We recently watched a Star Trek – The Next Generation episode titled “Family”.  True I had seen it before but not when adoption was such a dominating concept in my imagination.  Immediately, I thought – Worf was adopted.  Of course, in this case it is obvious – Worf is Klingon and these “parents” are clearly Earth born humans.  It is also obvious from their loving expressions that he matters deeply to them as a “son”.

My topic today began with reading an article in the February 2019 Science of Mind magazine titled “Real Radical Inclusion” by Rev Masando Hiraoka, who is Japanese-American according to his own revelation.

He writes – “In oneness, we do not lose our identity, we gain it back.  We are given the beauty that we were born with and are able to see it again.  There is an embrace that happens – not just an acceptance, but a full-on bear hug for ourselves, our skin, our heritage, our style, our height, our gender expression, our sexuality, our religion, our bodies, our abilities – our unique personhood in the world.  We come to include it all.  That’s radical inclusion.”

In finally discovering my original grandparents, I say that I am now whole +, because that personhood includes the adoptive parents for both of my parents, who I knew as childhood grandparents (and of course, the aunts, uncles and cousins I gained that way).

Not knowing our ancestry, robbed my family of some part of our identity.  And while it wasn’t obvious to other people, it was felt by me, my entire life, until I was able to set it right again.  Now when I think of grandparents – there are the “childhood” grandparents and there are the grandparents I now know my genetics came from.