Family Reunion After 22 Years

A typical family reunion is filled with joy and laughter, but for adoptees like me , a reunion is anything but typical. It’s complicated. I felt stuck between embracing my birth families and not hurting my adoptive families. I wont deny the feeling of rejection and long buried anger and bitterness towards my birth families. And what is the mother’s role in her child’s life now? She nurtured and bonded with her child during pregnancy, but now she is a stranger. For adoptees like me, reuniting with their birth families is a dream come true but it also brings another set of problems that i am not ready to face. Because of the deep emotions involved, reunions are rarely easy, but with time it is possible to forge a new and different relationship. 

What some people fail to realize is that for an adoptee, our past is actually our present.

We will always be related to our original family no matter what a an amended birth certificate leads anyone to believe.  

Whether they like it or not, past is present. Because a piece of paper doesn't eliminate relatives, as much as some people would like it to. Does it legally eliminate them as a relative? Perhaps temporarily -- on paper, it does. However they are never eradicated from our life, from our very being. They are ever present, spiritually and emotionally.

They are there.

 And there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Nonetheless, I am grateful to have finally met my birth mom and real blood sibling for the first time today after 22 years of self-questioning.