Journey of Discovery
My journey started with Mother’s Choice. It was my first home, where I spent the first year of my life, and from where I was adopted in 90s. I always knew I was adopted. My parents talked about it openly since I was young, and I am thankful that they did. There was no sudden revelation, and so I did not have identity issues or problems with the fact that I was adopted at all in fact, I found it to be quite special.
As I approached my teenage years, I started thinking a little more about my roots. Up until then, I did not think of my birth family often - as my family were the people around me - and I was not looking to find my birth parents. But I knew that I wanted to visit my first home, Mother’s Choice, so I reached out and a visit was arranged shortly after. It was not until about a year or two after my visit to Mother’s Choice that I decided that I wanted to seek out my birth parents.
My journey to finding my birth parents was not a smooth one. I reached out to various government departments, and despite giving them all the necessary documents each one, I always came up empty handed. They told me they could not find my birth mother, and they even told me I would just have to accept it. But until I exhausted all possibilities, I could not just “accept it”. It was then that a friend suggested I try the Red Cross, and once I reached out to them, they actually found her quite quickly an arranged a meeting.
I would describe that first meeting with my biological mother as intense. We did not talk very much, but you could feel the weight of the history behind her emotions, this feeling of heaviness filled the room. After that initial meeting, I continued to stay in touch with her, and I even met her parents and several family members. I also located my birth father. My birth parents are not together anymore, and although I have yet to meet my birth father, I have spoken to him.
I think when you first find your birth parents, your initial wish is to ask about your past, to know what happened, to learn the truth. Yet the stories shared by these birth family members were many, and often contradictory. I was appreciative of these different stories and have come to accept that at the end of the day, there is no “one truth”. Everyone has their own perspective and their own difficulties that they were facing, and are perhaps still facing now, so I just let it be. There has been no real closure in finding my birth family, but it is a process that I am glad to have gone through.
Heartache
While I just wanted to meet my birth mother, for her the moment was probably very different. My existence is connected to a very painful episode in her past, and meeting me must have felt like a reopening of past wounds. It took her three days to decide if she wanted to meet me. Some people choose to relinquish their child for adoption, but that was not the case for my birth mother and father. My biological grandma was adamant that my birth mother would not be able to take care of me, and she pressured my birth parents to give me up. They were teenagers at the time, and their parents quickly took over the process. My birth parents felt they had no say. What they wanted was to be my parents, to take care of me. What they wanted was support from their families. But this was something their families could not provide, and my birth mother still holds that sadness today. I do not know whether meeting me has helped her or not, but I think she is happy she did; at least she now knows that I am ok.
We need to address the myth that the adoption process is straightforward. People often think it starts with an unwanted pregnancy, the child is given up for adoption, the birth mother moves on with her life, then adoptive parents come and take the child, a new family is forged, and it is happily ever after. This was not the case for my birth mother. After giving me up for adoption, she suffered from depression. She told me that during my childhood years she would watch children on the street, always wondering if it was me. She also continued to have bad relationships. I think what she needed was to learn what a healthy relationship looks like, and have guidance on how to make good life choices. These were things that she never learned, and for years she continued on a destructive path. She is on medication even until today, as she remains suicidal. So, while adoption can be very beautiful, it can also be imperfect, painful, and it can leave behind a kind of brokenness. This is not often told in adoption stories.
Finding Peace
Growing up, my life has been a complicated road. From being adopted into a family, to finding my birth parents, there have been many questions left unanswered and so much remains unclear. Now that I am a parent of an adopted child myself, I can better understand both sides of the coin. I know the pain and the emotions of being an adopted child - of always wanting to “go back”, and now as an adoptive mom, I know the pain of wanting to be the only one your child loves, but realizing I need to share her with her past. With this new perspective, when I think of what family means to me, I think family is about commitment. It is the life you choose to have, a conscious decision you make every day to stick with the definition of what family means to you and carrying it through consistently.
I would say my family has tiers with differing levels of commitment, from the highest levels of commitment for my husband and daughter, to the outer circles for friends and perhaps my birth parents. Mother’s Choice is also my family because the people here were committed to finding me my forever family and it was my first home. When I was adopted, they gave me a book that had my original name, the names of all my caregivers, a record of my “firsts”, and it was beautifully decorated. This really made me feel that there were people that truly cared for me. There was a prayer in the book that was written for me by one of the founders of Mother’s Choice. This prayer made a significant impact on me as the words were so prophetic. In the last line she wrote that she had a special feeling that I would meet other people, but not in Hong Kong. I was adopted into a local Hong Kong family so she could not have known that in a few short years after my adoption we would move to another country. These words showed me the power of belief – that someone believed in me, had faith in the life I would live. I really held on to this prayer; it gave me a real sense of hope and instilled a kind of spirit in me that kept me going.
Looking at my life’s journey, I feel I have come full circle. I was adopted from Mother’s Choice, I met my birth parents, and now I have an adopted child of my own. Somewhere along the way I made a point of letting go of the need to make things clear, of accepting that some questions can never be answered. With this acceptance, I can be at peace with how far I have come, and I will embrace the flow that life will take me on.
