I never realized before how important family history is. My father is adopted and I have never known much about his side of the family. I didn’t think it was a big deal though until I started learning bits and pieces of his story, of my grandmother’s story, of why she chose to put him and his twin brother up for adoption. I started hearing bits and pieces of her pain. Of my father’s pain. I started understanding her story. My story. How I came to be. It was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. The puzzle of my story, my parent’s story, my family’s story. There has been a lot of trauma in my family. A lot of loss. A lot of abandonment. A lot of pain and heartache that has never been talked about. It has probable never been talked about because it is too painful to talk about. No one has known how to talk about it. We have been too afraid to talk about it. And the pain has been passed down from one generation to the next. Through the younger generation observing the older generation. Through the younger generation being raised a certain way by the older generation. I have come to fear abandonment. Loss. I have come to fear the same things my parents fear.
There is a lot that I don’t know about my family. There is a lot that I have not wanted to know. A lot that I have not wanted to see. There is pain. There is heartache. There is brokenness. I don’t think any of us want to see it. We have been ignoring it for so long. But I do not want to ignore it any longer. I want to understand it. I want to face it. I want to feel it. I want to heal. I have a lot of anger towards my family. Anger that I have pushed down and that I have turned towards myself. But I think a lot of this anger comes from not understanding. I don’t understand my family. I don’t understand where we came from. I don’t know the things that have happened that have caused us to be the way that we are. The things that have happened that have caused us to be afraid of feeling. Afraid of talking about hard things. Afraid of being rejected. I do not understand the things that have happened that have caused us to build walls around our sensitive hearts. I am ready now to start the process of understanding these things. I am ready to ask the questions and find the answers, however painful they might be. I have a story. My parents have a story. My family has a story. It has made us who we are. This is a story worth knowing. This is a story worth telling. It is not something to be ashamed of. It is not something to hide. My family matters. And our story is not one to hide.