According to Me

By Katherine M. Gionakis

Step inside the world of a woman who has been on a journey before she even knew it started, from the day she was born, July 7, 1968, in Florida.

She began her life in one state, with one path defined by people she would not even know until she was an adult and some she would never know at all. That path would take her out of that state, and that period throughout childhood, some pitfalls, and the huge life-changing reveal that would collapse her world forever.

According to Me is told by a late-discovery adoptee, a woman who commonly refers to herself as all the stages of her life: a bastard, an orphan, a foster child, an adoptee, a daughter, and a mother. Follow her heart as it is broken by what she learns. This story takes you through her journey of adoption discovery, self-discovery, and finding biological answers to decades-old lies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638817178

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Katherine M. Gionakis

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-63881-716-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63881-717-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book has shown me the journey I took to become me, Katherine Mary Gionakis, and so it is dedicated to my late parents, Charles William Gionakis Jr. and Bernadette Jane Horton Gionakis. Without them, as you will read, I would not have been me. I will love and miss them both until my last breath.

Additionally, this is dedicated to my husband and children, who have loved, watched, and learned as I walked through the storm of discovery and out to the side of the sun shining with me. I love you, David, Jeremy, Sarah, and Joshua.

Introduction

This story is a part of me. I say part of me because part of my life took on a second life of its own for many years. I finally found myself, standing behind this statue of me with all the right things I should be saying in speech bubbles above my head. I am glad that’s no longer the person I am.

I am now able to move more easily and to more clearly reflect on my different demons, starting with the abandonment issues resulting from relinquishment, foster care, and adoption, as well as being blindsided by news of my adoption as an adult (welcome, any other LDA friends). I refer to these as demons not because they haunt me. They don’t. They are just a part of my psyche that I can almost visualize. They are triggers, and sometimes you have pictures in your brain of your triggers. My triggers include seeing photos of myself as a toddler, reminding me that before toddlerhood, I was a different child with a different name and different parents, twice in a year, three times in two years.

Stringing my life together, piece by piece, story by story

I’m trying to put this all into a narrative of me, to make it something that isn’t just interesting but also intriguing, that isn’t just factual but brings you inside my world, my feelings. I hope I am able to do that with the telling of my life so far. This is a story of secrets—secrets revealed that maybe should have stayed hidden.

My story is like any mystery unraveled, and I have to wind it back up to tell it again and again. That’s why I decided to write it all down and write this book. I know this story inside and out, of course, but sometimes when I retell it, it takes my breath away.

Sometimes when I actually think about who I am and how I got here, I’m baffled. Of the many avenues I have traveled on and left my mark on, some I don’t even know anymore.

My entire life, I knew there were blanks in time. It can be quite unsettling to have blanks in the chapters of your life. I mean, I guess we all have blanks, pieces that other people know and remember that we can’t, places we’ve visited, and people who loved us.

Let’s talk about people who loved us. Think about the people in your life who loved you—really, truly loved you. Your grandparents who died when you were young, or a parent, if you were unfortunate enough to lose one to death or abandonment early in life. I know that love must still exist somewhere. Can it just disappear like the person? Does it hover around your soul like a blanket on a chair, there when you need it to warm your heart and mind? I like to think so. I like to think the loves that have loved us are all still with us, even the ones we don’t know.

What about places we’ve visited? We’ve all had that déjà vu feeling of having been somewhere or in a situation before. What if we are replaying what we previously failed at? Does remembering the feelings enable us to replay the events? To better ourselves? I like to think the places we’ve been have been etched into our memory like a tab that we can somehow recall but not close or fully view. Not necessarily total recall, like a distinct memory, but more like the building blocks of a memory—a feeling, a smell, a familiar thought. Those are the things our brain lingers on. Those are the pieces that fit together to make us over the years. We have to continue to use those building blocks to construct our forward mobility. They are like an archive of life.

Our lives turn inside out when we are adopted or moved from one foster home to another. It’s like each ending is always the beginning of a new life. There are new roads in every home that can lead us to becoming who we are. I hope the stories that took place in my heart and soul are the good I feel when I help others. But I struggle with the pain I feel also. I can’t feel secure—ever—in any relationship. It’s sad, and I so wish I wasn’t like this. I do surmise that this is from my being moved from living with my biological mother, when she had no means to support me or anywhere to live, to a foster family and then to my adoptive family at a year and a half. I had my name changed at that age as well. My identity just changed. Sometimes I laugh at this, but it’s true: I do feel like an unwilling participant in the witness protection program. I am a witness—a witness to my own life. But I simply can’t remember all the facts.

This retelling of my story is based on information I obtained over twenty-plus years. Some people who helped me were lifesavers, but I don’t yet have all my facts. This will be a lifelong search for my whole truth. And by now I am realizing I may