Last week I realized that this is my heart-work. Blessing Manifesting is not just a place for me to talk about my life. It is a place for us to share with each other. You and me. Our tribe, our family. When you get down to it, we're all in this together.
Today I create this sacred space, where you can share with me. Share with me what you are working on, physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.
Share with me the things that you are in love with. Share with me the things you're figuring out, wishing for, and hope to be. I would love that. You can also share anonymously. You do have to put in your email address but I can't see it so no one will ever know. You can read last week's here.
I also want to share more personal thoughts with you here, each Friday. I'm not perfect, I know this, and I'm sure you know this too, but I want you to witness those things, my wisdom and my flaws. My thoughts and imperfections. I don't want to just reflect on lessons of the past, but wisdom I am learning at this moment.
Gentle sharing, with no judgement. Just lots of hugs and hand holding.
I also want to share more personal thoughts with you here, each Friday. I'm not perfect, I know this, and I'm sure you know this too, but I want you to witness those things, my wisdom and my flaws. My thoughts and imperfections. I don't want to just reflect on lessons of the past, but wisdom I am learning at this moment.
Something that I've been mulling over sharing is about my biological father. I've mentioned it a few times in posts but never spoken out right about it because it's something that is still incredibly close to my heart and I feel shame about talking about it because I never felt comfortable enough to talk about it.
I'm biracial. My mother is white and my father is black. By the time I was born my mother had already married someone else who was also white. I then had two siblings who were white. At some point when I was six or seven, my mother told me that my father wasn't my biological father. I don't remember her telling me, but I always knew that I didn't fit in. People would ask me why I was a different color. I remember telling other children on the playground that I had got very sunburned one summer and I had a permanent tan. I always felt ashamed by the fact that I was different. I felt ashamed that I had never even met my biological father.
People would always ask me if I was adopted or if I was a step child, and this reinforced my feeling that I didn't fit in.
If other people could see that I didn't fit in, then plainly I didn't.
My Mom and Dad got divorced and at one point I found out that he wasn't paying child support for me, even though his name was on my birth certificate. I began to feel so guilty for any money that my struggling single mom spent on me.
I have always struggled with feeling like I wasn't supposed to be me and that I was an inconvenience being who I was. I discovered later in life that my Dad didn't know that I wasn't his child until a few years after I was born. Was that a factor in their divorce? I don't know. I always felt like my grandparents on his side resented me. And why shouldn't they? My mother had "trapped" their son into marriage. I felt like his whole family hated me.
I also wondered about my bio-dad. Why he never wanted visitation with me. I resented him as well. My mother had got pregnant with me when she was 19 and I found out my bio-dad had been 40 at the time. So much older, that worried me. Had he taken advantage of her? Hurt her? I still don't know. I've worked up the courage a handful of times to ask my mom about him, but those are always the hardest conversations that I've ever had. She always says a few nice things about him. That I was meant to happen.
Two years ago I wrote my bio-dad a letter for the last time. I told myself that if he didn't respond then I would let it go forever. Six months later I got a Christmas Card and a photograph of him.
I had waited 25 years to see his face and when I finally did, something clicked inside of me and I knew that the journey was over.
It was too late for me to forge a bond, to get back 25 years of not knowing him. He's almost 70 years old now. I know that I might not be able to change my mind in ten years, or twenty years, and I feel at peace with that decision.
I still struggle with how I felt growing up, and there's still a lot of things that I haven't dealt with. However, it has made me into the person I am today and I know that I will find those paths to healing when I need to find them. One step at a time.
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