When we set our sails, we did not envision the challenges that lay ahead. It is as if each day brings a new storm, gale, or wave to break across our bow and challenge the safety of calm waters, once familiar to us, amongst the fog bank of adoption. The vicissitude and volume that jeopardize our safe passage never seems to calm. We can sense our proximity as the spray from the ocean is heaved with equal potency against the invisible isle.
No one can tell you when it is the right time to start your search. Nor can anything you read prepare you for the length of your journey or what your expectations should be once you arrive. For some of us, the journey really is the testament we needed to make. For others, the reasons and answers one seeks seem essential to conclude. Perhaps, you have reached a point in your life where something you thought could be fulfilled another way, has fallen short of expectations. Whatever the justifications, it is important to stop occasionally and turn about to see what you have accomplished.
It may not seem important to take pause every so often, but for me I can see the changes people make in themselves as they pass from one challenge to the next. People fundamentally change themselves as they evolve along the way. For me, it is a night and day shift in their perspective. In the thick of their journey, most are just driven by the next hill they can climb or the next possibility they can overcome.
Clearly people need to answer questions they have about themselves and the birth family that just seems right outside of their grasp. It is important to really explore the reasons behind your motivations and what you really intended on embracing at the end of your quest. When you think you are too busy to answer this question, stop and attempt to appreciate your position herein. The catalyst may have been to find birth family but I assure you it will not be completely answered when you find them. I encouraged you to truly slow down and appreciate the journey you set yourself on and how it has forced you to face things in yourself not considered important enough to take notice of until this moment.
It was not until I reached the end and started to reflect more deeply on what I was looking for that the words rang more clarion for me, Nosce te ipsum. Know thyself. What it meant was I always seemed to be driven and yet did not know why it was so important for me to acknowledge the talents, skills, and deep desire to complete my picture did I really understand why it was so important to embrace. Those two words nearly drove me mad trying to come to the conclusion in as little time as it would take to complete.
My birth family did change my perspective. I now know the rest of my picture, and am slowly evolving a relationship with this new set of people into my life. I never thought I was looking to fill in what was missing from my adopted family, I just realized that it did help calm a place in my mind I did not know was out of alignment to begin with.
I am still absorbing who and what I found into my consciousness. I cannot fully appreciate what I have found or its significance entirely. Yet my boat has finally sailed off beyond the horizon, and I can only say I turned back to see if I could help others get here with a renewed sense of purpose.