Primal dream: fantasy vs reality in an adoption reunion

20Sep09

If ever there were a head trip to rival the weirdness of Alice’s terrific tumble down the rabbit hole, it’d have to be searching for your birth parents.

After years of knowing yourself as you are – a fully grown adult who’s long been at ease with the whole Adoption Issue, honest! – just footsteps into the search, out pops this strange beast: an incorrigible foetus in a stranger’s womb. And it’s you.

This hapless little tyke soon latches its pudding fingers deep into your psyche, and begins to assert control over your present-day feelings. Despite your best intentions to maintain a purely investigative interest in your own life story, your emotions are rubbed raw. One minute the search is a bundle of joy; the next it’s a crawling dread as intense and irrational as a fear of the dark. Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.

I started thinking about looking into my birth history a little over four months ago. At first, it was simple curiosity. There were none of the key events that experts say fuel a desire to delve into the past: I’m not pregnant, my adoptive parents haven’t recently died, I’m not terminally ill. I simply became gripped by the urge to open the book on myself. Perhaps I was bored.

Whatever the reason, it feels like good timing. If I am going to do it, it may as well be while the primary players are likely to still be alive. Initially, I told myself I’d just apply for the paperwork, get my medical history, keep it an intellectual exercise.

Before taking it any further, I told my (adoptive) parents I was going to apply for my original birth certificate: “That’s wonderful,” enthused my ever-supportive mum. “Everyone has a right to know where they came from.”

They gave their blessing, and that was the spark that lit the fuse. Hours later, I applied for a supply authority – an official piece of paper allowing me access to my medical and social records. A couple of hundred dollars and a couple of months later, I had my birth certificate (“father unknown”), my mother’s maiden name and her married name.

I did nothing with the information for a few weeks but stare at it, then, one lunch hour, on an impulse, I went to the library, looked her up on the electoral roll and there she was…

Now I’m wondering what to do. Curiosity is again impelling me to write her a tactful letter. But first, I’d like to ask this of other adoptees who have contacted their birth parents:

How did you come to terms with the reality of it all?

The one thing I always loved about being adopted was the intrigue, the possibilities. I’m sure fantasising fairytale pasts is not uncommon for us adoptees. As a little girl, I used to dream up all sorts of scenarios, but I had a favourite. Rather than rational, boring potentialities such as being the byproduct of fumbling teenagers, or nastier ones that I hadn’t even thought of yet, I’d imagine my birth mum was a pop star. Olivia Newton-John, I believe, was a front-runner – after all, it was the age of Xanadu and if I couldn’t be her as I glided around the garage on my rollerskates, at least there was a possibility she could be my mum. Er, maybe?!

Now there’s reality to contend with. While I never truly expected Olivia was my mum – in fact, she was flippantly and frequently replaced in fantasy by Wonder Woman’s Linda Carter, The Mighty Isis and any one of Charlie’s Angels – the honest, broad-daylight truth behind my birth may be more like something you’d see on Jerry Springer.

So: did anyone feel a sense of anti-climax when they found out about their past (even if their reunions went really well), or was solving the mystery enough?

In the counselling literature I’ve read, it says most people feel a sense of relief:

The ‘not knowing’ of the past is over and they can now move on with their own lives. Some people have likened adoption to ‘holding their breath’. Once the reunion is over and people have information about themselves they can ‘go on breathing’. (Adoption Search Guide, NSW Department of Community Services, Australia).

But is there also a sense of bereavement over the loss of that magical period of not-knowing, when you could indeed have sprung from a cabbage patch, been dropped by a stork or had superstar genes? Indeed, does anyone wish they hadn’t found out the truth? I’d love your thoughts.


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