And now, a few short words on the TRUTH. Or rather, my truth.

by Hannah Andrews
The truth is I never thought much about adoption. Oh wait, that’s a lie. It is, in fact, the biggest lie I told others. It wasn’t really intentional. It’s just that it was the lie I told myself, a lie I lived and breathed for almost fifty years.

I thought about adoption, abandonment, and identity, but I pushed all that stuff down. I was one of three adoptees in my family. None of us talked about it. Not because we were unaware of our own adoptions—we’d always
known—none of us can even remember being told. Not because we weren’t allowed to talk about it—we were. We just didn’t—not to our parents, not to each other.

You could argue that adoption was our “normal” so why would we talk about it? But c’mon, is adoption truly anyone’s “normal?” Just because it’s your everyday state of being doesn’t mean it feels normal. Just because it’s all you know doesn’t mean it’s all you want to know. Maybe we just couldn’t wrap our heads around it—I mean the hurt of it all, the mystery of it all, the trauma of it all. So, we kept our mouths shut. Unless maybe they were all secretly talking about it behind my back. Now I’m just being paranoid, right? Anyway, if I’m being honest, it never felt normal to me. I never felt normal to me. I wondered about the who, the why, the where of me. And who was this “she” that made me? I looked for some semblance of my face in every face. I scanned (usually subconsciously) for someone, anyone that resembled me.

The truth is, I didn’t hold a grudge against my first mom. Oh wait, that’s a lie too. I held a grudge against everyone—my first mom, my next mom, the whole world. My parents never said a bad word about her. I only heard, “She was very young,” and “She wasn’t able to keep you,” but without my full truth, or even a name, I made up my own internal backstory. That’s not to say I was perpetually blue. I have countless happy memories. I loved the family I landed in. Still do.

If I’m being honest though, I was also terrified. Of further rejection. Of abandonment. Of never being enough. Terrified to the point of rage, especially as a teen. Lost and lonely and always with a bitter taste in my mouth. Perhaps that anger protected me, no matter how misguided its targets were, which were usually women—my two mothers. That was unfair and unfounded. They’d been served up a smorgasbord of lies. One spoon-fed. One force-fed. And me? I gobbled up the scraps. The anger hasn’t vanished completely. A portion has been redirected. My anger reserves now target the system. I don’t know if that’s healthy either. I’m less angry, but not UNangry. I know that’s not a real word, but I’m not sure there’s a word for what I am. I’m just being honest here. And it’s all good anyway because--

The truth is, getting my Original Birth Certificate solved everything. OMG, I’m sorry I cannot seem to stop lying. I am very glad (I will NOT say
grateful) that I was able to get my OBC. Many domestic and internally adopted persons have zero access to their own backstory. That’s unconscionable. More states are changing this, but sometimes it’s too little too late. My first mom died 4 months before Illinois changed its law. I don’t know that we would’ve had a great reunion. Many don’t.

Also, my father of origin wasn’t listed on my OBC, and apparently, he was somewhat involved—I mean, beyond the obvious involvement. He visited the maternity home. He supposedly met with the adoption counselor, not that I have access to those records. I’ve only been told that. By the people who are allowed to look at the rest of my records that I’m still not allowed to see. The strangers who by court decree are allowed to get into the weeds of me. But that’s okay because--

The truth is, DNA solved everything. Liar, liar, pants on fire. I have thousands of matches on both sides of my biology, many of them second cousins, and a few firsts. I’ve worked with a number of skilled genetic genealogists. They scratch their heads. The trail gets so close, but we can’t find him. Their consensus is that he was likely an adoptee, too, making him a needle in my mysterious mitochondrial haystack.

And if I’m being honest, I have to circle back to the whole birth certificate thing again. Just learning I had another name was devastating. That never occurred to me. It’s been four years since I got my OBC, and still, I cannot fully wrap my head around that. I was someone else. And the state just locked that away. How can the government sign off on a lie as our legal record? Legal erasure. That’s not okay. I don’t think birth certificates should ever be sealed. EVER. We should have the right to know who we are, who we once were, and where we really came from. Why do we have to start our lives out on a lie?

Maybe things would've been different had my story begun with truth and transparency—for all involved, but especially for the baby that was me. And the teen me. And the young adult me. And the middle-aged me. You get the point.

I will probably never know my real truth, the unabridged story of me. It’s hard to imagine ever making peace with that, now that I’ve admitted to the world, and to myself, that it did matter.

AKA invites you to hear from members of the extended family of adoption and the surrounding community.  While we take great care in curating the content, please know:

• the opinions of the authors we invite to share are theirs and theirs only 
• some of the content shared here may be emotionally activating depending on your personal journey - therefore, please be sure to practice self care and seek the support you may need 
• If you would like to be a featured guest-blogger please submit your piece for consideration to [email protected]