That piece of paper changed your child’s legal parents,
but did nothing to alter their DNA.
Adoption and Birth Mothers
All my life I’ve looked into a mirror and wondered…
I’ve wondered who it is that has made the face that looks back at me.
Being adopted one wonders such things.
I turn 60 this year and I still look and wonder.
Whose eyes
Whose mouth.
Whose hair.
Whose lack of eyebrows.
When I first started blogging, this was one of the topics that I would often touch upon because
it was very much a part of who I was…who I am.
I am adopted.
Born in 1959.
Adopted in 1960.
Back at the first of the year I finally decided to do one those popular DNA tests.
My physician and I got to talking about my unknown medical history…as we keep
having little surprises…
What of my son and his medical surprises and that of my new grandchildren??
Plus I had a dear friend in Colorado who had just met her own birth mother…
What did I have to lose right?
As I mentioned, I had grandchildren now and I very much wanted for them to know this
“secretive” past of mine.
I wanted /want for them to know their genealogy, their origins, just as I want them to know their
medical history…just as I want this for my son.
As of now, I have three blood relatives…my son and my two grandchildren.
I was a history major for heaven’s sake!
History is so keenly important to me…and yet I don’t know my own history.
How pathetic is that?
I have been the unofficial keeper of my family’s genealogy…but the fact of the matter is…
this is not really MY family’s history.
I feel like a specter on someone else’s tree.
Adoption is an integral part of who I am and an integral part of my DNA.
Whether I want to admit it or not, it is the fact of who I am.
I recently stumbled upon a website written by a birth mother, who had given up
her child and her current quest is to dispell misconceptions and set the
facts straight.
Some of her words pierced directly through my heart…
“It’s natural and normal to need to know where you come from and how your child is.
It’s human nature and the fact that your adopted child
has searched for you is a testament that they are actually quite normal.”
The adoptee has a RIGHT to know where they come from.
No adoptee should not have to be a banned as a dirty little secret their whole life.
No one should have to have their very existence denied to protect another’s feelings,
even their own mothers.
It doesn’t matter that you view them as a stranger now,
they were not meant to be strangers, they were not strangers, your child is not a stranger!
You are still the only person in this universe that created this human who dares
to want to talk to you.
You have a moral responsibility to BE there for your adoptee.
Mothers DO for our children.
We are supposed to provide unconditional love for them.
That is our job and the relinquishment was not a discharge from service.
Adoption and Birth Mothers
This is just a small piece to a long story.
60 years worth of a story I suppose.
Just suffice it to know that I received some disheartening news today
regarding my birth mother.
She is still alive and is 83 years young.
I’ll put all of this together into a more coherent post soon, but for now,
my emotions are simply running quite raw.
They say that children who are given up for adoption have a lifelong battle with rejection.
Should that adult child ever find their birth mother and she, though a lawyer,
states that there is to never be any sort of contact as this is a “matter” of the past and
it is in the past that it is to remain…
well, then that becomes a matter of double rejection.
Why does having a lawyer these days seem to be the definitive answer to everything?
Rather than a “by God, this is the way it is”—rather now it is “by the words of this
specific legal eagle, this’ is the end of things, capiche?
Because if not, you will be hit with some sort of legal nightmare.
I sat with tears streaming down my face this afternoon looking at a lamp that was my grandmothers.
It is indeed a fine lamp.
A beautifully old lamp.
A coveted lamp by the lamp shop who repaired it.
I have some nice things…
I don’t want your nice things.
It is not a matter of my wanting anything from someone.
I am happy, comfortable and not lacking.
There should not be a fear of some sort of monetary want.
There should not be a fear of a knock on the door and the desire for
the need of a mother.
There is no desire to rock your neat and tidy world.
There are only questions and a desire for answers.
Like where in the heck did the lack of these lips come from?
I am a nice person.
I would be a good friend.
But yet you’ve opted not to know about that.
And you said so through a lawyer.
And for that, I am sorry.
Men who live far away will come and help to rebuild the Temple of the Lord.
And when it is rebuilt, you will know that the Lord Almighty sent me to you.
This will all happen if you fully obey the commands of the Lord your God.
Zechariah 6:15
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