Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to each of you. This can be the hardest time of year for adoptees and birth parents in search. The holidays bring families together and thus the missing member looms ever larger and heavier on wondering hearts.
Amstramgram/Flickr.com
My Christmas experience this year was blessed with knowing where all of my family members are, what they look like, and how they fit into the wonderful, whacky identity that is me. However, I recall with fervent clarity, the pain and aching wonder of not knowing who I was for 27 years.
Being born on Christmas Eve, meant that every Christmas brought forth images of what it must have been like for my birth mother to be in labor before the holiday, knowing that I would not be going home with her. I now know that it ruined Christmas for her from that day forward. My half-brother and sister, always wondered why she was so sad at Christmas, and only when I found her in 1992 did they finally understand.
If you are Christian, this season is all about the miracle birth of Jesus, and so your own miraculous entry into the world comes to mind. For more than two decades, I wondered if anyone smiled when I was born. I wondered if my birth mother thought of me on my birthday. I wondered if the nurses at the hospital put me in a stocking because I was a Christmas baby (as I’d seen depicted on TV).
My holiday gift to you, is to simply tell you that – I get it. I acknowledge the hidden pain of not knowing. You are perfectly normal to wonder about the missing puzzle piece. Whether signed away or stolen, you have a right to feel empty, and cheated, especially during this family focused season. I am sorry for your loss, and hope with all my heart that 2013 will be a year of glorious reunion for you.
Miracles do happen, and so I will end with a story of holiday hope and adoption reunion from Ireland.
Family’s dream Christmas reunion becomes a reality | Irish Examiner.
Blessings for a peaceful heart and the calm that knowing brings,
Vicki-lynn
V.L. Brunskill 