Adoption

My sister and I grew up riding horses from day one same with my mom. Not so much my dad, he’s more of a supporter (haha). We have always said horses was in our blood, we can not live without them. It’s crazy, if I go too long without riding a horse, I get that homesick feeling as weird as that sounds. I don’t even remember my very first rides when I was little, that how early I stated riding horses. We always had a place where our horses could live at home, so I was around them all day everyday., same with the rest of my family.

As time passed and horses were becoming more and more serious in my life, I started to understand my moms true history growing up. Like I said we feel horses was in our blood, even though my mom was adopted… Honestly my mom didn’t have the best childhood due to overly strict adopted parents, but one good thing that came out of all of it was horses. Her adopted parents also had a passion for horses and my mom was occasionally allowed to ride. Since my mom grew up with horses that passion carried on through my sister’s and my life. Even though my mom had a crappy life growing up, we always felt if she wasn’t adopted then horses would be in our lives, so the phrase “there’s a reason for everything” was really relatable to me at the time. Of course finding my moms biological parents was always an interest, but we never really carried it through. It’s scary, not knowing what your real parents will be like and if they are even still around. I think my mom was afraid of the worst case scenario, that they might not want to know her, or that they’ll be worse than her adopted parents… My parents had always done a little bit of research to hopefully find information on my mom’s real parents. The furthest we ever really got was only finding information on her dad. When ended up finding out that was served in the military and we found a picture of him, that’s pretty much it though. I think as my sister and I got older my parents took finding out my moms real parents more of an interest. They started to do more research to see if they really could find them. As scary as it was I don’t think my mom wanted to leave this earth not ever knowing who they were.

After many, many years of my mom trying to decide if she really wanted to follow through with getting in tough with her bi logical parents, she finally decided to pursue the search. Today, with the growth of technology trying to find something out, like getting in touche with someone, is easier than ever. So in no time we ended up finding my mom’s dad, apparently he never married my mom’s mother, but we felt we would cross that bridge when we got there. My mom found out he lived just outside Phoenix Arizona. Yes, that’s all the way across the country, but that wasn’t really a concern at the time. My mom didn’t really know how to come about this, how do you just say “oh hey I’m your daughter” it’s an extremely hard thing to do. So my dad actually started the whole thing, and he started with a simple email to keep things not so awkward. Thankfully, it turned out that my mom’s biological dad George, was actually really happy that we had reached out to him. My mom was in no position of holding a grudge or trying to get answers about why she was put up for adoption. Even though that was not her intention to ask those questions, after a few emails were sent back and forth, George just confronted the elephant in the room and told her the reason why they could not keep her. It was just simply because they could not afford it and it was a very difficult time. After many emails were exchanged and just talking about each others lives things started to go very well. As strange as it is, George doesn’t really know where my mom’s biological mother is, only because they drifted apart many years ago and did not stay in touch. So that was a little disappointing but my mom did not fight the situation, and was just grateful for at least finding her dad.

Many emails and Skype’s later of my mom and George trying to learn about each other as much as possible, there is one outstanding and meaningful similarity they both have and that thing is horses. Like I said we always said horses was in our blood, when were really didn’t know that for a fact because my mom was adopted, but for some reason horses found our family, no matter what my mom went through. We have never met my mom’s real dad or ever even tried to know him, and miraculously he holds the same passion that we all do for horses. At that point my family realized how special horses was to all of us and how we can really say for a fact, that horses really are in our blood.

Photo by SAS Photographie on Foter.com / CC BY-ND