What do you take for granted?  Perhaps it’s your job, your friends, or even your family.  But what does family mean?  That is, how do you define family?  Is it the summation of those with whom you spent your childhood, those who helped define your present being through a shared domicile, history, tradition, and heritage?  Or is it those with whom you share a genetic history, people whose blood carries hereditary markers common with your own?  And does it matter?  For those who are adopted, I suspect it does more than it might for others.

xocobra recently embarked on a journey that, lacking a common frame of reference, seems understandable yet alien to me: he began looking for his birth parents.  You see, almost 36 years ago he was put up for adoption by parents he never knew.  It would be inappropriate to think that this somehow diminished his experiences growing up.  He became part of a loving family with parents who cared for him and loved him in that way to which most of us are accustomed.  The only difference in his experience and that of the majority is that his parents did not give birth to him.

Despite this one small difference, he experienced the undying love and devotion that true parents give, a life full of living, a home that served to protect and harbor him, and the pinnacle of familial affection.  At least in regards to the true family model, he wanted for nothing.  Despite this, however, his adoptive parents did tell him as he was growing up that he was in fact not their direct offspring but had instead been adopted.

While I cannot claim to understand in even the most remote sense what such a disclosure means, I can empathize and comprehend the questions to which it must surely give rise.  Therein lies a certain self-discovery with which so many of us never have to concern ourselves.  We are nurtured by common and genetic families that are one in the same.  In his case, nevertheless, this was not true.

His adoptive father, the only surviving member of his family, expressed support for his search with an apparent sympathy for the emotional, medical and psychological reasons that often engender similar quests for adoptees around the globe.  Even more important for xocobra, however, was the desire to say “thank you” to his birth parents for giving him a chance to live, even if not with them, and to have enjoyed a rich life with those who adopted him.

In the end, do not we all at some time in our lives stop to ponder from whom our eye color came, what medical history within the family may be relevant to us, why we are as tall or short as we are, and a great many other reflections?  To a degree far more significant, would not one in the same position oft find reason to deliberate as to the disposition of our genetic family and why it was necessary or prudent to place us with an adoptive family?  It is likely the latter reflection with which most of us are unable to sympathize, yet it is likely the most important for those who were adopted.

xocobra’s search lasted almost two weeks and was aided by the most caring search partner imaginable, someone who also had performed a search for birth parents over the course of decades and who understood the driving forces behind such quests.  Last Friday marked the beginning of a new chapter in the life of one of my dearest friends as he received a direct communication from his birth mother.  She mentioned often wondering about him, how he was doing, where he was, and so on, and her message seemed a heartfelt welcome and sigh of relief embodied in a gentle hand reaching out to that which she lost so long ago.  She mentioned he has a half-brother who is only in his early twenties; I’m confident this is a twist on the tale for which my friend was not quite prepared, yet to say he was prepared in any sense of the word for any particular outcome would likely be ignorance on my part.  His emotional turmoil throughout the search was evident, a roller coaster ride of mammoth proportions that I could only cheaply imagine.  Yet such rapid success also created its own shock and dismay further adding to a tumultuous psychological experience.

After a third of your life has already passed, where do you begin?  There are so many questions, I’m sure, and so much one would want to share.  There exists a truth in all of this which presents only to those of common experience, a truth to which even I am not privy.  I love xocobra and would do anything for him, and I cannot express the joy I feel at his success in this case.  In no way does any of this negate or minimize the bond he continues to enjoy with his adoptive father, the man xocobra rightfully sees as his true parent, yet what mysteries can be revealed and what self-exploration can be accomplished given the opportunity to know whence he came?

Thus begins a new chapter in his life.  Irrespective of what is to follow, completing this leg of the journey has opened doors for him that were thought forever out of reach, if not locked.  As Lao Tsze once said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”  xocobra’s expedition into his own life has just revealed to him a path heretofore never considered, a trek wrought with possibility and hope for a greater understanding of himself, his family, his own children, and life itself.

I wish him only the best and congratulate him for demonstrating a true desire to reach out.  There can be no innate guarantees in what lies ahead.  But there can be hope tempered with acceptance.  What a wonderful flowering of life that now unfolds before him, one already made all the better by what has transpired, yet one equally wrought with peril and promise he never considered possible.  It can only be an honor and privilege for me to be some small part of this, and I will cherish the opportunity by remaining at his side throughout so that I may lend him my strength and support, and so that he might know that he does not journey alone.

xocobra: I am so happy for you.  What a wonderful event to experience.  Place no unfulfilled dreams or expectations ahead of you.  Instead, simply let the journey itself be reason enough to keep moving.  What will come will come.  Even if all of it were to end today, I know it has already been worth the effort.  Keep in mind this is not a search for identity; that you already have, and it can not be taken from you or changed by anything you might learn moving forward.  This, my friend, is a search for knowledge, a bit of comprehension in the midst of a near incomprehensible universe, some clarification which can be applied to what at present remains unclear.  Nothing you discover will change who you are.  What it can do is answer what has been until now unanswerable, and it can add to and augment your life in many ways you never imagined.  But it can not take away from what you already have.  In the same breath, though, remember that it can bring pain, the realizations that follow from reasons never before known to you.  No one can promise all good will come from this; equally, no one can deny the good it has already brought to you.  What we can promise is that we are here for you: we will help you with this journey as much as you need and will allow.  I am so very proud of you, and I love you dearly.