Then She Found Me

I just watched a movie that both is a wonderful depiction of how we as humans stumble through our own lives, often knocking things over and making messes, and also does not even come close to showing what the relationships and experiences of people mean. The movie is about a woman, grown, seemingly with her life figured out, an adoptee. She has a brother who was not adopted. This is not the relationship that gets the most voice but it may be the most important one. He is Her brother. April (the woman of the movie) goes through a marriage, a divorce, the death of her mother (the one who has raised her), the start of a new relationship that is more simple and complicated than one can imagine, the desire to naturally bare a child, and meets her birth mother. Throughout all of it her brother is there anchoring her to who she is always to him. He is the one who allows her to navigate the unknown space between the life and the person she thought she was and the life she is moving into and the person in that life.

There is a moment when he asks April a question that took me by surprise. He says to April that she should adopt a child. April says that he doesn't know what it is like. I thought the moment would then pass but instead the brother asks if she had ever thought about what it was like to not be adopted. I have never thought about this question from this side before. What that must have been like for him? What that was like to have her brother not be adopted? What it means for the way they both understand life?

There are many relationships that I will think about in this movie for a long time but I am so grateful for the presence of the brother because just like April's brother, my own brother grounds me, lifts me, and reminds me of who I am no matter the version of the person I am living at the moment.

He is my brother, and I am grateful.

Bush And Sky And Where I Belong

The dry air prickles my skin with tickling fingers. My hands caress the desert grass feeling the hidden life that flows up through the earth with all of the stories, histories, and people that have been there before me, that I am now a part of. My eyes are closed but I don’t need them to see the blue sky with sparse clouds that are white but also carry the color of the land. The air carries the voices of those who found this land and became part of it. My blood flows like the red rock with the rhythms of the people and animals that have passed.

This is where I am from. These are my people. Many may say that I have no right to say this, as they have. Calling me outsider, pretender, and unbelonging. They have scoffed at me. They call me unwanted because I do not know where I began. They say this place and these people cannot truly be mine because my story starts elsewhere, I do not know. But I have chosen this, this people, this place. I came by way of another but this is where I have found my home. I came from mystery, from magic, from fate. Here is where I hear voices and feel strength. I chose this land and its people and they have chosen me in return. It is here that I return to remember that I belong somewhere, that I have people and a place when others tell me no.

This is my home. This is where I belong. These are my people.