For the last eight days, every day, I have met a new member of my genetic family. On the first day, when I received my DNA results from MyHeritage, I was matched with two close relatives and three "next ring" close relatives. I messaged them. I couldn't resist. I had truly never wanted to search for my genetic parents. The parents I have are enough and have left me little energy for family that are not my children.
I don't know what changed in that moment. I had just had a solid argument with my mother about truth telling and mis-remembering as a performance of dominance. But, I just needed to communicate with these people. They were right there in front of me. I sent all five of these relatives a message. Just a "hey, we were matched" message and went on with my day.
My 2nd cousins responded immediately. On January 6, 2019 we connected as if we had been raised together. Both of them are really into genealogy and they started doing the work of finding out where I fit in what turns out to be a giant family from Oklahoma. I am not sharing names of folks until we have verified our findings and I have their permission. I hope that these two cousins will contribute to this blog in time. I talk to my baby cousin every single day. He has not let me take one step, experience one reveal, and meet a single relative without him by my side.
It moves really quickly from this point. Across the next seven days, I was blessed to meet one family member each day. I am not sure if they planned this, but it worked and allowed me to focus on each new addition to my life.
The reception has been very warm and loving. I get "I love you" after almost every conversation. Phone conversations are warm. "Whose baby is this?" has been reiterated in many emails, direct messages, phone calls and visits between my relatives. In the end they have identified the person they believe to be my father, three sisters, a brother, two first cousins, a niece, a nephew, a beautiful bounty of great nieces and nephews and several 2nd cousins across the southern United States and Chicago.
We are from Oklahoma. I was born in El Paso. They say my father is buried there, in El Paso. We are a talented, educated, accomplished family. We are singers and writers. We are healers. We are African American, Choctow and Irish.
My father is dead. He died in 2013. My father who raised me died in 2014. I am yet again a fatherless child. Sadly, I was born outside my father's marriage and his wife and daughters, my sisters, are so angry no one will tell them about me. I keep having to remind myself, when this starts to bother me, that I hadn't planned to do this and that I need to be grateful for what I have. I wonder why they are upset when I was the baby born without a name. But I get that we experience our own realities, not someone else's.
One of the high points is the pictures. Because I am a survivor of trauma with an impacted memory, pictures are very important for me. They hold my memories. I have made so many side by side comparisons. My relatives really enjoy seeing those pictures. The pictures they share with me are both invaluable and this offering. You ARE us... that is what each picture says to me.
As a child, even now, I always wanted to SEE what my genetic parents looked like. As a transracial adoptee, I longed to see who I looked like. When my children were born, it was the first time I had ever seen anyone that looked like me. They all, including my grandchildren, have my nose. The first thing my cousin said when he saw a picture of me "she's a M... alight, look at that nose. She has our nose". I also have their eyes, cheek bones and my sister and I have the same shoulders. Seeing myself juxtaposed with people who look like me is soul healing. Hearing their voices break with emotion is life changing.
I feel loved by these strangers. I feel like I KNOW these strangers. I have LOVE for these strangers. There is something in their voices and the way they move language that resonates with me. They feel like home. And, I feel guilty. I haven't told my mother yet. I don't know how she will take it. We have had issues forever. Days before my world upended, my mother and I had an argument about mis-remembering and gas-lighting as performances of dominance that I will no longer accept from her. And then this. She will feel like it is retaliation, all about her. She will never ask me a single question.
People are asking me questions, however. People keep asking me how I feel. I feel so many things that I am starting to disassociate. I am separating from myself and just watching from a distance. I am watching all of these versions of myself walk past each other. I am "baby girl" - theirs and my parents. I am now the daughter of two fathers in a salient way. I am an oldest daughter and a youngest sibling. I feel lost and abandoned. I feel found and saved. I feel deep joy and a grief that has no rhythm or melody just this responsive harmony that never returns to the tonic note.. I am the child no one wanted. I am the child that turned up in the front yard in bare feet, starving and neglected. I am the child that raised herself. I am the child that stands to return a missing familial and genealogical piece.
For a bit, I lost language. I know three days without words and being unable to write doesn't sound like a big gap, but for me not being able to write is the most cruel of isolations. It is an isolation from myself. It is the ultimate in liminality where time is kept in decades and seconds at the same time. I am 48 years old and a newborn. I have returned to the most liminal of spaces... the womb. I am waiting for a new identity. I am waiting to take my first breath. To hear my name. I am waiting to live.
I need that language. I need to be able to write this story. I need to generate theory about genealogical inheritance and disruption. Yesterday, I started tweeting @adoptee1970 - producing sound bites and quotes. Today an advertisement from wiz.com brought me here to you. And now, I am writing like my life depends on it. I just don't know which life.
More soon...
Baby Girl