Perfectly Chosen Family

The day after meeting with the adoption disclosure worker at the Children's Aid Society (CAS), I received a call that would change my life forever.  I will never forget where I was standing in my home, my mom was only one room away.  The person on the other end of the line was quite brief and told me that they had found a biological relative match.  If she hadn't sounded so clinical I would have thought I was being punked! I honestly never thought that anything would come of the paperwork that I had filled out just one day prior. Part of me was excited and curious but the other part of me was terrified. The fantasy was over, shit was about to get real. I had so many questions...all leaning towards the negative Who was this person? What would she want from me? What if she tried to take over my family life? What if I was the product of rape or something terrible? What if I hurt my parents? Did I really want this information after all, or should I ...

To those who were raised with their genetic family, it may seem that searching for your birth mother would be an obvious choice.   For me at least, it was not. Before I start, I should note, that my parents and I share the same race, so it was not apparent to anyone that my genetic heritage may be different from the rest of my family. Growing up, I was the only child I knew that was adopted.   It wasn’t until high school that I met another adoptee.   As early as elementary school, friends would ask if I wanted to find my birth mother or question “How can you not know where you are from?”. People will say things like this all the time to adoptees (I will get more into this in a future post). It’s bizarre and scary for them to think that you don’t have information that they have effortlessly available to them. At this young age, it was impossible for me to even begin to understand the depth of this process and what finding my birth mother would mean fo...