Perhaps it’s time for a brief intermission from the saga of sorrow that’s become the hallmark of my existence—a little palate cleanser, if you will. I recently received a couple of reader questions, and one in particular caught me off guard. It was a bit trippy, honestly, because it asked something I had never once considered throughout my entire life… until now.
Question 1: Since you seem to be “stuck in your feelings,” what were the feelings of the extended family you were adopted into?
First off, let’s address the premise. I don’t think I’m “stuck” in my feelings so much as I’m living a life that’s unrelatable to most people. It’s not so much wallowing as it is navigating a field of emotional landmines with a half-broken compass and a snappy sense of humor. But I digress.
As for the feelings of my extended adopted family? I truly have no idea. And that’s not me being evasive—it’s just the honest truth. There were no family meetings where someone stood up and said, “Let’s discuss how we feel about Dana joining the clan.” If there were, I missed the invite. Maybe it got lost in the mail or sent to my spam folder. Or maybe it was never sent at all.
What I can say with certainty is that I was much closer to my mother’s side of the family than my father’s. Geography played a big role in that—my mom’s side lived in the same small town, and since my mom didn’t drive and my dad worked overnight shifts, worked Saturdays and managed to coach baseball when I was little, we didn’t exactly have the luxury of our available time matching up with anyone else’s time slots outside of Nutley – unless, of course, people on Dad’s side were visiting from other states or countries – then we FOUND time. Other times, relatives on Dad’s side would pop on by for “coffee and…” – “and” whatever THEY brought because you KNOW in an Italian household, you never EVER show up empty-handed!
Proximity breeds familiarity, and in this case, familiarity bred connection.
Age was another factor. On my dad’s side, my first cousins were significantly older than me. Like, “already married with kids while I was still figuring out how to tie my shoes” older. So, there wasn’t much common ground—no shared cartoons, no sleepovers – unless, of course, you count my summer week stays at the DiMaio’s where I am sure I annoyed the shit out of them with my mohawked Barbie dolls and need for Cocoa Puffs. There was no bonding over awkward middle school phases with cousins. Just polite hellos at family gatherings and the occasional “Wow, you’ve grown!” and “How’s school going?” which, let’s be honest, is the universal cousin catchphrases when there’s a generational gap. True dat!
So while I can’t speak to their feelings, I can speak to the dynamics. And those dynamics were shaped by distance, circumstance, and the quiet complexities of being the adopted kid in a family that didn’t always know what to do with that label. Not out of malice—just out of unfamiliarity.
And maybe that’s the real answer: their feelings were never made explicit because the situation itself was never fully unpacked. It just was. And I just was. And we all moved forward in our own ways. I am, have been, and will be their cousin. They are, have always been, and will continue to be MY cousins.
Now, those cousins on my mom’s side? We were a tight little crew back then, even with a ten-year age gap from the oldest to the youngest—yours truly. There were five of us in total, each with our own distinct flavor, like a slightly dysfunctional but oddly endearing sampler pack of small-town childhood.
Let’s break it down:
The Storyteller: You know the one. She starts a story and you’re immediately bracing yourself for the long haul. You love her, but you also know you’re going to hear about every single detail—what she was wearing, what the weather was like, what the cashier said at the gas station three towns over. And yet, somehow, you’re still hanging on every word, and it just continues to spin in a circle because she will, undoubtedly, forget why she was saying what she was saying. I was closest to her, naturally—we were only two years apart, and she was my built-in best friend.
Ghost-boy: The elusive and also adopted one. Always around, but somehow never really a part of anything. Disappears. Expects the doting attention of everyone and tantrums whenever possible. We had all become good at eggshell walking back then.
The Old Hag: Don’t let the nickname fool you—she secretly adores it. She’s the wise-cracking matriarch of our cousin crew, even if she’s only a few years older than the rest of us. She’s got a sharp tongue, a sharper wit, and a soft spot she guards like Fort Knox. She has gone on record just the other day saying . . . AND I QUOTE, “I will never forget your first night home!! I knew I was gonna be able to boss you around for the rest of our lives!!!” (pink heart, pink heart, pink heart). She does not disappoint in her ability to boss – even into our fifties for me and SIXTIES for her!
The Hot Head: You could hear him coming before you saw him. Passionate, loud, and always ready to throw down. He played high school football like it was the Super Bowl every Saturday at Nutley High, and we were all there in the stands, bundled up and screaming like lunatics. He takes the family very seriously – I mean, passionately! Haha
And then there’s me – I provide the comic relief these days and am always there to never let anyone forget those lovely “vintage” photo memories of our parents’ lack of fashion sense in dressing us kids by posting them to social media on behalf of our childhood.
And that sums US all up. We just are.
Question #2: “Seems like a lot of work to find your real family. Was it worth it?”
Whew. That one hit a nerve. Not because it’s offensive, necessarily, but because it’s unnerving—like someone poked a bruise I didn’t realize I had.
So, here’s the thing: I lived my whole life with my real family. And yes, they were—and are—absolutely worth it. Every laugh, every fight, every awkward holiday meal and inside joke. My real family isn’t defined by DNA strands or matching last names. It’s defined by love. By the people who showed up, who stayed, who knew me before I knew myself. The ones who taught me how to ride a bike, how to make a mean pot of coffee, how to survive life’s bullshit and still show up for Sunday dinner at Aunt Theresa’s house.
“Real family” is a subjective concept, and in my case, it defies biology. It’s rooted in unconditional love, support, understanding, and compassion. It’s the people who saw me through the awkward years, the grief years, the “I’m fine” years when I was anything but. That’s real. That’s mine.
Now, as for the work to find my biological ties? Yeah. That was a whole different beast. It was hard. It was frustrating. It was, at times, soul-crushing. I won’t sugarcoat it. There were nights I stared at DNA match lists until my eyes blurred, trying to make sense of surnames and centimorgans and family trees that didn’t quite branch the way I expected. There were moments of hope that turned into dead ends. There were people who didn’t want to be found. And there were truths I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear.
It became almost all-consuming. Like I was chasing a ghost through a maze with no map and no guarantee that the ghost even wanted to be caught. Looking back, I can say—without judgment, just honesty—that it probably wasn’t the healthiest thing. I lost sleep. I lost perspective. I lost pieces of myself in the process of trying to find someone else.
The unknowns were terrifying. They still are, sometimes. There’s a kind of alternate reality that comes with not knowing where you come from, and then suddenly knowing too much. It’s disorienting. It’s overwhelming. And it changes you.
If I had to do it again, I think I’d approach it differently. With more boundaries. With more grace for myself. With the understanding that finding answers doesn’t always mean finding peace—and that’s okay. Sometimes the search is the story. Sometimes the journey is the closure.
So was it worth it? Yes. But not in the way people might think. It wasn’t about replacing anyone or filling a void. It was about reclaiming a part of myself I didn’t even know was missing. And in doing that, I learned just how firmly rooted I already was. Being able to fill in a whole bunch of boxes on my family tree – like MY actual own family tree – is pretty cool. Seeing generations and generations of biologically linked people is interesting, but it still doesn’t have a place of ownership for me. I research the names, I make them pretty in my family tree, I make sure everything makes “sense” when in reality nothing makes sense to me. I am more disconnected in this than you would have thought I would have been in an adopted family as a transplant to their family.
It is a very strange space to hold.
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