My seventy-seventh birthday didn’t sneak up behind me. I saw it coming—out there on the horizon—a distant, black funnel cloud whirling along its path toward me. As I watched it grow bigger every minute, I realized that I’d best get busy on “that memoir” I was going to write “someday.” It would be my gift to my descendants so they could know how their ancestor grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s. I had no thoughts of publishing it for the rest of the world.
I viewed being adopted as a small part of my story. But as I poured words onto the page, I found myself back in the body of the child that I once was, feeling what she felt back then. I began to understand that I was writing about more than the people and events of my early life—I was writing the story of how I erased my own identity and silenced my own voice in my struggle to be that elusive, golden child I thought my parents really wanted: their own. And so, I let that long-ago, lost girl who played the role of Dr. Beare’s Daughter, write her story in her own voice for the first time.
While writing as my child-self, my grown-old self came to realize how much my adoption has influenced my adult life. I’ve never allowed myself to depend on others—I’m the only keeper of my nucleus, and I guard it relentlessly. I’ve lived my life as an anxious person—watching and waiting for that other shoe to drop. Fear has kept me cautious. While that caution has saved me many times, it has also kept me restless, leaving no room for peace. Writing my memoir made clear to me, how I had developed these traits from the uncertainty my child-self felt in her relationship with her parents. This stunning late-in-life insight has helped me become less anxious about the future, and to find peace in the present.
When I finished my memoir, I knew I had to publish it. My enlightened self could finally let the voice of small, frightened Dr. Beare’s Daughter be heard—not just by her family—but by the rest of the world. Today I published her story. I held my breath and gave her a megaphone.