A dear friend, who read the blog for me, offered me the feedback that I seemed to be comparing my adoptive parents with my "new" genetic family who were already winning. I appreciate this perspective of the tensions in the writing. I am living those tensions. The feedback allowed me to reflect on the way that my adoptive and genetic families are inseparable for me. They are a comprehensive presence in my life rather than parts of a fragmented being. I am disrupted, not broken. In my completeness, I am necessarily part of both adoptive and genetic families in ways that co-mediate my identity and lived experiences. My adoptive family had a profound impact on me as a person. My genetic family had an equal impact on me in their absence.
I will also say that the tension didn't arrive with the discovery of genetic relatives and my new access to genealogical narratives. I have felt the tension between my adoptive and genetic families since I was young. Once, my mother got a signed poster of "Susan" from Sesame Street. I grabbed the poster and excitedly put it on the desk in my room. My mother followed me into my bedroom and asked me if I knew who it was. With a joy I can still remember, I responded "My real mother!". My mother melted into tears and left the room. I tried to apologize, but I feel like that was the last time we were really close. I was 7.
I spent the rest of my childhood and most of my young adulthood trying to make up for that moment. I now understand that, for my mother, my genetic relatives had ceased to exist. For me, they had not. I lived, and continue to live, with them every single day. Now, in reunion, that "living with" is simply more concrete. Before reunion, the "living with" happened every time I looked in the mirror. Being in an all white family and an all white community, my brown face was the only face I saw. Mine and "Susan's". I can remember being upset on days when "Susan" was not featured in the episode. I watched Sesame Street for the sole purpose of seeing the woman I had apparently decided was my genetic mother. I remember feeling real love for her. "Susan" and Snuffleufagus; they both resonated with me because, for me, my genetic mother was my invisible secret.
Entering reunion with my genetic family has compelled me to look back over my life and see these tensions and the ways in which I as a child I was left to manage them. I never wanted to hurt my mother like that again. So, I didn't mention my genetic mother again. I also didn't mention my growing suspicion that Diana Ross was my actual genetic mother. I never used the phrase "real mother" again. I never used the term "real mother" again. I started using biological mother and now I say genetic mother. I got both of those phrases from other adoptees who, for what I am guessing are similar tensions, stopped thinking of their genetic mothers as "real".
The tension, not comparison nor competition, filled up all of the spaces in my life. It took my air. It took my sight. It left me unable to feel. Suppressing my natural desire to know about my genetic family left me... disconnected. Protecting my mother from those desires left me undone. This was the first of many situations that caused me to disassociate - mentally and emotionally remove myself - from painful things. Not being able to think about and share, which is what the coping mechanism became, my feelings about my genetic mother and my framing of her abandonment left me unable to access the one person in the world that loved me most. I didn't want to hurt my mother so I said nothing. I didn't even write about her. By the time I was 25, I had convinced myself my genetic mother had died.
The reason that I never looked for genetic family is because I had laid them, my genetic mother really, to rest. If she popped into my consciousness, I drove her back out. I still feel guilty and always have for wanting her. I want to see what she looks like. I want to know what she smells like. I want to know what it feels like when she holds me in her arms. That is the first time in my entire life I have ever said those things. I miss her. I always have.
It is important to me that folks do not confuse my comparisons as a competition or a measurement of sorts. It is simply an articulation of the comprehensive realities of my lived experiences Adoption is not a binary space. Reunion is a liminal space. The complexities of life and relationship exist in magnified ways for adoptees and all of their families. There is no comparison because my genetic family wasn't there, they were not present, they were not "real" until now. My mother has witnessed and emotionally recorded her versions of all of my history. I would argue that she is part of my genealogical reality. I would also say that as an adoptive parent she plays or has played a role in my genealogical disruption. And clearly, members of my genetic family are directly responsible for my genealogical dislocation. I hold my mother no more or less responsible for my communal, cultural, socio-racial, genetic inheritance disruption(s). It takes equal parts genetic and adopted to create the person that an adoptee understands themselves to be. For me, they are sharing the same "blame" or "fault" around the tensions and struggles I have experienced. One family stayed hidden and the other family suspended my natural processing and grieving behaviors as they related to being a trans-racial adoptee.
And there is joy. There is laughter. There is light. Meeting genetic relatives for the first time. Being called baby sister. The way my genetic family has worked to create connective tissue to a past I did not live. My adoptive family holds my realities. They remember when I walked, talked, ran (broke a lot of things) and made them belly laugh. My grandmother that helped raise me loves to tell me stories about my childhood. You can see the love in their eyes in the old photos. There will never be childhood photos with my genetic family. Never. For me, there is balance in all of this. I do understand my friend's concerns, however. At face value, it seems like the glow and glory of reunion - which is far from the truth for most adoptees - is everything. It isn't everything. It is a continuation of something... of some - body... of many someones.
More soon...
Baby Girl