Having gone through many changes in the last few years of my life, I've also had the chance to meet a number of new people. Although many would consider me stand offish, or shy, depending on how we met, I have never been secretive about who I am to those that I meet. One of the major identifying aspects of who "I am" is clear in the title of this post: that is, I am an adoptee. Although there are also many other parts of who I am as a person, I feel as though this label incorporates the main parts of my life into one simple sentence. The tale of my adoption includes myself, my adoptive parents, my birth family, where I was born and the circumstances of my birth, where I have lived, and even where I am now to a certain extent.
In doing research on the 'institution' of adoption, I have learned that my adoption is considered pretty unique. To a certain degree, I always knew that, but regardless of the uniqueness of my personal adoption story, I believe there are many aspects of adoption that hold true for the majority of adoptees at least. Anyway, the point is, my tale is different from the one that many expect when informed that I was adopted. It stems from my parents (and birth parents) having joined and married into the Unification Church (UC for short). In the UC, there is a term known as "offering child" and it's basically a nice way of labeling the situation wherein one family cannot have children for one reason or another, and therefore another family in the same church offers to have a child for them. I have no knowledge of whether this method of adoption is found in other cultures or religions, but based upon the reactions I've gotten from others, it's a fairly unheard of approach.
When I explain this situation, most people are amazed, and exclaim over what a beautiful story it is. I agree, there is an immense sacrifice there, when a mother is able to give up her child to another family out of love or perhaps an intense empathy for another family who cannot have their own biological children. In my case (and this is all based upon what I have been told by my birth parents), my birth parents had many children, and felt that it was a blessing that they were given by God. Therefore, they felt called to provide the blessing of children to another family. And thus I was born.
One of the conditions of my adoption was that as I was growing up, I would be told that I was adopted and informed of the circumstances. Also, that I would be afforded the chance to get to know my birth family if I wanted when I was older. It sounds like a fairly reasonable request from a family giving up their flesh and blood, and I still believe it was the right thing to do. Surprisingly enough though, I know of a number of 'offering children' who were not given that information, and many of them were raised without the knowledge that they were adopted.
My parents accepted the terms of my birth families 'offering', and I was raised being told that I didn't come from "mummy's tummy". However, I grew up on the other side of the world from my birth family (they lived in Tennessee, while I was raised in Tasmania) and as such, my knowledge of my adoption was pretty abstract. I do remember thinking it was something to be proud of at one point, but when I told a friend at my primary school that "I have TWO families" she responded that "At least I have a family that cares about me, no one wanted you", and with one sentence, my 6 year old pride and sense of self worth was dashed for a good five years.
When I was 7, my mum and I took an extended trip around the world. We visited a training center run by the UC in South Korea before flying to the USA and visiting my aunt in Chicago. We were there for so long that I was enrolled in a school for a while. While in Chicago, my mum must have decided it was only polite to visit my biological family, so we flew down to Memphis, Tennessee for a short trip so that I could meet my birth parents and 4 of my 5 older siblings. My memories of this time are rather vague, and involve feeling overwhelmed by the sheer energy that comes from 5 children together in one house. I do remember my brother bothering me to the point where I was almost always crying in his presence, and that I viewed my oldest sister as the physical incarnation of an angel (she could wear makeup!!!). Recently, my siblings mentioned that I apparently thought they were my cousins when I met them this time. I don't know if this is true or not, as I always remembered that trip as one where I met my birth family for the first time.
After this trip, I didn't visit the United States until we made the huge move from Tasmania, Australia all the way to Kodiak, Alaska, in 2002. I can't even express in words what this did to me emotionally as a 12 year old girl, although I'm sure many people have similar experiences with the trauma of moving. This did mean however, that we were living closer (only 14 hours of flying!) to my mum's family, who were located in Massachusetts at the time. This also meant that I was closer to my biological family, and as a 12 year old just starting to define to herself who they are as a person, this was particularly meaningful to me. Growing up as an only child, but knowing that I had siblings, I'd started to add value to who they were, while minimizing my own self-worth. I was so jealous of everyone I knew who had a sibling, because they had this bond that no-one else could be a part of, and I wanted that so badly. But knowing that I had these siblings out there, it meant that there was a possibility of being a part of that, having what I wanted so badly, and it was just that much closer.
So I had my second chance to see some of my siblings when I was in Massachusetts in 2003. I was visiting my grandmother, and a number of my birth family members were in New York state, so I was invited to join them. My mum was understandably reluctant to see me go, but off I went. To me at the time, it was like I was coming home. I was finally going to be able to understand myself, and meet people who I could relate to! When I was walking to meet my sister, I started weeping from the sheer emotion. It was a very brief visit, perhaps one day, wherein I met my birth father and three of my siblings, but I attached so my emotion and sense of self to that moment that it felt like so much more.
After this short visit, I didn't see my birth family again for several years. However, with the advent of social media, and the use of MySpace, I did start to communicate with my siblings more as time went on. One particular thing that stood out to me was when my brother added me on MySpace. I was reading his profile, and under the section heading "Who I'd like to Meet", he had written "God, my future wife, and my little sister". I was blown away, he wanted to meet me as much as I wanted to meet them! All the feelings I'd had growing up, of being inadequate, alone, not enough... none of it mattered anymore. It was a real possibility for me that I might be able to be a part of this sibling dynamic. So when my sister asked me what I wanted for Christmas in 2006, I told her I just wanted to meet them again.
Again, my parents were understandably reluctant to let me, as a 16 year old girl, travel by myself to Tennessee for Christmas. I think they were also a little scared of letting me go, maybe thinking I wouldn't want to come back. I was so excited to go though. I told all of my friends about it, explaining that I have 5 older siblings, and how cool all of them were. But when I got to Tennessee, I was overwhelmed. There were 2 parents, 5 siblings, and 2 grandparents, and 2 in-laws to meet. Not only that, but we were all going to go on a road trip to Florida. I so desperately wanted to be a part of something, but there was so much to process that I retreated a little. I craved attention and validation, but my defense was to stay back and watch from a distance. It was a good experience for me in that I did get to connect with my birth family, yet I wasn't getting the connection that I wanted, and it hurt.
I remained in contact with my birth family over the years, visiting them mostly one at a time on a few occasions. Yet I was never able to gain that sibling connection that I had yearned for my whole life, and it hurt. It's absence grated on me, and left a hole in my soul. I've heard of the term "ghost kingdom" used to describe that many adoptees go through. One article defined it as the place where
"the adopted child keeps the lost birth mother, birth father, and his (or her) original self, the eternal ghost baby who was not able to grow up. The Ghost Kingdom is an alternate place, located in one’s psychic reality, It is a portable Home that adoptees carry inside them. It is the Land of What Might Have Been. It is the Land of the As If Dead."
Of course, this quote can't entirely encapsulate everything, but it does a pretty good job of introducing this idea of basically creating your own world, or idea of how things should/could be. For me, my "ghost kingdom" was tied into how I viewed my siblings, or perhaps how they viewed me.
A friend with a younger sister (also an offering child) reached out to me almost a decade ago, asking for help with his relationship with her. He was worried about some of the decisions she was making, but felt as though he would be overstepping his boundaries by confronting her about it. I told him that was ridiculous. If she was anything like me, she would welcome any kind of interaction from her siblings, and him telling her that he was worried just meant that he cared! That would have meant the world to me. It seems that it worked, and I sometimes see photos of their family, little sister included, and wish I had that.
It's so easy to compare, and to view others relationships in the best of lights. I can't say for certain what anyone elses real relationships are like with their siblings, but all I really truly wanted was for was my siblings to tell me they cared. Whether that meant initiating a text or facebook message conversation, or asking me how I am. It would have meant something if one of them had come to my high school graduation or my wedding. I live about an hour away from one of my sisters, and I see her once every month or two. It's nice to catch up as it would be for an old college classmate, or perhaps a distant cousin.
