Origin Story: “It Doesn’t Matter”
As a transracial (1), transnational adoptee, it feels like I’ve been thinking about origin stories my whole life. However, only in the last six years have I given it any serious, conscious thought. It has so far culminated in a book about my experience as an adoptee, during which I saw a therapist who specialized in working with those in the adoption triad (2). In other words, I consciously and intensely worked through a lot of my shit… including shit that I didn’t know I was holding onto.
Recently, however, I was brushed off and told that being adopted didn’t matter. And while I handled the comment well in the moment, when I finally got home to the comfort of my living room, I realized that it hit the core of me and I was extremely angry. To calm down, I took a walk, talked to my best friend, and binge-watched Supergirl (3). Yet, I have been thinking about the comment ever since.

Are origin stories important?
It seems so… every culture has an origin story. And even knowing these stories, people are still taking DNA tests like 23andMe, making trips to their ancestral homelands, and are searching for and through documents trying to learn where their ancestors came from. We even have a television series called Who Do You Think You Are? where celebrities are given the chance to research their family origins. Are origin stories important? Well, the show is now in it’s 9th season. “Who am I?” seems to be one of the most basic, yet one of the most explored questions we ask.
Why are they important?
What is it about origin stories that pull us? I think it’s because humans are essentially storytellers and mythmakers. We make decisions, we relate to others, we do or do not do things based on the stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves. Not only do these stories help us understand ourselves, but it also helps us understand our relationship to others. Writes Alan Watts, an English Philosopher, “A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.”
Depending on where you are from, your stories will be different, your understanding of the world will be different, the way you relate to the world will be different. For example,consider the constellations. What constellation is this?

If you are from the U.S., you probably said it was the big / little dipper or big / little bear (ursa major / minor). In the U.K. and Ireland, it’s known as the Plough and tells the story of a father and daughter pair named Blis and Úma. The Romans called it Septentriones, or seven plough oxen. In Greek mythology, it tells the story of Zeus and Callisto and Odysseus uses the constellation as a navigational marker when sailing. In Hinduism, the seven stars are the seven sages (saptarishi) who bring knowledge to earth; these seven stars also explain the Hindu time cycle (4).
The story each culture tells about these seven stars connects them to a story, a culture, a time and a place. It helps shape who we are and where we fit in it. It connects us to the cosmos and thus, to each other. As Carl Sagan writes, “Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things.”
What if some, most, or all of your origin story is missing?
A book that was influential to me in the beginning was Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness by Betty Jean Lifton. It gave me language for the feelings that I didn’t know how to express. In it, she states,
“The story about who we are is a sacred story. When people take it or keep it from us, they rob us of ourselves. They destroy the most sacred thing of all. They kill our Source.”
I love my adoptive family and am very close with them. They are my real parents (I intensely dislike any adoption question that implies that they are not my real parents). But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t painful to not know where I come from.
When we took a family trip to Ireland (with my parents, grandparents, cousins, and Aunt and Uncle), we went to the remnants of a castle that had belonged to an ancestor. My cousin, 11-years-old at the time, cried and said, “do you feel this, Amanda? The land….” She was completely mesmerized, she felt her ancestral story in the land, she felt her connection to her tribal myth. She felt connected.
I, on the other hand, was secretly heartbroken that the true answer was that even though I loved being there, I so obviously didn’t feel that same, deeply somatic connection. I had spent my childhood reading and learning about Irish mythology, and writing stories heavily influenced by Tuatha Dé Danann (Tribe of the Goddess Danu) and J.R.R. Tolkien. And suddenly, I didn’t know where I fit in.
In her book, Lifton describes the story related to her by an adoptee who was Native American. She says,
“If you rear someone else’s child and that child is of the Bear Clan and you’re of the Turtle Clan, you’ve got to tell him what it means to be of the Bear Clan. He’s got to be given a name that fits with Bear Clan customs. He’s got to know his whole identity and that identity goes right back to the myth, right back to the beginning of time.” (5)
Not knowing how my identity connects “back to the myth, right back to the beginning of time” is a deep loss that shouldn’t be dismissed. It is all at once physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual. And I know that I’m not the only one that feels that loss.
With all of the research and money spent on learning one’s ancestral history, DNA makeup, and traveling to ancestral homelands, it is easy to see that the need to know our origin stories is universal. These stories help us make sense of the world and shows our interconnectedness. It reveals our relationships to each other, to our environment and to the world. Our origin stories are sacred stories and as such, they matter more than I can express.
References
- “Transracial adoption is defined as “the joining of racially different parents and children together in adoptive families” (Silverman, 1993, p. 104) and occurs through various forms of domestic adoption (e.g., foster care, private, and stepchildren in interracial marriages) and international adoption (i.e., children adopted from another country).” (link)
- The adoption triad includes the adoptee, the birth family, and the adoption counselors / agencies involved.
- Supergirl is about Kara Danvers, the cousin of Superman. I have a soft spot in my heart for powerful women, and orphans. She lost her parents and her home planet. I think that losing a planet is much like losing a country. See also: “The Psychology Behind Superhero Origin Stories”
- See also: Aboriginal Canadian Sky Lore of the Big Dipper by Frank Dempsey
- Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness by Betty Jean Lifton (Goodreads)
- Professors David Leeming, author of Oxford Companion to World Mythology discusses creation myths with Liane Hansen on NPR, November 13, 2005. (link)
Born in the Philippines, raised in Wisconsin, Amanda Ngoho Reavey is a poet, a Reiki practitioner and a cellist interested in plant spirit communication and healing. A graduate of the MFA Writing & Poetics program at Naropa University, her work appears in Construction Magazine, Galatea Resurrects #23 and The Volta, among others. Reavey currently works as Marketing Director at Woodland Pattern Book Center.
She is the author of MARILYN, which received the the 2017 Association of Asian American Studies for Best Book of Creative Writing (Poetry). It is available directly from The Operating System here. Enter “MEDIUM” at checkout for a 20% discount for our readers!

