A Sacred Quest

Art by Stephen Delamare

If every life is actually a sacred quest to know who and what we really are, mine has certainly been easily viewed as just that.

I feel as though the “real” me has finally emerged out of the broken family tree that once concealed my true origins.

Now I know that we never were what we were forced to pretend we were due to adoptions.

We now have family, always had family, but that family was intentionally hidden from us until I was able to discover it in only the last year and a half.

Certainly, there are shadows and unanswered questions and it may be impossible to shed light on them now that so many years have passed.

But I am grateful for what I know and the “new” family I can build relationships with now. They are no more “perfect” than the members of the adoptive family that I still consider my “relations” as well.

It’s just that I know the same blood that runs in the “new” family’s veins, runs also in mine and for that I am eternally grateful.

I feel that I have fulfilled some part of my life’s purpose now.

Links in the Chain of Life

What about women who do NOT want to know the children they gave up for adoption, do they have the right to not have their identities revealed ?

I’ve not met one yet who would not want to know what became of their child, though everything that can be thought of does exist. I would also wonder if it is a denial of pain long suppressed. I do know I have felt a bit “unwanted” by one genetic relative when I turned up. “Oh yes, I do remember hearing she had a daughter . . . ” an inconvenient truth, I suppose.

When a woman has a child, even if for whatever reason she gave that child up for adoption, it is my belief that child is still owed an identity, you owe them at least this.

Each of us wants to understand our place in the chain of life. Closed adoptions with sealed records are like the lock up there in the middle of the links of a chain.

Does such a mother have a right to be free of the trauma of confrontation ? How about the denial of joy in knowing where they come from for the child ?

In most cases, I do not believe a confrontation with one’s now grown child would be traumatic, unless the outcome of that child is one that causes a deep regret and sense of responsibility in the original mother.

I don’t believe that anyone who conceives a child has any right to privacy from that reality. A woman who insists on such a “right” is at the same time infringing upon the right of an adoptee.

Why Does It Matter ?

Someone once asked me if the adoptive parents are good parents and the life of the child is basically happy, why should they care about where they came from ? As I tried to explain it to her, she realized she didn’t see an issue because she took the family history that was hers for granted. It was just there and she knew it. That not knowing, that uncertainty, didn’t exist for her. But it does exist, it is the very existence, of adoptees who don’t know anything about their origins.

When I was a school girl, my friends were all bragging about their ethnic backgrounds – I’m French or I’m German, or whatever. I went home that day and asked my mom, What are we ? She replied “American”. Yeah, but all of my friends are American, what else are we – what country did we come from ? She said we don’t know, both your dad and I were adopted. I thought they must be orphans without a family “out there” and that wasn’t true either.

When a person is adopted, their name is changed and their birth certificates are altered as though the truth of their very being never existed. How presumptuous we are with another person’s true origins. For a long time, I would tell people I was an Albino African. I actually suspected that my mom’s origins might have been biracial and then the National Genographic project who tested my maternal DNA told me we did come out to Africa but that her people ended up on the British Isles.

Though my parents died knowing next to nothing about their origins, I now know a lot about mine. Probably, I know as much as most people do who really don’t care. My dad seemed not to care. He seemed to have accepted his fate in ways my mother never did, though she tried and could make no headway on the matter. My dad was a good ole boy – he liked to fish, drink beer and eat Mexican food – heck he liked to eat period. That’s how he earned the nickname Fat Pat.

Family Dysfunction

I remember a long private Facebook chat with my nephew as I became aware of wounds that he was suffering from and trying to help him with the truth I knew at the time. I had not yet learned so much that I have learned in only the last year but I understood that somehow the family I was born into was broken.

This didn’t mean I had a bad childhood or that my parents didn’t love us or that they divorced. None of that is true of my own circumstances.

I believed stories about my parents’ origins that weren’t true. And now, armed with the true stories, I have yet learned about the wounds that happen when any child is separated from its mother – as both of my parents were – then adopted by strangers and forced to live false identities.

There were other elements too – my grandmothers grew up without their mothers who had died. All three of us – me and my two sisters – in one way or another lost custody of our own children – the same as our grandmothers (and by inference the fathers had lost their children too).

I am still trying to write this sad, romantic and true story in the best possible way. It is also a growth and healing process for me. I understand so much, so much better now. Eventually, it may come to pass that you are able to read my story too.

What’s It Like Living A False Identity

As I began to learn about my own parent’s identities (they were both adopted and died knowing next to nothing about that), it very quickly dawned on me how awful it must be, to be forced to live a false identity. Most people never even consider that.

This is the statute for only one state but most states are the same regarding adoption laws.

Why is it so difficult to just love a child in a parental way without the ownership of that child? Adoption legally strips away a child’s heritage and attempts to force another one on them. Is it any wonder that adoptees struggle with identity?

When my cousin from my dad’s original mother and I discovered each other, I said I had his adoption certificate. She immediately noticed something I didn’t, his mother’s name wasn’t on the paper. Instead the Salvation Army had taken “ownership” of him.

One doesn’t own a child like they own a pet or car or house. A child is also a human being. Take away their name and the name of their original parents, what’s left?

Something that is no longer wholly real. Sadly.