How strange it is that we can meet someone at the park, work, and school and quickly become friends. Before that moment, this person was a stranger. You realize everything you have in common through communication, time spent together, and a friendship blooms. 

Before you know it, you are exchanging birthday gifts, sharing vacations, and supporting one another through life’s trials and tragedies. Our friends walk the dog when we aren’t home and babysit the children. We trust our friends to be responsible for the most precious thing in our life, our children.

That is what friends are made of. That chance meeting gave us the blessing of a true friend. You think, ‘I’m so glad we met; what would I do without this friendship?’. 

Would it be fair to expect a biological relationship to rise to the same level, if not higher?

Meeting my biological family should have been as easy as meeting a friend. I had visions of spending time together, getting to know one another and growing a relationship.

Strangely, becoming a friend to a stranger is more effortless than becoming family to my biological family. They know nothing about me, and they don’t want to. They have decided, without speaking to me or asking questions, that I can’t be a part of their life.

I am the enemy. They are suspicious, have closed the ranks, and built a wall against me. Their wish was for me to go away and keep their secret. Simply being me, the product of two people who chose adoption, are reasons enough for them to dislike me.

How strange it is to have someone who looks like you, talks like you, shares your mannerisms, your biology to decide they never want you in their life. If that same person was a chance meeting at a park, you would be open to conversation, learning what you have in common, and possibly striking up a friendship.

I am a daughter, a sister, an aunt, and a niece, but to them, I am no one because I was adopted.