Finding the pieces - an adoptee's journey to feeling whole

I hope you enjoy this moving and inspiring guest blog from adoptee Gilli Bruce.

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Finding the pieces of your jigsaw is one thing… you also need some glue.

As an adoptee I felt like a hotch potch of pieces, many pieces were missing, some were broken and some were from the wrong box all together. My attempt to piece together my fractured identity started quite late, I was 43 before I could steel myself to brave it.

Childless, an only child and in a decidedly dodgy second marriage – the need to literally pull myself / my ‘self’ together grew too strong to remain marginalised in my sub-conscious. By this point the missing pieces, blanks and questions had gathered enough collective force to propel me into action.  

All that - and the pain of course. Up until then I’d squashed down the emotional turmoil and buried it under the pile of nonsense, cultural myth and family legend that insisted I was lucky to be adopted. There are many different tales and chapters in my adoption story – but this short account deals with the aspect of ‘pieces’.

If you are raised with your birth family – it is taken as established fact that you get trait A from this person, feature B from her, talent C from him – this ailment from her and so on and every one in your family knows these things too – so you belong. Being adopted in 1962 – I knew nothing. Nada. Zilch. I minimised the need to find my ‘pieces’ telling myself; “I’ll just find the bit about my medical history – fill the information void so I can answer doctors’ questions, see what’s in the blood that I should know about.”

Secretly I wanted ALL the pieces – every last scrap that could tell me who I am, every clue that could complete the puzzle and help me to feel whole, I just couldn’t admit it even to myself. The fear of not being able to find anyone or anything was too real and the fear of being rejected again – unthinkable, so ‘I’ll just go for medical details’ felt like the safest route forwards. And still……

Massively curious by nature anyway (who does that come from?) I wanted to know whose nose I have. Whose genes gave me this unruly hair? Whose sense of rhythm has me up on the dance floor at the first opportunity? Whose love of colour draws me to art and design? And who’s to blame for my weird digestive system that makes me need to eat painfully slowly? None of these aspects were from my adoptive family. I was different. I didn’t fit.

Bigger questions such as ‘What the hell happened?’ Have you thought about me AT ALL?’ ‘What were you bloody THINKING of?’ would come later and belong to a different account - at the beginning these were still buried.

I really believed that finding these genetic pieces would make me feel whole – bring some  sense of who I am….if I could just find who I’m meant to belong to I’ll be all fixed I thought. Again way down in the sub-conscious was an idea that went something like…’ I will find this family, we’ll all bond and I will belong to them and all will be well’.

I hadn’t factored in that pieces don’t just stick together on their own – you need some glue. In families that glue comes from early infant bonding and shared history – naively, impatient to belong immediately I didn’t really acknowledge that, I had no genetic belonging experience to refer to.

So – finding the pieces as I did, was and is a wonderful and helpful thing – it WAS a good start – but I was disappointed (this sounds a bit bonkers now) at the start of my family finding - to NOT feel magically transformed. I realise now that at that first starting point when we all met, we didn’t really know if we all wanted to belong to each other, to even BE bonded. The glue was still in the shop. We hadn’t even set off to town to buy it – we weren’t certain we wanted it. But, really quite quickly I did piece together the picture:

• Nose – Birth Father 

• Unruly hair – An Aunt 

• Sense of rhythm – Birth Father

• Love of colour / art – Birth Mother

• Weird digestion – Birth Father 

Now, 12 years later, I have nice relationships with both birth parents (we get together a few times a year) and I have 4 siblings; 2 lovely brothers and 2 amazing sisters, a wonderful brother-in-law, great nieces and nephews – all lovely people. So by now, I now know where a fair bit of ‘me’ comes from:

• Being something of an organiser – Birth Mother

• Being sensitive and needing of solitude – Birth Father

• Being independent, strong and determined – Birth Mother

• Being a gentle, softy too – Birth Father  

• Being madly affectionate and tactile – both sides of my birth family – all cuddlers (no wonder it was tough growing up with non-cuddlers)

• Being a mad animal lover – an Uncle and Sister too

And so it goes on and we are all still learning. The younger of my two brothers sees his mother in my gestures, the elder of my two sisters sees her sensitivity in me and we see each other’s vulnerability in each other. I saw myself at 17 in a photograph of my younger sister they showed me of her at 17 – I actually thought they’d somehow got a picture of me in an outfit I couldn’t remember!

The stories of the search, the finding and meeting along with the aspects of finding my birth family that have been tough are for another time. My early years, the rebellion, the mad times in the fog, the life lived on the run all have some value in the sharing along with a life lived as a joyful soul who has been successful and had lots of fun despite it all.

Thanks go to my birth family for welcoming me back and their willingness to keep on building and bonding with me, for this is what I learned – the pieces of information did help but the glue was time. Time and shared history, commitment and patience allow me to share that today I have a soul-mate relationship with my elder sister who I’d choose as a dear friend even if we weren’t related.  My younger brother is wonderful, he and I are building our closeness when we get chance and I value his presence in my life. It seems we had to make some shared pieces and create our own glue along the way – the ‘Superglue quick fix’ simply isn’t available for human bonding.

As for feeling more whole – I realise that actually in the end – that was down to me. The King’s horses and the King’s men couldn’t put this Humpty together again – I had to do it myself. 

I now have a solid sense of self that became actualised through the process of fighting to find my records, pushing on when it was tough, working with tenacity to reach career goals, caring for myself with costly therapy and finding a non-religious spiritual practice. I’ve worked hard to create lasting friendships, a lovely relationship and found what works for me through sheer hard work. So in being my own best friend I am finally standing on solid ground, feeling mostly whole, most of the time which feels like some kind of ‘normal’ whatever that is.

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Deep thanks to Gilli for sharing this moving and inspiring piece. I think many of us can relate to the feeling of squashing things down until such a time when it feels unavoidable and necessary. I also relate to Gilli’s description of the bonding challenges created by adoption reunion. I’d love to know what you think, and I will pass all comments on to Gilli. Thanks for reading x

 Photo credit: "031 - Irony" by Del Amitri is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0