Opinion | The family history I never knew: How being adopted hid a life-saving clue
By Shara Cooper, Contributor
Shara Cooper lives and works in the West Kootenays, BC, and is working on a memoir.
Whenever a doctor asked about my family medical history, I waved it off with a flippant hand. As an adoptee from a closed adoption, I couldn’t answer. I would shrug and say, “I don’t know — I’m adopted.” I didn’t have any control over it, so I tried to let it go. How do you explain that your life began with a mystery?
Despite loving my adoptive family, I felt at times intense jealousy when friends introduced me to parents or siblings and I could see immediately that they were part of each other. Sometimes they looked alike, but more often it was the mannerisms — the gestures or mirrored laughs — that made me envious and wonder what it was like to see your lineage.
read at the Toronto Star
