Saturday, November 26, 2005

Part III: A Journey to the Beginning

I suppose a point is reached in every journey in which the people on that journey wish they could turn back the hands of time. They wish that they had never started the journey. They wish that they could go back in time to the day BEFORE they began said journey.

Today is that day for me.

You have to know when you begin a journey of this proportion that there will be unexpected surprises along the way. There may be some unpleasantness. "Things" will not always progress according to your perfect plan.

Again I say... Today is that day for me.

Today is the day when I wake up to a new identity.

This week, I received a letter and two emails from my birthmother. In the first communication, she reminded me that I am lucky to be here. And I know, being born 11 months prior to the legalization of abortion how lucky I really am. Before abortion was made legal adoption was relatively easy for couples who could not bear children biologically. Just over ten years after abortion was legalized, there were approximately 100 couples applying to adopt for every one baby born.

In the second communication, she encouraged me to ask questions. And I did. Who do I look like? Who is my father? The things that most adopted kids tend to wonder.

In the third communication she told me that I am probably tall like my father and that her side of the family is German, French, Dutch and Irish. If you KNOW me, you know what a shocking revelation this is. German, French, Irish and Dutch... ARE YOU KIDDING? I have spent the last 17 years of my life believing that I am ITALIAN and FRENCH on my mother's side and CHEROKEE on my father's side.

I am having a bit of an identity crisis, to be honest. I suppose this is normal. An uneasiness with which I am not familiar has come over me. But this is just the beginning of the journey. I am sure we haven't even gotten to the meat of it.

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