The Pink Month Always Gives Me Pause

Because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it’s also called The Pink Month. Breast cancer awareness is an international campaign and it focuses on the importance of early detection, creates awareness about signs and symptoms, and signifies solidarity with people (men get it, too!) diagnosed with the disease. According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, one in eight women will battle breast cancer.

The theme is ‘Give Hope. Save Lives.’

Many of you know my story. When I was 48, I was sent for a breast biopsy due to six areas of concern in my right breast. Gratefully, the biopsy results showed ductile calcifications and dense tissue. No cancer. But the experience highlighted a weighty situation. Because of my closed adoption, I did not possess any family medical history. That fact, along with my problematic breast history, set me on a track of quarterly mammograms and years of follow-up doctoring.

The breast biopsy had another outcome. It compelled me to poke at my closed adoption.

For five long years, I battled to gain access to vital family medical information–details that any person who is not adopted has at their fingertips. The subsequent process of opening my adoption records and finding my birth family was uber challenging. To complete the task, I needed the help of an adoption agency, a confidential intermediary, a social worker, a PI, a judge, and a genealogist.

At first, my birth mother was reluctant to forge a connection with my twin sister and me. Because of my other female health issues, I petitioned a circuit court judge to make an allowance for a second outreach to her. It worked. She returned a family health history, and then in 2014, we located our birth father. At the age of fifty-five, me and my twin sister became the proud owners of a complete family medical history. This journey is detailed in my debut memoir Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging, which is due out in May 2021.

While my health history and the significant efforts I made to attain it have made me sympathetic to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, other factors intensified my interest. You see, my doctors’ concern over my breast health did not end with that biopsy or the ramped-up schedule of diagnostic mammograms.

The search for my birth family had yielded other disturbing facts: My paternal aunt died of breast cancer at the age of thirty-nine; One of my birth mother’s sisters was a breast cancer survivor; Another maternal aunt had suffered uterine cancer. These truths placed me, my twin sister and our collective four daughters into an at-risk category. As a result, I was sent for gene testing. It was with great relief that I learned I do not carry the breast cancer gene.

I think that The Pink Month will always give me pause. While it’s a subtle prompt to be diligent about monthly self-exams, it’s a reminder of my personal health concerns, and the extensive efforts I made to locate my birth relatives. In short, Breast Cancer Awareness Month reminds me that I’m a closed adoption adoptee, a fact that means my life has a unique set of complicated subplots.

If you haven’t done so already, schedule your mammogram, do a careful self-exam, and then if you’re so inclined, make a donation to breast cancer research. Ensuring proper education about the signs and symptoms of breast cancer is one of the best ways to ‘Give Hope. Save Lives.’

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