I was raised an adopted, only child. Growing up without any connection to a DNA relative left me without biological mirroring. I searched faces in the crowd, on TV, and in the movies for a glimpse of the familiarity I saw when I looked in the mirror. I knew my family was out there somewhere. Where they looking for my face in the crowd? I still catch myself looking from time to time. My eyes move along face after face. In my mind, I am swiping left or right. Looking for the connection I couldn’t feel.

When I was young, I looked at other families and could tell they belonged together. Their appearance or mannerisms would be similar. They would laugh alike and I could see the generations before that looked like them. As an adoptee, I would have to use my adoptive parent’s family tree as mine. There were no faces that looked like me. I recall telling the stories of their ancestor as if they were mine. I wanted more than anything to look into the face of someone that looked like me, acted like me, was a part of me.

From the outside, our family may have seemed normal. Not everyone looks like their parents but most people feel a connection to their parents. I wasn’t sure what I felt. I knew it wasn’t what other kids had with their parents. My adoptive parents believed love was all you need. They loved me but I always felt like I didn’t love them right.  I watched other families and knew something didn’t feel the same.

Being loved, but not being able to love back, in the same way, caused me to have extreme guilt, which I carried with me for most of my life. My mother couldn’t have children, so I had to fill the void. I couldn’t be me. I had to be what they wanted. I was chosen to fill this emptiness. I became a master of adaptation, a chameleon. As an adoptee, you adapt to fit in. I didn’t feel like I fit in, though.

My adoptive mother liked dolls. I didn’t, but she bought them for me all of the time. She sewed clothes for them. She had an idea of what she wanted me to be. I would go along with it for her sake. My adoptive father liked to take me fishing. I did enjoy that. He kind of got the boy he wanted. I discovered I could fit in as long as I acted as everyone else wanted. I was great at impersonation. After all, wasn’t that why I was “chosen”?

I was an imposter. I did what was expected. I lied to myself and everyone else. My adoptive parents loved a version of me that wasn’t true to who I was. By not being honest with them they never knew me. To be honest, I didn’t know me either.  I no longer recognized myself in the mirror.

All of my life I wanted to fit in. I worked hard to be around people I thought I wanted to be like. I never asked what I wanted because I didn’t know. I longed for a connection I never felt. The missing piece was me. I had to see someone that looked like me, had my DNA.

And then I did find my biological family. I finally could see myself in another face. Reunion was a shock—to me and to them. They didn’t know I existed. I had dreamt of this my whole life but to them, I was a secret. I was now facing my own self through a rollercoaster of emotions.

Everyone tells me how much I look and act like my mother. The mirror crumbles. The reality of meeting my sisters and seeing pictures of my mother was soul-shattering. How could my mother ignore me and reject me? I was just like her. I saw it in the pictures and heard it in the stories. Then I saw myself for the first time and hated what I saw. I had to figure out who I was. What I wanted to be.

Adoptees know the mirror lies to us. We only see the outside. The outside and inside need integration.  Our true selves need to be seen. Truly knowing who you are is a privilege adoptees don’t have at birth. We have to work for it later in life. Adaptation is how we survive. Survival isn’t enough. We need to know who we are. Where we come from. Who we look like. These are all things that many take for granted.

Adoptees are often called angry. This is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Embrace the saying, “The truth shall set you free but first it will piss you off.” Get angry enough to look at all of yourself. All of you. Look in the mirror and be truthful with what you want and who you want to be. Be free with your truth whatever it is and your true light will be projected.