Just Celebration

Byrd Baylor wrote a lovely children’s book in 1995 called I’m in Charge of Celebrations. In it, many oft overlooked reasons to celebrate are memorialized with a special day such as Dust Devil Day or The Time of The Falling Stars and more. Ms Baylor would be proud of the proclamation that my new sister sent me this morning- New Family Day!

Exactly one year ago today, I mustered the courage to send a message to my biological mom’s children. In June of 2018, I learned her identity and that she’d passed away 10 weeks prior. (See my first blog post for this full story.) One of the most agonizing aspects of the days following my new knowledge of Jan’s identity was the dilemma about if/how to reach out to her family and if/how they’d receive my introduction.

On the morning of July 14, 2018, I copied and pasted the letter that I’d crafted, revised, and rerevised into a Facebook message for Katie, Betsy, and Joe – my three maternal half-siblings. (I’d meant to send it also to Jan’s husband, but his contact info proved harder to find.)

To say I was terrified would be an understatement. There would be no going back after hitting send. I had to prepare myself for rejection, life-disruption, and any number of other possibilities that my imagination conjured. There aren’t enough Brené Brown books in the world to describe the amount of vulnerability I felt as my finger hovered over the return key that morning. Perhaps sadly, the only way I mustered the courage to press it was to zero out my expectations. While I had great, unspoken hopes for what could happen, my expectations had to go through a thorough purging. Only if I expected nothing, could I risk hearing or gaining nothing from my introduction.

I sent it. They received it.

Fast forward one year. Many hours on phone and FaceTime calls, several flights back and forth to visit, new memories being made, and even an introduction of one of Jan’s daughters to my adoptive parents (surreal is the only word for that day). We are adjusting to new normal. Nothing can take away the pain of never getting to meet my birth parents, but God’s timing is perfect. The gift of new family to share life with (including my new paternal half-brother… that one deserves a blog post of its own – coming soon) in my second half is more than precious and a perfectly good reason to proclaim New Family Day as a reason to celebrate.