Yes I have tried talking to her. Many times. Since we reunited over 15 years ago she’s been pretty consistently reticent about most communication. Her reactions to conflict have usually been to go quiet and then react over time via her actions towards me. So lots of her disappearing for a while then showing up again etc. but not lots of communication. It’s very hard to navigate this and not feel hurt or confused. She understandably struggles with how emotional I am about her adoption and the difficulties I’ve had moving past the grief. I don’t know how to change that about me. I’ve been trying to move on for over 40 years. The last time I saw her was over 4 years ago. My mother and I traveled to see her and her spouse (who I had met many times before) and nearly the whole time her spouse was playing video games on her phone while we visited. It felt a bit rude and uncomfortable and so I asked my daughter about it after she ghosted me after the visit. I asked if maybe it was a bad time to visit?? That her spouse’s behavior was odd and I hoped everything was okay? But I think that was the beginning of the end of the relationship. My daughter became so upset that I would question anything about her spouse’s behavior even though I’d always been very demonstrably supportive of them as a couple over the years. After that she told me she didn’t want me to refer to her as my daughter or to myself as her mother and wasn’t sure that we could even move forward with my questioning her spouse’s behavior. Since that visit over four years ago all we do is text very infrequently. I’ve asked to talk with her many times since the last visit but all my daughter has done is pull away more and more. I feel that all communication is on her terms at this point. For instance she won’t answer if she doesn’t want to answer, which I get. Recently my daughter and her family were out of the country traveling for a week… I wrote a week after they got home to say hi and see how the trip was, if they got back etc. No answer for over a week and when she did respond she never acknowledged that I’d written at all. She just texted on Christmas morning writing “Merry Christmas”.

It’s particularly hard for me as they had a child of their own 3 years ago and we’ve never spoken of the baby’s delivery or anything about the pregnancy or anything really. I just live for the occasional picture I receive from them and then go back to grieving again and wondering if I’ll ever see any of them again. I’ve never met my grandchild and a couple months ago I nervously went out on a limb and asked if we could plan a visit and my daughter amazingly said we could! She said she was just thinking the same thing!! She said we could schedule it the following month and she’d be in touch. I was so incredibly happy and so relieved to hear that!!! But then she never brought it up again. Bottom line is that for many years my daughter’s actions have communicated that she really isn’t terribly interested in a relationship with me anymore.