It hurts to find out, as an adult, that you were adopted.
Every late discovery adoptee’s moment of truth is delivered differently but there’s no way to sugarcoat it. The blow may come in a relatively gentle way as it did for me.
Thirteen years ago, my sister, Melissa, called me one evening. “You and I were both adopted,” she said very matter-of-factly, with no tears or anger in her voice. (Melissa and I both hate drama.) MeIissa, who suspected we had been adopted, confirmed it with a call to our cousin, Gina. Gina had been adopted by a couple who were close friends with our parents. She knew about our adoptions.
I felt stunned and betrayed by my parents. They never so much as hinted at the possibility that I was not their biological daughter.
They fooled me and now I felt like an idiot for not having figured it out. Here I was, married, a mother, 38 years old and finding out for the first time that I had been adopted. It must have been obvious to everyone else. Mom and Dad were both in their 50s when Melissa and I were born. Women in their 50s don’t have babies. I should have put two and two together but I didn’t.
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