I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about having been adopted as a kid. It's something I haven't contemplated heavily in a long time.
I was adopted when I was 5 weeks old. This information was something that I always knew. And something that I obsessed over. My mom told me that it made me special because my parents chose me.
Even so, the thought of finding my birth mother and my birth family was never far from my mind. It's hard to explain and not every adopted kid feels this way. But it was like a piece of me was missing. There was a restlessness around me that urged to me to press on until I found them.
I'll take a break here to tell you that none of this diminished my feelings about my family (you know, the people who raised me). If anything, it made the relationship stronger knowing that they cared for me when others couldn't.
When I decided to begin my search, I was 21. I could have started at 18 but I guess I wasn't ready for the long road ahead of me. It turned out to be so easy. My birth mother wanted to be found. She had left her information in my file at the adoption agency and I just went and got it.
I braced myself for the worst. For the unknown. For rejection. But instead I was received with love, with open arms, with acceptance.
I found people who looked like me! I have the family nose. The hair comes from my father. They all like to hug. I make gestures just like my birth mother. I am going grey early just like my birth mother and grandmother. It is the exact color as theirs. It may seem superficial, but it wasn't just the physical similarities. After spending your whole life feeling like you just didn't quite fit in, it was very special to be around people who instantly understood you.
That was 1992. Since then, I've gotten to know many of the people in my birth family. My youngest siblings barely remember a time when I wasn't their sister. They were very near where I went to school and I spent a lot of time with them. It was at first overwhelming. There were all these people who suddenly cared about me and it seemed like an awful lot of obligation. But once I realized that feeling was coming from me, I could let it go.
Not everyone was so in to getting to know me. And that was okay. Everyone is entitled to their feelings.
My oldest birth brother, who is four years younger than me, was one of those people. This is why I was so surprised when he invited me over to his house for Thanksgiving this year. I was so shocked at the invitation since he'd barely said two words to me in 20 years that I absolutely had to go. Since then, we've spent some time getting to know each other and talking about the life that we might have led together. My heart hurts knowing that I can never be the sister that I should have been.
While the reasons that he never wanted to be close until now are personal and not for me to share, it has made me do a lot of thinking about this strange thing called adoption. There is so much out there for the births moms, for the adoptive moms and for the adopted kids, but what about the brothers and sisters?
It is so wonderful and amazing that some people have the ability and the means to take care of children who are unable to be cared for, neglected or unloved. I know my life would be so different had my birth mother made a different choice. I am so grateful to her for recognizing that I could be so much more given different circumstances.
No matter how much I am thankful and very happy with the circumstances I find myself in today, most certainly as a product of the environment I grew up in, there will forever be a sense of loss. Having experienced the immediate bond when having my own daughter combined with my experience as an adoptee, I really believe that something important is lost when a mom and child are separated too early. It has repercussions throughout the lives of everyone involved.
I am who I am because of a special combination of the genetic pieces in my body and the experiences of my life.
I really wouldn't have it any other way.
