It’s tempting. You want to destroy her.

You want to be the mother. You want your daughter to know she is in the right place, that a life with a women you would never call a straight out mother, a women you call birthmother in one long breath, like if you say it fast enough it will disappear, would have been awful.

You hate her, when it comes right down to it because you love your daughter so much, and this birthmother comes between you and the story that this person is your daughter, 100%, signed, sealed, delivered (not by you but close enough, you love you enough to have birthed her so why can’t you pretend you did?).

You have a special afternoon with her daughter who is 16 now and asking questions. You show your daughter the birthmother’s Twitter account. You show her the tweets the birthmother has made that prove she is low-class and probably a Trump supporter. You show her the tweets that talk about drinking and possibly hint at drug use.

“She is trash,” you say to your daughter, and you watch your daughter get quiet and nod. You feel both awful and wonderful. Well, this woman clearly is trash and you need to let your daughter see just how lucky she was to be saved from a life with a Trump supporter. You are happily relieved that your daughter does not ask how you found this Twitter account. You are happily relieved (see!! you knew your daughter really wasn’t all that interested in her birthmother!) that she doesn’t ask to look other places such as Instagram or Facebook for pictures of this birthmother.

You’ve looked, of course, briefly, and you saw her face. You’ve had her name all these years on that piece of paper the agency gave you by mistake when you got your daughter. That piece of paper that somehow slipped into the file of this closed adoption, this piece of paper you’d forgotten about but had found as you were looking through the papers your daughter had asked to see not too long ago, the paper you fortunately had found so you could hand your daughter the file without said piece of paper.

Your daughter should not have to endure the pain you felt as you looked at this piece of trash, let’s be honest and call a spade a space, on Facebook with her arm around a man and two children. What kind of future would your daughter have had if she’d stayed with this woman? Maybe your daughter would be working in a bowling alley at 16, trying to make enough money to pay for a new pair of jeans. Instead she gets to lie by the pool when she is done with her school work. Your daughter gets to relax because you and your husband have given her a nice life.

If your daughter wants to search on her own now and find these pictures, then so be it. Let the cards fall where they may.

That fight a few weeks ago was horrible. “You’re not my real mom,” your daughter had spat out when you told her she couldn’t sleep over her boyfriend’s house (good lord it’s hard to fight the genetics!). Your sweet girl had turned on you and now it was time to fight back with the big guns so she would know just how good she has it. It was time to pull out the Twitter feed and let your daughter know things could have been very different for her.

It was time to fight fire with fire because you are the mother and that is your job.