Wings To Fly - Part 3

Over the last 10 years we've all got to know each other, and in finding my Birth Mum, I also found my birth dad and sister because they were all together. We've spent some nice times together. Strangers I'd felt I'd known all along - a quirky thought!
It was like I'd just been away for a while. 
A long while!


Meeting my sister was bittersweet. She had grown up an only child, too young to have remembered anything about me, to have noticed the swelling in her mum's tummy where I grew.
Both of us had wished for the other, a sister,
21 years later she had come.....And so did the shoes!!! We are the same size = Bliss! 
I'd never had the same size feet as anyone until then, yay!!! 
We've only been together a few times, I could count them on one hand.
Our second time came when she flew over to be bridesmaid at my wedding!
Then after that she made a quick one-day visit to Perth a few years later. I still smile when I think back to that time, we were shopping when the assistant approached us and remarked, "Gee, you can't half tell you two are sisters!"
We both looked at each other and burst into tears. 
The poor girl in the shop looked baffled at what she'd said to get such a response but all I could manage to say amidst the blubbering was "it's ok, what you said is like music to our ears!"


I don't see her much. My sis travels far and wide. Separate lives but similar hearts. When we do track one another down we are able to pick up where we last left off. I adore her and miss her despite the fact that we don't really know each other. 


I got really upset one day, a little angry too I guess. I was pregnant and sitting in a waiting room at the doctor's, when playing on the floor by my feet were two little girls dressed in fairy costumes. 
Sisters. 
In their own little world, oblivious to everything else but their dresses, their wings and each other.
I watched them, my heart tugged,
and to put it plain and raw, I felt ripped off! 
So me being me, I wrote a poem about it... 

My sister wasn't the only one who didn't know I existed. No-one tied to my birth-parents did apart from one best friend. When all was finally revealed after I'd searched, some tensions arose. I'm no expert but according to Maori traditions, if for any reason you can't keep your children then they go to other members of the family. Aunts and Uncles were hurt, they said they could have had me. That they would have had me, 
but it wasn't meant to be, My God was onto it.


An exception to the rule.

Finding them filled in the spaces,

some of them anyway.

From someone who had searched her mind, her life, her heart, the world, I thought I would find the answer in finding where I came from.

I thought I would find myself.

Instead, I got to the end of myself,

then realised exactly how lost I was in the process.

I was back to basics.

Back to square one.

Back to wondering who?

and back to the beginning for HIM, my Saviour to find me, to start over,

to ultimately bring me HOME, the home He planned for me, not the one I had sometimes wished they'd taken me back to. Not even the one I ended up at despite it being chosen by Him, by God. 

But the one He wants me to bring others too as well. 

I didn't always see it like this and have had to deal with some pretty heavy issues that still rear their head from time to time, but here and now I can see that I wasn't without. 

I'm not without.

God gave me a family - a good one, the best for me in-fact!

Loving parents who love Jesus and taught me first to love Him.

He gave me my little-big brothers (they tower over me!!)

My own Family, the one my husband and I have made, complete with two little girls who are the cutest sisters that love to dress up, giggle and read stories with each other. A brave, amazing son who first made me a mama and helped to put things in perspective.

God gave me His Family and in that, the desires of my heart. 

My home is Heaven and my family will come with me, all of them! That was His plan all along. 

I will bring them Home.

I know where I belong and I am right where He wants me!

Sunday Girl - Part 2, 'Found'

April 2000 - The Reunion


Waiting at Perth Airport, my tummy is doing somersaults, my heart is twisting and contorting in all different directions.
Will she recognise me? Will I know it's her when I take one look at her?
Oh I feel sick, Thank God I have this pram to cling onto,
my knuckles are white, I'm shaking.
Oh this boy, this beautiful baby of mine, so new, so innocent.
She won't even know if he looks like me or not because she never knew me at that age.
She never knew me at all.
Oh what if she wants to cuddle him - not sure I'm ok with that, that's MY baby.
Come to think of it, I want her to cuddle me, hold me.


And there she is.


I don't know who sees who first but amongst the crowd we lock eyes.
The same eyes.
The tears.
The relief.
The embrace.


She holds me,
Better late than never.


A rush of emotions spill out in that moment and my world stands still. Actually I think hers does too, or maybe it really only just begins to move for the first time in 21 years.


We talk.
Her lips are bigger than mine. Her voice has a sing-song tone to it and I like it's rhythm. It's all just so different, yet the same,
so strange.


We can't peel our eyes away, stealing glances at any opportunity we can get.


Amazing! Somebody actually looks like me. I came from somewhere. Someone.


The questions,
the regret,
hangs in the air like a strange smell we cover over with nice things like perfume.
Oh her perfume! Had my newborn senses registered that scent at birth and placed it in the filing cabinet of my mind for such a time as now?


Perhaps it's all just fantasy, I'm caught up in the emotion,
Captivated.


Surely she must want me now that she's seen me?


Oh but my Mum, the one I've grown up with, I love her. All of this will be hurting her so much... I wish I didn't have to. She had wanted me all along, should that have been enough??
I don't know what to do. 
I want this. I need this, I'm hurting too much to just let it go.


Who am I?
I've never known.


I'll be Sunday for her,
and Rachel for Mum.
I'll be good, I promise.
It'll be the best of both worlds.
A good daughter, an honouring daughter, a tolerant, patient and pleasing daughter. You both just tell me what you want and I'll do it my best. We can all be happy...can't we? Please?


I hear about a family I know nothing about. Tales of the land of the long white cloud. I want to grasp it, to live it, to understand 
and to accept 
that it just wasn't meant to be.


I want to show her my life. To show her I made it. To show her my childhood, my achievements. I want to show her the ones who hadn't given me life but made it into a good one. The ones she gave me up for. The ones I'm oh so proud of for loving without reservation, despite my demands and inner yearnings.


Not possible.
Not then,
Not now,
maybe not ever,    and I guess I'm ok with that.


Two worlds.
I fit into neither.
and over the years I begin to realise I was never meant to.
I wasn't made for here.

Found at last.
The moment captured.
Never to be lost again.

Sunday Girl - Part 1

If I know the way home and am walking 

along it drunkenly, 

is it any less the right way because I am staggering 

from side to side? 

- Leo Tolstoy

And so it begins. My Story.
Being in my early thirties there's a bit of ground to cover so it could take a while...consider this the first instalment!


I always knew I was adopted. There was never a time I remembered being sat down and told, I had known it all along, my parents were open about it. They took me home at 2 months old and I was theirs.
That's it.
The End.


Ok, maybe not. So I knew a few things surrounding the mystery through which I came to be, that I had a Maori heritage, I knew 'they' (my birth parents) were hippies, hence naming me Sunday Peaches, I knew they were into organic gardening, I knew I wanted to find my birth mum one day, I knew that could be a scary thing to do, I knew my adoptive parents couldn't have kids naturally, 
I knew in one sense that I was wanted 
-well my head did anyway, 
 in the heart-sense I wasn't convinced.


There was also much I didn't know, but thought a lot about.
Was my Birth Mum still alive? Was she going to knock on the door one day and want me back? If she did, would I go? Some days the thought of that seemed exciting, but mostly petrifying. 
Why didn't she want to keep me? Did she remember my birthday? Did she hold me? Did she see me? Why Birth, not abortion? Was she a famous movie star with such a successful career she couldn't raise a child? Had I walked past her on the street and not even known? Was she lurking around my life? Did she watch me in the school yard? What did I look like as a newborn? What time was I born? How much did I weigh? What's my health history? Do we look the same? 


And then there were some absolutes, so I thought.
I must have had something wrong for them to not want me. 
I never looked like anyone around me.
I felt like a forced-fit, a jigsaw piece in the wrong space.
I was a mistake that someone else happened to benefit from.


Don't get me wrong, my parents are amazing, incredible people with huge hearts. They gave me and my two adopted brothers a fantastic childhood. We have a great family and I love them and I now know they were God's idea for a family all along. Growing up on a 10 acres of rural bushland, we had cubbies and secret hide-outs, trees to climb...and space...lots and lots of space. It was awesome! I did dancing, gymnastics, figure skating & modelling to name a few.


But for years I had all of those thoughts, mostly unspoken, swirling around in my mind, wondering if I should search. 
I never had really questioned whether or not my Adoptive Parents would be ok with me meeting 'her' someday, they had often told me I would have their full support if I wanted to find my roots. On my eighteenth birthday my mum presented me with a box full of all the adoption information that she had so that I could use it for my search. To me, it was a licence to go ahead....and I did.


That's when it all changed. I don't want to go into all of that here, but the reality of 'the search' was clearly unwanted from that moment on, but it had already begun and until then, I thought my folks were fine with it.


At 19 I moved away, down south to Margaret River. Some space to breath, to find who 'I' was, to rest my wounded and doubly rejected heart and to wait for the news I knew would come. And it did, I discovered my Birth Mother had married my Birth Father and I had a full-blood sister who was a year older than me. They had kept her. It was another year later that the agency had actually tracked them down when searching all records throughout Australia had been exhausted. They were eventually found in New Zealand.


At 20 years old I got THE call and I was 4 months pregnant. My strong religious upbringing had me convinced by now that I was doomed and going to hell for being unmarried, pregnant & with a divorced man. Shame and disgrace and rejection was like a cloud that loomed and I was constantly trying to duck from beneath it. Thankfully I now know you are never too far gone that God can't find you!


My Birth Mum told the agency she had been waiting for their call and would love a letter from me. I had mentally noted what I would say for years, but when the paper and pen was before me I was stuck for words. It was the hardest letter of my life, until I finally began by thanking them for choosing to give me 


Life.


To be continued... (this is long enough & I may bore you!!)
Next - The Reunion.

A picture I drew in a book when I was little,

A Mummy & Daddy Kangaroo with a Baby Teddy Bear.