If you don't have a desire to search, what
would you say to those who wonder why you have no interest in knowing where you
come from?
I count
myself fortunate, with all the comments I get on a regular basis, one I have
not gotten (as of yet) is someone telling me they believe I was unhappy in my
adoptive family or had a bad childhood as an explanation for the reason I
searched for my natural family.
However,
there may have been occasions where they have assumed this without saying it. It
seems to me that people being curious by nature, need an explanation for
everything and many times, when they don’t have a true understanding of the
dynamics of adoption, they go with the most convenient explanation, rather than
digging deep.
Until we can understand
the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves.
- Adrienne Rich
On the
surface, one might assume that an adoptee would begin a search because of unhappiness
and on some level this may be true. I
don’t particularly care for the word unhappy unless you want to say that I was
very unhappy with my situation of not having any information about why I was
adopted. Then unhappy doesn’t even begin
to describe the feelings about my predicament.
Freedom is knowing who you really
are.
- Linda Thomson
So I will
replace “unhappy” with lack of a complete identity. We all
start out in life with an incomplete identity and as we grow up, we build our
identities. In adopted people, this
identity has large holes.
All of us, adopted
or not, strive to engage in life choices and activities that enhance rather
than take away from ourselves. The
search, therefore, could be seen as a “stage of life” for an adoptee, not
unlike any normal stage of life all of us go through as we grow up.
Until we see what we are, we cannot
take steps to become what we should be.
- Charlotte P. Gilman
It is about
understanding oneself in a deeper way, similar to the quest of adolescents. I have never been an adoptee who didn’t want
to search. I wanted to know from the
time I could speak about why I was adopted and where my other family was. My
parents had no answers for me.
Many
adoptees had unhappy childhoods and being treated like a state secret didn’t
help in that happiness. Many adoptees
had a wonderful childhood but still felt unhappy about their adoptee status. Many
adoptees had a wonderful childhood and never questioned what they were told (or
not told).
The precept, "Know
yourself," was not solely intended to obviate the pride of mankind; but
likewise that we might understand our own worth.
- Cicero
It is really not for someone outside of your
family to judge about whether you were happy or not. I believe the unhappiness card gets thrown
about when the non-adopted -- who believe the stereotypes of adoption -- want
to blame the adoptee who may choose to speak out, go against the grain, or open
Pandora’s box.
We are volcanoes. When we women offer
our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new
mountains.
- Ursula K. LeGuin
We are
labeled “unhappy” because we make people uncomfortable. We say things about adoption that others don’t
want to hear or believe. Some people
find it highly offensive when we don’t prove to be the grateful adoptees others
think we should be. We upset the apple
cart by proving the social workers wrong that we would be just like a
biological family.
If you were
adopted as a child without any say, something was taken away from you. Family, names, choices. You don’t have the understanding to fully
realize this fact until you are an adult.
Sometimes it takes years to really
grasp what has happened to your life.
- Wilma Rudolph
I believe the search (whether it be physically
reaching out or just questioning what people tell you about yourself and life)
is really a quest to become whole.
Some adoptees want to propel themselves
forward in a full-blown investigation and others want to sit back and hope
someone comes looking for them. Still
others deny any need, curiosity or desire to search. Each of these people are in different stages
of growth. The non-searcher of today may
be the woman on a mission next year.
Ninety percent of the
world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their
frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way
through life as complete strangers to ourselves.
- Sydney J. Harris
As a person who
was always been a searcher, what I want you to take away from this blog is that
my searching had very little to do with my adoptive family; however for many,
the decision NOT to search has very much to do with them.
In other living creatures the
ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.
- Boethius
Loyalty to
the adoptive family and hurting people’s feelings is one of the biggest reasons
adopted people postpone their search (sometimes indefinitely). Fear is the enemy of all searching and fear
of upsetting the adoptive family (and extended family) is very powerful.
Many
adoptees search after the death of their adoptive parents which to me says the
desire was always there, just laying dormant waiting for the right time.
Sometimes a person has to go back,
really back-to have a sense, an understanding of all that's gone to make
them-before they can go forward.
- Paule Marshall
From the
time I was a child, I have always felt it was my right to know where I came
from. I believe we are born with this need and expectation. When the need is not met, we will feel
fragmented. I questioned my mother like
a prosecuting attorney throughout childhood with nothing to show for it. Once I became an adult, I requested all
information that my agency could legally give to me. I received it on my birthday the December
before I got married. It wasn’t until my late 30’s that I could take
the giant psychological leap toward actively seeking out my mother. But that’s a story for another blog.
I was never looking for my Oprah moment when I
searched . . . only the moments of truth that I was forced to grow up without.
The
important thing I want to say about my searching is that it had very little to
do with the quality of my adoptive home and whether I was happy or not, but
mainly in my belief that I had a right to know and wouldn’t stop until I did.
Somehow we learn who we really are
and then live with that decision.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
