Letting Go and Moving Forward

by Kathleen Kirstein

I describe being a late-discovery adoptee as having lived my life in the grooves of a vinyl record. My hand guides the needle onto the record as it plays pitch-perfect music. Winning a free trip to Cancun, Mexico at age 49 stopped the needle in the groove of the record; the turntable, my whole life, came to a screaming halt. 

The passport office rejected my birth certificate for being filed with the state too long after my birth. That’s what outed my adoption. 

As I have been on this path of endless rotation, turn upon turn, finding biological family and learning my true origin, a new layer of vinyl is being poured over the old record base. Missing information in my story leaves holes in the vinyl coverage and allows the needle to fall into a groove of my old story as it plays the music of my life. When the needle gets stuck in one of these holes, it’s a problem because I have to stop what I’m doing. I have to rescue the needle manually and insert it into a new story groove. Every time this happens, I remind myself that the new story is what’s real. The first half of my life was a lie to cover up my adoption. Otherwise, my brain tries to fight me. Wanting me to believe once again that the story of my adoption isn’t true. Those are the times when I look in the mirror and think I still look like the mother who raised me. I still have her hands. I have spent the past 20 years since discovery processing my adoption and learning about my biological family. I find myself trying to figure out why it’s so important to have someone else’s hands.

Why can’t I be happy with my own hands? Hands shaped by the inherited genes of my biological parents. Developed by my lived experience and the choices I have made. Unique to only me. 

During my adolescent years, I realized my body type and problem-solving skills were different. I knew something was off, and I didn’t understand why. I think it made me look for anything that would help me feel connected. So I focused on my mother’s hands as I learned by watching her cook, garden, and sew. Noticing her always tanned hands, the bulging knuckles from the hours spent working her garden, and the changes of arthritis.  Her slightly flattened finger tips from all the years of pushing fabric through the sewing machine as the needle placed each stitch as she made our clothes. 

My parents would spend Saturday nights out with their friends. My grandmother, my mom’s mother, lost her husband just after I arrived in the family. She moved in with us. We shared a room with a carousel painted on the wall for my first five years of life. She and I bonded. Even though I felt like I bonded with Gram, I don’t remember as a kid or even in my teenage years ever going to anyone for support when I was upset. After we moved to the new house, Gram’s room was where I spent most of my time as a child. My new room was a wide-open loft in the middle of the upstairs. When I wasn’t outside playing with a friend, I was in her room playing with my toys on her homemade braided rug. I loved hanging out when her adult stepkids would come to visit. I always wanted to be part of a large family. My parents had a biological child when I was four, so I grew up with a sister. It was a small family. All that nurture provides. 

When I reunited with my maternal biological family, I learned I had a full sibling brother. I had always wanted a brother; he was truly a gift of reunion for me. My biological mother had dementia when we met, so I tossed my questions out the window. I just appreciated spending time with her. I looked, and I don’t have her hands either. Her hands are small, petite, and pale. I always came home from my visits with a mama story. Mama’s name was Helena; they called her Helen for short. I called these Helen stories; they sustained me between visits. I learned that I have Mama’s personality: her humor and her quiet presence. For most of her life, she was a single mother to my brother. Living as a single mother was hard. I also see her strength in myself. I have always done the hard jobs. I learned I was part of a large family, as she was the 9th of 10.  

Having grown up in an Irish household, I was excited about my newfound Italian ancestry. I did a DNA test to see which regions of Italy. In a surprise twist, I learned my brother and I were only half-siblings: our fathers were different. It was a crushing discovery. I have reunited with the correct paternal family. In doing so, it solidified for me where my love of driving comes from. My father passed away long before my discovery. The pictures I have don’t show his hands. I saw, at age 63, for the first time in my life, my body type mirrored back to me. I truly look like this family. Nature providing.

I spent my 69th birthday this February sitting with my perception of my birth mother’s pain as she spent 100 days sitting in a maternity home waiting for my birth. The maternity home was only 8.3 miles from the farmhouse where she grew up and lived during that time in her life. She spent her 32nd birthday in that maternity home. In my non-identifying information, it said she was a calming influence to the girls and taught them all how to knit. For the week before this 69th birthday, I felt driven to imagine and sit with her pain. 

Vinyl records often have an A side and a B side. My life’s record is no different. It was sitting with Mama’s pain that allowed me to let go of my all-or-nothing, either/or thinking, the A side.  I am now a firm believer in AND the B side. My grief and my joy sit side by side as the music of my life plays and the needle navigates all the grooves. While I feel like I side toward nature more than nurture, I can now see the benefits of both. I can find the importance of being unique. I can feel grounded knowing I get to be myself. I finally get to have my own hands.  

As I drive or sit at my desk doing artwork, I embrace my long, thin fingers, smaller hands, and some scars. The most recent injury on my left middle finger was from a knife cut while I was chopping celery for Thanksgiving stuffing. The carpal tunnel surgery scar is embedded in the crease of my left lower palm. My right thumb shows self-abuse, picking at my skin when I am anxious, upset, or unsettled.  It’s the true barometer of how I am really coping with my life as a late-discovery adoptee. If the thumb looks good, all is stable to good. If the thumb is red and raw, covered by a bandaid, when I say I’m fine, I am covering up what I really feel. 

I move forward with grace as I witness my hands doing what I ask them to do, the vinyl record of my life continuing to play in the background.  I am part nurture, part nature, unique, all of it leading to my authenticity.

Kathleen is a same-race, domestic infant adoptee born in VT and adopted out to NH, where she still resides.  She is a retired registered nurse, mother, artist, and writer. She discovered her adoption late in life and also found via DNA that she had a not-parent-expected (NPE) event. She has found healing within the adoption community and understands the importance of Peer Support and for adoptees to tell their story. She has published essays in Severance Magazine and has done several podcasts. She is a co-facilitator of Adoptees Connect in Derry, NH, and also serves as a co-facilitator of AKA’s First Friday Adoptees Peer Support group.  She is a board member of AKA.  A collector of first names since learning about her adoption, she is also known as Wendy Kathleen Janet (WKJ) on Facebook. Instagram @kathleenkirstein

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