Fede Z.
During the first 40 years of my life, the fact that I’m an adoptee never represented any kind of conflict for me. I was adopted when I was 1 day old and I always knew it. Everything always happened in absolute transparency, although it was not something I told openly to everyone. Being an adoptee was like a part of me that I kept to myself, only to share with those who were special to me. To those who asked me directly about my adoption, I would simply tell them that it was something I only remembered when at a doctor’s appointment the doctor asked: “Is there any family history?”. Except for those moments, everything in my life always flowed naturally, and my adoption never represented any kind of trauma.
A few years ago, one of my best friends and his wife decided to start looking for a child. They tried to get pregnant for a very long time. They did not succeed and so they decided to have assisted fertility treatment. They did several treatments but they couldn’t get pregnant either. So, they decided to start the long and not very empathetic adoption process in Argentina. My close relationship with them, allowed me to support them throughout the whole process, from the beginning… their attempts to get pregnant, the sadness and grief because they were not able to conceive, their doubts and fears about adoption and the ups and downs of the process itself.
Fede Z.
I can see from a distance how being present throughout this journey with them was like seeing firsthand everything my adoptive parents had experienced before my arrival.
Being an adoptee was always something super natural for me, something that never represented any kind of trauma or problem. This fact took advantage of the silence of the strict quarantine we had to live in 2020, and came out of that place where I had buried it. He sat down in front of me and told me: “We need to talk. I need to know why it happened and how it happened”.
During the first 40 years of my life, I had asked very few questions about my adoption, basically none. I felt that if I had concerns or a need to know anything about it, I would be ungrateful to my adoptive parents. I was sure I was going to hurt them if I asked them anything.
The year 2020 was one in which I could not help but look inward and begin to ask myself those important and essential questions. Questions I had always avoided and kept within me. This probably happened to many people, not just me. The pandemic began, we started the quarantine and I began to feel like I was ‘floating’, but not in the good sense… floating without being able to find stable ground, without a place to return to, without roots. I was missing that part of my story that connects me to myself at the very beginning of it all.
And that is how, by seeking help, I was able to start asking questions without feeling that I hurt or offended anyone. My story is mine and I have the right to know everything I need to know without giving explanations to anyone. It wasn’t easy, I had to go very slowly, without knocking down walls, but moving and accommodating very gently each one of its bricks in order to get through.
Today I also know that I was actually born 3 days before the date I always celebrated my birthday. Today I know that I was not born in the city where I was always told I had been born. Today I know that I was born in the same city as Franny (my friends’ adopted daughter) and today I know that the hospital where she was born is named after the Doctor who convinced my first mother to give birth to me.
At the moment, I don’t need to know anything else. I don’t want to know more about my first mother or father, but this is a process, and I know that maybe someday I will want to know more and I will see what information I can get. I am aware that time is the enemy in this context, but this is my process. These are my times and no one else’s.
Knowing my story has not distanced me from my adoptive parents. On the contrary, knowing that first part of my story has allowed me to connect very strongly with all it meant to them as well, and with the enormous act of love that adoption implies.
Those of us who were lucky enough to be adopted by loving and protective families are fortunate, yes, but don’t forget that we, their adopted children, are also their salvation.
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Fede Z. lives with his wife and dog in Buenos Aires.
Music and conversations with his closests ties make him happy.
His life purpose is to inspire people to rediscover their essence to
awaken possibilities that bring them closer to their own life
purpose.
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