by Anna Taylor

Created on: October 03, 2009   Last Updated: October 04, 2009

Adoption is a bitter-sweet process for all involved. As an adoptee myself, I know firsthand the emotions that come with an open adoption. In my case, both of my families helped raise me until I was three and my younger sister was adopted. After that my biological family pulled away so that my younger sister wouldn't feel jealous since her adoption was a closed adoption. It was sixteen years before I got back in contact with my biological family.

I had no memories of my biological mother, and being raised knowing that I was adopted and not knowing where I came from was very painful. I always have and always will unconditionally love my adoptive family. However, no amount of love can change the loneliness felt when you realize that for some reason, your biological family decided that they didn't want to raise you. Regardless of the validity of the reason an adopted child was given up, it is almost impossible for them to keep from feeling at some point that they don't fit in. For me those moments came every holiday from a hateful aunt who once told me how grateful I should feel that my adoptive family rescued me from a life of poverty and sin. And then tried to steal my inheritance once my grandmother and her mother-in-law had passed, saying that I wasn't true family and therefore didn't deserve anything that was left to me because I was adopted.

As an adult, when I finally got back in touch with my biological family, it was like watching all the puzzle pieces of my life falling together. The similarities I had with a mother I couldn't remember were shocking. Suddenly I didn't feel so out of place. I had a brother and a sister who looked like me, and a nature loving tattooed and pierced parent that contrasted sharply with the straight laced upbringing I had with my adoptive family. The fact that I was an artist and a vegetarian was no longer strange and extreme, and suddenly I was no longer the family freak.

That is not to say that being reunited with my birth family fixed everything. There were still a lot of obstacles to overcome. During the sixteen years we were separated my birth mother had six other pregnancies, two of them were miscarriages and two of the babies died very young of a rare genetic disorder. I was completely devastated by this news and it was very difficult to understand how to process that grief. Then there was the fact that most of my biological family didn't know I existed. My biological grandmother swore my mother to secrecy about her pregnancy with me, telling aunts uncles and cousins that my biological mother wasn't pregnant and had instead been in and out of the hospital because of a bladder tuck. To this day I have biological family that has no idea who I am.

Adoption, open or closed, isn't a perfect solution. My biological mother spent years terrified that I would hate her for giving me up, my adoptive parents felt guilty for taking me away from my biological family, and I struggled to find my place in my family. However I was lucky enough to have adoptive parents that put their own desires and insecurities aside so that I could have a relationship with my biological family and discover where I came from so that I am more confident in the woman I am becoming.

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