Add Family Reunions To Adoptee’s Touch List

There are several events or circumstances that usher in an adoptee’s anxiety and frustration (see post: “Triggers”, 12/12/18).  Occasions like birthdays (see post “Why Does My Birthday Make Me Feel Sad”, 5/22/19), Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and of course the holiday season can trigger feelings of abandonment, rejection, lack of belonging in an adoptee.  Trips to the doctor (see “Two Things That Bother” 11/7/18) can be problematic, for it is in this clinical setting that an adoptee confronts a major shortcoming: the lack of some or all of the birth family’s medical history. To the adult adoptee, this failure to produce health documentation is frustrating and embarrassing; the experience often leads to adoption anger (see “Adoption Anger” 3/6/2019). 

Let’s add family reunions to the adopted person’s touch list.

My adoptive father’s family was small enough that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter sufficed and supplanted any organized family reunions.  Over the years, I grew close to some of these cousins and still value their role in my life.  My adoptive mom was the youngest of thirteen. Each of her siblings produced an average of six kids, which means that on her side alone I claim over seventy, first cousins. Until the whole process became unwieldy, my mother’s family collected at a picnic grove in the summertime. Games, prizes, face painting, hot dogs and hamburgers. Sounds fun right? On the surface level any child would have a blast, but when I returned from these events and I lay exhausted, sunburned, and bug-bitten in bed, something troubled me. It wasn’t until I was a teenager noodling in a spiral-bound journal that I figured out why.

Here’s the thing. When an adoptee heads off to a family reunion, they know the event is a gathering of their adoptive family’s biological relatives. As a legal member of the adopted family, the adoptee knows they belong to this multi-generational group. However, even if an adoptee is welcomed and encouraged to take part in the reunion activities, we are cognizant what we are lacking – we lack some basic biology that ties us to these folks.  We may want to connect, but something feels off. Let me put it another way. The adopted person knows that somewhere out there, in some other picnic grove another family reunion is taking place- one that their genes gave them a ticket to attend, however that ticket got taken away. 

Now that I am very much an adult, I enjoy seeing the cousins in my adoptive family whenever we have reason to gather.  It used to be the occasional wedding or baby shower pulled us together, but sadly funerals and memorials force our reunions now.  I enjoy catching up and reliving old times with these aunts, uncles and cousins. Over the past fifty years, I’ve grown used to them and them to me. We know our way around one another. Even though we don’t have genes that link us, we have shared experiences that do.  That’s important. I care about these folks and it doesn’t matter to me that I’m not related to them.  I value them as people, want and need them in my life.  I am grateful for their inclusiveness.

At 48, due to some health concerns, I embarked on a search for my birth relatives. In 2011, I located my birth mother. It took her seven months to agree to enter into direct contact with my twin sister and me. Once we connected, she shared scores of genealogical data and photos. As we sat in her front parlor, my birth mom offered an oral history about these relatives and the pictures came to life. My people. Blood relatives. My biological kin. It thrilled me to match the biographies my mother shared with the folks I’d found on Ancestry.com, 23nMe, and through other means.  I was not just interested in these biological strangers, I was captivated. I wanted to get to know them.

A scorned, unwed mother from the 1950s, it came as no surprise than my birth mother took her time enlightening her family about the two daughters who had come back into her life. I was patient with her while she went through this process. I wept for her as she agonized over how and when to disclose the shocking secret.  I cheered for her when she succeeded. I was equally glad when the news was well received.  This was a benchmark that I was certain would lead to introductions.

Every year in a picnic grove, several states away, my birth mother, her siblings and other living relatives gather for a potluck reunion. Every year, she sends me photos of the reunion taking great pains to label each person in her neat schoolteacher script. Ready for the punch line? We are now eight years into our burgeoning relationship as mother and daughter and not once have I been invited to attend these reunions. It’s a one-way mirror.  I can look in from afar but I’m not allowed inside the inner circle.  I belong but I don’t. In my head, I know that my genes afford me a legitimate reason to be included, but it is easier on my birth mom for me to stay at home. I get it but it hurts.

I wish that I could have my cake and eat it too. I wish these things.  I wish that I shared more than good times with my adoptive cousins. I wish that my biological family were more inclusive. 

Even as I enter my sixth decade of life, for this adult adoptee, reunions are tricky business. 

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