When Did Your Life Take A Different Direction Than You Planned?

In the closing chapters of Michelle’s Obamas best-selling autobiography, Becoming, she reflects upon the moment her life swerved.  She stepped out of the corporate legal arena at Sidley & Austen, took a pay cut and entered the not-for-profit world.  This wasn’t a sudden decision, there had been precipitating events.  The shift from corporate to private and her subsequent efforts there influenced the choices Obama made when she became first lady.

This idea of evaluating one’s life and assessing where life takes a detour fascinated me.  On a snowy afternoon in late January when it was too cold to do much but fiddle with my computer, I reflected upon the moments when a choice I made altered the course of my life. 

Like Michelle Obama, there were several contributing events that led me to the proverbially fork in the road.  Just like Obama, I have a long answer to a seemingly simple question. 

At sixteen, while I was in the midst of taking a high school midterm exam, I was summoned to the principal’s office.  There I met up with my twin sister and younger brother and we were sent home. In the middle of the school day. In the middle of a test. No reason was given. For the twenty-minute ride home, the three of us barely spoke to one another.  We were too worried. We knew something was very wrong. 

Suffering a chest cold, our youngest sister, age 4, had stopped breathing.  The ER docs were not able to save her.  Following my sister’s sudden death, my family became understandably dysfunctional. My father immersed himself with work. Instead of grief therapy, Mom sipped wine with the neighbor ladies in the afternoon.  My younger siblings had no one holding them to rules.  My twin sister and I refused to go to Church, retreated into our schoolwork, and became very eager to head off to college.

Swerve number one. Instead of coursework in business, I studied psychology.  I longed to understand grief, loss, rejection, relationships, personality, and nature vs. nurture.  My baby sister’s death influenced my college major and that choice set me up to deal with the events that came decades later. 

Ten years ago, I flunked a mammogram and was sent for a biopsy. I informed my adoptive parents that I was looking into my adoption. I wanted a sense of my birth family’s health history.  This did not go over well with my adoptive mom.  Thanks to my psychology background I was tuned-in with framing difficult conversations. I also knew my mom’s touchpoints.  As a mother myself, I explained that I wanted my birth family’s health history not just for myself but for my four children.  Mom wasn’t enthusiastic, but I did not back down.  It caused a rift between us which we still dance around.

As I have shared in other blog posts, locating my birth family was an arduous task.  When I began searching in 2010, genetic genealogy was in its infancy and not nearly as effective as today’s technology in helping estranged family members discover one another.  Fortunately, for me the Illinois adoption statutes changed in 2011, and the Confidential Intermediary Service of Illinois (CISI) was up and running. 

For eight years, both of my families – birth and adoptive – challenged me.  They tested my reserve, the well of resiliency that had been slowly filling since my sister died.  Because of my coursework in psychology and extensive adoption group counseling, I was able to cope with my adoptive mother’s resistance, and the problems I faced in locating and getting to know my birth mother. In the course of my personal odyssey, I learned to accept my adoption.  I didn’t just question it. I explored all aspects of it. I became righteous about my right to know. I marvel at how a benign breast biopsy was the impetus for such extensive personal growth.   Swerve number two.

Journaling about adoption, my search for birth relatives, the ups and downs of adoption reunion, became my salvation.  The journaling tool morphed into an obsession with learning the craft of writing. I not only wanted to write my story, I wanted to write it well. And, I wanted to share it.  Blogging, social media posts and crafting my memoir led to a later-in-life second career.  

The big swerve. A breast biopsy led to finding my birth family which led to writing.  Had I not experienced health issues I may have let my adoption stay where it wanted to be- locked up and buttoned down.  I may never have become a writer.

What were your swerves? Think about them. And share.

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