Tag: life

When the Family / Town Secret is You!

Leave a comment

My brother and I are perplexed. How is it possible to be in your 40s and only then find out about a family secret that literally everyone knows – all our extended family, all friends of our family, my best friends growing up and an ex-boyfriend I have not talked to for 40 years? It seems, the only 2 people who did not know were me and my brother.

The secret? We did not know that I was adopted until my full sister and a half-sister reached out in 2008, when I was in my mid-forties. They sent me a Facebook message to say, “You don’t know us and we don’t mean to upset you, but we have reason to believe you might be our sister.” First thought? Who are you and what do you want with me?

My birthday – probably January 1, 1981 – my brother, mother, me, and dad.

Immediately, I sent this message on to my brother. He has a sharp memory and can recall things I have no idea about. If this was true, surely he would know. He didn’t. He was just as shocked as me. (Also, for those who are wondering, he is the biological son of our parents, born a couple of years after I was in the picture.)

Our first thoughts were that this was an iron clad secret almost nobody knew – otherwise, how was it possible to keep such a secret for over 40 years? Also, it was in the 1960s and social media did not exist. Looking back now, I can see the reasoning was faulty – our parents adopted a child – of course they would have told everyone. So, that explains family and family friends knowing.

Soon after I learned this news, I met up with one of my best friends from high school. I mentioned a sister – thinking I would surprise her. Instead, she surprised me, “Oh, you know.” She had heard through a grapevine. When she asked her mother what she should do, her mother told her it was not her story to tell. True enough.

Then, I discovered some of our cousins knew – which meant all of our cousins knew. My brother and I are among the youngest.

A couple of years ago, a high school classmate died and a few of us gathered to remember him. It was a poignant time. We talked about people we grew up with – including who was adopted or otherwise had different family arrangements. My name was not mentioned in this conversation, nor was I or my situation referenced, nor did anyone ask me anything – even though we all openly knew the background of the people we talked about.

Lunenburg High School Graduation – June 1980.
How many people in this photo knew I was adopted and never said a word?

Later, one of the people there – also a good friend from high school – messaged me about my memoir: Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Openheartedness in which I write about the unfolding of my adoption story and meeting my birth family. In that exchange, she shared that she knew I was adopted while we were in high school together! Her mother had told her, but now her mother could not recollect how she knew.

I shared this information with my brother. Again, we were equally stunned that people we went to school with knew this about me and our family and it never, ever came up – not in casual conversation, not when talking about other people who were adopted and not in a moment of spite where someone might want to offend you.

This is top of mind at the moment because, recently through a strange kind of delightful serendipity, I reconnected with my high-school sweetheart, my first boyfriend – also, interestingly through FB. As we did the high-level overview of 40 years of life, I mentioned about being adopted. And, he said, he knew! He found out a couple of years after we broke up. The clincher in all of this. My father told his father. They worked together but were not really friends. How on earth did that conversation even come up? And, if my dad could tell my ex-boyfriend’s dad, why couldn’t he tell me? We’ll never know because they are both gone now. Just when you think you can’t be surprised anymore, something else comes to light.

So, it begs the question. How does a whole family and a town not expose a secret, even by accident? How does pretty much everyone we know from that time know about the adoption and it remained a secret to us? Our parents must have had moments of fear, wondering when I – or my brother – was going to come home with questions. Yet, year after year, through university, graduations, career changes, marriage, divorce, remarriage and 3 children of my own, the topic was never brought up.

When it finally did, my mother’s dementia was far enough advanced, it didn’t make sense to try to talk to her about it. Dad and I did have a good conversation – and several after that – and he was supportive of me meeting my birth family, also initially a little worried that this knowledge would affect our relationship. I told him we had 40+ years of relationship – we would be okay. And we were.

It’s a strange world we live in. I do believe secrets want to be revealed. I’m okay with how this story evolved – although it would have been nice to have known my sister earlier. I am curious what would have happened had I heard through one of my classmates – but it’s almost like everyone was sworn to secrecy.

You never know the life path. You never know what is coming up to be cleared anytime but particularly in what had been a very challenging year – 2025 – adding to a 9 in numerology which is a year of endings and clearings – leading into a 1 year – 2026 – for new beginnings, possibilities and opportunities. I have also just left a 9 year behind personally and entered a 1 year personally.

Dear 2026, please be kind, generous and abundant – for us all. I’m ready for it – even as I may never understand how my brother and I were at the heart of a family and town secret that everyone knew except us!

Identity – Reconnecting to Who We at our Core

Leave a comment

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about identity lately – sparked, in part, to recently having a First Person Account published by CBC titled “I had a loving family. My life changed at 46 when my birth sister revealed I was adopted. My parents hid my adoption. But somehow, the truth brought us closer.”

I’ve been doing a series of videos over at the Inner Wisdom Lab Youtube channel where I speak to various aspects of identity and offer a few guided visualizations for anyone looking to connect more deeply to their own core essence. And there are more to come.

I have now known about being adopted for 17 years, which seems a bit incredulous. Finding out sparked an identity expansion in some ways. In a moment, everything changed, yet nothing changed – with respect to my life, my immediate family and my sense of identity.

Identity and Core Essence

In thinking about identity, I am curious about what is underneath personality traits, skills, abilities, life events … and, I have arrived at core essence. The most basic and important attribute of self that provides a sense of who we are, the inner foundation of being. This essence is constant. In this 7 minute video, I speak about core essence or identity and, in this 10 minute one, I offer a guided visualization for anyone wishing to connect with their own sense of identity or core essence.

Identity and Roles

Sometimes we know and sense our core essence with absolute clarity. Other times it is obscured by layers and layers of roles, expectations – our own and others, doubt, hubris, the minutia of life, disappointments and external successes collected over the course of a life journey. We learn to not trust ourselves, our own inner knowing or wisdom or what our highest self whispers to us along the way. I speak about identity and roles in this 12 minute video and offer a 20 minute guided visualization for any wishing to review the timeline of their life, the roles they took on or were thrust upon them, the gifts in the roles and the opportunity to choose to more fully inhabit some roles and shed others that no longer serve.

DNA and Chosen Family Lineages

Perhaps not surprisingly, over the last 17 years I have also thought about lineage – a lot. DNA and chosen family lineage. DNA does not necessarily a family make. As someone who has been adopted, I feel both of these lineages strongly. I imagine there might be others who feel this way – rooted in at least 2 lineages, if not more.

I have felt most closely connected to my chosen family lineage. One could argue that they chose me since I was a baby at the time. But, if you believe in soul choices and choices made before incarnating, then we chose each other. This is the lineage I grew up with and claimed as my own, since I knew no other until I found out I was adopted. It is very much a part of my sense of self. For a long time, my biological lineage felt abstract.

In more recent times, having connected with a biological cousin who shared the gift of all the genealogical research she has done on my birth mother’s side of the family, something shifted. My sister and I knew that our birth mother’s mother (our grandmother) had had multiple children with different fathers. Our understanding was she had given all the babies up.

I had no idea how many blanks were actually there until that knowledge was shared with me. My birth grandmother had eight children with five different fathers and had not, in fact, given them all up – only the first two, one of which was my birth mother, the second child, raised by an aunt and uncle. Now I have my birth grandmother’s name, and the names of her parents, children, and their fathers, as well as information about the relationships. Having knowledge of my genealogy brings a sense of balance and wholeness I did not expect even as I do not feel a need to connect with all the names that are now etched in my birth lineage.

Identity and Place or Geography

Place and geography influence and shape our sense of identity – where we grew up, where we live, other places that have had a significant influence on our own sense of self. Interestingly, this can expand beyond our own experience to include places that family members are from. I very much have a sense of French Quebec heritage through my dad and of Newfoundland heritage through my mother’s mother (yes I mean the family I grew up in for any who wonder).

My partner, Jerry, is strongly influenced by growing up in the US mid-west. He refers to himself as a flatlander who does not like edges. I, on the other hand, grew up on the coast in a fishing town. People in my family were said to have had the “sea in their blood”. I muse on the influence of place and geography in this 9 minute video and invite people who listen to reflect on what parts of their identity have been shaped by where they grew up or where they live.

Is Finding Your Birth Family a Good Idea?

I am sometimes asked, is searching for your birth family a good idea? One the one hand, it is hard for me to say since this decision was not in my hands. But it reminds me of the famous quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet – “to be or not to be” – although I am not entirely sure way. Searching for birth family is very much an individual choice. Not everyone wants to search, not everyone wants to be found, not everyone connects in relationship and not every story has a happy ending.

Having said that, if you are someone who knows you have biological family out there and are wondering whether it is a good idea, be aware of the expectations and hopes that you carry, and know that for some, it does not or will not answer the questions they are carrying. This can be hugely disappointing.

On the other hand, actually meeting people may not even be necessary to receive answers – like having my birth family tree suddenly fleshed out. And, for many, there are solid relationships that emerge and evolve over time. For my full sister and I, it is almost as if the 40 year gap did not exist.

My sister and me as children.
Me and my sister in Mexico - a year after we reconnected.

On the whole though, there is an invitation to embrace your identity – all of it. And in so doing, remembering what was here before the physical body and after it is gone. It is all essence.