Just a Glimpse
Yesterday for work, I went to a showcase for a new band. They are a brother and sister duo - and they looked EXACTLY like each other. It was fascinating. I couldn't stop staring at them because they really looked like twins. After they played, I was talking to the girl, and found out they have five more sibling at home - seven kids in all. She told me how close they all were and that they were all musical. I wondered if they all looked just like her and her brother. I am so intrigued by people that look like their relatives.
I guess that is one of the reasons I'm searching for my birth family. I have spent my entire life trying to fit in with a family that I really have very little in common with. Every time I introduce my parents to someone, I feel like they're staring at me - thin, tall, brown hair, fair skin, freckles - and staring at my mom and dad - my mom who is short, not-so-thin, blonde hair, blue eyes and my dad who is short and stocky with olive skin - and wondering what kind of freak genetic accident occurred to make someone who looks like me come from people who look like them. When I show people photos of my siblings, I generally get a "that's your brother?" or an outright "you look nothing like your family", which is fine. It doesn't bother me at all, because I know it is true. The wedding pictures are always fun to try out on new people who don't know I'm adopted. = )
My personality is really different from everyone in my family, as well. Although my little brother and I do share a similar sense of humor, he's still a lot different than I was at his age. Both my brother and sister are really shy - I was never shy as a kid. Everything that goes on at home is a major drama. I have always been much, much more laid back and relaxed than anyone in my family.
I guess I am hoping to find a family that I don't feel like I have to make excuses for. Why don't we look alike? Why don't we act alike? Why am I so tall? Why do I have freckles? I am so tired of feeling like I have to prepare people to meet my family for the first time. Don't get me wrong, my family has always been there for me, and I've had a good life. I'm not trying to replace them. I just want to have what they already have with each other - a sense of belonging, a biological connection.
A thought occurred to me for the first time while I was visiting home over Christmas this year - I was sitting in the living room, trying to watch something on TV and I looked around - my mom in the kitchen talking to herself, my brother in his room with the door shut, my sister using the computer and my dad just standing in the middle of the living room - Who on earth are these people and what am I even doing here? I felt like I was with someone else's family for Christmas. It isn't that I'm uncomfortable when I'm there, I'm perfectly comfortable. Besides living in a foster home, that house is the only place I ever lived growing up. But it isn't about being comfortable, it is about feeling like you belong.
Yesterday at that showcase, I caught a tiny glimpse of how amazing a sibling bond can be and that made me think - my husband and I want to adopt kids someday and I always just assumed we'd adopt one kid at a time, but how cool would it be to adopt siblings? I feel like a person could be so much more at peace with adoption if they had grown up with a brother or sister from the same family, the same mother, who looked like them and acted like them and had some of the same personality traits and mannerisms as them. Just one physical thing to link you back to where you came from seems like it would be enough to put you at ease about being adopted. Sure, there would still be questions and struggles, but at least you wouldn't be all alone - you would always have your sibling, who you knew would understand what you were going though.
We're sold on the idea = )
I guess that is one of the reasons I'm searching for my birth family. I have spent my entire life trying to fit in with a family that I really have very little in common with. Every time I introduce my parents to someone, I feel like they're staring at me - thin, tall, brown hair, fair skin, freckles - and staring at my mom and dad - my mom who is short, not-so-thin, blonde hair, blue eyes and my dad who is short and stocky with olive skin - and wondering what kind of freak genetic accident occurred to make someone who looks like me come from people who look like them. When I show people photos of my siblings, I generally get a "that's your brother?" or an outright "you look nothing like your family", which is fine. It doesn't bother me at all, because I know it is true. The wedding pictures are always fun to try out on new people who don't know I'm adopted. = )
My personality is really different from everyone in my family, as well. Although my little brother and I do share a similar sense of humor, he's still a lot different than I was at his age. Both my brother and sister are really shy - I was never shy as a kid. Everything that goes on at home is a major drama. I have always been much, much more laid back and relaxed than anyone in my family.
I guess I am hoping to find a family that I don't feel like I have to make excuses for. Why don't we look alike? Why don't we act alike? Why am I so tall? Why do I have freckles? I am so tired of feeling like I have to prepare people to meet my family for the first time. Don't get me wrong, my family has always been there for me, and I've had a good life. I'm not trying to replace them. I just want to have what they already have with each other - a sense of belonging, a biological connection.
A thought occurred to me for the first time while I was visiting home over Christmas this year - I was sitting in the living room, trying to watch something on TV and I looked around - my mom in the kitchen talking to herself, my brother in his room with the door shut, my sister using the computer and my dad just standing in the middle of the living room - Who on earth are these people and what am I even doing here? I felt like I was with someone else's family for Christmas. It isn't that I'm uncomfortable when I'm there, I'm perfectly comfortable. Besides living in a foster home, that house is the only place I ever lived growing up. But it isn't about being comfortable, it is about feeling like you belong.
Yesterday at that showcase, I caught a tiny glimpse of how amazing a sibling bond can be and that made me think - my husband and I want to adopt kids someday and I always just assumed we'd adopt one kid at a time, but how cool would it be to adopt siblings? I feel like a person could be so much more at peace with adoption if they had grown up with a brother or sister from the same family, the same mother, who looked like them and acted like them and had some of the same personality traits and mannerisms as them. Just one physical thing to link you back to where you came from seems like it would be enough to put you at ease about being adopted. Sure, there would still be questions and struggles, but at least you wouldn't be all alone - you would always have your sibling, who you knew would understand what you were going though.
We're sold on the idea = )
posted by everyscarisabridge at 12:46 PM
4 Comments:
Maybe you're on to something - I know that for myself, I was always much more curious about my siblings than about my parents. My desire was more for a closeness with siblings than with parents, though I think that has more to do with my having a hard time separting "good parents" from "bad parents." It is a trust issue, I guess, but one I am learning to work through. And I'm GLAD I'm working through it now, before I find them, instead of after. I don't want to punish my birth parents for what my adoptive parents did and didn't do. They don't deserve that.
After getting to know so many great moms through our blogs, I'm regretting something I said in the letter on file with my agency and IARMIE - I expressed the fact that I had more interest in meeting siblings than in meeting parents. I think I wrote that out of hurt I wasn't even aware I felt.
Hopefully I'll have the chance to fix that.
I'm adopted too but my brothers who are biological are the ones that don't fit. They have blond hair blue eyes and my parents both have dark hair. I'm the one who looks like them and we aren't even blood related. This is one reason i was glad i didn't really know i was adopted until later - i didn't question all the time if people were looking at us wondering or question whether i was accepted etc.
I've been where you are now in searching for your mother. The only advice that I feel qualified to give is: be persistant. Your mother might be out there waiting, hoping that you will find a way to her, or she might have left behind something for you to treasure; whatever the outcome it's well worth all the effort you invest.
When I tell people I'm adopted the first thing they ask is if my brother is adopted too. My standard reply is "No, he's real." They laugh nervously.
I know what you mean about feeling like you don't belong sometimes. I have felt like that with my family a lot. I feel like they thought of me as a piece of clay they could mold into the daughter they wanted or should have had. They didn't let me be who I really was.
There has been a lot of distance between us for a few years, but we're starting to be more honest now and I think our relationship is beginning to heal and be more healthy. I know more about who I am now, not because I found my birth family yet, but because I was able to distance myself from the adoptive family and just figure it out.
I think about adopting siblings as well. I have a friend who has one bio-daughter and adopted two siblings as they were born to their un-wed parents a little over a year apart. I'm so glad for these little ones that they have each other for all the reasons you talked about. But I wonder if the bio-daughter will be the one to feel left out as they all grow older.
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