves as the spiritual successors to the slaveholders AND the Nazis, and that given a chance they will try to re-enact those policies.
People can have fun with historical periods that don't have direct current events tie-ins, but when normal people are confronted with weird fascist dog whistles, it gets very uncomfortable very quickly.
We also have literal pirates in the seas, and that doesn’t stop us from playing pirates. We have wars, and that isn’t stopping us from playing soldiers.
We shouldn’t let a bunch of morons spoil everything.
And yet those who call for the actual re-enactment of those filthy activities are (rightfully) shunned and mocked by the same people around them.
A thing is a child playing pirate or soldier, another thing is an adult partaking a themed party showing up dressed as a literal slave owner. If you cannot tell the difference between these two situations I’d advise you to show up dressed as Hitler at the next jewish-themed party you might be invited to. Maybe you’ll learn a valuable lesson.
OOP is Original OP, so the original author of the thread. It is common in repost-subreddit like “Best of updates” to specify that “I”, “me” and so on in the post do not refer to the person posting, but to the original author
OP is Original Poster. So, it’s kinda redundant to call it original original poster, but thats what stuck.
I also dont like all of the bots copying reddit posts to Lemmy, however it might help with search engine results. People dont want to go to Reddit because of the stupid update to the API terms, which is why a lot of them flock to Lemmy, because whether we like it or not - Lemmy is basically the same thing as reddit, except federated. If it grows, the community of Lemmy will be near identical to that of Reddit, or at least that of Reddit some years ago, and not just fediverse and OSS enthusiasts.
Seriously, if you don’t like it nobody is forcing you to look at it. It’s a federated network, stop gatekeeping like you have a claim to the whole fediverse. Sorry, but it’s fucking obnoxious.
If you don’t like me not liking it, then entertain the idea that you’re not forced to interact with me in any way whatsoever. It’s free world, so stop being an obnoxious gatekeeper, dude.
Sorry for being topic adjacent, but.... Is this the point of this community/magazine? To recycle old reddit content? Because I subscribed with the assumption that it would be about the best posts here in the fediverse, new content.
i dont really have a problem with that, i mean on reddit we had posts from every other platform like 4Chan, Twitter & co too
Difference here is that reddit is the source and will be for the first few weeks the main one because it has content
Exactly! People need to put Reddit to bed over here. Let’s make it about here. Morn yes, but come up with new stuff. Or at least copy the model but make it fedi specific.
The point of this community is to be the fediverse version of BestOfRedditorUpdates. If you want to contribute content from the Fediverse you are free to do so, but until that point I’m content to read content from wherever it’s gathered.
If you don’t want to read it, nobody is forcing you to be here.
We arent gonna get more peolple if there isnt any content to retain people with. If you want fediverse updates, then please post some. Right now, there arent any instances that generate updates in the first place. So this is whats gonna happen until we get more instances made that generate stories.
Probably for now tbh - as Lemmy gets more posts/content, I imagine it will swing over to best Lemmy updates. There’s a few communities/magazines re-created over here but not a ton of content to share just yet!
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