My birth father wrote me a happy birthday email. Messages from him are like unicorn sightings. I feel touched by impossible when I hear from him.

I don’t like “birth father”.

I call my “birth father” by his first name, at his request. I call him by a first name that the rest of his family does not. They call him by another first name, but that was not the name he asked that I use with him. Frankly, I would like to call him “Dad” because I like the sound of it, like an arm around the shoulders. My father’s name is Frank. I’m glad I get to call him Dad because Frank doesn’t sound as loving as Dad.

I have one dad dad. That’s Dad. Frank.

The word “dad” however, I find more flexible, more like a t-shirt, than “mom”. “Mom” is sacred and only goes, in my book, to one person. My mom.

I have half siblings. I call them my half-brothers and my half-sister, but they don’t belong to me because I spoke too openly for them—I even told one to fuck off in a blog post because he didn’t want to know me—and so they aren’t “mine”. When I said “fuck off” I didn’t really mean it. I was trying to show what it feels like when an adopted person faces rejection or disinterest from biological relatives. I was expressing the hurt rage of a child who runs downstairs to meet Santa only to have Santa give a look of dismissal and shoot back up the chimney with all the gifts.

Adoptee rage can be such a buzz kill. It’s such a non-relational way of being in the world.

I have an uncle. I call him by his first name. He feels like “loving father” to me. He is the brother to my “birth father” and he is the one I found on 23 and Me. He has a wife, my aunt. I call her by her first name, but she feels like “Grandma” to me. My uncle is the one who, unlike others, finally talked and told me who my “birth father” was. He’s the one who convinced my “birth father” to meet me. I have four cousins. One feels more like a “brother” than a “cousin”. If we lived closer, we’d probably spend a lot of time together. He has a wife and three kids whom I and my daughter love. We call them by their first names.

The first time my daughter met them, within minutes the kids and she were racing all over the lawn. The genetic similarities were like neon lights. Later, my daughter told me she was so happy she had met this group of people because it helped her understand herself better, why she was so competitive, why she was so strong. I nodded. I understood completely. After meeting them for the first time, I told a friend that it was such a relief to see that I wasn’t an asshole: I was one of this group, a highly competitive, highly motivated family. I was just living out my genetics.

If I hadn’t met any of these people or if I didn’t know who my “birth mother” was, I would feel like a baby bird waiting for the mother to drop the worm into my open beak. I would feel like a magnet that was pulling towards an unseen other magnet. The unseen part would be so uncomfortable because I would have to exist with the ache of not connecting.

I am against adopted people never knowing or meeting biological family just as I am against astronauts heading for the moon and aborting (!!!) their mission before touchdown. Why travel all that way and not touch ground?

I am not advocating for inclusion, for families having to include newly-found biological relatives in their family gatherings. I understand that when a family is living out its story, carrying on its traditions, it can feel yucky and intrusive and wrong to have someone drop in suddenly, a new “brother” or “sister” or “cousin” or “niece” or “grandchild” or “daughter” or “son”. But I am advocating for kindness and understanding. I am advocating for letting people see their home planet, for knowing their roots, for touching the skin that is like their skin in a fundamental, related-by-blood way.

I feel like we should have SWAT teams that help adopted people find their roots so they can take a deep breath, look in the mirror, and know they didn’t come from some other planet. I feel like we should understand that not knowing where you came from equals not feeling completely human.

“Reunion”, however, with people you have never met could also be called a “shit show”. It can be like going on a blind date with someone you hope will be all your prayers and dreams, or at least a lot of them. It’s can be like calling the plumber and asking him or her to fix your car.

So, there’s the whole fallacy of the fairy-tale nature of reunion. It can be so painful, so disappointing, so, ultimately empty.

But then there is also the moment of looking down at your siblings feet and seeing your own toes on another person’s body for the first time in your life and feeling rooted in a way you hadn’t known was possible, the way, sort of, you feel after you sigh, not knowing you had needed to drop your shoulders.

Dear, sweet Carole, I feel like the best thing I can do for you is to offer my hand. When your root base is uncertain, it is contact with friends and family of your own choosing that help keep an adoptee who feels rootless from wanting to die. I will hold your hand your entire life.

I want to say that ultimately it feels insulting in an essential, body/brain way to not know any biological relatives. It can feel like no one cares about you even if you are surrounded by those who love you. It can feel like the universe is against you. To feel alone in a pack culture is interpreted as danger by the body and the brain. It’s easy to translate this feeling to I am a mistake or I am not worth much at all and, therefore, tragically enough, to believe and neither are you.

Sweet Carole, sweet friends who have not met their roots, I want you to know you are loved.

I also want you to know I understand that sometimes that is not enough.