I can't say that I have a touching reunion story, or that any attempt at finding my biological family has been successful. It hasn't. I write this as a person who doesn't know where she comes from. Or where. I was adopted out of a children's home when I was 6 months of age.

I have to admit there has been a certain aura of mystery all of my life as to my origins. I used to fill my childhood with colorful fantasies about where I come from and who my biological parents were. My adoptive parents were very open, in regards to my adoption, but any information on my biological relatives was and still is buried under a court ordered seal.

As a woman of 37 and a mother, I have to admit that even now, I wonder. I still look at faces as I walk down the street wondering if any of them could possibly be related to me. The mystery of my origin still plays heavy on my mind and fantasies. I wonder often how much of a different person I would be had I been raised by my biological family instead of my adoptive one. How would I think? What would my religious preference be? How would I see the world and my relationship with it?

I suppose at this point I have to be quite honest and say that there is a certain defragmentation from the rest of society, in my mind. I don't belong to any particular nationality or group. I don't know the history of my ancestors. Sometimes I wonder if it's a blessing or a curse, being able to distance oneself away from the rest of humanity. I know that my mind is my own and that my beliefs are my own. Traditions I've developed with my children are my own, not handed down from generation to generation. Of this I'm proud. The true gift of individuality.

But there are times when I wish I knew...when I wonder what my biological mother must have gone through in a restrictive society to have me. What was she thinking? Does she wonder about me now? Does she remember my birthday? Is she still alive?

These things haunt me sometimes. I can't escape the wonder of wondering. I can't escape that part of me which wonders if certain things about myself are hereditary or just simply my own delusionary self. Adoption is both a blessing and a curse. It's a necessary invention in a disposable society. Was I a grief born to a teenage girl that didn't know what to do? Was I a humiliation for her? Or was I torn from her arms as she cried for me? I doubt if I will ever know. All I know is that a couple paid for me and raised me. I'm a disappointment to them, I know that. That's fine, and that's life. But I wonder, if the girl who gave birth to me ever thought or cared what happened to the baby she gave away in 1965.

Credits: Anita J. Wittig