A Place At Both Tables
Stories We Inherit
Welcome to Roots & Branches, new followers and subscribers! Welcome back, long-time subscribers. Hope you’ve had a relaxed fall weekend.
This week’s turn toward Thanksgiving has me thinking about past family gatherings, shared memories, the wealth of belonging, and what these mean to me and my fellow adoptees.
November is National Adoption Month, which evokes complex emotions for many of us. The warmth of this season stirs an ache in me that is a mix of nostalgia, gratitude, and longing. My gratitude doesn’t erase loss, but honors those who have become my living roots and branches. The ones who set a place at the table. The ones who helped me grow into my own story, even when many pages were missing.
Each Thanksgiving of my mature adulthood, especially now that my adoptive parents and their parents have passed, underlines all I’ve been given, and everything I still longed for.
When we are missing the facts of our birth, whether through tragedy or through secrecy and denial by law, we lose what is intrinsic to us.
Because our origins and family histories are, by definition, vitally important, many of us will seek to fill that void — somehow. Even if we’ve been provided with adoptive parents and we are among the fortunate who were well cared for physically and emotionally, we may still decide to search for our first mother, our biological family, and attempt to obtain our original birth records.
Adoptive parents may accept — even assist — their child’s search to “find out who they are.” Often, they don’t fully understand the need for information about the first mother, or an entire family of origin, who, for whatever reason, was not “there for the child.”
My search for my first mother was not merely out of curiosity. Long past the stage of teen identity bewilderment, at the age of forty, I needed a passport, and my Certificate of Baptism no longer sufficed as I.D. I learned that all I was entitled to was an Amended Birth Certificate from South Carolina, with my adoptive parents’ signatures. All original documents were under seal by the State.
Two years later, with the help of adoptee advocates, I learned my mother’s name, and it was months before I spoke with a cousin who led me to her. Our one year in reunion was as happy, despite her chronic illness.
I learned that adoptees have the right to information about our first mother’s family structure, their traditions, language, birthplace, genetic ancestry and lineage, health history, and inherited traits. The family feasts we might have celebrated in another childhood home, with other siblings, other grandparents, and cousins, as well as those of our adoptive family. Adoptees long for their place at both tables.
Wherever you are this week, I hope you know peace and that by memory, by truth, and by the people who are yours.
All the Best, Mary Ellen
P.S. If you’d like to follow the storyworld I’ve built that corresponds to my reflections, the second installment of Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic arrives this Wednesday. Join us from the Prologue, or step into Silverton Foundations, where we are introduced to key characters and enchantment is never far off.