I really thought I would have it all figured out by now, “it” meaning my life, identity and my place in this world, but I don’t. In fact, I feel more lost and confused than I did when I first met my adoptive parents for the first time in Dessie, Ethiopia. I was prepared for a life, a good life filled with many opportunities and comfort. My life has been everything I could have imagined as I prepared for my voyage to America and so much more.
As I write this, I am deeply grateful for my life and the many opportunities I have been given, yet at the same time I am also incredibly lost and confused. This feeling of being lost is perhaps even a little more than when I was still in Ethiopia. Back then it was all hopes, dreams and the anticipation of what was to come. Now it’s what has been and what I am. I am a mother who doesn’t know how to talk about her childhood with her kids because it’s sad and traumatic. The world I describe is not even close to a reality that they can imagine. And the part that saddens me the most is I have lost my connection to it; I am also a stranger to the culture, place, language and customs. I’m on the outside looking into something that resembles a familiar place I’ve visited, perhaps in a dream, or a familiar face I once knew but have lost touch with. What remains is a familiar feeling that I can’t quite put my finger on the context or our actual relationship.
This experience leaves me feeling embarrassed and shameful. “How can you know and love someone for nine years and act like you don’t know them? Why did you give up so easily?” I worked so hard to fit into my environment, to belong to the people and community I was placed in that I abandoned my home, my foundation. The foundation that allowed me to be where I am today, to be strong and resilient, to learn English and to integrate into the new life and community given to me while dealing with so much turmoil. I feel sad that I’ve allowed this foundation to slip away.
So here I am as a 38 year old mother of three, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter, an aunt, and cousin; lost trying to find my way back to where it all started, in the highlands of Ethiopia, where the days were marked with coffee ceremonies, holy days, family, and so much more.
As I pursue having “it” figured out, I need to go back and figure out what my adoption journey has been about, beyond survival and overcoming trauma.
Hanna Grove