I hate lightbulbs—well, not exactly. I detest overhead lights, and fluorescent lights are soul-crushing. Being in the sunshine is being home. I can bathe in its radiant glow for hours.

Some mornings, I’m the early riser in our house. I head downstairs and turn on a pendant light hanging over our kitchen island—never igniting an overhead light. If my husband is first up, he flips on the recessed ceiling lights, plus pendants, plus living room lights, creating an operating room ready for surgery. I walk in prepared with dark sunglasses, an unwelcome accessory to my PJs.

I walk around, turning off lights incessantly. When my kids are home, they ask, “Mom, can we please turn on a few lights?” Ten years ago, we added an addition to our house, and I had the electrician add dimmers to every switch, including bathrooms. No one dims but me. My family has no aversion to bright lights. They determined I may have a phobia. It’s possible. Is despising artificial bright lighting in my DNA? These are the things I wonder.

It’s impossible for me to work under fluorescent lights. After college, during interviews, if I entered a company with fluorescent lights, I walked out. That extinguished many jobs. My first position was at an ad agency with quiet mood lighting, where I settled in for ten years. I have hazel eyes, and it’s mildly uncomfortable to be in glaring lights. I always assumed it was biological.

As an adopted person, I am haunted by the dichotomy of “nature or nurture,” which often becomes a rabbit hole I tumble down. Did I inherit my hate of brash unnatural light from my birth mother while in the womb and my love of natural light from my adopted mother on the sunny day she carried me home? 

The current view is that our genes and environment work together to shape who we are. Epigenetics is a field of research that studies how experiences can affect a gene. Scientists have proven that genes aren’t fixed and that what we experience can tweak how they work. Throughout life, those impactful moments, plus the love and care you get or don’t get, can leave significant marks on your DNA. More remarkably, individuals can inherit these changes. In other words, traits can be passed from mother to child. 

Did I get my disdain for bright lights while in the womb? My birth mother, I learned, sadly spent much of her life in a psychiatric hospital treated for bipolar disorder, even while she carried me. I assume she hated the bright lights. Did her dim experience soak into my DNA, sparking this specific trait?

Could it be the day I entered this world? I have little details, but I imagine I came into the world, and the artificial lights burned my sensitive newborn eyes, blinding me the moment I popped out. A nurse cleaved me from my birth mother, flaming overhead lights, the last thing I saw before being carried to a nursery. Lying alone in my bassinet, never to experience her touch, smell, or see her again, I faced more diabolical lights, becoming my enemy. The flame dwelling above me during that time is a torch I carry today. 

I never had the chance to meet my biological mother. But I became acquainted with my four half-sisters. We have several similarities: the love of sunflowers, seventies rock, the ocean, gardening, and creating art. But many people share those interests. My sisters grew up in a strict religious household; their mother was seldom home. Their father prohibited them from attending college but made an exception for his son. If they were raised in my family, how would they be different? My parents raised me, encouraging individuality and independence as a beacon. Would I have become a shadow of myself with their upbringing? I often wonder.

Roaming around the house and powering off lights might be a vestige of my father’s upbringing during the Depression, passed down to me. He lost his mind when my brother and I were kids and left on unnecessary lights. He presented the monthly electric bill on the kitchen table, showing us when we exceeded last month’s usage. Heat, electricity, and water usage closely examined, and a monthly IRS audit convened at the kitchen table. His upbringing had an environmental impact on his psyche, seeping deeply into mine. 

Natural sunlight is a pure delight. On a frigid winter day, I sit outside, bundled up, facing the warm yellow illumination of the sun and feeling its glow. I celebrate daylight saving time; the extra hours of sunlight give me hope and peace. My heart is fuller, my body is relaxed, and I breathe easier. When the sun’s up later in the day, I’m happier.

Family folklore about my adoption, a story I’ve been told since I can remember, is that my mom, wanting a baby girl because she could not have more children and had two sons, walked into the nursery and peered into my crib. I gazed up at her and smiled, my bright hazel eyes staring back. She instantly understood I belonged to her—”love at first sight, her gift from God,” she always said. 

Forty days after my birth, my adopted mother, surrounded by my father and two older brothers, carried me out of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Philadelphia on a sunny, sixty-six-degree day in March. A rare burst of brilliant sunshine for that time of year in the city of brotherly love. The sun’s rays caressed my tiny face, swaddled tightly in a pink and white crocheted blanket, gazing up at my new mother. At that moment, I was home. It was the first time I encountered the embracing warmth of not only the sun, but also the tenderness of my mother’s pure love. That vivid day left a fateful mark, imprinted on me, altering me and the course of my life in ways I may never fully grasp.