I tried out loudness early in life. Asking my adopters about who my birth parents were. The discomfort on their faces—something I became used to whenever my difference from them was exposed by my actions—made me sick and rage-full. 

My adoptive mother, with a mildly threatening undertone: 
“What if you don’t like what you find?”
“What if she was a fast girl?” 
“Only bad adoptees want to know their birth parents.”

A cold fear spread from my tongue to my belly, waves of nausea. I repeated after them: “Only bad adoptees want to know their birth parents. I don’t want to know them.” I smiled but felt nothing inside. 

Many times I was told that I was quiet. My loudness was undercover—searching for people with my birthday in the newspaper and cutting out the articles about them, thinking that we might be connected. My aunt saw my scrapbook with an obituary of a man with my birthday. The concerned yet ignorant look on her face revealed I was strange to them.

After school, watching TV shows on the couch, home alone, I cried out loudly for my mother. Started screaming for her. Where was she? I knew I was not crying for my adopter. 

In middle school, a poster of Jim Morrison hung on my wall. He became my father, sharing a strong jawline and unruly dark hair. His likeness covered my sketchbooks. I scoured his autobiography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, hoping to find a hint of familiarity. My adopters did not know why this man fascinated me.

In science class, we completed genetic trait charts. As might be expected, my traits did not follow from my adopter’s traits. 

The teacher directed me to put a footnote stating that I was adopted, that I did not come from the same genetic lineage. 

I felt much pride in this notation, a relief that it was acknowledged that I was not from this family. 

When my adopters reviewed the finished chart and saw the notation, I took the opportunity to ask about my heritage. My adopter denied knowledge and said, “You are what we are—Polish and German.” I repeated in monotone, “I am Polish and German,” and felt sick inside.

My adoptive sister told me that I was French. I was confused because my mother had said she did not know my heritage. And … she did not like French people. She called them “dirty.” 

My parents did not like many people. 

My undercover work continued. At age 18, I pursued my ancestry through the Adoptees Liberation Movement Association registry. 

No hits.

In high school, our teen group counselor handed me Betty Jean Lifton’s memoir of adoptee experience, and said it was okay to be estranged from one’s parents.

My adopters did not know.

Years of being a blank slate onto which those around me projected, being expected to fulfill other’s needs and desires, left no room for me. 

In my early twenties, a Gestalt training therapist told me that I had a “fuck you” chin. As usual, I was the quiet one in that group. Maybe my undercover loudness has morphed into my facial expression. Frankly, I think that I simply have a strong chin, one passed on to me by my Quebecois ancestors from way up north, and my dark eyes and hair and serious expression make people uncomfortable.

My “fuck you” to my adopters was making them uncomfortable by choosing myself over them, leaving home, and getting an education. Things that they did not want me to do. 

When I searched full-force, and openly, for my birth parents, rage took over. I challenged my adopter on why she withheld my non-identifying information. She hung her head in shame. Teary, she mumbled about how difficult it was for her, which only made me angrier. I asked her why she did not tell me that I was of French heritage or provide the wealth of facts that they had at the adoption agency. She repeated, “They didn’t tell us anything.” 

After I found my biological family, in many ways the adopters disowned me. 

I was the “bad” adopted child. 

I changed my last name to the name on my original birth certification (the real one, not the fake post-birth one). The joy over claiming my heritage was powerful. 

Even so, the backlash of my adopter’s, and others,’ outrage, even from those who had nothing to do with my adopters, was strong. I was repeatedly told that it wasn’t “right.” People thought that my joy over knowing my birth parents and reclaiming my first name was insensitive. No one asked me why this was so important to me. 

They never saw the hypocrisy of their judgment of me for wanting to know and claim my ancestry, while they sat in the lifelong non-adoptee privilege of ancestry, known and unquestioned.