Dear cj:

You owe your biological parents and sister… nothing at all.

If you owed your adoptive parents anything at all, you paid your debt in full: “both of them had multiple health problems which led to me becoming a caregiver throughout their lives”.

Your adoptive parents didn’t do a great job parenting you and now you are attending therapy to heal best you can from what lacked in their parenting of you. It is a bad idea that you will now burden yourself with genetic mother and other genetic relatives who are strangers, really.

Nothing wrong with helping strangers, if the help you give doesn’t harm you. I suppose you can join a program to help the homeless, a program that will call for you donating your time and maybe the cost of a few meals, but not one of your kidneys! And such volunteer work will not include a start up donation of $400 or a resuming of your life as a caregiver.

No, you don’t owe them anything. Besides, why help people who not having met you yet, are already exacting a price for a meeting, your money, your kidney and your services, reads like they see you as an opportunity to benefit themselves. It is not rude to not accommodate them, it is not rude to say: no, I do not wish to be taken advantage of.

anita