Unseen Connection

In the 12 or more years I have been trying to answer the question “why can’t adoptees just be content to have loving parents and a happy home?”  I have a better understanding of unseen forces now than I ever have.  I cannot see electricity, my voice on the phone wire, or how this computer can send things around the world, but I know it happens.  I cannot see what makes the tides come and go or what makes fish, birds, and animals migrate, but I know the “unseen” pull is powerful.  There are many other things that are powerful and unseen such as prayer, wind, sexual attraction, and love.

Why wouldn’t a baby who spent nine months growing and hearing a world from inside his or her mother not have a connection to her?  It seems like a no-brainer to me and has for a very long time, way before I began to understand the “need” to search for that connection when there was an early separation.  Just today I had that same old conversation about the adoptee being whiney and ungrateful.  I know I did not convince her that neither of those words applies to the situation.  Yes, she is an adoptive mother and feeling very threatened.  She is sure her teenage daughters have no thoughts of seeking that other person.  I happen to know that they are waiting until they are old enough to do their own search.  They love their mother and understand her insecurity.  (I may wish I had not written this if she ever reads it, but the girls said to go ahead.)

These girls (young women, if you will) have spent endless hours playing games about who their mother and father are since they are apparently unrelated.  They both recall when mom caught them “play-like other mothers” when they were really little.  One says, “Mom almost passed out when she realized what we were doing.  She was so hurt!  We never let her catch us again, but it was our favorite game---looking at people and trying to guess if they were related to us.”   They never intend to tell her when they search or when they find their “other family” because neither one would hurt her for the world, but both say they “have to, absolutely have to search.”

My question is-how could there not be a connection?  Share your thoughts.

Until next time,
Alice