i wonder how many times you approached your adopted mother with glee or enthusiasim or excietment and found her to be cold. to push you away.

i don't know where they got this figure from... but someone or other said that "good enough" mothering was something like 30% responsive. no idea where they got that figure from. point is that we don't need ALL our needs responded to on demand to have good enough mothering...

the loss and abandonment that you feel... could have arisen during seperation individuation (of your adopted mother rejected you when you started asserting your own identity) or it could have arisen when you were really very young as a result of your birth mother leaving, as you say. one could have compounded another. maybe you and your birth mother never really bonded or maybe something interrupted that bond.

who knows.

doesn't really matter for the purposes of working through / resolution