Who has any brothers or sisters?

Family … what makes it?

I love my family, but it is incredibly complicated. Simple questions such as how many siblings do you have – leave me feeling like I am lying when I answer only 2. In some ways, I realise that it’s not just those of us who are adopted who have this complication – especially now there are so many ways of creating, making and blending families. Full siblings, half-siblings, genetically related, legally related, there are so many complexities and a myriad of ways to make up a family now.

Why then do I struggle so much? Who is my family? My parents – who adopted myself and my younger sister when I was 4 ½ – my mum and dad, absolutely no biological connection at all, but I look somewhat like them – not noticeably different. I have my full blood sister who looks identical to me. Then there is my parents birth children, born 8 and 10 years respectively after I was adopted, I am closer to them than anyone in the world, fiercely protective, and so full of love – something that biology can’t change, that is my family.

But what about the other side? My birth mother? My birth father? My birth mother had 2 children prior to having me, and my birth father had 4, so that’s 6 half siblings I share DNA and history with? Then earlier this year I discovered that my father had 2 more children from a previous relationship when he was much younger. So now I have 8 half birth sibling and one full blood sibling … then there was another baby in our home – that could have been my fathers, I’m not sure and I don’t think I will ever know. So that makes 9 half-siblings, one full-blood sibling, and two adopted sibling, two mums and two dads … that’s a lot to contend with.

I know that my mum is fiercely protective of me, she doesn’t like it when I call my birth parents my mum and dad, this isn’t from a place of jealousy or resentment just that the love she has for me is so strong that I think she baulks at the idea of the woman who carried me but was unable to care for me being afforded the same title that she has earned through endless nights of looking after me, loving me and caring for me when no one else would or even could. I understand and empathise with how she feels, no one will ever compare to her, when I’m poorly or have my heart broken or just need advice she is the first person, I go too. I can’t, however, reconcile that for me she is my mum, but I have another one.

Then my siblings – so endlessly complicated, I have 6 siblings I haven’t seen since I was a child, 1 sister from who I am estranged and 3 siblings I know almost nothing about – I’m not even fully sure they exist or are related to me. So perhaps when people ask me how many siblings I have and I say 2, partly I do so to avoid the complexities of explaining my family tree, but also it’s what feels right for me.

Brothers, sisters, full siblings, half-siblings, genetically related, legally related. The complexities, and innumerable options of ways to make-up a family. All I know is I love mine, and they forgive my mistakes, love my flaws, and support me indefinitely. My family, they know who they are.

Anger

Anger, locked up inside

Caged up tears, I try to hide

Peering at these photos, what do I see

Who are these people staring back at me?

I don’t like you very much, in fact I’m so very mad

But the anger I’m holding onto, makes me feel so bad

I don’t know why you lost me, or why I wasn’t enough

But the way you let me go made me strong and tough

I am loved, unconditionally, and always without restraint

Why then does my ability to give love and trust always feel so faint?

I know that this is my story, and you have your own

But I don’t think I’ll ever hear yours, I don’t want to pick up the phone

Sometimes I just want to scream, and yell and shout

Just sit there, empty myself and cry my history out

Other days I want to find you, fix us, mend and heal

But the schisms of my past aren’t something I’m ready to unseal

I’m not quite done with discovering who I’m meant to be,

But one day I won’t be angry, and that’s what I can’t wait to see.

Identity, Adoption and the politics of who I am …

Who am I? What defines me? Where are the gossamer threads that weave me into shape from? Who spun me? Identity, what makes us who we are, is something we all innately question. When you meet someone and you ask “what parent do you think you are like?” A culture of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter guiding us to a curated image of who someone might be. We try linking how someone’s schooling, social background, cultural beliefs and a myriad of other things to understand what makes the delicately crafted person who they are.

In turn we all introspectively question our own identities. Why do I believe this? What am I passionate about? What inspires me? Who am I?

How then do you deal with the repercussions of a conflicted identity? Of care records that inaccurately record your birthday wrong three times? Of a doctors record where you are noted to be left handed, and have blue eyes? When you are right handed and have brown eyes? Did I change that much? Was I too inconsequential for someone to remember me correctly? What is my value if my past is a collusion of other people’s incorrect facts?

In recent years events have dictated for me to look with renewed effort at who I am. I always claimed that my past may not define me. I realised however that it has shaped me, as one might carve a stone, my experiences must have narrated who I am. But how has it shaped me? What have I learnt? How do I carry my past with me? Part of this journey was to dissect the simply recorded facts of my past. Truthfully though, it was a journey to see if by pulling back the curtain on the past, I could understand myself today.

There is a certain fear when delving into your history, what if you the past you find is not good? You need strength to dissect harsh truths, especially as they can transform the person you are now. Many will say it how you respond to these truths speak to who you are right now.

It wasn’t so much that I wanted to know why I love to bake, or who I inherited my love of reading from, but rather who were these people who loved me so carelessly? Was I going to be like them? Them. My biological parents. Both products of their own misfortunes, simply being the people they had been brought up to be. So what if I with the same genes, 50/50 chromosomes, the same blood coursing, roaring, through my veins, was only ever capable of being just like them?

Then I realised that it doesn’t matter.

I am not just nature, I am not just chromosomes and genetics. I am not where I went to school, or where I live now. I am every lesson I have ever learned. I am a culmination of the life I chose to experience. I guide me. My past is not who I am. I am a girl who loves sprinkles on her ice cream, and bowling and arcade games. My identity, my capability, who I am is not dictated by my history or by case notes. I can chose who I want to be.