​“Trying to fit in,” seemed to exemplify the feelings expressed in this chapter. I was the adopted child who learned to fit in to my adopted family, only to later need to go through the same process to “fit in” to my birth family. Adaptability seems to be a quality that is necessary during all phases that mark the process of adoption, the search, and reunion. Our reunion turned in to a long-term bonding process.
 
In this blog post, I have included articles about adoption and reunion to offer research perspectives for my readership. Kinship in the context of adoption and reunion requires a form of resilience that allows family members to overcome the difficulties of complex family relationships. Our family fist looked for likenesses to solidify our relationships in our birth family. But as time went on, we were able to respectfully embrace our differences too.
By sharing family experiences, we got to know each other and make memories that have ultimately linked us. Not only did Cathy and I become part of the Wylie family, but all our relations shifted to incorporate a new matrix of relationships that brought all our families together in a loving embrace. My book is yet another relational space to celebrate our coming together as we look back, reading our lives.

​When my grandparents, Marnie and Poppy died, I said adieu by writing poems for their funerals. I was called to the top of the mountain to run on Poppy’s last day of life, watching the sunset on his life, I ran with a growing sense of purpose through his continual love and support. Poppy died when a friend from Tibet was staying with us. She had been in the Tibetan Parliament in Exile and gave me books signed by the Dali Lama. She was in Switzerland trying to raise funds for a school for handicapped children when my grandfather passed away.

​Here is a link to her work: https://tibetanparliament.org/81761-2/
 
 
Walt Whitman’s poem written for President Lincoln, incorporates lilacs, the flowers in bloom at Lincoln’s burial, that have a heart shaped leaf. Marnie too died when the lilacs were blooming in the back of the farmhouse at Black Bird Bend Farm. Here is a link to Whitman’s famous poem:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45480/when-lilacs-last-in-the-dooryard-bloomd
Here is an analysis of this famous poem:
https://interestingliterature.com/2020/05/whitman-when-lilacs-last-dooryard-bloomd-analysis/