I'm Adopted.

No, it's not one of those 'jokes' people say when they think they don't belong in their family, I'm actually adopted.

When I was four months old, I was adopted into a family of other adopted children, by our parents' who happen to be white. It was a very unique up bringing and life I lived. From being the youngest, the family going through our parents' divorce, moving states away from family and much more. My parents ALWAYS made sure that we felt loved and nothing else. Even if it was hard some times...I knew what their best interest was.

Obviously you can tell that we look different, you can see that they are not my BIRTH PARENTS...but they ARE MY PARENTS! They raised me as their own and they love me as their own (as well as my other siblings)! Growing up differently than my family was a hard pill to swallow because of the bullying, discrimination, racism, depression and the emotional toll...I didn't like my life at that point and started to wonder why I was adopted.

My Mom and Dad, taken January of 2020

My adoption journey is completely different than most as you'll get to see. The 90s to 2000s were a really weird time. Like I said earlier our family had to go through our parents divorce which changed the dynamic of our WHOLE family. People were mad at others, not talking to anyone who talked to someone they didn't like at the time, I was treated differently because I was the youngest and my parents weren't as strict with me as they were with the older ones and I always stood up for my mom "mommy's girl"...you know sibling ishhh. Because of that dynamic I began to develop depression, anxiety, abandonment and trust issues. At the time I had no idea what was happening but I can look back now and see, that's where it all began.

When our parents split, the family split. I felt like I was the only child but I had eight other siblings. My sister who is five years older than me became my best friend even though we had our moments. Glass bowls thrown at each other because of our attitudes/anger issues, cussing at each other just because...but if one of us needed anything the other would be there. It got difficult as we grew up because my sister had her own personal issues due to adoption and just life in general...we faded in and out of our relationship over the years which hurt me growing up. I couldn't understand why I was taken away from a family to be placed in a dysfunctional family, why did God put me with this one knowing I would have so many challenges to face?!

Any and every one that I trusted had let me down for their own selfish reasons (that's what I thought at the time). I started distancing myself from everyone but was always the happy child. I knew I hated getting in trouble or being yelled at so I did my best to do right...

It didn't make sense to me that my birth parents gave me away...why?! I had no explanation, What did I do wrong? I couldn't of done anything I was too little. Did I cry too much? Did they not want me...why would they give me up?!

As I grew older and my depression and anxiety began to really show, my mom and I had talks. I started opening the adoption conversation. I am SO thankful that my mom is who she is. She has been through HELL and back and still did her best to raise NINE children while going through a divorce and nursing school. She has always been my provider and will always be my hero. What also made her wonderful was that she was completely open with me when I wanted to talk about my birth family. "You have the right to know your birth family, but only if you ask me. I would NEVER hide that from you!" She also told me she was sending my baby pictures to the agency they adopted me from and the agency was putting them in a file for my birth parents to see.

My adoption was a CLOSED adoption meaning there is no contact from the birth family to the adopted family, if there was contact it was through the agency (the laws have changed since 1991). Once my mom told me these things...it brought me a little joy that lasted a while...than I let the conversation go. I knew nothing was going to change and I never wanted to leave my mom, even if she went to the store it scared me that she wouldn't come back. I also think because I was going through 'the family issues' with everyone leaving and not talking...I developed the abandonment issue. I hated being by myself and I hated seeing people walk out the door.

I got through middle school not having any friends over, wishing I was white so I wouldn't get picked on or left out, not telling anyone I met that I was adopted, I had special needs siblings and I definitely didn't say that I had white parents for the longest. Kids are mean and I wish they weren't. Just because your different your not accepted and this led to depression and my anxiety. I felt safer around my mom and eventually people that I knew I could trust. I also started to develop hate for my hair and was constantly telling my mom, but she didn't know what she was doing...my other siblings figured out their hair textures and what they needed to do but once again it was at a time our family wasn't a family. We were on our own in that aspect. I used to put a towel over my head to create the illusion of long straight hair that flows...I was not enjoying my nappy curly roots. My mom was my safety blanket and I was probably a lot to handle.

Once I got into high school things started to change a little. I got braces, new glasses and I started to understand who I was and who I wanted to be. But I was learning to push my feelings aside instead of dealing with them. In the 10th grade a lot of my classmates from middle school started to get interested in my adoption. After all for a little while I was the only one that was adopted in my class ,until these brothers from Africa were adopted! I was excited to meet other people that might be going through the same thing as me. They also had a white family but their lives were different than mine, they were adopted as teenagers and not babies. It got me thinking again. I decided to bring the conversation back up to my mom about the agency I was adopted from. It was becoming very interesting to me and I started to see it from another side.

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Thankfully my mom remembered the agency I was adopted from (it's now called Family Forward), I typed it into google and found it. I went to their ask me a question part and wrote in 'I was adopted from your agency and I wanted to know what I had to do to get some more information to search for my birth parents.' It took them 3 days to reply back to me and I was shocked. This was it, I'm on my way to finding my birth parents. The lady that emailed me back just so happened to remember my case. She just started working at the agency when I was adopted and she handled some of the paper work. She immediately told me she remembered my parents names because my last name was unique. Unfortunately, there is a fee that you have to pay to 'search for your family'. "Ugh, I'm broke and in high school...I can't pay these fees." It was $450 for the agency to complete the search and it was $25 for non identifying information about my birth parents. There was also a 50/50 chance that they would reply to being contacted by me. I got discouraged and let go of that thought for a while.

I want to stress, I was not wanting to look for my birth parents because of the situation with my family. I wanted to be able to say "I know my birth family and where I come from", for my future and health reasons...because at that point all I knew was I was from Missouri. I was NOT looking to replace the parents or family that I already have...it was for my peace.

In all honesty, I wasn't ready nor mature enough to start the search at the time, every now and than more doubt and hate came and went as I got older. Like I said it got easier in high school but it was still hard. There were times that I did think about running away, not being the person that I was because it wasn't getting me anywhere but I knew that wasn't going to help me in the future. So I decided that if my curiosity comes again about my birth family than ill go a step further but in the mean time, I'm working on me.

A couple of years passed and a lot of things happened that distracted my focus and attention. My siblings and I were off and on again and like siblings we would fight...say really hurtful things to make the other shut up. Well my my curiosity came back and I would find myself wondering what my birth family was doing. I didn't know if I had siblings at the time, I didn't know anything...so I emailed my adoption specialist but than I deleted it. I'm not sure why, I probably got distracted and actually was hanging out with my friends. But I always felt empty inside and it set the tone for how I wanted people to see me and what they thought of me. When I went to community college I was asked by a couple of people where I was from...all I could say was Missouri but they didn't mean that. They wanted to know where my parents where from because to them I looked Ethiopian...but just like any other time I had no idea where I come from. This got my wheels spinning again.

Through the years it took me a while to try to understand WHY I wanted to search for my parents. I needed to do it FOR ME...not because I wanted to feel accepted, not because I wanted to feel apart of a family (I already had one), not because I wanted to know if they loved me...but to understand what they were going through at the time. I started falling in love with adoption stories and the most popular stories were because of drugs, or the baby was a product of a rape...I had no idea if that was going to my truth, but I wanted to find out. I wanted to understand why God took me to another family. I wanted to know what happened back in 1991. Don't get me wrong, I also wanted to know ALL the reasons of why but they became smaller as I got older. My understanding of knowing my parents for my future became more important to me than "WHY ME" or to have anger towards them. I was beginning to change my thought process...this happened for a reason and it could of been a good reason.

Finally in 2017 I decided this was IT! Over the last eight years I've gone back and forth with this and if its meant to be...it will be. It also helped that I met a very supportive person (my boyfriend) that was showing me that not all men/people are untrustworthy, bad and horrible. He helped me re-gain a lot of confidence, strength and courage that I lost over the years due to a past relationship and family issues. So, I reached out to my adoption specialist ONE LAST TIME and I sent her $25 for the non identifying information and left it up to GOD. I was so nervous, so anxious that I didn't know how to act...do I smile or cry I don't know lol. They could of left nothing in my file, but the only way I was going to find out was to JUST DO IT!

THREE DAYS LATER...I have an email from the specialist. I opened it and there it was...a description of my birth mother! I couldn't believe it...am I sure I want to read this?! This is what I've been waiting my whole life for...