The story of my life: the beginning

So many people have asked that I write about my adoption story and my journey to finding my birth parents. I have tried to start blogging a couple of times, but every time I did, it seemed like something more happened and I needed to take time to process and work through it all.  Now seems to be the perfect time to get started, so here it is.  Please remember as I work my way through this journey, this is a journal of my own thoughts. Although I can speculate at times or come to my own conclusion regarding a situation, I cannot begin to pretend that I know another person's thoughts or feelings.

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Even now, as I sit and try to think about how to begin writing my story, I struggle. Where exactly do I start? Usually the first chapter of a book fills you in with some kind of background about a character - where they are from, the setting, situations that have influenced their lives.

I, however, have no significant background to be able to share. There are a few pieces of information that will give a hint of insight. For example, whoever my biological parents were, they were not married. But that little tidbit only leads to more questions, ones that cannot be answered. Were they in love?  Were they boyfriend/girlfriend? Was it a one night stand? Or even the tragic, could it have been rape?

For most of my life, I created a fairy tale in my head. Surely they were in love and just made a mistake.  Even though the consequences of their bad choices created what some would consider to be a permanent problem, my birth mom chose life, choosing to sacrifice and give me up because she could not care for me. Maybe she made this choice because she herself had been adopted and she knew what a gift it was to give a child a loving family to raise them. She must have truly loved me.

It is my guess that I look like her.  The non-identifying information from the adoption agency says she has brown hair and brown eyes. It also says she plays the piano, so I imagine this is where my love for tickling the ivories has come from.  I must get some of my height from him, since I have grown to be 5 ft 5 inches, a whole three inches above her listed height.  He graduated with a business degree. Does he like math? He must. I love math! So where else could it have come from? What does he look like? Since I feel I look like my birth mom, I can imagine him to be whoever I would like him to be. It says he is 6 ft 2 inches with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. I decide to pick Don Johnson during his days on Miami Vice as a very likely candidate. He is so handsome and what little girl wouldn't want him as her father?

But who loves to cook? The few typed paragraphs that take up half a sheet of paper don't tell me that.  Where does my stubbornness come from? Again, another unknown fact.  Being adopted sometimes feels like you are a main character in a book about yourself, but the first couple of chapters are missing. You can kind of figure out how the story began as you keep reading. You can pick up clues that help you fill in the missing details as you go along. But none of these things are certain. Just guesses.

So as I begin this journey, I will start at the one place I am absolutely certain of.....

...43 years ago on this date, a baby girl was born.