I finally feel it is time to start my first blog. I started one prior but decided I was not ready for it.
I am an adult adoptee. At the age of 34 I finally decided it was time to realize who I am and boy did I get more than I bargained for. So here goes the start to my story....
I was adopted at 5 weeks old in a closed adoption. I have been told the story many times over and can even picture how it went in my head, the noises, smells, feelings. It was Halloween and my adoptive parents got the call that they would be getting a little girl. Now, I like to think of myself as more of a treat for Halloween but my sister tells it more like I was a trick.
The night I came home with my new family I cried and cried and not only did I cry but my sister, who was 10 at the time, was not able to go trick or treating like her usual tradition. I mean come on, no wonder she didn't like me to begin with...don't mess with a kid and her candy! Even though I was upset my parents loved me. They loved me through the collick, they loved me through the poopy diapers, they loved me through breaks and aches all through my life. I fit that family like a glove. I am much like my adoptive parents in so many ways. I get anxious like my mom and I hold feelings in like my dad.
I grew up always knowing I was adopted. In fact, I can't even recall when I was told. During my teen years I recall thinking a lot about my birth family. This is an important time, after all, we are developing our identities. This is where we find out just who we are and what we want to be. As an adoptee this becomes a bit of a problem. I always related to my adoptive family's background and history but as a teeneager I realized, this isn't really MY history. That is where the wondering began. Who did I look like? What exactly is Bohemian? What history is there? Who's talents do I have? What about medical history? No one can even answer those questions but my birth family. I remember thinking I shouldn't talk about it with my mom and dad becuaseI don't want to hurt their feelings, even though they have always been open about talking about it. I have always been, and so often adoptees are, a people pleaser. I never want to let anyone down or do the wrong thing. This has plagued me my entire life. At work I am a perfectionist and do not want to do anything wrong and I get some serious anxiety over it. Personally, I never wanted to let my birth family down by being a failure and I never wanted to hurt my parents by digging in to my adoption. That is a tough road to walk down, let me tell you. There is no perfect in this world and trying to attain it is impossible. It is setting myself up to fail. I have realized this in later years but it wasn't easy getting here.
This feeling of wonder resurfaced again in my early 20's. I thought many of the same thoughts. I often wondered about siblings and if my birth parents ever got married. When I was growing up I always....always wanted a brother, it was something I thought often about with my birth family. During this time I was going through some really difficult life issues and decided that at that time it just wasn't right for me to go through a search for my birth family. It was hard enough to deal with life much less adding that to the mix. So, again it went on the back burner.
Searching really didn't resurface again for me until I was 33. I remember my mom's brother's wife talking about how she was adopted and she recently had searched for her family and found she has a half sister. We talked a couple times about this and that is when I decided it was time. My life has been going well and I think I can handle this emotional journey. I just needed to get past that feeling of hurting my parents. I decided to get on some forums and kind feel out other people's experiences and start meeting with my counselor again as well. This helped me realize that this will be emotional for them but that it is something I need to do for myself and it is okay to search.
And so began my adoptee journey.....
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