Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel sold a brilliant album on January 17, 1966. The final track on their Sounds of Silence record was I Am a Rock, which deals with feelings of isolation and emotional detachment. In part, it says, “I am a rock. I am an island… A rock feels no pain. An island never cries.”
Paul Simon later said of this song and others that he “doesn’t believe in them as I once did… I am not ashamed of where I’ve been and what I’ve thought. It’s just not me anymore.”
It sounds like even Paul Simon came to realize the importance of community.
My own personal experience with community has been solidified this past year while battling breast cancer. You can read about my experience here in an article I wrote for Pursuit Magazine.
We all need community, whether we admit it or not. Even us introverts need community. Although I refuel during solitary moments and I crave peace, quiet, and solitude, I also need a bit of community thrown in there.
Community can be found in so many different places - family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, teachers… you get the picture.
Adoptees, like the rest of us, crave community in some form or another. Like my client, Tina, they find community in the same places we all do, only theirs if often accompanied by a sense of incompleteness.
Many adoptees go through their lives searching. They may have happiness and fulfillment, but this is often coupled with missing pieces.
Tina hired me last year to help her find those missing pieces and complete her community. With help from AncestryDNA and the social history she had been given about her biological parents, we made it happen.
Tina finally found solace in a previously undiscovered community of biological family members. In her blog, she writes about her “homecoming in Jersey” where she meets three of her half siblings, cousins, and other extended family members.
Tina says of her experience, “Meeting my siblings is mind-blowing. We have an easy kinship and deep recognition I wasn’t expecting. All of the angst, suffering, and displacement I’ve felt surrounding my adoption is dissipating. It’s like being able to take a full breath for the first time.”
I cannot state more clearly that we all (adoptees included) have a basic human right to know our genetic origins. We don’t have the right to a relationship, but we all have the right to at least know who we are and where we come from.
All adoptees, like Tina, deserve that full, deep breath.