The Importance of “Personal Story”

I was in the hot seat.  Three chapters of my memoir were up for peer critique before a writer’s group I joined. To help the discussion, I’d sent along a synopsis of the work, an outline of the years I’d spent searching for my birth family. The chapters were from the midpoint and dealt with a climactic moment when my birth mother had changed her mind about contact.  This section had been percolating in my head, but my words were fresh on the printed page. The writer workshop would review what worked in the piece, what was confusing, and what needed revision.

The workshopping of an early draft is not for the fragile or vulnerable.  To receive constructive criticism your ego is deposited at the door with your umbrella. During peer review, the writer being critiqued scribbles notes while fellow wordsmiths carve up their baby.  With many craft classes under my belt, I have survived this process without hiring a therapist. Although I admit that sometimes following a session like tonight, I take a break from writing, embark on long walks, and call my mother. She loves the extra attention.

I was stumped by the first question: “What do you consider your story to be about?”  

As mentioned, I’d included a synopsis with my submission. Additionally, I’d presented an overview of my memoir at the start of class.  Looking as dumbfounded as I felt, I attempted to answer the query, “This is about my search for ‘personal story’.”

‘Personal story’ is a term adoptees use to mean any detail about the life that they had before they were adopted.  Someone who is not adopted can pick up the family bible or phone living relatives for desired oral history. Genetic genealogy sites abound and are useful for those who have the correct data to plug in. The point is that for most folks, ‘personal story’ is a given, a privilege, a right that is taken for granted. An adoptee or foster care survivor not only lacks accurate medical history, but are often forbidden by law to even know the state in which relatives reside. For an adoptee, the possession of basic genealogy or family history is a need so profound that we bury it neatly next to other impossible desires.

“What does that mean?” my colleague volleyed back.

I wanted to talk about my writing.  I wanted to go through the document and hear what word choices were off, where I needed a comma, where to start a new paragraph.  This discussion of ‘personal story’ was sidelining the workshop of my submission, but I realized that for the class to understand the narrative they needed to understand the narrator. Plopping my classmates into part two of my memoir had cheated them out of valuable backstory.

I put down my pen.  I explained that my search for ‘personal story’ meant learning basic information about my biological parents, my ancestors, and myself. The circumstance of my birth, i.e. why I was adopted, was the first question I had wanted to solve. Secondly, I craved details regarding my birth parents: physical characteristics, identities, whereabouts, medical history, genealogy, and photographs. If you’re like me, an adult adoptee from the Baby Scoop Era (end of WWII thru 1970s), you possess little or no personal history. By digging into my adoption, I wanted a better sense of my ancestors and myself.

In a ‘closed adoption’, like mine, adoptees are blocked from information sharing due to privacy laws. While adoption law varies across the nation, in some states the rights of adoptive parents and birth parents preclude the adoptee’s right to know. In ‘open adoption’ there is an established flow of information and contact between an adoptee, birthparent(s), and adoptive parent(s).  The child in an open adoption has a better sense of their story than one from a closed adoption.

The right to information is a battle I have fought, still fight and having dredged it up before the group was taxing. It is at times like tonight that I remind myself about the goals for my writing. While the search for my birth relatives has been about gathering information, putting it down in a compelling manner has been about sharing it with those touched by adoption. To write and to share are my objectives.

While my writing group didn’t offer much discussion in regards to the words I had set forth, I exited the class with their written critiques. In turn, I had left them with something to consider: the importance of possessing a ‘personal story’ and in turn having a better sense of one’s self.