Happy New Year! It’s still January, so it still counts, right? I am going to try to blog more in 2018. As long as I stay unemployed, this should be easy. Right?

I spent some time with family over the weekend. My aunt had recently gone through lots of old family photos, and had brought me an envelope of them. Some I had seen before, and some I hadn’t. There was one of my mom and I that struck me in particular.

You see, I have been saying for years that no pictures exist of my mom and I together. By that, I mean ones of just her and I. Her holding me as a baby, for example. While it was the mid 70s and people didn’t take a hundred photos in one day of their babies, I still found it odd that (for example), on my Baptism day she isn’t holding me in any of the pictures. My godmother, her sister in law, is holding me in all of them. She stands off to the side (as she does in all ‘family’ photos of the four of us), as completely removed as possible – at least to the photographic eye. In general, few baby photos of me exist. I have none (obviously) from birth, and they only start around age four months when the adoption was finalized. I have several pictures of my dad and I together; always snuggled up and smiling big. I just find it so weird that I don’t have any like that with my mom. The old adage of the first child having all the pictures partially comes into play here I am sure, as I have seen a few pictures of her holding my older brother (also adopted) as a baby.

So imagine my shock when, tucked into this thin pile of old Kodak prints, was a picture of Mom and I sitting on my aunt’s back porch. I am busy playing with something very intently in my lap, knees propped up, unaware that my photograph is being taken. My mom is sitting next to me, and there is a small side table between us. She is aware the picture is being taken, and is looking at the camera. She is not smiling, big or otherwise. All of her body language is, once again, removing herself from the situation. My husband noticed it immediately without me saying a word. “That explains it all”, he said. In that short phrase, he completely surmised my relationship with her.

The older I get (44 in three weeks – eek!), the more I realize that is true. The “connection”, the bond, that most healthy mother-daughter relationships have, isn’t missing from our relationship. It isn’t missing, because it was never there. It’s a sobering thought to write out, and one that I don’t write lightly. I’ve spent an extraordinary amount of time thinking about this over the last fourteen years. My husband (a wonderful free therapist – shout out to M!) once said to me “You cannot mourn what you never had”. Well, I don’t think that is necessarily true. I mourn for the loss all the time, in different ways. Mostly when I notice other mother-daughter relationships, which presents itself as jealousy on my end. Watching my cousins with their mom (my aunt). I have a lot of cousins. They all have involved, loving, expressive parents who dote on them and their children. I had a conversation not too long ago with my brother, G, about how difficult it is to observe that and interact with that – as an outsider. And our own relationships with our mom and dad are not the same as theirs with their parents, nor could they ever be. While I am rather close with my dad, the relationship is complicated by the fact that (I think) he often feels he has to “chose” between my mom/his wife and me. Neither of them are in the best of health, and she doesn’t drive or really even go outside anymore, so he feels he can’t leave her for long (to visit me and two of his five grand kids, for example). My brother, who only lives an hour and a half from our parents, has the opposite problem. He has the ability to visit often but chooses not to a lot of the time, because of how difficult my mom is. (sidebar: I have always thought G was the favored child, and not just because he has more baby pictures that I do)

I love family photos, old photos especially, because they are proof that we existed before now. Proof that we were, that we are. In terms of this lone, solitary picture of my mother and I, I suppose that proof is all it is.

“I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you, that I almost believe that they’re real.

…there was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more than to feel you, deep in my heart. There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more than to never feel the breaking apart all my pictures of you.” – The Cure

My biological mother, S, turned 70 last Friday. The day itself passed with little fanfare or remembrance for me, as I was traveling back from upstate New York where I had been visiting my father in law with my family.

But I did remember. I remembered that my uncle (her brother) had mentioned she might be having a party, and he invited me to it. I never heard any more about it, but I didn’t really expect to. Although he was extremely kind and gracious with his invite, I felt she didn’t want me there. I would not even know what to say to her, beyond “happy birthday”.

And I did, I guess, celebrate in a small way without planning it. We stopped in our travels for the night in Muncie, Indiana to visit with my brother and sister and their 6 kids between them. We slept at my sister’s house because there were no hotel rooms available. After visiting at my brother’s house for a while; my husband, my sister’s husband, my sister’s two boys, and my son walked to my sister’s house (my brother and sister live a couple of blocks apart). My sister and I drove. As I pulled up to the house, we came upon my son and his cousins racing down the road in the middle of the night, overcome with excitement about the sleepover. I smiled out loud, and realized that, although my biological mother refuses to talk to me and refused to give me my biological father’s name, I was able to take this small piece of my past back into my control. I found my paternal biological side on my own and in doing so, am able to create new memories – the possibilities of which had been denied to me for 40 years.

I’ll be able to look back at 70 years and appreciate that even more than I do now.

“This is the book I’ve never read.
These are the words I’ve never said.
This is the path I’ll never tread.
These are the dreams I’ll dream instead.” – Annie Lennox

(or, why I am not a fan of this holiday)

For the first time in my 43 years on this planet, I forgot to call my Mom on Mother’s Day. I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON. Or, maybe not so much.

Look – Sundays are BUSY for me, okay? I woke up, tended to dear daughter and her sleepover buddy, argued with DH about whether or not it was worth going out for breakfast (he is not a fan of breakfast food; I mos def am but I think it’s a waste if there’s no good coffee to be had AND TRUST AND BELIEVE THERE IS NO GOOD COFFEE TO BE HAD IN MY TOWN – at least at breakfast places), ate the breakfast he ultimately made me instead, grocery shopped for the week, meal prepped for the week, did a few loads of laundry, ran other errands, you get the picture. “I should really stop and call Mom” did in fact cross my mind a couple of times, but then it would be promptly erased by the next “to-do”. By the time I remembered, it was 10 o’clock. I was mortified and guilt ridden. Obviously. Right?

Well, kind of. For some time now, thanks to many factors but especially it seems social media, I have not looked forward to this day. My family always makes me feel special but there are things they cannot control that make me feel like shit and/or riddled with anxiety: namely the fact that MD always falls on a fucking SUNDAY which all moms know is the woooooooorst day of the week. Just the worst! From sun up to long after sun down, I do not stop on Sundays. Day of rest, my ass. And then there’s the blessing-curse of social media. Every year, starting somewhere around a week or so prior to MD, people on my Facebook feed start changing their profile pictures to a darling, vintage photo of their mom. And the tributes begin. I do not change my photo. I love my mom, but we are at our best when we are at a great physical distance. We have what is best described as a complicated relationship. I started to realize that something was “wrong” between us when I was 29. I was out with some friends and somehow the topic turned to moms, and their relationship with their moms. As I listened to each girl talk about how imperfect, yet healthy and loving, their relationships were – it was if a light turned on over my head. My relationship with my own mother sounded nothing like theirs. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t a “Mommy Dearest” type situation or anything close to it. But it was not healthy, not stable, and – as I was about to discover – not normal.

I can and likely will go into more detail about this dysfunctional relationship between Mom and I in a future post. But for now, suffice to say that the nurturing gene did not seem to exist in Mom. She cared for me in the physical sense, but emotionally there was pretty much nothing there. Just…empty. Some experts in Adoption Land believe this can happen when a child does not share the womb connection with the mother. There is actually a term for it: “the primal wound” is what occurs when a child is separated from the biological mother. I’m not sure I believe that. But is my mom disconnected from me (and eventually, I from her) because she didn’t grow me inside her body? Or is it because, for whatever other random reasons, she just didn’t connect? For example, there’s a lot of sadness and trauma in her background. Did this contribute to the kind of mother she became? Surely, that has to be part of it. The whole “nature vs. nurture” argument will forever confound me. Because then, I have the other side of the coin. My biological mother, whose connection was “cut” with me. While I am in reunion with her, I would not say overall that the relationship has been a positive experience. The rest of the bio family is amazing and wonderful, and I am grateful every day for their presence in my life and our reunion. So I let a lot of stuff slide with S. because I have so much good with the rest of the bio fam. In some ways, I consider it a very small price to pay.

So on Mother’s Day…it’s hard for me to spend a lot of time dwelling on the two mothers I have, neither of which meets my ideal. In the past, what I have done is focused instead on memories of my grandmothers and three friends who “taught” me how to be a mom at the most critical time of my life, as a new mom whose husband was deployed for most of the pregnancy and the first six weeks of our son’s life. Of course, I also focus on my own little family and my kids. And mostly stay the hell off social media.

But, as with most holidays for me…there’s some hurt that always shows up. We don’t have any family close by, so nearly every holiday is spent with just the four of us. It’s less chaotic and dramatic for sure, but it’s also sad. I always feel empty somehow. Here’s a classic conundrum for Adoptees: we are never satisfied. In my perfect world, I would live in the same town with all of my extended family: adoptive, bio, in laws. But I’m not sure that is normal. Nobody else seems to feel this way. Except, of course, adoptees. For us, family isn’t everything. It is the only thing.

“Through the storm, we reach the shore
You gave it all but I want more
And I’m waiting for you

With or without you
With or without you
I can’t live with or without you.” – U2

PS: I called the next day and had flowers delivered. All was well. Unbeknownst to me, my brother had also forgotten to call and so his flowers arrived within 45 minutes of mine. LOL. (if we can’t laugh at ourselves, we’d cry ourselves to death)

“There are only two kinds of people in the world: The Irish, and those who wish they were.” – unknown quote

Erin go Bragh and top of the morning on this belated St. Patrick’s Day post! Did you know that “Erin go Bragh” means “Ireland Forever”? Well, you learn something new every day. (you’re welcome!)

This day, for obvious reasons, has more meaning to me now having learned my heritage in 2004. St. Patrick is the Patron Saint of Ireland, as well as immigrants, and he is credited with having “driven the snakes from Ireland” back in the 16th century. Of course, this is a thinly veiled reference to him actually converting the Pagans (i.e. the “snakes”) to Christianity. I am not Catholic nor religious, so I do not celebrate the religious aspects of this holiday.

The other main focus of St. Patrick’s Day is celebrating one’s Irish or Irish-American heritage. I always cook a big, traditional Irish meal to celebrate.

There are a lot of fascinating aspects to my biological, maternal story. After I “found” them (a story for another day), imagine my surprise when I was told that we (the biological fam) were owners of a castle and land in County Clare, Ireland! I was Irish royalty! Well, sort of. Allow me to explain.

Some time in the late 1960s, my biological great Uncle Jack and his wife, Anola, were vacationing in County Clare, Ireland. As the story goes…they were in a local bookstore in Corofin. Jack picked up a book randomly and saw that nearby was a castle and monastery, Dysert O’Dea. Dysert is the Gaelic word for castle. He inquired to the shopkeep, who gave them direction on how to get there. Jack and Anola drove over and to their great Irish good fortune, it was for sale. The property was quite run down but there was a priest on site, giving a tour. Long story short…my great uncle and aunt purchased the property. They spent the next 10-15 years flying back and forth from Wisconsin to Ireland, often with their sons and nephews in tow, and restored the property. The 15th century castle (really one tower and a couple of lower floors) at the time of purchase was covered in ivy. They removed all of the ivy in time, and eventually turned the property over to the county so it could be used as a museum.Irish Royalty! Dysert from a distance, July 2014. Note the Clan flag atop the turret. Up the Banner!

Today, the Clare Archaeology Centre is housed inside the remains of Dysert O’Dea. The property features the ancient remains of a monastery and graveyard, as well as 25 other historically important field monuments. One of the most impressive is a surviving Irish High Cross. It is made of stone and dates back to the 12th century. Only a handful remain in Ireland today, and this one is still mostly intact so is considered a rare treasure.

High Cross on the property of Dysert.

Even more extraordinary then finding out we owned this property was the fact that every three years, clan members from all over the world gathered at Dysert for a Clan Gathering. In 2014 my husband and I finally were able to attend. It was life changing for me. Standing atop my family castle, looking out over the hills where generations of my blood kin had walked before me, was quite overwhelming and inspiring. Not for a second did I take it for granted. I carried with me on that trip all of my many adoptee brethren who had not yet met their biological families, and those who may never meet them. Not all will have as dramatic or fascinating story as mine, but all adoptees deserve to know their truth and where they came from. I invite you to visit the Dysert website at: http://www.dysertcastle.com/home.htm

“Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” – Linda Hogan

“We went from zero to everything, all in a day…” – Counting Crows, “Possibility Days”

My brother, N, posted a darling photo on Facebook this week. It was of him when he was around age 4. As has become my habit when seeing photos of my biological family, I immediately starting searching for family resemblance. I personally feel that we look a lot alike as adults, but this was one of the first pictures I’d seen of him as a little boy. I was stunned. It wasn’t quite like looking like in a mirror, but close to it. Same scrunched up eyes, same skin tone, same hair color, same smile. I commented by posting a photo of myself around the same time.

Pretty quickly, his friends started commenting on how much his son, H, looks like him. And it’s absolutely true – he’s a mini me of N. No one, however, commented on my photo comment. And why would they? I doubt any of them knew who I was. But I started to feel a little melancholy. I began to think about the 41 years we had lost. Pictures we had never taken, play dates we had never had, Christmases and birthdays we never celebrated together. I grew up with my brother G, but only two years ago discovered that I had not only another brother but a sister, too. We are all in reunion now and it’s wonderful..but from time to time, the “real” sets in and it makes me long for memories that we never made. I’ve heard it said “how can you miss what you never had?” but I am here to tell you – it is absolutely possible. Seeing photographs is like seeing ghosts from my past…only the spirits have now come back to life. I want to crawl inside the photos and insert myself, too. Then I think about if I had grown up with N and A, I obviously would never have known G. And it’s not about a “better” or “worse” life…it just would have been different. It’s impossible not to think about the what might have beens. I try not to dwell there, but I think it’s important to explore the feelings all the same.

To be sure, we have made a precious few memories since and will continue to do so going forward. Strangely, in many ways the paternal side of my reunion went much more “smoothly” than the maternal. (more on that later!) But adoptees are incredibly emotional beings. And one emotion I keep coming back to is “unsatisfied”.

We live 4 hours from one another, N and A (my sister) and I, and we all have families and jobs. So it makes it hard to get together as often as I would like (which is, frankly, every week). I have to work on seeing them (as well as my maternal side) more often, but life creeps in and makes it hard. Before we know it, months have slipped by. All of these “possibility days” (thanks Adam Duritz) and I feel sometimes as if I will run out of time before I am satisfied. How does one make up for 41 years of lost time? It’s impossible.

“And the worst part of a good day
Is knowing it’s slipping away
That’s one more possibility day
That is gone..

Me and you, we know too many reasons
For people and seasons that pass
Like they weren’t even here

And the worst part of a good day
Is the one thing you don’t say
And you don’t know how but you
Wish there was some way…” – Counting Crows, “Possibility Days”

*Counting Crows is my favorite band. So you should expect to be reading many more quotes from them on my blog. #sorrynotsorry

Triad (tri-ad): noun

1. a group or set of three connected people or things. (source: Google)
2. a secret society originating in China, typically involved in organized crime. (source: Google)
3. Adoption Triad is a triangle which symbolizes the three parties involved in an adoption: adoptee, adoptive parents and birth parents. (source: https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/adoption-triad/)

I thought it might be helpful, especially for those of you “just visiting” the blog, to understand some basic adoption terms. I found Google’s secret society definition amusing, both because I had never heard it before and because many in adoption-land view the adoption “system” as a secretive, criminal activity. Again, for clarity, I do not share this view.

It might also be helpful to let Triad members who are visiting this page to know where I stand, personally, with regards in my views on adoption. Here’s a quick overview:

• I was adopted at birth. Well, by age 4 months.
  • I have known practically my entire life that I was adopted. In other words, as long as I can remember. It’s best illustrated by a true story I love to tell: one day in second grade, my mom (for intents and purpose, whenever I say “mom” or “dad” I am specifically referring to my adoptive parents) came to school for some reason. A friend ran up to her and said: “J says she’s ADOPTED!”, as if to somehow embarrass me or suggest that I was lying. My mom said: “Well, she is!” I remember feeling incredibly vindicated, even at age 8. After all, wasn’t being adopted special?
  • So my parents have always been extremely forthcoming about my adoption. Because I always knew, it was always just a part of me…like my eye color or loud speaking voice. It just was. It just is.
• I was raised by stable (mostly), loving, and supportive parents. I get that many, many adoptees got the shit end of the stick in this regard. I was incredibly fortunate to have a positive (mostly) upbringing. My mom and dad were not perfect (more on this later!) but they were and are good people.
• I believe that adoption is a positive force. It certainly needs to be desperately overhauled in the U.S., but I firmly believe that when it is in the best case of the child, adoption is a wonderful option. I believe that not all biological parents are simply capable of caring for a child.
• I have been in reunion with my maternal biological side for 10 ish years. I have been in reunion with my paternal bio side for 2 years. It didn’t go well with my parents. MUCH MORE on this later. I encourage all adoptees who are curious to know their origins to begin that search. I support open records for all states. I support common sense reform for adoption laws. I do NOT support throwing out entire bills that could open doors due to a few words in the language of the bill that annoy some. I will strive to keep this blog non-political, but I’m sure at some point there will be a post or two on this. Adoptees can be our own worst enemies.
• Around age 30 is when I started to realize how much “being adopted” was a part of my identity. I don’t mean like earlier, when I said it was like having blue eyes. As I became a part of the online adoption world I realized that there were deep divisions and very different definitions of what “being adopted” meant for each adoptee. As I navigated personal growing pains within my own family, and my own children, it started to dawn on me that being adopted shaped much more of my personal identity and choices that I ever realized, or was ever willing to admit, before. Not all good, and not all bad. But definitely present…and therefore, needed to be explored and examined. Finding my biological family only intensified these feelings.

So this is a quick snapshot of where I “stand” on the adoption side of things. Love my parents, love my biological family, and I won’t apologize for being raised in a stable home nor the flaws of any person I am related to – blood or otherwise.

Thanks for hanging in this far. Onward!