Your Own Truth

March 5, 2011 at 3:57 pm (Uncategorized)

Someone said something incredibly profound recently that really struck a chord with me.  With her permission, I thought I would share it.

“Of course you’re not looking for replacement parents…you’ve already got a set of those.  Of course you aren’t trash…even though you were given away.  Yep, they probably don’t deserve you…but you deserve your truth.”

This statement was so eloquently made and it explains so much of what I try to impart upon non-adoptees who question my motives for searching.  I wasn’t trying to ‘replace’ my AP’s, but I still had to find my FP’s.  Adoptees are probably the only sect of people where being given away is supposed to equal love.  (Crap, by the way.)  All of the adults involved in our adoptions, the courts, the AP’s, the FP’s, the agencies, they probably don’t deserve us if they blatantly refuse to see the damage that adoption can and has done, but we DESERVE our truth.  We deserve to know where we come from and who we come from.

One of the definitions of Identity, according to ‘Dictionary.com.’

i·den·ti·ty

The condition of being oneself or itself, and not another: He doubted his own identity.

I find it ironic that the sentence they use to show the context of this definition is “He doubted his own identity.”  Isn’t that exactly what adoptees are looking for?  Their own identity? 

I have found it completely impossible to explain to non-adoptees what it’s like growing up knowing your adopted.  It’s not their fault they can’t understand and it’s not mine either.  Where you come from is something that people grow up with – It’s a gradual comprehension that comes with the formation of our awareness as we grow from an infant to a cognizant child to an adult.  There’s no way for a non-adopted person to imagine not knowing their parents and their identity because they’ve never ever been without their knowledge.  Likewise, I don’t think I could ever know what it’s like to not grow up adopted because my adoption was integrated into my identity from the get-go.

This isn’t to say that adoption is the only thing that created my identity.  I think our identities are formed as a result of our experiences – it’s who we are.  My AP’s are part of my identity just as much as any other parent.  But where we come from is a big part of our identity as well and, as my fellow adoptee stated, We deserve to know our own truth!