It is hard for me to believe that a year ago today, I was reunited with my biological family in a remote village in Northern Vietnam. Now a year later, I think that meeting them was the easiest part of this complicated journey.
I am still processing, learning, enjoying, and facing many difficult emotional hurdles about everything that has happened, and that will continue to happen. It is not an easy or 100% happy and loving journey. A lot of the times it has been stressful, emotionally draining, and confusing. However, there is not a day that goes by where I regret traveling halfway across the world to help find a missing piece of me. This was a major milestone of my life and I am so thankful that I had the most supportive and loving people with me.
The biggest questions that have me torn are "What is Family?" and "Who defines family?" These have been extremely hard questions for me to come to terms with, answer, or even think about. For the first 3-4 months of being home, I just repeated the same cookie-cutter answer whenever someone asked me about my trip, but on the inside, I was freaking out. I felt like I knew even less about myself than when I did before I even began my trip.
This might be hard to understand, but even though they are related to me by blood it does not necessarily make them family. They still gave me up and my adoptive family was the ones who raised and nurtured me. So the questions that spin around in my head are: How much do I have to give back to them? What do I owe them? How much am I obligated to support them? Am I even obligated to give them anything? Am I a bad person for not wanting to be a financial supporter? Am I a bad person for keeping my distance for my own mental health sake? Am I a bad person for not feeling obligated to do anything? Did I disrupt their lives and ruin things? And these questions go on and on and on in all the ways you would expect.
Some things I do not want to share for my privacy, but I do wish I had a direct connection with my biological mother and that I did not have to talk through someone else to communicate with her. I believe that blood relation has nothing to do with who you think is a parent figure to you, but blood relation has caused me some serious internal turmoil. Even through all of this continued uncertainty I thought would be solved by simply finding my biological mother and her family, I am so incredibly grateful for everyone who has supported me through this journey. It is no where near over and I am still excited to be on this path of discovery. Most importantly, a thank you to the mother that gave me life and the mother that raised me to be who I am today.
I plan on returning to Vietnam one day and continuing the journey of finding my biological father and his family. I have some leads, but I want to do this in the safest way possible.
Family will always be complicated and there is no correct answer to what it is, but without all of them, I would not be here today.
To read the blogs about my adoption story please click here!
To watch the video of our reunion please click here!
❤️ Understand how you would wrestle with what possible obligations you feel toward Thanh. Even if you gave the family everything their heart desired, I would wager that that feeling would still hang over you. Here is the excellent news: You have “farmed out” giving possible help to the person to whom it belongs, your adoptive mother. 2. The gaping unknown which looms over the unconsciousness of most adopted children is now replaced by the ambivalence about the known.
Experiencing the former for 22 years and the latter for only 1, only now can you measure which position is a better place to land. Both moms (and many other family and friends) love you to pieces. You are Wonderf…