Finding Myself

March, 2011

The journey one takes in an effort to discover who they are remind me of taking baby steps. Sometimes, it's two steps forward, three steps back. I have thought a lot about the circumstances that brought me to where I am today. I have recognized that the pain, triumphs and hard lessons learned all shaped and molded me.

I have accomplished more than I ever thought I could and I have overcome obstacles that some, maybe most, don't. I have found the love and peace I longed for my whole life.

But it wasn't always this way. I still remember what it felt like, years ago, when I looked at myself --and I hated looking at myself- I also hated it when people looked at me. I was afraid they would see right into me, seeing all the shame, pain and sorrow and my secret self loathing would no longer be secret. My pain was so great that I had resigned myself to it, I told myself that this was what my life would be.

I often have flashbacks of my life at times, memories I thought we lost forever, suddenly resurfacing in my mind. One memory was when I was a little girl-I was so excited about things! The anticipation of what the day might bring was the most simple, free feeling I have ever had. .

In order to explain who I am today, it's necessary to go back many years- because who I am today- who we all are- is a culmination of a journey we have taken to now.

This is my story- My journey to finding myself.

Dream Come to Me Easily at Night

Created on 7/23/2002 8:29 PM


Dreams come to me easily at night, often my head is overwhelmed with the fears I refuse to acknowledge during the day. The most frequent is the dream where I am with my mother in a store, any store, and I turn around and she’s gone. I look for her everywhere, frantically running though sections of the store calling her name

“Momma. Momma, where are you” but she never replies… She’s gone, just like every other dream, I find myself facing my greatest fear, the fear or being alone, left, abandoned.

A literal manifestation of years of hidden fears, that as an adult, has yet to abate. I always thought as a child that it would be better to be an adult, I would have to power to make decisions, I could control my life. I always thought the solutions to my childhood problems lied in my adult world, years away. But now, as that adult, I can only laugh at the simplicity of this idea. I am in less control of things than I think I ever have been.

And as that adult, I am still controlled by one inescapable reality: that my fear of being lost and alone, will forever control my life and has been the one fear that has not faded from the part of my brain that is still that little girl, that still is hoping to be an adult. The story of my life started in controversy, a theme that would resurrect itself in my life for many years to come. I was born to an unwed white Irish Catholic women in 1974, the product of a short relationship with a black man who she met attending Indiana University. I was given up for adoption in March, 1974, and entered a loving family. My life as a bi-racial adoptee, as my mother has stated to me many times, is rather extraordinary.