Starting Over 3, 4/28 – Cassie Gets Ready to Meet Her Son!by LauraBelle
I can't believe after all this time, it's finally happening for Cassie. This poor woman has been around the block. While it's a great fantasy to think once you get your life together, everything is going to fall into place, it just doesn't happen that way, at least not always, or certainly not in the way we are expecting it to.
Cassie is making her third appearance on Starting Over. She came on the show last year with two goals – to get her GED and meet the adopted son she had given up for adoption eighteen years before. Cassie had had her own bad unfulfilling childhood being passed off from parent to adoptive family, and seemed to have been abused in some form by every person she respected. After a rape attempt, she quit school, and turned to alcohol to heal the emptiness.
At 22 years old, Cassie became pregnant, and held off of the drinking during her pregnancy, but knew she wouldn't be able to devote her life to a child, not even being able to devote her life to taking care of herself. Being adopted as well, she didn't want to never be a part of the child's life, so she sought an open adoption. She found a family that took care of her during her pregnancy, in exchange for letting them adopt her baby and agree to an open adoption.
After her son was born, Cassie was slowly shut out of his life. The last time she was allowed to see him, he was 3 years old. She cleaned up her life, became sober, but wasn't allowed by the adoptive parents to see her son. The open adoption she had counted on was crumbling beneath her. The adoptive parents' life was crumbling as well. They divorced and married others, and Cassie's son was shipped back and forth between the two families, yet he wasn't allowed to ever see his birth mother.
Getting in contact with the adoptive mother when the boy was 16, Cassie was told he was never even told he was adopted, led to believe it was because she was a horrible person and not worth knowing, and told not to contact them again. A few years later, she began her first term on Starting Over, wanting to become a person to be respected, by getting a GED, and wondered what the morals and laws were about her contacting her son, now that he was a legal adult at 18.
Meeting with lawyers and adoption experts, Cassie found she didn't have many rights, despite the fact that the adoption papers stated this was supposed to be an open adoption. While she had the right to contact him now if she wanted, she risked being seen in the wrong light, like she would be trampling over his feelings, as others believed she would be worried more about her own. She met the adoptive father's second wife at one point, and learned some things of her son's early years, but she didn't have much contact the past few years with him either. The worst insult came when Cassie received a notarized letter asking her to cease and desist that was signed by lawyers, the birth mother, and her son. Cassie refused to believe it was his signature.
Cassie graduated from the Starting Over house without her son, and without her GED. She earned her GED later, but didn't get any closer to meeting her son. A year later she came back to Starting Over for a "tune up." She had hoped she had been invited back because they had new information about her son, but that wasn't it. They just wanted to do some work on her employment, having her create her own business. Cassie was disappointed, to say the least. She met with adoption experts who gave her one more option to try, saying she could register with the state in which her son was adopted, and if he ever wanted to search for her, and went through the state, they would be able to tell him she was looking for him as well.
Leaving the Starting Over house for the second time, she assured everyone she was okay not meeting her son, but everyone knew she still wanted it more than anything. She took matters into her own hands, and called his place of employment. It ended up he no longer worked there, but the message still got to him anyway. The unimaginable happened one day; she received a call from her son, saying he heard she was trying to contact him. He asked why now, and she assured him it wasn't sudden. She had been looking for him ever since she was cut out of his life. He informed her he had been told she had died.
So it's this week that Cassie came back to the Starting Over house for her third appearance. A meeting was scheduled between her and her birth son. It will be the first time she has seen him in sixteen years. Making it even better for her is that she is surrounded by people that care for her deeply. There are a few housemates that were here for her second time in the house, Jodi and Christie, and a housemate from Cassie's first time on the show, making her own second appearance on the show, Sommer, who had been kicked out of the house over a year ago. Now she's back, determined to end her stay the right way.
Of course, after much buildup during Friday's whole episode, of Cassie getting her makeup, hair and nails done, new outfit from Andy Paige, etc., the episode ended just as Cassie and Rhonda were opening the hotel room door. Behind the door sits Dr. Stan and Cassie's son. We knew that would happen, but come on! And to do that on a Friday? Talk about a cliffhanger.
In the previews for Monday's episode, we see Rhonda consoling Cassie, as it seems the meeting didn't go exactly the way she planned. This makes it even worse for us to have to wait through. Does he totally curse her out asking how could she ...? Does he patiently listen, then say thanks, but no thanks? Does he tell her he has to think on it? What?
I feel bad for any of the other women in the house right now, as they are being totally overshadowed with this momentous thing. This is yet another time on Starting Over where you step back in awe, and say, wow, that's real life. In the next episode, we'll see real life, real emotions. Are some reality shows somewhat scripted? Of course, to a certain point they have to gear storylines a certain way, including this one. But this part? This is real. Just like Allison finding out she carried the gene to have cancer reappear, and just like watching Josie leave the house voluntarily in the first season, resigning her life and unborn child's life to the control of ... a jerk, to put it as nicely as I can, it's real. Some of it you couldn't script if you tried.
My heart, hopes and prayers will be with Cassie all weekend, waiting and hoping this meeting eventually turns out to be everything she wanted and more.
You can email me at LauraBelle@realityshack.com
Read an interview with graduate Jill Tracey hereJill's Interview
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