An Adoptee Confronts an Empty Nest

I was pushing my cart through Whole Foods in a daze, having just come from a yoga class the day after dropping my son—my only child—off at college. I saw—and then, suddenly, felt—someone lunging onto me and latching his teeth into my right bicep, tearing through my denim shirt and breaking the skin.

For the next few seconds I was silent and motionless before I jumped into action, trying to remove my arm from the grip of his mouth. Finally one of the two women with whom he’d been walking was able to get him off and away from me.

He was a 12-year-old autistic boy I’d find out, though due to his stature I’d have guessed him to be older. Since no one knew what to do—including the young employees standing around looking shell-shocked—I took the lead.

“Please get me some ice,” I said to the nearest employee. And I told the women, who were also shell-shocked—his mother and aunt—to go outside where the boy would feel safe. His mother told me he was easily over-stimulated, and neon lights and crowds were a couple of his triggers. I’d simply been the unwitting moving target.

It didn’t occur to anyone to get their phone number, help them out of the store, or help me. No one on the staff seemed older than 20, and the manager was on break. So it was up to me to find the nearest Urgent Care and get a tetanus shot.

After the doctor released me (“human bites can be more dangerous than animal bites!”), I went home and recounted the story to my friends, who’d all been calling to check on me after I’d returned from college drop-off.

“I’m fine… but you won’t believe what happened to me today!” I’d respond to everyone who called. It was just the chaos I needed to distract me from what I’d soon discover to be the most painful and grief-stricken time of my life.

“You may want to take a look at what’s going on with you—it’s very possible you drew that energy in,” my friend Jainee said, regarding the bite. “Sadness, when not in check, can attract dark entities.”

I heard her. The truth was, I was devastated. I’d never known this kind of loss, like a piece of me was missing—my purpose suddenly gone. I had no idea how empty I’d actually feel. I hadn’t prepared myself for what it would mean to send my son off to school.

Sure, intellectually I’d known it was coming. In fact, I’d encouraged him to apply to out-of-state schools because he could “always come home,” but I hadn’t truly emotionally prepared for the actual leaving piece of it. The unslept in bed that took my breath away the morning after I got home. Seeing the lone t-shirt that hadn’t been packed on the floor of his closet. Not hearing Spotify during his long showers or staying up until he was home from a night out with his friends, waiting to start a new show until he had a night free, or any of the myriad things that made up our routine.

His going had been, until this moment, just a concept—part of the plan when you have kids, or a kid, in my case. They graduate high school and they go to college—or at least that’s what I understood. And as other parents have throughout the course of history, I wanted better for my son in every area of his life—a better foundation of love and self-worth than I had, better opportunities than I had, better exposure to whatever it was he expressed interest in. 

So I drifted through his childhood, showing up in the way I knew how, by being available and loving him and laying the groundwork for him to live out his dreams. But I forgot about me. I forgot to plan for me. 

As far back as I can remember, I wanted to connect with another human being, and giving birth was the way in which I was able to do that. I couldn’t get there in any other way—for whatever and a variety of reasons. Having been relinquished (rather, taken away) at birth for adoption, the divorce of my adoptive parents, and other events in childhood that pushed me to shut down. 

I’d tried, but I always had a barrier between myself and others. As I write this, I know that I wasn’t aware of how thick the wall was, or maybe even that there was one at all. I simply felt distant and removed from the world and the people in it—until my son was born.

Beker was the first person in my life with whom I shared blood. And that might seem like no big deal, but for adoptees it’s a profound experience. You grow up with no mirror, no explanation for why you shot up to 5’10” and have blonde hair and green eyes, a gap in your teeth and long arms and legs, or no reference for why you twirl your hair or dislike certain foods that the family around you loves. And later, when you’re older, you wonder where your penchant for pairing vintage and new clothes, alternative music, and your pursuit of a creative life originated. And on a cellular level, never feeling ‘quite right’ with the people around you. There’s no real way to understand it—you’re just… different. And awkward. And everyone knows it but no one says it. 

You don’t ever really get a chance to feel comfortable in your skin, so you spend your life not quite being able to put your finger on just what’s wrong. You adapt to your surroundings and twist yourself into a pretzel to be what you think people want you to be.

Beker was born six days past his due date, after an induced almost-24-hour labor. As soon as he was born, I looked at him and felt a bond I hadn’t known could exist. I knew this human. We were family. Finally, there was someone in the world that I could love and would love me in return.

That night in the hospital, after everyone had gone home and it was just the two of us in the room, I took him out of his bassinet and put him in bed with me. I had a deep fear that someone might steal him. Later, after I met my biological mother, she’d tell me that I was taken from her, she wasn’t allowed to hold me. 

I believe that I knew—that my body had kept that score.

From that point on, Beker became my focus. Baby classes, toddler activities, and volunteering at all of his schools as he got older. When he was around seven, he became an avid skateboarder, so I spent my days at the skatepark. And after he discovered basketball the following year, which lasted until he graduated high school, I traveled all throughout Southern California for his varsity and club games. I was team mom, snack mom, and fan mom. 
Throughout his life, my career path was one that would allow me to be available to him. In the early years, I made a living as a writer. Later, I opened a business—an ice cream truck—which I sold the summer he went to college.

These choices also allowed me to shift the focus from my unhealed wounds and distract myself with what I thought was the right way to parent—undivided devotion to my child.

It’s been nearly six years since that day at Whole Foods. For the first few years after college drop-off, I spent my time unknowingly anticipating when Beker would come home. There was fall break, Thanksgiving, and then finally Christmas and a month of winter break; after that, I’d have to wait until May, when he’d be home for close to three months. Of course, I showed up for work, saw friends, had a life. But underneath all of that, it was just me waiting. Stagnant. Not moving forward.

And then it was 2020. Early in January, Beker told me he’d taken an internship that would keep him in Dallas the following summer. I felt gutted, unsure of what that meant for me.

Shortly after, as we all know, COVID hit. My salary was reduced, I had to give up my home, and I made—as had often been the case in my life—a reactionary decision; I moved across the country to be closer to family (primarily Beker, who’d be only an hour plane ride away). 

I left Los Angeles, my home of nearly 30 years, and the house I shared with Beker. Leaving behind the ghosts of the bounce of a basketball, the trodden path we’d walk with our dog Pearl (whom I’d lose not many months later, another terrible loss in a time of great pain), the beach where Beker dug holes and splashed around as a toddler. My friends, my hikes, all that was familiar.

At first, the novelty of living in an only vaguely familiar place—one that I’d visit twice a year but wasn’t quite intimate with—was enough to avoid the deep grief that I’d been pushing down for many years. 

But then it caught up. About six months after I moved, my friend Louise and I started a podcast about adoption and, shockingly, I read my first-ever book about the emotional effects of adoption, The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. Suddenly, my entire life made sense. My attachment to my son made sense. My difficulty attaching to others made sense. My reliance on alcohol made sense (I’ve since quit). Everything started to open up, and I began to heal.

I won’t lie—I still anticipate seeing Beker and make sure we don’t go more than a few months without a visit. I still have bouts of melancholy when I return after seeing him, though they don’t last as long and I’m not indulgent about it.

But it’s different now…it’s not filling a gaping hole. It’s not the pressure on him that it once was—even if we weren’t both aware of it. The anxiety has lessened.

I still have a ways to go, but I trust that time and awareness of the origin of my wound(s) will help, finally, to ease the pain.