Beyond

Anyone who knows me in any meaningful way, in the physical or virtual realms, knows that I'm adopted. It comes up and out in the most usual of conversations ranging from familial associations, medical history to behavioral backgrounds, genetic memory, and so on. I've always known I was adopted, and its simply always been a key defining piece of who I am. In most ways, I've been comforted by it, and have never had any inclination to seek 'n' know anything about by birth mother, or the Y chromosome contributor. 

I've never asked to know. I've never wanted to know.

Who I am in this veil of mystery has always resonated with me, has consistently been a comfort to me, has always felt Just and Right.

So when someone - She - shared unwanted, unsolicited birth mother detail with me, without even checking in, my world rocked. Fucking rOcKeD. What's worse is that the teller - She - did not own the story, and to my knowledge, the owner of the story - the birth mother - took the story with her into the big mystery. And that was her choice. As was the adoption. As a woman who respects women in an actual meaningful way, and their choices, I respect my birth mother's choices. Period. Bottom line. End of sentence. I respect any woman's choices in any such situations, no matter what the choices are. 

So sharing the birth mother story with me, without the slightest bit of check-in, is nothing short of cruel - to both of us.

What's quite possibly worse is that this rather personal detail was shared with others before it was shared with me. How fucking weird is that? And worse still is that it was shared to me in a letter that was sprinkled with passive aggressive poison. And the worst bit of cruelty, from my view, is that my birth mother was told - by She - on her death bed, along with other other venomous fictions, that I knew and that I was angry, and that it was the reason I chose distance from a family that - clearly, now more than ever - needs no reason for said distance.

That last bit rips my heart out. Fucking rips it out.

I'm still sorting through the shards of this bomb. As a Medicine person, I take this work seriously. As a Medicine person, I've always placed premier value on the Medicine of forgiveness... but now... that may shift. And if so, it would shift a deeply rooted aspect of me. And that truth leads me to wonder: Is that selfish? 

So there's more work. And the heaviest query, it seems, at least in this moment, rests on She, and the puzzle of how anyone can be so mean. To so many. Dead, dying, and living. 

It's beyond sad. And quite possibly beyond forgiveness.

Peace. 🕊