Escaping the Divide: Uncovering Unity in my Family Story

You might not know this, but I was actually adopted. I have two women in my life I have noticed officially calling me, "my son." Whenever I tell anyone I was adopted, they always invariably ask, "do you know your real mom?" which is another way of saying, “is your biological mother in your life?” Now, I could talk about all the things you've heard before and the cliche about a real mother being the one who raised you, but you’ve heard all that before. I want to speak to a more subtle idea. One that requires me to point it out because you can't know it or of it, on some level, without having been in it. It's an idea that bridges the gap, in my mind, between childhood and adulthood for a man that grew up in the circumstances that I did.

It's the bridge point between these two that succinctly and intuitively enables a realization of how much growing up has actually occurred in me because the difference in how I perceive a word like family and the value it holds and has held begins to naturally allow itself to emerge now. That is, in simple terms because I'm not here to confuse you, the distinction between how I viewed the word family as a child and how I view the word as an adult and the clear difference I notice between the two ways of seeing it makes itself known.

As a young boy, I remember understanding that I had two families. Two sides to the family. Not just my mother and my father's side of the family ... but my mother and my father's sides through my adoption and my mother and father's side through my biology. That is to say that two sides emerged in both families. In my biology, the family was already separated, a mother and father whose families literally stayed on different sides of parties - one inside, one outside. The boundary was clear in this way but inside any one given side … boundaryless. There was no different between self and other. The wild side was anywhere you were.

Now -again through the eyes of a child- with adoption came a new family. A clearer understanding with more boundaries and structure than I had ever been accustomed to, and not in a good or bad way I mind you. Just a unique way. The pendulum had swung the other way and here I was knowing damn well I wasn't where I was before. To give you a little perspective, family became split for me in the way of “boundaryless” and “boundarymore,” a split in the psyche I've been given that to this day cannot be unwound, although the split came much before this. That being said, the clear distinction I'm speaking to evolved as I became an adult.

I recently wrote a comment on social media about how I have the best family in the world. I didn't wonder about which side of the family I meant or about whether it was biological or adoptive; that wasn't important. I could clearer see that everyone around me doesn't have the family I have although they have parts of it they are connected to. I mean to say there is a merging that occurred for me, an experience with zero separation, where the families were seen as one with me being the connecting point, the bridge point, and to say “my family” is NOT to say only one side or the other but, as an adult, the entirety of that which I have some form of connection with via the time spent and moments had, good or bad.

For me, family has grown to encompass all of this. That doesn't mean that boundaries go away because a merging has occurred in the mind. But that the boundaries serve a very important purpose and having the understanding between keeping the wild side and unpredictable side of myself alive as well as the more structured side and the more well-intentioned side alive too requires that I keep me in touch with both of the inner experiences and all the other wide-ranging experiences traversing back and forth that my higher powers have allowed me the pleasure of embracing. In that sense, I am nothing if not grateful for what I have and how far I have come. Thank you.