searching

14 March 2019

don’t you want to find your birth parents?

To close this series out (for now), here’s one I get a lot. This one is phrased in a few different ways: “Have you ever tried looking for your parents?”, “Do you want to find your birth parents?”, “Do you ever wish you knew your birth parents?”, etc. The answer to these questions has changed drastically over the years and has shifted and gained nuances and layers of complexity I wish wasn’t a thing but is part of my story I cannot deny. For a long time, I had a lot of anger towards my birth parents. If they threw me out on the street (which is the way I framed in my head/heart for a good deal of time), why would I want to find them. They aren’t looking for me so why would I look for them? That comes and goes. I some times felt so overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem of finding them— with little to no information and at best only guesses or fragments of facts that a search could be based on—kept me from even wanting to try or start. Then going back to China when I was 18 and finding out I was 5 days old (roughly) when I was found, added a layer of anger, hurt and sadness that I retreated into not trying any further. We tried to find the spot where I was found but it seemed like too much time had passed and the geography had changed, the people who lived there had changed, and we didn’t think to put up signs so I felt I had failed. Flash forward to now, reconnecting with how I felt about searching, reading some amazing articles/books by fellow adoptees and a new notion that it might actually be possible given social media and the internet that maybe the puzzle of finding them wouldn’t be so hard. Of course nothing is guaranteed and this could still be a life long process that doesn’t result in a direct answer, but I started to feel like it was worth giving it a shot. I don’t know if I will ever become a biological mother, but if some day that does happen, it would be nice to be able to give my child the answers I didn’t grow up with so maybe they won’t have so many questions or unfilled medical forms as I do. I could go on and on this but I’ll end this here and say I have started the search. I found a searcher who lives in the town where I am from. Stay tuned. 

💛

This concludes this series for now, thank you so much to all of you who’ve read all these posts, responded and shared. It really means so much to be heard and open these conversations. Til the next one…