“Identity is a right Naty”“The truth about your origin is your right Natalie”From the outside it is so obvious, so clear. Especially for everyone who grew up knowing their biological origin.Every so often I come across a series or movie where one of the characters is adopted and shortly after the viewer is presented with that truth, the character goes in search of their biological origin. 

Without any problem, they get on a bus, train, plane, whatever, they arrive at their destination, knock on the door, one of the parents or relatives appears, they even sometimes do a DNA tests, and they continue then on their way integrating their new reality. That easy. And the family that raised them either helps them, or supports them, or never even finds out about the search. One can see a little bit of conflict, but nothing out of this world. Unconsciously all viewers think “of course they have to search, how can they go through life without knowing who they are?”Of course we have to search. How can we walk through life without knowing who we are?But then, what is stopping us? Or better said, then, what stopped me?I already said that one of the great challenges was confronting the internalized racism I lived with. Challenge the truths and beliefs that have infected the entire world since The European colonialism and instead give space to the notion that I’m just as worthy as everybody else, regardless of the amount of melanin in my body.Then, of course, we must not forget the whole story with the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the Argentine military dictatorship, their crimes against humanity, and their systematic theft of babies. Nor losing my identity again and my German passport, plus the fear of the consequences that my father would suffer if they found a relative in the genetic bank at the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.One would think that all of that is reason enough to make me want to leave behind my truth and the search for my biological identity, but that was not all, there was more...The other reason was something I've heard from several adoptees I've shared my story with: We don't want to break our adoptive family's hearts.We don't want our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters to think that we don't love them, that they weren't enough, that we are ungrateful, that we actually always wanted to be somewhere else, growing up with other people.I can't speak for all adoptees of course. There are so many of us and there are so many versions of adoptions that it would be pure ignorance to generalize. This is just an observation, from having discussed it with other legally or illegally adopted people. But since it is something so recurring, I think it is an important detail to mention.The search for our biological roots has little to do with our adoptive family. If I base this on only my story, even though my family lacked the harmony and love that I needed so much, they were and will always be my family. Unique and irreplaceable. What's more, according to what my therapists have always told me, adopted children cling to their adoptive family very much, and are very loyal out of fear of being abandoned again. This will occur even when the adoption happens a few days after being born and, contrary to what many say, “Newborns can’t possibly remember anything about that” and think that the change of family should go completely unnoticed by the baby.In general, we adoptees are not very good, so to speak, with losing people or letting go. It's not our thing. Then of course we have to see how we handle it, but in general, wherever we get hooked, we don't let go.Personally, the most important bonds, psychological patterns, my culture and the general way of relating to the world, for better or worse, I inherited from my adoptive family. The search for my roots is not a search to replace my beloved dysfunctional family. That's impossible. Whether I like it or not, that is my family and that is the inheritance they left me. The deep love I have for them is unshakable.The search for my biological identity has to do with something else. At first, it was not clear to me what I was trying to understand, and as Mercedes Yañez, who for many years dedicated her life to recovering the biological identity of people like me, said, “Don’t think that by finding your biological origin you are going to solve all your problems.” At no time did I ever think that it would be like this, that if I found my biological origin, all my problems would be solved. What I needed to find was not just my blood or my genetics, it was something much bigger and inexplicable than that.After the last trip to Argentina, where I traveled to contact my possible biological mothers, it became clear to me that what I really wanted was to understand what happened. How could my mom let me go so easily? Did she ever think about me? Or was I really as insignificant to her as my adoptive family made me out to be? What I wanted was  to understand the context. Because even though it is cruel and heartbreaking, it is important to know what happened, how it happened and why it happened. It's putting things in their right place.

When I thought that my parents had been killed by the military dictatorship, it was having to accept reality and the time in which they lived, human cruelty, sadism, total ignorance, the powerlessness of citizens before governments, the fact of that somewhere, in some file, the truth is found but there are people who still do not allow me to access it. I wasn't looking for justice, although I don't think it's bad that there are people who look for it.

When that path was closed, and instead the search led me to enter another reality, an extremely cruel reality, such as the reality in which the women who could potentially be my biological mothers live, I had to again, when knocking on those doors, accept the heartbreaking reality of poverty, capitalism and the vulnerability of certain social classes. It was accepting that nothing makes sense, that for some reason I did not have to grow up in that context, and that life is a lottery... It was accepting as the lyrics in the tango “Cambalache” says:”That the world was and will be crap, I already know", that everything It's chaotic, that there isn’t much I can do about it and that I must accept my helplessness in the face of reality and be grateful for the luck I had.

It was trying to place the pain and injustice in a place in me where it would not block me from the love and light that actually exists in my life. Being able to mourn the dead. To be able to survive my own story,Being able to accept and let go. Forgive and heal.

So if that is my truth, and it is all there is, one would wonder why even bother? Why then put so much energy into this?Because there is something worse than a heartbreaking reality, and that is called fantasy. It is floating through the air of ignorance, it is being in denial, separated from the world, in a parallel dimension, in an inner world full of questions that are not silenced. It is having a compartment of the brain, heart, soul and body always secretly busy trying to complete a puzzle with missing pieces. As I have said before, I do not believe that all problems are solved by knowing our biological identity, but at least knowing what happened is feeling the ground under our feet. Even when that same ground  is cruel and unjust, it doesn't matter. It is still our ground, part of our history, our context.And our family, is our family. I assure you that I cried profusely when they died, that I miss them eternally and regardless of my age, I always continue to seek the approval of my adoptive mother and father.That is the beauty about adoption, love transcends blood and biology. Love is not stopped by dysfunction. It is the superpower that children have, for them the natural thing is to love. That's why our inner child’s heart always longs for mom and dad to see us. The child within always longs to return home.And that’s why, the search is not a family matter, it is personal.They will never lose us. What's more, if they help us instead of hindering the search, they will be able to share our truth with us. They will be able to accompany us in that difficult moment of accepting reality.Now that is something I would have loved to say to my mom and dad: “Fear not, my heart is endless and there is always room for you. You will never, ever lose me.”Family, have faith, the truth sets us all free, always.