The "Look"

I come from a different tree

My adoptive family is huge.  And nearly everyone looks alike.  Most have the same face shape, similar hair, and the same laugh.  Even I have a hard time telling my mom and her sisters apart from their laughs and I've been with the family for twenty-four years.  They are just that similar.  Most of my cousins look alike too, which means that when we get together, you'd be able to tell we're a family (with the exception of a handful of us, mainly me).

I have a group of cousins who look very much like my mom.  They have the same facial shape, use the same expressions, have the same hair, and their eyes are like carbon copies of my mom's.  It's interesting to see how genetics come into play, especially when they have a father who clearly isn't genetically related to my mom.  It's different.  Anyway, we've been spending a lot of time together lately and when that happens, things come up.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone comment on the [insert last name here] look.  It's the "look" that clues everyone in that we're a family.  Well, that they're a family anyway.  I have to wait to be introduced and then it's assumed that I take after my father.  I do, just not the father they're thinking of.

Oddly enough, it hasn't happened as often over the past few years.  I think it probably has something to do with the fact that we're growing up and don't spend as much time together as we used to.  We don't have the same amount of family fun time that we used to, plus I've been living in another state for five years.  I haven't even been home a year, but I'm reintegrating with my family and getting back into the swing of things.

Back to the family fun time that we've been having lately.  We've been together a lot in public places and meeting new people.  And new people love to comment.  And thus the "look" was brought up again.  Only this time, it didn't bother me so much.  I didn't feel like there was a knife sticking out of my back and being twisted. It didn't hurt as badly as before.  Before it had been a reminder that I was different, that I wasn't "one of them" and that I didn't have people that I looked like.  Now, I see it as a celebration of those differences and I know that had my first family been there, those people would be saying the same things about us.  What a difference it makes knowing where my own "look" comes from.

This is just another example of how reunion has allowed me to start to heal and to live a happier life.  It's certainly one with fewer questions and more awareness of self.  Yay! :-)

Preparation

I drink lots of tea

I'm starting to get into preparation mode for my upcoming face to face.  I slightly remember this from a year ago.  In a way, I'm glad that I had that face-to-face to sort of prepare me for this one.  I know not to expect anything because it's so unpredictable.

I know that my first mother won't be concerned really with how I look.  It doesn't matter what I wear, or how I do my hair because that's not what she's meeting me for.  That being said, because first impressions are the most lasting, I want to look nice when I meet her.  I know that I can't prepare for the emotional stuff, but if I can feel good about myself, maybe it will help a little bit, especially with my own self-esteem.

I'm going to get a new outfit.  I did that when I met my first father, and it made me happy.  I don't want to dress up too much, because that's a pain and it's not a job interview.  I don't want to show up in a sweatshirt either.  When I met SinginInTheRain, I wore nice jeans and a sweatery thing (I'm so fashion forward I know what to call everything...).  I wore my ballet flats because I knew he wasn't much taller than me and I didn't want to wear my four inch heals.  I wasn't too concerned about it because in general, guys don't judge women's clothing the way that women tend to (and I knew my first father was that type of guy... he wears white socks with black sneakers).  Knowing me, I'll probably get a nice new top, wear my nice jeans (I have a new pair of nice jeans now), and a nice pair of shoes.  I have a ton of shoes to pick from, so I'm sure I'll find something to wear.

I'm debating on getting a haircut.  I'm trying to grow out my hair and its in that annoying in-between stage.  It's not short, but it's not long either.  Also, because my hair is so curly I have to straighten it or it turns into a triangle shape that looks awful.  I could get it cut so that it looks really nice for when I meet her, but lose a few months worth of work (and I consider growing my hair out lots of work), or I can leave it the way that it is and pray that I have a good hair day.  I'm leaning towards praying for a good day.  I just really hope it doesn't rain...

I'm also finishing up a pack of Crest white strips.  It's about that time of year to use them again anyway so it's not a big deal.  I drink tea which isn't as bad as coffee, but white teeth make me happy so I'm going to finish up the pack before I meet her.  At least I'll have white teeth!

I'm taking the day off of work for when I meet her. If I meet her in the afternoon and I try to work in the morning, I'll be stressed and watching the clock the whole time to make sure I don't miss it.  I won't get anything done and I'd feel badly for my coworkers for having to deal with me.  I'm not going to want to go back to work afterward either.  I have a feeling I'll be way too worked up.  Last time I saw my first father I planned a massage afterward.  It was great because I knew I had something to look forward to after he left.  I just may do something similar this time around.

In the morning, I'll go and get my car washed.  I'm going to clean out my car on the inside this weekend anyway (it badly needs to be done) so I'll just have a nice outer shine to match the inner shine!  Anything to make me feel more prepared for the un-preparable.

Thank goodness for my running.  It's not that I needed to run to lose weight.  Running for me is more to tone up and gain some muscle weight.  However, running's been my key to sleeping lately.  I'm so tired by the time I hit my pillow I'm out like a light.  I haven't been plagued with my normal insomnia for a while now (since I started running actually) so that's been a good thing.  It's also keeping me less stressed so I'm better able to handle all these things.

Looking in the Mirror

The Mirror

I've been trying to pamper myself lately.  I don't always take the time to stop and think about how far I've come.  When I look in the mirror I tend to see the faults and flaws, and not the positives.  The other day I caught my reflection in the mirror and I actually stopped.  I realized that I'm too hard on myself sometimes.  It's funny, but I see myself in a completely different light than I used to.

When I used to look in the mirror, I'd only see question marks.  I didn't know where my skin tone came from or where my curly hair came from.  I had no clue who else had the same brown eyes.  I couldn't see the history that was written on my own face.  It was frustrating to have my lack of knowledge of where I came from thrown in my face.  Every.  Single.  Day.  And when I was so frustrated, I'd nitpick.  My nose is too big.  My skin likes to throw temper tantrums a lot (especially right before something where lots of pictures are going to be taken).  My hair and I have a love/hate relationship.  My face has a funny shape.  My teeth are OK thanks to braces, but they could be whiter.

I didn't see those things in the mirror the other day.  My skin is clearing up from it's most recent tantrum and is looking good again.  My hair was having a good day and was cooperating.  My teeth are looking a lot whiter thanks to some great new whitening toothpaste.  And I know that my facial structure comes from my first father and my first mother.  I've always loved my eyes, but now there's another reason why I love them.  When I met my first father, the first thing I noticed was that he has the exact same eyes as me.  It's like looking in the mirror.  What an odd feeling.  Now when I look in the mirror I see that history there.  I see my heritage and my biological family reflected in my face.  I know this is a huge reason why I want to meet my first mother, so that I can see for myself our similarities.  Pictures just don't cut it.

I've been trying to be better to myself these past few weeks.  When I was looking in the mirror, I realized that I'm a lot more put together than I used to be just a few months ago.  I'm exercising.  My anxiety levels are a lot lower.  I'm more relaxed because I'm getting out my pent up energy.  I need to work on the sleep thing, but I'm getting there.  I've been a friendly person to be around and I'm more likely to smile on my own rather than forcing it.  I'm eating right.  I'm putting on (good) weight.  Meals are no longer an epic battle.  How exhausting that was...  I'm doing things that I enjoy and spending more time with my extended family.  I have my hard days for sure and I'll always have my hard days.  But I'm managing a lot better.

It really is true.  I got some great advice about being happy.  "Fake it 'til you make it".  I never thought it would work.  But I tried.  I made myself smile more.  I faked a good mood even when I really didn't feel like it.  I forced positive energy into my life when I wanted to lie down and give up.  And suddenly, I seem to find myself happier without really trying.  The changes I've been making in my life recently are starting to pay off.  I'm trimming out the negativity and added in things that are good for me in their place.  It's working so far, and I hope to keep it up.

I like the girl in the mirror these days.  I want to keep liking her...

Drama in Adoptoland

Great post by Von today, as well as several others. In case you missed it, there's been a lot of drama the last few days after an adoptive mother posted a picture of her Asian daughter pulling her eyes back.  Several adoptees, including Von and Mei-Ling, went over to try to respectfully point out how that might be raciest and offensive.  They were told to "take a chill pill" and that the gesture was "cute".  There are some great posts out there who say it better than I would, including:

Once Was Von: Twenty Fun Things To Do With Adoptees: pose your adoptee using a racist gesture which is against her race, make sure you photograph her and post on an open blog and collect commen...

Exile of Xingnan: Being Nice Just Doesn't Work: Suffice to say, I’m exhausted by this. Not just the racist post, but because of the comments going on over at Joy’s blog about the racist post. Someone wrote: If you would just be nice, people would listen to you.

Joy's Division: Adoptive Parents and Moral Imperative: I know you don’t want to hear this, but there is no getting around that I am simply right about this issue in re: the picture of the young girl posted on the internet by her adopter-woman....

iAdoptee: The Ugly American is alive and well: Much chatter has been sparked within the adoptee community this week over a photo that an adoptive mother posted to her blog. The photo features a very young Asian girl using her fingers to pull her eyes back making them appear slanted. The Caucasian adoptive mother captioned the photo with the words "She did this... and then asked 'Mommy, do I look Chinese?'"

Marginal Perspectives: Hubris: I feel as though I cannot escape the hubris of so many pathetic people at the moment. It is horrible and haunting. At the best of times, you...

If I forgot any, please leave them in the comments section!

More Family Drama

Well, it's been an interesting week.  And for the first time, I feel I've been a bit alienated from my adoptive family.  I'm talking about my extended adoptive family just for clarification.

I always considered myself to be a "lucky one".  Not only do I have great adoptive parents (they have their flaws but who doesn't?) but I also have a big adoptive family which accepted me.  We're all very different, and there were times growing up when I felt very alone, but for the most part, I was never made to feel like an outsider on purpose.  My mom's sisters knew how much she had struggled, and wanted a child, and everyone sort of just jumped right on bored.  Maybe this wasn't the case at first, but by the time I was aware of anything, everyone seemed to be fine with my adoption.  It's never brought up.

I was never treated differently than my other cousins.  As I got older, I was treated differently because I acted differently.  While a number of my cousins (there are a lot of them) don't really go out of their way to stay in touch with my grandparents, I do.  I call once a week, stop in to say hi on my way home from work, and take the time to get to know them.  I have issues with my grandparents in the past (my grandfather and I don't get a long at all), but it's a personality thing, and a generational thing.  Not an adoption thing.  Of this I am sure.

My mom's family has weight issues.  Not major weight issues, but enough that there's a lot of dieting.  Someone is always on a diet.  Someone always looks great one Thanksgiving, and then packs on the pounds the next Thanksgiving.  It's just the way things are.  Thanks to genetics and the fact that I can't eat a lot of foods, I am a thin person.  I wasn't always super thin.  My boyfriend remarked the other day that my high school picture looks different to him.  I told him it was because I was twenty pounds heavier, so my face was rounder.  He couldn't get over it!  After high school, I had to stop eating a lot of my favorite foods because they were making me sick.  I can't eat pizza, ice cream, anything acidic, or drink milk, beer, OJ, soda, or anything with carbonation.  This means that I'm pretty much screwed when it comes to eating.  Sometimes it doesn't matter what I eat, I'm still going to feel sick no matter what. Case and point, I ate breakfast yesterday, managed to get some Cheerios down this morning, and will find a way to get down some food at lunch time.  So that's two days in a row where I've only been able to eat one full meal each day.  Not quite the best way to maintain a healthy weight.  It is what it is and when I feel better I'll go back to my normal diet (I really love food and eat lots of it when I can!) but the result is that I'm barely maintaining a healthy weight.  It's not something that I like to talk about because I know that it's a lot more common for people to loose weight and that a lot of my family members struggle with it.  I don't see them having much sympathy for me, so I keep quiet about it.  Plus there are so many other family members who are a lot sicker than I am.

My cousin is getting married in November.  We're all thrilled (we love his fiancee) and a few cousins decided to do a friendly competition to see who could lose the most weight.  Clearly I'm not joining in on this competition. Yet, I'm getting fifteen emails a day regarding this "friendly competition".  So I figured, I'd change things up a bit for me.  I'd use it as inspiration to get in shape.  I might be thin, but I'm very out of shape.  I can barely run a mile and survive.  So while everyone else is trying to lose weight for the wedding to feel good about themselves, I figured I'd get in shape and feel good about myself too.  So I told them I'd donate a $10 lottery ticket to the winner.  Well, apparently that was the wrong thing to do.  In following emails, I was labeled an "other" along with my uncle's girlfriend (someone else who's an outsider in the family) and it became pretty clear we weren't wanted.  I wrote an email explaining that I wanted to get in shape along with them and while for me that doesn't mean losing weight, I was going to try to add exercise to my day.  Didn't matter, I was still an "other" and they were going to kick me off the email list.  My cousin spoke up for me and let me know that I was more than welcome as long as that one particular aunt didn't care.  Things spiraled out of control from that point on.

I let them know I wasn't happy with the way things were going and asked to be taken off the email list.  My aunt apologized (she was just "joking around") and I've been kept on the list, though I haven't responded back. I think this was just so hard for me because it's the first time I've felt directly labeled as an "other" in my family.  And it didn't take a genius to realize who else was being labeled an "other", the one other person on that list that wasn't considered to be "real family" by a lot of people.

I think that my aunt and I need to have a talk at some point. She's going through a lot right now.  I know she has a lot on her plate.  But I do think she needs to understand how I was reading that email chain.  I don't know if she realized how I would make that jump.  She knows about my reunion, and she said she was supportive, but she's the aunt I was worried about.  I don't want to stir up more drama, but this is my family. I know I could easily let this go, and maybe I will.  And I'm so over it at this point.  But I do think this is something that is going to come up again.  And hopefully next time I won't lose it again.  I don't think my poor boyfriend can handle the tears again lol!

Body Image

I've always been really thin.  I've been that way since I was a little kid.  I had a six-pack when I was six.  There are photos to prove it.  It's not something that I'm proud of because I don't have to work at it.  I don't spend a ton of time at the gym, I don't watch what I eat, and I don't usually have to worry about being too heavy.  In fact, it's the opposite for me.  I usually have to make sure that I'm eating enough.  I fight to keep my weight at an acceptable level.  I also can't eat a lot of foods that I would normally eat in order to put on weight, so it gets tough.  I wish I could eat a bowl of ice cream every day and pack on the pounds from eating pizza but those two offenders are at the top of my "Can't Eat Or I'll Start Puking And Could Die" list.

I've never really liked the way I look.  I don't think the super skinny thing is attractive.  My adoptive family isn't as thin as I am.  I wouldn't call them a huge group of "large" people, but they aren't delicate little flowers either.   Some of my adoptive family members have struggled with weight.  My adoptive mother is one of them.  As odd as this is going to sound, I wanted to be just like her.  I would have rather been a little bit overweight just like her because then I could connect to her on that level.  But I wasn't.  I was always just a little bit underweight.  It was embarrassing.

I know that people struggle with weight-loss all the time.  You can't turn on the TV without seeing an ad for a new program.  It makes me embarrassed that I don't have to try to loose weight.  I don't go to the gym even though my boyfriend says it looks like I do.  I wish I had a few more pounds on me.  I'm not a "healthy" person.  I'm not toned, I can't run more than a hundred yards without getting winded, and I need to eat better.  Yet I can't work out because I don't have the fat to loose.  I get dizzy just trying.  And that's never a good thing.  I'm sure if you've ever had weight problems you're probably rolling your eyes at me right now and I don't blame you.  I feel like it's something I can't complain about because everyone else struggles trying to loose weight and I have to try to gain some.

I think that's one of the reasons meeting my first dad was so important to me.  I'd seen pictures, but I never really grasped from the pictures how thin he actually was.  Turns out he's been that way his whole life.  He got made fun of at school because he had skinny legs and knobby knees (ME TOO ME TOO!!!).  Hearing about how he struggled with gaining weight as a child made me realize that I wasn't alone in that too.  It's nice not always being alone.  It's nice having someone else understand.  It has made me feel more comfortable with myself and with my body.  I still wish I was a few pounds heavier, but I don't obsess over it anymore.  I am who I am.