Today I wrote this post for the adoption blog called Don’t We Look Alike? that I write with my daughter, but it also seemed to connect with this blog as it concerns the notion of story.
“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.” ― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Everybody and everything has a story. According to Terry Pratchett, we are all shaped by stories. This quote might mean that reading a variety of stories helps develop us into who we are. But, in fact, we are shaped even more by the stories which are unique to our selves.
We create stories out of our complex lives. To understand ourselves and others around us, we tell ourselves stories that make some sense out of it all.
As Patrick Rothfuss puts it:
“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
Most of us come to our consciousness with family stories told to us by relatives. Even in families which are reticent to talk about the past, there is a pattern which is story in hearing that one has the same stubborn streak as one’s father and that he has hammer toes because his mother couldn’t afford to buy him new shoes when his feet grew. These elements become part of the story of the child.
Some people have stories which are missing big gaps. Imagine having amnesia in your fourth grade year. You can remember the rest of your life, but there is a hole where an entire year should be. Many adoptees have a hole larger than this. If an adoptee was not part of an open adoption, it’s probable that she was not given much information about who her birth parents were, what their stories were, and what their lives were like when she was not yet born.
The person who was adopted might not know anything about her own birth or what her life was like as an infant. When there is information shared, it can be sparse and not tied into a narrative. It might not even be accurate. It could be lies.
I was not adopted, and I have been told plenty of family stories. I grew up with family stories and photos. Many of the dots were connected for me. Recently I’ve done some genealogical research, and it astonishes me how some of the stories I was told turned out not to be accurate. However, the most fundamental information has been true, unlike that for some adoptees.
My children were adopted as babies in international adoptions. We received some pages of information from the agency. Mainly, we learned about their medical exam results while living in the orphanage (son) or with the foster family (daughter). We learned their weight and health when they were brought to Holt. But there is also information on the charts listing the ages and education levels of their birth parents, and what areas they came from. When we read these pages with our case worker, she filled in information, providing us with story fragments.
I took all the information we had been given—both written and oral, guesses and facts—and wrote up stories for both children, providing them with a story which pre-dates their lives in our family.
It seemed important that they have their own stories.
“[T]here’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.” ― Mitch Albom, For One More Day
Think of this: “behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin” [my italics].
So while it seems important that the kids have their own stories, these stories had to begin with the stories of their birth mothers.
Next time you wonder why many adoptees search for their birth families and wish to to learn information about these families, remember that you are who you are because you have your own story. They are only searching for part of their story, a story that is important to their very identity.
