Recently in my personal blog I wrote about the non-id letter and 40th birthday card I received through the adoption court from my biological mother.
http://assemblingself.blogspot.com/2011/09/40th-birthday-card-from-my-mother.html
I waited for thirteen years clinging to these two pieces of communication from my mother. It gave me comfort and solace while I awaited the time she could come forward and release her identity to me, and tell my siblings about my existence. I now realize, that is probably never going to happen. After being rejected and abandoned by two families it is truly hard to feel whole, worthy, or to have any sense of belonging or real place in the world.
I wrote this about the time I when I was twenty-two in New Orleans having a street artist sketch me. I hung it in my bedroom and spent uncounted hours staring at it wondering where my face came from. It's something the 'real' world can't understand. It's the most basic human right to know our heritage and our genetics. It will never be something I will be able to stop thinking about. And most days, this is how I feel:
Sketches
Sketches of this person here can't illustrate my inner fears.
I pose afraid the artist sees just how this picture is incomplete.
But what is missing, what is gone, can't be seen, it can't be drawn.
No shades can show the gaping holes left in my heart, deep in my soul.
The pallet holds no color near, nor tint, or shade of hidden tears.
For what was lost taken away, the pain a brush stroke can't portray.
No pencil either lends a clue.
No crayon, chalk, will show the hue.
Of this facade on which I depend, because I know not who I am.
Perhaps someday I will reveal these deep held emotions that I feel.
The fragments of myself not shown.
Searching for family never known.
http://assemblingself.blogspot.com/2011/09/40th-birthday-card-from-my-mother.html
I waited for thirteen years clinging to these two pieces of communication from my mother. It gave me comfort and solace while I awaited the time she could come forward and release her identity to me, and tell my siblings about my existence. I now realize, that is probably never going to happen. After being rejected and abandoned by two families it is truly hard to feel whole, worthy, or to have any sense of belonging or real place in the world.
I wrote this about the time I when I was twenty-two in New Orleans having a street artist sketch me. I hung it in my bedroom and spent uncounted hours staring at it wondering where my face came from. It's something the 'real' world can't understand. It's the most basic human right to know our heritage and our genetics. It will never be something I will be able to stop thinking about. And most days, this is how I feel:
Sketches
Sketches of this person here can't illustrate my inner fears.
I pose afraid the artist sees just how this picture is incomplete.
But what is missing, what is gone, can't be seen, it can't be drawn.
No shades can show the gaping holes left in my heart, deep in my soul.
The pallet holds no color near, nor tint, or shade of hidden tears.
For what was lost taken away, the pain a brush stroke can't portray.
No pencil either lends a clue.
No crayon, chalk, will show the hue.
Of this facade on which I depend, because I know not who I am.
Perhaps someday I will reveal these deep held emotions that I feel.
The fragments of myself not shown.
Searching for family never known.
