u/CromwellsCrumb

So, my mom is adopted. She didn’t know her bio-family until she found them via ancestry research in 2017. We enjoyed a decent relationship with them until my uncle (mom’s bio-brother, Sandi’s oldest son - the first child she had after giving up my mom) died very suddenly and unexpectedly just before Christmas in 2022.

My uncle was absolutely the glue that held us together. He was vibrant and sociable and LOVED us deeply. He accepted us immediately without any hesitation and was so proud to have a big sister and two new nieces (myself and my sister) and often joked that he loved that he could now refer to himself as a little brother after having been the oldest for his entire life.

At one point, Sandi told all her children about her updated will, which included monetary amounts for her “legitimate” children, but just a bracelet for my mom.

My uncle balked at this, told his mom (Sandi) that she shouldn’t treat my mom any differently from her other children, and told my mom that he would split his part of the inheritance with her regardless of what Sandi chose to do.

My uncle was also wealthy himself. He told my mom point-blank that he had included her in his will. But when he died, there were two wills: one from 10 years ago, before he was divorced, before our families found each other.

And then there was the new will, which excluded his ex-wife and included his new sister (my mother. My sister and I were also included, but this is really more about my mom.)

Sandi chose to disregard the new will - stating “We don’t know what his true wishes were! This new will isn’t notarized!” - and excluded my mom from the inheritance entirely.

Now, my mom was willing to live with that. My sister and I actually didn’t know about any of this until well after the fact, because she chose not to tell us originally since she knew we would be angry on her behalf. My mom has a tendency to let people walk all over her, and my sister and I often feel the need to stick up for her.

But then, instead of just keeping it to themselves and being polite about it, Sandi and the other siblings would talk openly about how they were using their inheritances. Like, we would all be at dinner together and Sandi would talk about how she was using her part of the inheritance to renovate her kitchen. And my aunt was using hers to get lapband surgery to lose weight. Etc etc. And they talked about this openly in front of my mom, even though they chose to exclude her from receiving anything.

So that caused a huge rift. When my sister and I found this out, we started distancing ourselves.

Then I had my miscarriage.

This letter from makes it seem like the miscarriage happened recently……No, I miscarried my child in **JANUARY 2024.** Over two years ago.

Sandi mentions how “it takes love from those close to you to support you through that pain and loss” …….at the time, she didn’t come to visit me, she didn’t send flowers…she hardly acknowledged my loss at all.

Now, my miscarriage was complicated. I have a large 10cm fibroid that had always made it difficult for sonographers to find my baby. It always took a long time to find the heartbeat, because the fibroid was in the way.

When I miscarried, the sonographer in the emergency room could not find the heartbeat. But because they couldn’t *confirm* that the heartbeat was not there - just that they couldn’t find it - they refused to give me any pain medication, because it might harm the baby. My pain was secondary.

Because of this complication, they also did not want to give me a D&C, just in case the baby was still viable and they just couldn’t find it because of the fibroid.

My OB knew it wasn’t viable. I knew my baby was gone. But because I live in a state with very strict anti-abortion laws, everyone had to be very careful.

So, because of this, my miscarriage lasted for 17 days, throughout which I was laboring and bleeding and in significant, unimaginable, traumatizing pain. Finally, after more than two weeks, I was given a D&C to remove the remains of my child.

So…

I shared about this experience QUITE OPENLY because I was just shocked and horrified at the experience I was made to go through because of the current political state. I wanted people to know that these laws don’t just affect women getting abortions willy-nilly (or whatever argument anti-abortion people use) but that they also affect women who planned for and wanted their child deeply, but biology had other plans. I could have died, and it didn’t need to be that way.

Sandi is quite right-wing, religious (as evidenced by the letter) and told me that she understood what I went through, but that she still had to vote by what her religious beliefs told her to do and she still believed these anti-abortion laws were for the best.

So that was the nail in the coffin for me. My sister and I had already distanced ourselves from them after my uncle died, but when she had so little regard for the danger my life was put in, I just shut down entirely.

So that was somewhere in summer 2024. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since then. My mom still keeps in contact with her, but my sister and I do not at all.

So….since then, I have had my rainbow child, who just recently turned one year old. Sandi was not invited to my baby shower. She has never met my daughter. She has also never reached out to ask me directly to meet her, she always communicates indirectly via my mom. Like, she’ll say to my mom “Oh I sure do wish I could meet my great-granddaughter!” And my mom will say “Well, you’ll need to ask *her* mommy about that, why don’t you text Bekah?” But then I never hear from her.

Which brings us now to these letters.

When I wrote my response, I thought it sufficiently came across as a closed-door situation. But apparently I was wrong, because here she is following up with another letter.

Part of me wants to write Return To Sender and pop it back in the mailbox unopened.

Part of me really wants to know what else she has to say.

To be clear, absolutely NO part of me wants to maintain a relationship with her. I know people will say “This is really a conversation that should be had in person or over the phone” and I would agree, if the goal was repairing the relationship. But that is not my goal.

So what should I do? Open it and satisfy my curiosity, or send it back without opening it to give a clear message that the door is closed?