My Unicorn by Guest Blogger Justin Mitchell Bennett

Another year draws to a close, and thankfully, another Christmas has passed. I have never been one to celebrate Christmas, and perhaps the most memorable, and darkest had been the one experienced, December 24th, 2006. I’d sat atop Twin Peaks, in San Francisco, California, the cold wind that night chilling me to the bone. As I’d ridden a motorcycle there, I couldn’t just hop into a car and turn on the heater. For many, Christmas may be a time to be among family, yet that evening. I’d never felt so isolated, and alone – as though the chill of death surrounded me. I had returned from an Iraq deployment earlier in the year, and though I would depart San Francisco shortly into 2007, during my time in San Francisco, I’d made progress, on a lifelong quest, which to an adoptee, may be referred to as “The Search.” Perhaps part of what made that Christmas so dark for me, I had reunited, via telephone, with one half of my biological family, an Uncle. Sadly, I’d been informed of my birth father passing away. Mourning the death of someone you’d never known, and whose passing had occurred years prior, coupled with understanding Continue Reading →