On the other hand, I have discovered that (as I have mused before) I have really hurt my Mom. She is still grieving the passing of my Daddy. It has only been a year. I have completely quit sharing things with her, even though I have always told her everything, even with the objection of other close family and friends. I haven't even shared with her the picture that I have of my birth parents being together, the one I shared here in the last post.
I am also dealing with my husband's disinterest. I won't go into his story, but he has never been very close to his birth family and just doesn't get my excitement or my needing to find my roots and what my bio family is like. Consequently, I have just shared some basic information with him.
I feel that I am overwhelmingly lucky to have a bio family that is excited to hear and see all of my discoveries. Such as this picture of myself at about 17 and one of my bio father's nieces at about the same age.
Don't know about you, but we can sure see the resemblance!
I want to try and explain to those of you reading this that may not be adopted. I have found a passage in a book I have been reading that explains MY view on my search for answers. This is a perfect way to say it, in my humble opinion!
Again, I want to say, that this is my feeling exactly. It does certainly baffle me that people dont understand the need for adoptees to know their biological relatives. It truly has nothing to do with feeling any lack of love or lack of needing ANYTHING within my adoptive family! Maybe I am in the minority, but with the location of this passage in the book, Almost Home a memoir by Hilary Harper, I think that maybe I am not.
Getting back to my title, I am for real getting to know my bio relatives. Several of them have been sending pictures of my birth father, Russ, as well as pictures of many of my uncles, aunts, and cousins. In fact, there are so many, that I am having trouble even remembering who belongs to who! Having great-grandparents that had two brothers who married two sisters, gives their kids all as double cousins. On top of that, one of my great-uncles who was the son of one of the daughters of those two families, married another woman with the same last name who was also a distant relative. That leads to even more and more cousins and once removed etc etc. I think I went over earlier in this blog where in Ancestry it shows over 1000 4th cousins and closer! I come from a family of three uncles, three aunts and 8 cousins, so can you see where this is completely overwhelming for me!!???
One of my uncles and I have been exchanging Marco Polo's with each other. This is quite helpful in getting to know the person that is so much more personal than just typing on a computer. His wife has also participated with this even showing a Marco Polo of a family gathering this past weekend. It is fun to try and sort out who is who from pictures. Then I need to figure out relationships as to who belongs to who! I am pretty sure I will have all this down some day. Yes, someday!
I totally get your “need to know.” I was adopted at birth. I found my maternal half-sister almost two years ago. At the time of our joyous reunion, I was 65 and she was 80. I found our mother in 1983; she wanted nothing to do with me and asked me never to contact her again, which I honored. I had a wonderful adoptive daddy and a not-wonderful adoptive mother. But my curiosity about my bio family has existed as long as I remember, long before my adoptive mother’s narcissism disrupted her ability to mother me. A college friend said to me recently that she had a wonderful adoptive family and no need to find her bio family. But my reading tells me having a loving and supportive adoptive family is unrelated to the need to know one’s bio family. I keep searching for my bio dad. He may never be found (is certainly deceased, probably didn’t know of my conception, and might never have fathered any other children, so no way to know him). But I’ll never stop searching. That curiosity, those “holes in my soul” have no other way of being filled.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post. I totally identify.
As long as you are still curious, keep looking! You will need to do DNA but I found mine through a second cousin...so it’s possible even if he didn’t have other children
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