Tag: False Stories

Send A Letter

The lyrics in an old song – The Letter by The Box Tops – could fit the story for today –

Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just a wrote me a letter
I don’t care how much money I gotta spend
Got to get back to my baby again

An adoptee writes that she is seeking advice on whether to reach out to her biological father. It’s been about six months since she found out his identity through sleuthing and ancestry links. When she was still trying to figure out who it was, she narrowed it down to one family and stupidly cold called. She now knows it was her paternal grandmother. She did not take the news well and was not kind about it either. She told the to leave them alone and never contact them again. Since then her biological mother (who she’s never met but have contact with on social media) confirmed his identity and admitted that the story she gave to the adoption agency wasn’t the true story. It’s still unclear if he knows about her existence – he definitely didn’t at the time of her birth. She is considering writing a letter because calling or emailing just doesn’t seem like the right way to do it. Though she worries he may never answer her letter, it would be worse to leave this hanging.

By way of encouragement, another one writes – I sent a snail mail letter to my biological family, with pictures of me and my family. It worked well for me. Good luck!!

And an even better success story – My biological father “thought” he might have been my father but until I reached out at the age of 30, he didn’t want to interrupt my life because he didn’t know what I did or didn’t know. I found the link thanks to Ancestry DNA and emailed his mother. She told me that Ancestry must have been mistaken. She is a sweet woman who just didn’t quite understand DNA testing. She has since accepted my children as her great grandchildren and loves to hear all about us. But at first, she gate kept because she just didn’t know and was afraid of what I wanted.

My dad and I have since established a relationship and he moved (and his wife and their child) 400 miles to live 3 miles from me and my family. Our relationship has its great days, good days, and rough days. I don’t regret reaching out. My biological mother raised me until she passed away when I was 7 and then I was raised under legal guardianship in a not so great situation with my stepfather before leaving his house and living with my mother’s parents who claimed to have no idea who my biological father was. I did not reach out until after they passed away.

I initially only wanted medical information. They have since become some of my biggest cheerleaders and love their grand babies dearly.

Blogger’s note – It was the same with my mom – adoptees lack family medical history. That is the reason that many want contact with their biological family.

Freed From A False Story

So very much like Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, the author of this month’s Science of Mind Daily Guides, Dr Temple Hayes, describes her family’s lifelong belief that a great-grandmother was Native American.  Eventually, an inexpensive DNA test revealed the truth that they were not.

Such advances in what was once expensive medical technology are freeing people from false stories that they have been told all their lives.  This allows the newly liberated person to create a new, bright and dynamic existence.

When we believe a false story we feel disconnected from our family.  On an energetic level, we may simply feel that something does not add up, the shoe doesn’t fit.  My mom believed she had been deceptively “stolen” from her original parents.  While the story she concocted wasn’t accurate, the general circumstances of exploitation to take away a baby were the truth.  The story I had made up about my dad’s origins – that a Mexican woman named Maria had left him on the doorstep of the Salvation Army – also turned out to be false.

I never expected to know what I know now. My parents had to be taken away from the families they were born into, in order to come together from the families they were adopted into, so they could marry, so my self and my sisters could be born.  I cannot regret my very life.

I am happy to have had my false stories proven to be the mistaken ideas that they were.  I am now more interested in everything to do with Denmark or Scotland than I was just a very few years ago.  I prefer reality.  Most people honestly do.  Adoptees deserve to know their reality.  All efforts at reform are seeking that outcome.