By Charles K. Youeli.
I am sitting on a giant red rock. All around me as far as I can see are more red rocks and red dirt. The sky is brilliant blue. There is no one else around, at least not that I can see from where I sit. All I can hear is the wind. I do not know where I am, but the scenery burns itself into my memory forever. I am 18 months old.

ii.
There’s a tree growing next to the fence in the far corner of the back yard, next to a swing set and a sandbox which no one in our family uses anymore. One summer day, I haul some scrap lumber, a hammer, and some nails out of my dad’s basement workshop. I’ve cut up five boards that used to be part of a picket fence, and I nail them to the tree to make a ladder that gets me just far enough up to reach a branch that I can use to climb higher into the tree. I tie one end of a rope around a stack of boards and tie the other end around my waist. I put the hammer through a belt loop, fill my pockets with nails, and climb up into the tree to a spot where three large branches come to a fork. I haul the boards up with the rope and use them to build a simple, sturdy tripod. I haul up more boards the same way and build a small platform on that tripod, just big enough to sit on.

My dad comes home from work to find me sitting 30 feet off the ground in a tree. He is not happy that I didn’t ask permission to build the platform—something that I fully anticipated, and also the reason that I didn’t ask him. But he says that it seems sturdy enough and does not make me take it down, although he does insist that I take off the lowest of my ladder boards so that my little brother, who is three years old, can’t reach it.

That summer and the summer that follows, I will spend hours sitting on that platform, high above a world that I don’t feel like I belong in, can’t make any sense of, and don’t have much interest in fitting into. Mostly, I read science fiction paperbacks: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Piers Anthony, and other authors I’ve long since forgotten.

I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. I am 10 years old.

iii.
I wake up on the floor of a small church in a reservation town called Towoac in Colorado. Everyone else in the church youth group I’m here with is still asleep. We arrived the night before after two straight days on a bus and basically slept where we fell. I rub my eyes and tiptoe around sleeping bodies until I find the stairs, and, ultimately, a door that leads outside.

I step through it and look out across 40-some miles of desert at Shiprock. It’s hard to miss, because it’s incredibly huge and also because it’s literally the only thing to see. The Navajo call it Tsé Bitʼaʼí, or “winged rock,” hearkening back to the legend of the great bird that brought them from the north to the desert.

I am overcome by my smallness and insignificance in the greater scheme of the universe and history. And this feeling is surprisingly comforting and reassuring because everything else about my life seems uncertain and unnerving and one bad day away from falling apart completely. I am 18 years old.

iv.
Later that same year, my parents and I make the 500-mile trip from St. Louis, Missouri to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I’m going to college. We arrive at my dorm and carry my suitcases to my room, along with my most important possessions. These consist of my bass guitar, my stereo, and boxes of records, cassette tapes, and CDs.

I am supposed to have a roommate, but he hasn’t arrived yet. We talk for a few minutes, but they are as anxious to be on their way as I am for them to be gone. The door closes behind them, and I sit down on the bed closest to the door, which I’ve chosen to be mine. It feels like a tremendous weight has been lifted off of me, as if I’ve been holding breath for a very long time, as long as I can stand. It feels like I’ve been waiting my entire life for this moment, the moment when I’m finally on my own.

v.
I am standing on the edge of a cliff that overlooks the vast, barren, and seemingly endless expanse of the Badlands in South Dakota. There’s so much to see that it’s impossible to take it in all at once. It’s early in the morning, and I am the only person in this part of the park.

In a few days, I will pull into the driveway of a small house on the Missouri River in the town of Craig, Montana. The driveway leads down a short, steep and uneven hill, and I will drive down it at what must look like a comically slow speed to Jeff, who is waiting for me at the bottom. Jeff and his twin brother, Jerry, are my older brothers. Well, two of them. As it turns out, it’s a long, complicated story.

We were born five years apart to the same mother, but we have different fathers, and we are meeting in person for the first time. I will get out of the car, we’ll give each other a long hug, and I will say, “Sorry it took me so long,” which is not a great joke but in this instance works on a number of levels. And we will walk inside to start a conversation that somehow feels like the continuation of one that we’ve been having for years, maybe even all of our lives.

But none of that has happened yet, and I am standing on what feels like another planet, a beautiful alien landscape that somehow also feels like home. All I can hear is the wind. And for a few perfect moments, I am the only person in the world.Youel is a writer and creative director. Born, adopted, and raised in St. Louis, he lives and works in Minneapolis with his wife, two dogs, and a frequently fluctuating number of bicycles. He regularly shares words, ideas, photos, and questionable advice on Instagram and Twitter. In what used to be his spare time, he also manages ARTCRANK, a pop-art show and online shop dedicated to bike-inspired poster art.

By matthew charlesAs a transracial adoptee raised by a white family in a small racist town in Oregon, I’ve always known that being Black meant being different. My Black body was both a cocoon and a womb, working overtime to birth and metamorphosize my self.

I used to long for my father. The one whose seed impregnated the woman I was told I looked like—the woman whose picture I’d never seen.

Looking like a ghost can be a kind of curse.

As a child, I fantasized that my Black body was a descendant of African royalty. That one day, a man with skin like the soil would knock on the door of my adopters’ home and tell them he’d come for me. He’d tell them flowers grow best in the soil and most eagerly when they are watered. He’d tell my adopters that he was my soil and he wanted to be my water, too.

Being a Black boy without a Black father is a common experience, but it hits different when the Black child is a transracial adoptee and lives in a town with almost no other Black people. Adoption scholars call this phenomenon “a lack of racial mirrors.”

How was I to imagine who I was? Who I could be? Who I might desire to be—without a robust intimacy with Black people?

My three most enduring and long-standing relationships with Black people are myself, my twin (with whom I was adopted), and Hip-Hop.

I discovered Hip-Hop at 12. Before that, I’d heard friends rave about Eminem, but I was so disconnected that when Eminem was at the height of his career between ’05 and ‘10 and I heard people talking about him, I thought they meant the M&M’s from the candy commercials were putting out albums. I couldn’t fathom why anybody would be interested in music made by animated candy. I mean, really!

Eventually I’d discover that Eminem was, in fact, a real human. I never connected with his music but it inspired me to probe Hip-Hop. As a West Coast kid, that meant I discovered folks like Snoop Dogg, NWA, and Tupac. Coming into contact with their music was the first time I was experiencing Blackness or Black cultural productions. Even though I couldn’t relate to their stories of gangbanging, drug dealing, partying, and hood life, the kinds of pressure the music placed on me was immediate and life altering. These gangsta rappers became my stand-ins for the Black father I longed for.

As I let myself be fathered by them, I changed the way I dressed, talked, and behaved to be more like them. To be more like the only image of Blackness I was presented with.

I call this my first identity crisis. I was 12. And I had no one to talk to about what I was going through—the invasive and ever crippling doubt that I wasn’t and could never be “Black” enough. This was reinforced in the schools I attended by white classmates who would chastise me for my intelligence by saying, “you’re so white” and who would reward me for performing the kinds of Blackness I learned from Gangsta Rap by remarking, “you’re the Blackest person I know,” even though they only knew a handful of us.

None of us knew what Blackness was except for what mass media and music told us.

Back in the day, I used to use LimeWire to pirate music, and somehow in that journey I discovered Lupe Fiasco. He presented a different kind of Blackness. One that, sometimes, I could relate to. Nowhere was this more evident than in his song “He Say She Say,” about a single mother and a fatherless child. For the first time, I was seen.

And then I discovered B.o.B.

Mixtape era B.o.B was different. He was a trailblazer. A genius. A Black man who was actively trying to be different, a breath of fresh air in a stagnant industry—an Andre 3k throwback.

When I started rapping at 12 the first thing I did was try to remake “I’ll Be In The Sky” myself, exchanging words and phrases so that B.o.B’s story would be mine as well.

As my Hip-Hop tastes evolved, so too did my ideas of Blackness. And as my perceptions of what Black people could be expanded, like our universe did when the Creator big-banged us into existence, I began to fathom that I might have permission to be different, too.

But I was still isolated. Marooned in a sea of Whiteness. I still had to contend daily with how Whiteness policed my body and behavior. At the end of the day, for survival’s sake, I could only be as “Black” as Whiteness and my adoptive family permitted me—and their permission was filtered through their own (mis)understandings of what Blackness might be.

I was told the reason there is a higher percentage of Black people in prison than white people is because Black people are a more criminal race.

How can a Black body that is both womb and cocoon birth and metamorphosize a self that is not criminally malformed when it is laden with expectations like that?

I was pimping myself before I ever heard of Kendrick Lamar. Tryna figure out how to sell myself to a people who were in the market for a pre-prescribed Blackness that was self-destructive. And as a transracial adoptee raised in racial isolation, this pimping was a survival skill, and a violence inflicted on myself.matthew charles is the host of little did u know, a podcast that centers the lived experiences—the learned and inherited wisdom—of transracial adoptees. He is also a poet, and his debut poetry collection, You Can Not Burn The Sun (2020), is sold out, so you can’t buy a copy. But you can eagerly anticipate book2. And you should definitely listen to his podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @CantBurnTheSun or Instagram @matthewcharlespoet.Severance Magazine is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

On Venmo, @matthewcharlespoet

By Kristen SteinhilberI had just moved, with only a couple weeks in my new apartment under my belt. I had very recently begun to emerge from the fog, so as you might imagine, this particular moving process was my most hectic yet. Reunion with my biological mother had fallen through about five years prior, and she hadn’t spoken to me since. But I knew, with the new insight I’d gained about the impact adoption has had on me, that I had to write her a letter.

First, with every muscle in my body clenched so hard it hurt, I wrote to push her away; to tell her every horrible thing that had ever happened to me, and to vehemently convey that it was all her fault. I finished a few interpretations of that letter, each time with my finger hovering above the send button, unable to press down. I didn’t understand; I’d thought about the closure sending it would bring me for a while. But then I remembered the time The Dixie Chicks’ Wide Open Spaces came on the radio and we sang along together and how her embrace felt like home. And I realized I didn’t want to push her away. I finally admitted to myself that not only did I need her, but I also wanted her in my life. I finally admitted to myself that she is my mother.

I went back to the drawing board; this time with hope and a sense of relaxation in my shoulders. I started to write the letter that I just knew would fix everything and get me my mother back.

Dear Ava,*

I don’t know how to let you know about a lifetime’s worth of feelings without bombarding you. So I’m resorting to doing just that. Please try to keep in mind that I only intend to help you hear, acknowledge, and understand me, and that I entirely lack the intention to attack, shame, or berate you.

I don’t know if you think that I’m the same as a peer or another family member with whom you have a more conventional and grounded relationship. Or that disagreements followed by years of radio silence is fine. But I’m not a peer or a family member who always knew you. I’m the daughter who was raised in a family that wasn’t my own because of bad timing and circumstance.

I acknowledge all of what you had to weigh and that the decision you made was pure, out of love, and made in order to give me the best chance at the best life possible. I’ve had admiration and respect in multitudes for it. But I had no choice other than to accept and forgive since the day I was born. As I got old enough to decide for myself, I still chose to accept and forgive. The moment I was given a chance to meet you, I chose to accept your presence in my life. Eventually, I chose to give you pieces of myself, and finally, I even chose to give you my trust. Acceptance and forgiveness regenerate with ease, but when your life starts the way mine did with a broken bond and no choice in the matter, it also starts with a massive deficit of trust. I actually never got out of the negative space; something always happens to keep me there. The amount I gave you, I got it on loan.

I have given more to you throughout the course of my life than I realized until all I got was your disregarding absence. That absence continues to further break something in me, and I don’t deserve it. Candidly, I’m running out of tape and glue.

I know you suffered an unimaginable loss when I was born and that a part of you died when you couldn’t take me home to raise in your family. I know that the very subject of me causes you pain and grief. I also know the world doesn’t make room for the particular kind of pain you’ve felt and that opportunities to talk about it freely and without filtering are rare. I know that causes the pain and grief to turn into anger, guilt, shame, and numbness.

I don’t know the lay of the landmine on your end, but I do understand that’s what it is. A landmine of 33 years’ worth of explosive affliction underfoot.

I know this because unimaginable loss was my birthright.

Again, I respect it. You were mature and capable beyond your years. You didn’t leave me on a doorstep with a note and an extra bottle. You placed me responsibly into the hands of professionals whom you knew had found me a home and fit parents. I think I remember hearing that I was physically healthy, so at some point you must even have started intaking more nutrients than the average teenager. You left your friends, your pom poms, the boyfriend who knocked you up, your home, your family, and everything else about your adolescent life behind to take care of me. You were up north at your aunt’s house preparing to give birth to a child you knew you might never meet while you should have been having senioritis.

You did good, Ava. Maybe it’s weird to say that I am proud of you, but I can’t think of a better way to say it. You did everything you could have. You didn’t just become a mother that day; you outdid yourself in your role as my mother.

The moment your role was to relinquish regimentation and have faith, I inherited a massive role and responsibility—to adapt. The world’s lack of acknowledgement that I experienced that unimaginable loss as well was what dismally became my inheritance.

Science shows that infants have instinctual awareness and memory. The loss of you was a trauma my brain doesn’t recall, but my body does. Apparently, I wasn’t knitting a sweater in there; I was bonding with you.

Fighting my biological awareness and memory of that broken bond as if it were natural was expected of me from the start. I was told losing everything with my first breath was something to be grateful for. I was saved. That never clicked with me as quite right, because it wasn’t. Now I know that attachment disruption is acknowledged as relinquishment trauma, and not being given a chance to grieve is acknowledged as adoption trauma. How well I adapted to surroundings that didn’t reflect me became how I understood my value and place in the world.

When I was in 3rd grade, my best friend who lived down the street was at my house and we were playing with sidewalk chalk. We were arguing about who gets to choose what game to draw and play. I went with the typical nine-year old’s stance: My house, my sidewalk chalk, my choice. Keep in mind that she was a sweet kid, just thoughtless in the moment (yet impressively calculated) with her rebuttal, “Yeah but your parents aren’t really your parents, so it’s not really your house or your sidewalk chalk.”

“What a relief, thank you for saying that out loud,” I remember thinking. “Now please do me a solid and go ask my mom to explain like, all of it and then come back and tell me what she said. Word for word. Do. Not. Paraphrase.”

Instead, I stormed away angry on behalf of my mother. On behalf of myself, I felt nothing but numb and confused. I knew that I was supposed to be mad, so I was. I stayed fake mad because it made my mom happy, and I thought maybe I would be mad mad if I tried hard enough. I couldn’t, which I felt guilty for. So much that I almost confessed to my mom so she could punish me appropriately. But I didn’t think telling her how I really felt was worth hurting her feelings, so I just made myself sick with shame. And to punish myself, I didn’t talk to my best friend for almost the entire school year. I caved on the last day of school. Self-sacrifice is a very strange instinct for a third-grader.

My whole life I’ve been consumed by trying and failing to maintain a sense of self because I’ve been trying to exist in two worlds; one that doesn’t accommodate my longing for the other, which is filled with mystery and ghosts. It’s relentless discomfort, anxiety, phantom pain, and hiding.

I was listening to a TED Talk by a social worker whose work focuses on adoption. It was about the unnecessary obstacle course along the path to reuniting with birth family and the need for change in this process. She said something that seemed to stop my heart for more than a few beats: my original birth certificate is state property, and I have no legal access to it. But if I were able to see it, I would see on the side of the document that it had been stamped with one of those ink stamps used to save time. Like the original birth certificates of adoptees in many states in the country, the document was stamped with the word “Void.”

What I have instead is an “amended birth certificate.”

I have always relied on the language of symbolic comparison as a way to explain and relate, and a stamp that invalidates my original identity is the most perfect symbol to explain why. I rely on anecdotal relatability because my access to a real sense of belonging is void. It’s never been tangible.

I am an amended version of myself, and that’s a very hard way to live. I am defined by the loss of you I didn’t grieve for, and the rest of me is made up of dissonance.

I have lived my whole life in fear of the fact that I could lose my seat at the table in an instant. I come by it honestly. I know you feel many of the things I feel and that the very subject of me causes you pain. But I finally am able to have compassion for myself after 33 years of thinking I’m not worth the trouble. Only now can I definitively say that your pain is not a good enough reason for you to treat me as if I’m unlovable. Your fears are not a good enough reason for me to let them amplify mine.

I thought reunion was supposed to fix me, but I’ve learned that isn’t how it works. I always enjoyed spending time with you all, but I think I just went through the motions and ended up feeling more alone. I know now reunion could never be that simple. Meeting you would not have repaired my traumatized brain, and it wouldn’t fix yours either. There’s absolutely no way you don’t have PTSD in some form as well. Giving up control over everything that will happen to a child that you gave birth to is unnatural and goes against every instinct a mother has. It’s not something you just move on from with only faith to hold you up.

As for me, I’ve blamed everyone and no one at the same time for the wreckage. I’ve gone down the list and been angry with pretty much everyone I know for at least a little while. Doctors who throughout my childhood attributed clear cut signs of manifested trauma to stress, but shrugged them off and said I was “just a little tightly wound.” The therapists and psychiatrists who misdiagnosed me after I spent countless hours on their couches. My parents, of course, for not helping me find my own truth, which would have helped me obtain a proper diagnosis a long time ago. I landed on “everything” for the most amount of time. The ignorant, narrow, and damaging speak surrounding the whole topic of adoption. A reductive narrative that takes a process where most everyone involved is either nobly intended or an innocent newborn, all of whom have lost something so significant that they will never be the same, and wrings it out until it’s a shitty, low-budget Hallmark film. I blamed the fucking thing it’s called. “Adopted.” If that was intended as some form of shorthand, they should not have been in charge of naming things. It’s too fucking short. It’s a denial of enormous grief, and erases everything except what goes on some legal documents that end up sitting in a file cabinet. It takes away the story and, more importantly, the voice of everyone involved in one way another.

As I said before, I don’t know the lay of the landmine on your end. But in the midst of all the anger I felt when trying to figure out who was to blame, it occurred to me that whoever named it the thing it’s called—“adopted”— it seems like it had to be a birth mother.

The whole thing about the adopted child being chosen by the loving adoptive family and saved by them to go live a happily ever after life—it sounds like a hopeful birth mother who felt she should keep herself out of it just in case it would cause her child pain. Or she was made to go away because of stigma, but requested that her child be told they are the main character in a real-life fairytale.

That got me thinking about what happened to you. The fact that you were expected to leave your home and move to a strange place to endure one of the most traumatic experiences a person could have, at 18 years old, because others might shame and stigmatize you instead of supporting you. I always recognized that as a load of fucking horseshit, but you had told me about those circumstances so casually that it never sunk in how horrible that really was. There is nothing about that you deserved, and it never should have happened. You never should have had to go through that. You never should have been burdened with shame and rejection on top of loss. You were a child.

I’m not convinced that the situation would be a whole lot different today. Definitely not as different as it should be. So that’s my answer. The only thing to blame is “the way things are.” I have never had goals or very much direction in life until now, but I know I want to help change this garbage version of “the way things are” for as many adoption triads as I can. I don’t know what that means yet, and I have a lot of work to do on myself before I can start to figure it out.

I don’t know who I am, but I do know what I stand for. I wholeheartedly believe everyone deserves to heal and that they should. Especially from the things they went through as kids. And I know there is no way that you have. Adoption-competent mental health professionals are like unicorns even today, so there is no way in your situation that you got the support you needed. The fact that we don’t speak is proof of that. And you have to stop pretending that the problem is me. I don’t deserve it at all.

I’m a good kid. I have a larger than life capacity to provide a safe space for people to feel their pain, especially the kind the world does not make room for. I have been through enough. I lost you before I could ever know you at the beginning of my life. I lost my mom before I could ever know her at the beginning of my coming of age story. All of that was so hard on me that I tried to die. Then immediately after that, as I was trying to want to live, I lost you again. Give me a damn break, man. Stop treating me as if I am the problem. I can help, and you can have some time, but this is the last time I will be reaching out.

I don’t trust easily, but I sure as shit don’t scare easily either. We are not a conventional mother and daughter. Our shit is very extra by nature. Trust me, I had a much different letter written just last week. I had a right to every teenage angst-influenced word, too. It’s natural to idealize your mother and be disappointed and furious and crushed by her when she doesn’t live up to that ideal. I have gone through a lifetime of emotions, naturally childlike, when it comes to you on a very strange and inconvenient timeline, and I have had to parent myself through every bit of it. I have reached an adult resolve without even writing emo song lyrics on my Converse with a Sharpie. I am a proud-ass mama.

You have a right to all your feelings too. I am hurt by open-ended silence, but I don’t think there’s anything you could say that I wouldn’t understand to some degree. I’m a subject that’s caused you 33 years’ worth of pain. You don’t need to slap a pink bow on that shit. You could have wished I was never born, and I would understand that.

Try me. I will absolutely surprise you. Just don’t deflect and avoid and leave me alone in the process. I can’t even act tough and stand up to it. I have never had the luxury of not knowing exactly how fragile I am every moment of my life. So, please. I deserve persistent acceptance and kindness.

Anyway, about everything else, I am a bit of a psychological breakdown junkie, and I have read a ton lately about the adoption triad in general. I am happy to send links and resources. And to listen.

Btw, seeking community has helped me a lot. There are plenty of online adoptee support groups, and I would imagine that there are also birth mother support groups out there. Hearing other people’s stories is healing, even if you don’t have the desire to interact with the group.

Xoxo, Kristen

It’s been 9 months, and she hasn’t sent any sort of response. I imagine this is still sitting there, swarming in on her, perceived at a glance to be the indictment of the ages. Misunderstood and avoided like bad news. My unsung apocalyptic longing weighing down her inbox.

*Name changed for privacy reasons Steinhilber is a private domestic adoptee with a passion for adoptee rights and mental health advocacy. You can follow me her on Instagram and Twitter: @girlxadapted Severance is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

On Venmo: @sandrafckingdee

By Kristen SteinhilberMy whole life, when everyone told me that biology doesn’t matter, I did everything I could to believe that they were right. I learned to ignore my gut and tirelessly struggled to silence my insides that grievously screamed otherwise. It took me more than three decades of fairytale-oriented platitudes and assumptions thrown like bombs my way about adoption to piece together one very relevant thread: everyone who told me that biology doesn’t matter—including both sides of my own adoptive family—had intact bloodlines and genetic histories. And that what they were really saying, whether they meant to or not, was that my biology doesn’t matter.

Before I finally understood this, my takeaway was hardly stretch, considering the message I was sent: if my biology doesn’t matter, then I do not really matter. That’s what I believed above all else.

After my adoptive mother died, I found out she knew exactly who and where my biological family was and had kept it a secret from me. She had even allowed certain biological family members to attend my gymnastics practices without my knowledge. These kinds of things—withholding and secrecy—are encouraged in the world of adoption when it comes to the biology of adoptees. In fact, withholding and secrecy are legally enforced through sealed birth records. So when I found out, I assumed this was normal, understandable, or even maybe for my own good. My adoptive mother may have even believed that herself. Still, to know that there was nothing but a glass wall that separated me from the family I’d only daydreamed about as they watched me, or that maybe I’d accidentally brushed up against one of them on my way to get a drink from the water fountain, was a a mind fuck, even at the time. It just didn’t equate to anger the way it should have.

That’s what a person feels and should feel when they find out they have been lied to their entire lives by the person that raised them and who insisted that honesty is paramount. Anger. But since I’d always been told that adoption was such a gift, I didn’t feel I had the right to it. I pushed my own feelings away and suppressed what was in my gut. Of course, the lesson I took away from this is that my truth (or the truth in general) doesn’t hold much value. I’m not worthy or deserving of the truth; betrayals are to be immediately forgiven, no matter how all-encompassing. I applied this lesson to every aspect of my life without realizing, allowing others to manipulate me and believing them when they told me it was for my own good, telling lies myself and dismissing the feelings of those I’d wronged.

When I met my biological mother, I also found I had two sisters, one who is just four years younger than I am. Four years. So, my mother wasn’t an unfit parent, yet, through adoption, I was still legally severed from all ties having to do with her. My sisters got to grow up together, and I, an inherently and dangerously lonely only child without even the knowledge that they existed.

There is no way I at 18 (or anyone at any age for that matter) could possibly wrap my head around that thought all at once without exploding. That my mother gave me away and then had two more children, and that they all built a life that went on without me, and that the only thing that separated me from them and that life was four measly years. So I pushed it away and again, suppressed what was in my gut; the same method of self-protection I’d used my whole life. Your feelings don’t matter. Don’t have them. Biology doesn’t matter, and therefore all of the years you missed out on don’t matter either. Yes, you were the one who was given away but it doesn’t matter. You had a “better life.” Believe that, not yourself.

I had a beautiful reunion with them for years and “fit” naturally. Not in the same way that they fit with each other; that’s simply not possible when you miss out on all those years. I was also still under the thumb of the responsibility placed upon me to believe and feel they didn’t really matter. Not like the adoptive family who “saved” me. So I kept the feelings of everyone else protected and them at a distance.

Then one day they were gone. One fight was all it took. This is extremely common in biological reunion; many of our birth mothers have been both pressured to relinquish as well as shamed from every angle for relinquishing their children, not to mention having rarely been supported through their grieving process. So by the time we meet again, the combination of intense desire and fear of authentic connection often backfires, as do the reunions themselves.

During all of those years that I was included among them, I could never allow myself to be present with them. I never let myself dwell too much on the fact that my mannerisms and sense of humor are exactly like theirs and that I grew up without that. I didn’t dare admit to myself how good it felt to lay in the arms of my mother and sisters while we talked about everything under the sun and laughed in sync. I certainly never allowed myself to ask questions about my birth or the before and aftermath. I felt that would only cause upset and come across as ungrateful for the “gift” I’d always been told she had given me by giving me away. Like, “Did you ever regret your decision? Did anyone in the family want or try to keep me? Did anyone hold me or comfort me during the five days I spent in hospital nursery before I went home with my adoptive family? Did you name me? Can you tell me more about my father?”

And now, it’s too late.

After a lifetime of searching like Nancy Drew on the case of “Why am I like this?” Only now can I see my adoption trauma and maladaptive coping qualities through a lens of clarity. Because of the fairytale narrative that is everywhere and enforced by seemingly everyone who has ever seen a movie about adoption, my clarity has been systematically hidden from me. What I was conditioned to believe was self-preservation was actually self-abandonment.

The spiritual and psychological isolation of having two families but not belonging to either has ripped me from limb to limb, over and over, my entire life. My humanity has never once been seen by the adoption industry and the laws that bind, through which family ties and preservation are rendered unimportant. My voice and dignity have been robbed. Every memory of family I have is tainted either by lies or painstaking regret.

My story is not any other adoptee’s story. But the gist of it is not uncommon. These themes of diabolical dishonesty, betrayal, unbearable rejection, and hopelessness run through countless adoptees’ stories, and are begging not to be ignored.

Adoptee Rebecca Autumn Sansom made a film titled Reckoning with The Primal Wound that captures the complexities, forsaken years, and mirror smashing pain of adoption better than any other I’ve seen. My favorite part is the “Adoptee Army” featured in the credits. There’s a massive number of names listed, all those of adoptees who stand in solidarity for adoption reform. After a lifetime of feeling utterly alone, I was moved to tears seeing my name included with all of the rest.

We are the adoptee army, and our biology matters. It did all along. Steinhilber is a private domestic adoptee with a passion for adoptee rights and mental health advocacy. You can follow me her on Instagram and Twitter: @girlxadapted Severance is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

On Venmo: @sandrafckingdee

By Aimee Seiff ChristianMy hair is unusual. Thick, coarse, wavy, and curly all at once. Every stylist I’ve ever gone to marvels at it, fears it, or both. People tell me they envy my tresses, but for most of my life I did not appreciate their tenacious temperament. Step outside in the summer humidity and poof, I am a dandelion, a big frizzy, fuzzy one. I leave souvenirs of myself everywhere: little fuzzles of hair, reminders that I sat in that seat, used that pillow case, or borrowed that jacket. My hair listens to no one and wants everyone to know it.

I’m adopted; I am boring brown hair brown eyes white skin, but in the guess where Aimee’s from-from game, my hair is always a special contestant, and no one ever surmises its origin. Least of all me.

The first time we played the game it went like this:

Neighborhood kid: Where are you from?

Me: Here.

Kid: No, I mean where are you from?

Me: Here. Queens. Jackson Heights.

Kid: No, I mean, where are you from-from?

Me: Oh. Well. I don’t really know.

Kid: Wait, what?

My parents have garden variety Jewish hair. You know. Basic. Brown. Like mine, but not. Fine. Straight. Even if I passed as their biological kid a lot of the time, people looked at me quizzically, touching my hair without permission, saying you sure didn’t get your hair from them!

There are pictures of me as a toddler with my hair in rollers. The night before school photos my mother would furiously comb and set and trim my bangs. In every single elementary school photo, my bangs are a line graph plotting steady progress from where she started just above one eyebrow across a series of cowlicks to where she ended on the other side of my face, some two inches higher. By middle school, I refused to let her anywhere near me when a camera was about. In high school I stopped brushing it altogether.

My hair became a stand-in for the rest of me. In elementary school was when things with my mother began to go awry. In middle school, she and I stopped talking. By high school, well, shit was bad, and it was not just my hair, which was down to my waist. I was studying art history and I joked to everyone that soon I’d look like Mary Magdalene emerging from the forest. When I shaved my head in defiance of not even I knew what, people started to worry.

When I reunited with my birth mother at 26, I saw she too had thick brown hair. In a photo she gave me of herself as a teenager, her hair was shiny, lush, and smooth, brushed out long over her shoulders. She was salt and pepper by the time she was 45, like I am now, but her hair, while thick and wavy, was less wild than mine. It responded to blow outs, perms, and keratin treatments. She looked like she just came from the salon up until the day she died. On the other hand, I looked like I’d never set foot in a salon. But at that point I hadn’t. Box dye, crimpers, Aussie Sprunch Spray, bandanas, clips, and backcombing all made my hair even more impossible than it already was. Over time I vowed to embrace the curl and the thickness and the rest, learning to go natural thanks to my Black friends and the internet. But it was harder than I expected. I wanted to look like my birth mother. I did. But my hair didn’t.

Turns out, she too had been adopted. Generations of adoption, I learned, are not uncommon. But this left me not knowing anything more about where I’m from-from with my birth mother in my life than without her. After she died, I spat in a cup and discovered I was only 25% Ashkenazi Jew. The rest of me was Northern European. All British and Irish.

When I met my birth father, it was like looking at the definition of a recessive gene: blond hair closely cropped to his head, blue eyes, left-handed. All the things I was not. But then he emailed me later, apropos seemingly of nothing:

Do you need to buy your baseball caps at the extralargebaseballcaps.com online store?

I have never worn a baseball cap, I responded. And I hate hats in general. They don’t stay on my head. My hair is too thick.

Well, you got that from me, he replied with a laughing emoji. Try that store.

I investigated. They sold about three ugly caps, so no thank you. But when I looked at him closely, I could tell that his very short, now white hair was coarse and feral with cowlicks. I recalled the blurry high school yearbook photo my birth mother had given me years before: a teenaged, cranky expression and a bushy, blond bob that refused to obey, pointing this way and that. His adolescent hair was just like mine.

I never would have guessed that my wild mane came from these roots, but that’s the irony of not knowing the answers to the where are you from-from questions. Anything’s possible.

My birth parents created the perfect genetic storm for this riotous hair. They created me, this person with otherwise innocuous features and hair that no one could figure out. And now that I know where it came from, I’m kinda loving it. And now that I know where I came from, I’m kinda loving me too.—Christian is an adoptee who writes creative nonfiction, essays, and memoir about identity, adoption, parenting, and disability. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Independent, Cognoscenti, Pidgeonholes, Entropy, Hippocampus, the Brevity Blog, and more. She reads creative nonfiction for Hippocampus and is an instructor at GrubStreet and privately on her own website. Find out more about Christian at her website, find her on Twitter and Instagram, and see more of her work here. She is offering Writing Personhood: For Adoptees beginning Sunday January 9, 2022. Find information and register here. 

By A.D. HerzelThe return flight was most memorable. A six-month-old boy slept in my lap for 18 hours, never crying once. He was not my baby and legally no longer belonged to the woman who gave birth to him. On many papers signed by governments and agencies on opposite sides of the world, he belonged to a family in the United States. I was 19, and my thoughts and memories reeled back and forth through time. I reflected upon the experiences and challenges I had encountered as an Asian adoptee in America, and I wondered about the known and unknown possibilities his future would hold. As I thought about his journey to the other side of the world, I silently cried. Did anyone notice? No one said a word. My tears fell on and off through the course of the long night. We were flying together in limbo, he and I leaving one home on the way to another, though I felt neither place was truly ours to claim. Was this only my story? Would it be his too?

In the summer of 1987, after I completed my first year of college, my adoptive parents generously sent me on the Holt Motherland tour. Holt international was an Evangelical Christian adoption agency founded by Harry Holt and his wife, Bertha, in 1953. Harry Holt is credited with creating the logistic and legal pathway for the intercountry adoption of Korean children to families in the United States. The Motherland tour was an effort by the Holt organization to create an opportunity for adult Korean adoptees to learn about their Korean heritage and visit their “homeland.”

I did not ask to go on the tour, but when it was offered, I readily accepted. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I didn’t have much access to Korean culture. My parents were not the kind who celebrated or shared the beauty and culture of the country I and my two adopted siblings had come from. I recall meeting Bertha Holt on two occasions at large gatherings when I was very young. The evangelical church community my adoptive parents belonged to recruited new members throughout the suburbs of Long Island, New York. The church members adopted roughly 100 Korean children. I have a picture in my mind of us all posed in a hall with Bertha wearing a hanbok. Somewhere on Long Island, in a box of my now-deceased parents’ photos, it may be hidden.

Unlike most Korean adoptees dispersed into the white American population, I was raised among many other Korean adoptees and their families. When my parents’ church devolved into a conservative, Sephardic, Kabbalistic, messianic cult, I was in first grade. I was told we do not pray to Jesus anymore. Two of my brothers and I were put in its private religious school until sixth grade, where half of the children in my class were Korean adoptees.

Yet we never talked about being adopted. My best friend was a Korean adoptee, as was her sister. My adopted siblings and I talked quietly, privately, about many things, but never about our lives before adoption or our families on the other side of the world. We, according to my adoptive mother, were God’s will in her life, her mission. Thus, I was named Amy Doreen—beloved “gift of God.” Amy is a common name among Korean adoptees. When I was a child, I imagined it made me special. As a teenager, I held on to the name of “love,” hoping if I embodied it, it would come to me.

As I grew up, I came to find the name silly and ill-fitting. Amys were pretty, sweet, and bubbly. Cherished, they were something that was not me. Inside, and occasionally outside, I was mean, cutting with words, hungry, lonely, awkward, uncomfortable in my skin, angry, and always afraid. I cursed myself, as I was cursed at, and felt cursed. Being “God’s gift” was always a chain.

In a recent interview with an adoptee, she reminded me of my past self. I had forgotten the feeling of my anger, my self-hate. Though I spent my elementary school years in a religious bubble where I did not think about my race, when I was in my home, my neighborhood, and when I finally went to public school in seventh grade, I was harassed, afraid, and I hated being Asian. I cringed at the sight of another Asian in public or on tv. I was ashamed of being part of the denigrated class. I was taught at home that Asians were stupid and ugly and weak. Was I made fun of? Of course, this was the 70s.

After learning the breakdown of my DNA, I was reminded of having been taunted with “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!” I used to say, “I am Korean, stupid,” with fury and fear bubbling inside. The kids never knew what or where Korea was.  But now I know. I am Chinese and Japanese and Korean. I knew it never really mattered. The truth was always clear. I was more interested in being invisible or at least visible on my own terms. It would take me decades before I even knew what my own terms were. This was never possible within my adoptive family or within the upper-middle-class Long Island suburbs where I grew up. I escaped Long Island and my adoptive parents’ home at the end of college and returned only for major family events.

My Motherland Tour shifted many things. The American spell of my “minority self”—”ugly, powerless, and unworthy”—broke when I saw the beauty of the landscape and the masses of people and witnessed the culture. It was an awakening that some Korean adoptees have, but not all. The tour helped create a space for “Korean pride”—a long well-guarded taboo. It was also the first time I actually spoke about the nature of my adoptive family struggles with fellow adoptees. How many tears were shed? How many cheap Korean cigarettes were smoked at Il San Orphanage, sitting around Harry Holt’s gravestone? No one understood. Counselors might have been helpful. Alcohol, cigarettes, tears, and late-night confidences carried us through the two-week tour—“orphans” once more figuring things out on our own. Seven of us were close in age and created an odd “Breakfast Club.” It was a strange brief enlightenment and a respite for those of us not wanting to return to the families that sent us. We would all return to our respective states—Tennessee, Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, California, Kansas, New Jersey, and New York—after sorely straining the nerves of the late Dr. David Kim, the former director of Holt International Children’s services.

The most profound stop for me on our tour was Holt’s unwed mother’s home. I do not remember the inside or anything I saw. I only remember being doubled over outside the building bawling my eyes out, finally having a complete emotional breakdown. I do not have memories of any words from the moment. A geyser of sorrow had broken free and I no longer had the will to fight it. The unwed mother’s home was considered progress—something Holt International was proud of. Dr. Kim always told us his dream was that adoptees would end up running Holt. I wonder how he interpreted all the tears and wailing sobs elicited by these annual tours.

As our tour bus obliviously rode through the South Korean peninsula, the June 1987 Democratic uprising was occurring. The demonstrations led to a democratic election and other reforms as well as the Great Workers’ Struggle, which was marked by the largest and most effective union organizing and walkouts in South Korean history. One night, our bus was stuck in the demonstration traffic, and several people were sickened by the tear gas that floated through the windows. The political struggle for Korean democracy was not on the Holt Motherland Tour cultural menu, so context was never given.

At 19 and older, had we grown up on the peninsula with or without our unknown birth parents, we likely would have been part of, or greatly invested in, the outcomes of the crowds on the streets.

Instead, we were buying tourist trinkets in Itaewon. “Eol meyeyoh? How much?” and “Kamsa hamneda, thank you,” were the pillars of our Korean language acquisition. My American freedom had already been bought by the war, by my adoption. I had not grown enough to truly protest with my fellow Koreans. In Korea, I was an “orphan” in an American wrapper, envied and looked down upon. In America, I was an American in a Korean wrapper, a dirty import.

Time has passed. The first experiments have grown up. The adoptee outcomes from the first wave of Korean adoptees and my subsequent generation resulted from prescriptions of assimilation and religious charity. Though research is scant and belated, it showed what many of us have privately known. A study by the Evan B Donaldson institute I participated in, reported by the New York Times in 2009, showed that 78% of Korean adoptees identified as white or wanting to be white. It also documented that, “as adults, nearly 61 percent said they had traveled to Korea both to learn more about the culture and to find their birth parents.” This shows us; the majority of adoptees assimilate and displace their identity with that of their foreign families, and that their innate identity is still almost equally important. Intercountry adoption and many forms of adoption demand the “erasure” of a life and identity prior to placement in the foreign environment, but identity can only be controlled by external forces for so long.

Revolution and a way to culture, identity, and citizenship reclamation is still being paved by adoptees born after me. According to data culled from US State Department reports by William Robert Johnston and the Johnston archives, only 4,400 Korean children were adopted the US in the 1960s. During the 70s, 25,247 Korean children were recorded as adopted to the US, and during the 80s, the number rose to 46,254. A small fraction of these younger and older adoptees would move back to Korea, search for birth families, and demand accountability from adoption agencies, the government, and their birth families. With the rise of the Internet and DNA technology, these numbers appear to be increasing, though they have yet to be measured.

Unceasingly, these same demands have been and will be replayed by every adoptee who understands what it means to ask for their rights as defined by the UN Rights of the Child Agreement. (The United States is one of the few countries that has not ratified, and does not subscribe to, the Rights of the Child Agreement.) Thus, our work continues: supporting Korean adoptees, making community, creating birth search and reunion resources, and sharing our stories in writing and through the arts. Today, adoptees are fortunate to find a varied handful of Korean adoptee-centered organizations, podcasts, and magazines online among them: ICAV, IKAA, AKA, KAMRA325, GOA’L, Adoptee Hub, the Adapted Podcast, and The Universal Asian.

When my return flight landed at JFK airport with the other HOLT 1987 Motherland Tour members, I was brought to meet the family waiting for the baby I carried. My service as an escort paid for my plane trip back to the US. I do not remember the name they gave him. I recall the family—white, with perhaps two older daughters. I may have intentionally not wanted to remember them. I had not wanted to give him up. I had not wanted to give him to them. I gave him up knowing, whether they were kind or not, the road could be difficult. America was uniquely hard on Asian boys. He would have questions they could not answer, desires for self-knowledge they could not fulfill, and my heart was inadequate and broken. I was still inadequate and broken.

I hope he was fine, was loved, was fairly treated, found pride, self-acceptance, friends, and self-love. He should be 34 now and still on the journey that never ends, reconciling the before and after, the with and without. My best hope is that he was one of those adoptees who was able to be proud and have an easy knowledge of his Korean cultural heritage and identity. What I could not do for him then is what I do now—share as much as I can and show what I am able.

And to him I say, “If you are out there looking for a friend on the road or the mule that carried you to America, here I am.”

미안해  Biahnay

I am sorry.

A.D.A.D. Herzel was “found” in 1968 in Hari, Yeouju eup, South Korea, and brought to the U.S. in 1970. She is a Korean American adoptee, visual artist, writer, and educator who has exhibited work nationally for the past 20 years. Trained as a painter and printmaker at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she also earned her M.Ed. in art education from the Tyler School of Art. Her current project, titled Seeds from the East: The Korean Adoptee Portrait Project, will be shown in multiple venues in 2022-2023. These exhibits are scheduled for the Philip Jaisohn Memorial House in Media, PA, and the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. She’s working with Adoptee Hub for an exhibit in Minnesota, and plans are in the works for shows in Oregon and, possibly, Boston. She is also a regular arts contributor to The Universal Asian, which describes itself as an open and safe online database platform in a magazine-style to provide inspiration to Asian adoptees (#importedAsians) and immigrated Asians (#hyphenatedAsians) around the world. Learn more about her work here. Find her on Instagram @pseudopompous.Severance is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

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By Meredith KellerWhen a letter arrived in my mailbox saying, “I think you might be my grandma,” it dredged up shattering memories of a campus rape 52 years earlier. I threw the letter on the floor of my car and drove erratically in a state of high anxiety and angst. My body went rigid at the thought of reviving that story from my past. All would be revealed.

Would I want to go down that path? To relive scenes and open sores from episodes long buried, the chilling details of an incident that began with rape on a college campus in 1962?

How would this grandchild ever understand that repressive period I lived through after WW II and before the birth control pill? Society then held single unmarried pregnant women in their grip. Rape or unplanned sex led to blistering consequences as unplanned pregnancies made women face the scourge of what was labeled illegitimacy, undergo illegal and dangerous abortions, or carry a child to term only to sever that extraordinary bond between mother and child with separation. It’s estimated that as many as 4 million mothers in the United States surrendered newborn babies to adoption between 1940 and 1970.* I had had no choice but to carry my child to term.

At the time, thoughts of motherhood were tearing at my moral senses. After all, I’d been raised with the idea that motherhood within marriage was the shibboleth in our society. I was facing the dilemma of my life. Would I dare keep a child under these circumstances and bring shame on me and my family or allow the baby to be adopted?

Opting for adoption, I faced the deep sadness of that very moment you hand over your own child. That final act of severance between mother and child caused a quake deep in my soul. I can recall that moment with crystal clarity but mostly I keep it compartmentalized, forever afraid to revisit that devastating moment. The deep shame I felt should not have been mine but the rapist’s who drugged me and took me to his fraternity for his pleasure. After that sorrow of an unplanned pregnancy and what I had put my family through, the anger and resentment were knotted together and locked deep inside.

Returning to that letter in my hands, my emotions were jumbled thinking about the conflict of remembered pain and the promise of closure. I knew this letter was reopening wounds, but it was also exciting to think of learning what happened to my child after that sorrowful moment deeply etched in my soul.

Should I answer the letter?

How would I respond? I started to formulate a letter. What could I possibly say that would adequately explain my lifetime of secrecy and shame? They hadn’t lived through my restrictive times, that conservative era just before the bra-burning sixties and the new sexual freedoms.

What evolved from this request to be acknowledged was that I wrote a memoir. Through tear stained pages, I re-lived for my granddaughters and all young women every aspect of my journey when my self-esteem, ambition, certainty, and reputation were instantly erased and replaced by shame. I explained the hurdles I had to jump to restore my dignity.

So I well understand that not everyone wants to immediately meet their lost child. The pain of remembrance can be deep. The personal stories are wrenching. The reasons for relinquishing them can be quite complicated.

I did eventually meet my daughter and granddaughters in an awesome moment of pure joy, but it was writing the memoir and addressing that long journey that healed the pain.

Keller is reviewing her book, The Unraveling: The Price of Silence, in Zoom format conversation with her daughter Ann at the following Napa Bookmine event November 11. All are invited and it is free. Register here.

*The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative.Meredith Keller honed her writing skills in a career as food editor of a leading restaurant magazine, copy writer for top advertising agencies, and publicist and marketing executive. All helped her articulate trauma and the emotional topography of rape and the blistering consequences. The Unraveling is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Find her on Instagram @theunraveling_9162.BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Ande StanleyAll you had

To do

Instead of saying

I love you

Was to tell me

The truth

Trust is essential in relationships. Honesty is one of the foundations of ethical behavior. When we grow up with lies, when we are denied the ability to make informed decisions, when we are taught that our senses are untrustworthy, when our identities are erased and we are made invisible, the ability to be in true authentic relationship with others is greatly hindered or made impossible. This inability for intimacy to exist within a context of deception is true for everyone, not just for people like myself. Trust is the engine of society. We need to be able to trust ourselves and others in order to be mentally, emotionally and physically healthy. We need to trust to be successful socially and economically. What happens to a person whose trust is betrayed at a deep and foundational level?

The last thing my adoptive mom said to me was that I must believe how greatly I was loved. I want so very much to believe in what she was saying. I long for that connection. My chest hurts and my eyes burn just sitting here and thinking about what that would mean. To be seen. To be heard. To be real, in a deeply intimate relationship with my adoptive family. The problem is that I don’t believe her. I believe she loved what she needed me to be, what she needed to fill the void in her own ego, to assuage the pain of her own failures and rejections. She never loved me because she never knew me. She knew the fiction that she created when she insisted that I not know that I was adopted.

I grew up thinking there was something incredibly wrong with me. I had no other explanation for the sudden silences and the awkward responses. I tried and I tried but never seemed to be enough. My older sister and our dad had an ease of communication and a closeness that, no matter how much I desired to live in that space, was beyond my reach. My youngest brother and our mom existed in a give and take where his protection and nurturing seemed to take precedence over that of mine and my other younger brother. He and I were the odd ones. We looked different, sounded different, acted different. To look at pictures of the six of us together now, I can immediately see what strangers saw—that we did not belong.

I had no mirror. I still have no ability to conceive of how I appear to others. When I asked why I didn’t look like anyone else in the family, I was told that of course I did. A child needs to believe their parents. By insisting that I did look like people I did not resemble, my mother set in motion a mental process that required me to deny the evidence of my own eyes. What I perceived to be real was in doubt. I could not trust what my eyes could see.

My mental health suffered because of the lies. Because I was told that my senses were unreliable. I was over-imaginative, being dramatic, making up stories. Better that I be the crazy one, the identified patient, than to simply tell me the truth. I looked and acted and was different because we weren’t related. Funny how liars felt comfortable accusing me of lying when they set in motion a family system that constantly had to be reinforced with more lies. It’s no wonder I never felt close to my adoptive parents or to their children. When lying is the basis of a relationship, you live in fear of being caught out in your lies. The more lies you tell, the more lies you must remember. I can only imagine how exhausting and anxiety producing that must have been and how much easier that made keeping me at a distance. Keeping me Other.

My physical health suffered due to the lies. My mom was more comfortable accusing me of hypochondria than willing to be honest with me and say we were not genetically related. I was warned of health problems that ran in my adoptive parents’ families, went so far as to have tests done to rule out some of those possibilities, even considered mastectomy—all based on false health information. I went wrongly diagnosed for genetically heritable conditions because there was no history of them in “my” family.

Being lied to has emotional consequences as well. If you systematically deceive and manipulate a person for decades, and when they discover the truth they are devastated and enraged, do you have a right to accuse them of being unbalanced? When they begin to learn to name their emotions and establish necessary boundaries that change the family dynamics, is it okay for you to command them to stop being disruptive and upsetting the people who created the trauma? Do you have any business telling them that they are responsible for the mental health of the people who hurt them?

When the people who you are supposed to be able to trust most are the ones who betray you? I was taught to not trust myself. Then I was taught to not trust anyone else.

My mom said she would have told me about my adoption at some point. She was hurt when I said that I had no reason to think she actually would have done so. Even 20 years after I found out by accident about being adopted, she was still telling me lies. I think the habit was too ingrained by that point for her to do otherwise.

And then she died.

I wasn’t the only one who was the victim of my adoptive parents lies. Their natural children were also. I can’t imagine what it does to a child to be told that they must always be on guard around a sibling. They must always lie to that person and never let on what they know. The habit is ingrained in them as well. They cannot hear or see me. So we do not talk. I was tired of being invisible.

My own children have also been victims of the lies. They were already in school by the time I found out. Their identities changed as well, along with their ability to trust other people. They endured the years of watching their mom falling apart and trying to put herself together again. They suffered loss also, and it is hard to forgive my mom for that.

The lies robbed me of family—adoptive and my own. Robbed me through the process of making intimacy impossible with the people I grew up with and whose name I legally carry. Robbed me of the opportunity to reach out and connect with my first families because so much time had gone by before I was able to find them. Robbed my children and grandchildren of opportunity. Time that none of us can recover.

All they had to do was tell me the truth. Grant me my power, my autonomy, my ability to know and be myself. If they had done that, been honest, then they could have been themselves as well. We could have established relationships based on choice and openness and understanding. But that didn’t happen. It is too late for the majority of the relationships. Thankfully it is not too late for me and for my kids and for my grandkids to learn how to be in authentic relationship with ourselves and with others. I am not sure I will ever be able to fully trust anyone, but I hope to learn to trust myself. I want to know what it is to say I love you and know that I truly grasp what that means. I want to hear someone else say I love you to me and know that it is said by someone who knows me.

You taught me to hide

So I stayed hidden

You concealed me from myself

Called me a

Dreamer, a

Fabulist

I lived in paper towers

A broken

Rapunzel

You fed me on

Fairy tales

You created a

Fiction

Pressed hard

With your pencil

Wrote over the lines

You erased

With your lies

But,

Everything comes out

When the paper

Is held up

To the lightAnde Stanley—an international, stranger, closed adoption adoptee—discovered her adoptee status by accident when she was in her early thirties. A writer from an early age, in recent years she is learning to use her voice to speak out about the trauma caused by denying adoptees their identities and autonomy. She spends her days painting, writing, and harassing her husband of more than 30 years. Visit her blog The Adoption Files. Find her on Twitter @AndeStanley1.BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Lorah GeraldMy hand strokes the smooth white fur of the rug I am lying on. I move my hand slowly along it. It’s soft and soothing. I rub my face into the fur. My fingers dig into it and pull it close. It calms me and triggers Oxytocin—a hormone associated with pleasurable feelings—to be released by the pituitary gland. My breathing becomes slow and regular. The pain I’m feeling slowly subsides. I start regulating the mental turmoil in my mind. I draw on a memory of when I was happy. The sensation of the fur on my skin reminds me of the love I felt for my dog Brizzie. She was my everything. I spent as much time as I could with her, and I’d miss her when I was working or on vacation. I loved that dog with all of my heart. When she passed, my world crumbled.

I bought this rug to remember how I felt when I’d stroke her fur. She was unconditional love. I could feel it when I looked into her blue eyes. She’d look up at me, the world would fall away, and it would be just us. Our walks together were my happy place. Our connection was pure and uncomplicated. I felt she understood me; she could sense my pain and would come to my side. The love she gave flowed from her heart without pause. When she passed, I could still feel her beside me. Blump, blump, blump she would run up the stairs. I can still hear it. Her movement, her fur, her breath were all still alive in my thoughts but I could no longer reach out to touch her. I wanted to feel her again. I felt like a part of me died when she did.

As an adoptee, I’ve always felt closer to animals than humans. My childhood home was a farmhouse that was more than 100 hundred years old. My backyard had a barbed wire fence separating us from the farm behind it. The cows, horses, and ponies would lean their heads over the fence to eat grass out of the yard. Sometimes I’d gather vegetable scraps or handfuls of grass and hold out my hand to feed them. Their noses moved back and forth in my hand as they chewed the treat I held. They felt soft, like a rabbit’s ear. For a special treat, I asked my adoptive parents to buy sugar cubes for me to give to the horses. I’d slowly walk over to them and touch them, my hand softly stroking their hair. I looked into their gaze. Once I felt trust between us, I’d go to their side of the fence and play in their field. After years, I felt like we were friends. One day, I was told not to go into their field anymore. I understand then that the adults wanted to keep me safe, but it was devastating. I felt as if my friends had been taken away. I agreed to the rules but went into the field anyway when no one was looking. I’d already been taken away from my family, and I wasn’t going to let anyone take away my friends.

Being adopted, it was easier for me to have animals as friends. I loved the feeling of their fur, and I understand now that I was self-regulating my emotions when I petted them. I felt they loved me without complications. They helped heal my hidden pain. I loved all the animals and wanted to take care of them. Growing up, my menagerie consisted of cats, dogs, parakeets, fish, and turtles. My adoptive parents allowed one of my cats to have kittens so I could watch how birth happens. I thought it was gross but I loved those three kittens so much. One was white with a couple of gray spots. The others were tabby cats, one grey and one orange-striped. I was sad that we had to find them homes when they were old enough to be given away. It confused me. I knew my adoptive parents didn’t wait that long to get me. Was I given away too soon? I didn’t want to give them away. I felt heartbroken. It made me think about how I was given away. I knew my adoptive parents never talked to my birth mother. I wanted to know where the kittens were going. Why did my birth mother not ask who was taking me? I cared what was going to happen to my kittens. Why didn’t my birth mother care what happened to me?

Now I sit with my white fur rug, petting it and soothing myself. I remind myself that I am loved and I am worthy. The pain of being given away doesn’t go away. We learn to adapt to it.Lorah Gerald—adoptee, writer, intuitive, Kundalini yoga Instructor, reiki master and ordained minister—writes memoir, inspirational, educational, and opinion pieces and blogs on her website, LorahGerald.com, and as @theadoptedchameleon on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. She hopes to help others, adopted or not, heal their trauma by sharing her lived experiences as an adoptee, educating about breath work and energy healing, and using her natural intuitive abilities.

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By David Sanchez BrownI was not the dream son my adoptive parents envisioned I’d be. I was a clumsy, overweight kid with Coke-bottle thick glasses and learning disabilities who couldn’t seem to do anything right—couldn’t even throw a ball. Father-son relationships can be challenging enough in biological families, but I learned early that they’re even more complex for an adopted son.

I was adopted in 1956, but my adoption was a lifelong event. It was a closed adoption, meaning that all genetic connections were severed when a new birth certificate was issued. This separation from my birthmother was the first trauma I experienced, and it influenced every aspect of my life. It diminished my self-esteem, disrupted my identity, and left me unable to form secure and satisfactory attachments.

My adoptive parents made a crucial mistake in waiting until I was eight to tell me I was adopted. I have no idea why they waited so long. I had already established a strong bond with my them, and it confused and shattered me. When I said, “You’re not my real mother, then,” my mother’s face contorted. She looked possessed when she came at me and screamed in my face, “How dare you to question my motherhood, you selfish boy.” My father just stood there and let her rage. It took a moment, but the damage was permanent. I never trusted her after that. Not only had I lost my mother at birth, but now I had a mother who didn’t love or like me.

I’d bonded with my dad early on, but after the adoption talk, my relationship with him, too, changed. I had a younger brother, also adopted, and a younger sister—my parent’s biological child—but since I was the oldest son, there was more pressure on me. I was expected to be of blue-ribbon caliber. He forced me to play catch with him and he had no patience. “Pay attention and keep your eye on the ball,” he’d holler. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, I always dropped the ball. When he and the kids on the block called me Charlie Brown, it stung.

My efforts to understand geometry were equally dismal. Late nights at the kitchen table with my dad doing homework, we were both stressed. He’d throw back another shot of Cutty Sark whiskey, yelling “pay attention” and cuffing my ears. I’d get debilitating stomach aches. I still hold those memories in my body, especially in my hunched shoulders. I felt broken and internalized the shame of not being enough for my dad.

An alcoholic with a violent temper, my dad was as unsafe as my mother was hot and cold emotionally. He would often say that how I turned out would reflect on him; I had to be perfect, and he was an unrelenting perfectionist. He needed me to be an extension of him, but  I couldn’t. I was the antithesis of him. Perhaps he felt I would become like him as if by osmosis.

It pained me that I couldn’t be more like my dad, but I couldn’t; I was another dad’s son. The more he pushed me, the more I shut down and retreated into my inner world of remote islands.

I didn’t look or act like anyone else in the family. I stuck out like a sore thumb and I became the family scapegoat. The more withdrawn I grew, the more my father would verbally and physically abuse me, especially after he’d been drinking. I reacted by dissociating, which only accelerated in my mid-teens. Alcohol became a way to numb my feelings, and later I’d rely on prescription drugs like Xanax. I stayed that hurt kid most of my life, and it prevented me from being an adult. Now I know dissociation was a trauma response.

When I finally left home, I was an empty shell—no identity, no personality. I didn’t know how to take care of myself and I drifted. My life up until then had been all about surviving from one day to the next. I believed I only deserved dysfunctional, toxic relationships, including those in work environments. But I never connected my feelings about myself with having been adopted. I thought I was a failure and unworthy of unconditional love.

In September 2006, while I was visiting my mother, she casually handed me my adoption documents. The first page contained the court decree. It stated that David Lee Carroll would now be known as David Raymond Brown. The shock of that news was a gut punch, and I threw up. I joined an adoption registry at adoption.com, but received no response. I didn’t aggressively search for my birth parents, and although DNA testing became available in 2012, I didn’t test. I was afraid to find birth family. I was afraid I wouldn’t be enough and that they, too, would be disappointed in me or might reject me—a secondary rejection.

But then I read Dani Shapiro’s “Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love”—in which she discovers after taking a DNA test that her dad wasn’t her biological father and she searches for and finds the man who was. I’d always felt incomplete, so I put aside my fears of rejection and took a risk. I took an AncestryDNA test, but I didn’t consider the emotional impact of what I might find.

On July 27, 2019, while I was on the treadmill at the gym, I got a text from Ancestry DNA. My results were ready to view online. I got dizzy and almost fell; I hit the emergency stop cord and sat down. I had a first cousin match and I messaged her immediately. A couple of minutes later, she responded. There would be many phone calls and trading of pictures before I realized I’d struck gold. I was in a state of shock, and seeing pictures of my bio father I got the whole meaning of genetic mirroring for the first time. I could see myself in him, a genetic connection. But I didn’t know for sure if he was my father. My paternal first cousin put me in touch with someone I’d later learn is my half-sister, who agreed to take a DNA test. And five weeks later, Ancestry confirmed that we shared the same father. I also learned I have two other sisters. It was overwhelming; I had to walk away for a few weeks. I felt like I was coming apart at the seams.

So, who was this man? Who was my bio father, and was I like him? Did I have his traits?

As I came to know more about my paternal family, I discovered a history of addiction and mental health issues. Learning about this medical history gave me insight into my struggles. Knowing about it sooner might have saved me a lot of wear and tear.

I also learned my biological father was a fraternity party boy with a reputation for being a jokester in front of an audience. But he often was the butt of the jokes, which was painful to learn because I, too, had been laughed at when I thought I was the life of the party. My sister gave me a photograph of him wearing fluorescent orange shorts and holding a beach umbrella; I couldn’t accept it. It wasn’t what I wanted to remember and it was an unpleasant reminder of all the embarrassing pictures of me.

I also learned my biological father had been physically abusive toward one of my sisters, which made me physically sick. It hit a nerve because it reminded me of my painful past. I don’t think any of my sisters fully recovered, and I am only now able to live free of the traumatic memories of growing up.

Over the past two years, learning about my origins and my genetic inheritance has helped ground me. It’s been painful finding the truth, but I am no longer that hurt boy. I am the cycle breaker. I’m grateful I didn’t have children. I might have passed down the generational trauma. I couldn’t risk anyone else’s life. Honestly, I was hoping my bio father would be more, and maybe that’s like my adoptive dad wanting me to be more. I think all these desires were unrealistic.

I carry my ancestors inside me. I bear my biological father’s genes and the imprint of my adoptive father’s abuse and disappointment. But I am not either of my fathers. I am my own man.David Sanchez Brown is retired and living in San Jose, CA, with his partner. In 2019, he created a blog, My Refocused Life Adopted, to document his adoptee journey to find his lost identity. You can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to read about his journey.Severance is  not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

On Venmo: @David-Brown-0516BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Cindy FlemingGrowing up as an adoptee, I frequently fielded questions from friends and strangers alike. “Do you know who your real mother is?” “Do you think you look like your parents?” “What [ethnicity] are you?” The first two questions were easy to answer: My mother is my real mother. No, I don’t look like either of them. But the third question hounded me my whole life. It speaks to a universal quest to identify with a group. And it speaks to the need of others to figure out who we are. For an adoptee, another question swirls around in the mix: Are we valid?

On one hand, our identity is who we believe we are, and on the other it’s who others believe us to be. In essence, the identity question is two-part: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who do you think I am?’ Adopted or not, we work to reconcile our personal vision of who we are versus who others believe we are. Yet when you’re adopted, there’s an added layer. For me, and I imagine for many adoptees, there’s a struggle to answer the question ‘Who are you?’ When others challenge our identity because of our adoption status, it’s difficult enough; but it’s further complicated by the fact that we have incomplete information about our genetic roots and, therefore, we can’t answer. And even when we get that information, we’re still left wondering how others view us.

I was adopted at birth and didn’t know my birth ethnicity until I was an adult. Of course, I had the ethnicity of my adoptive family, but even that was muddled. Muddled, in part, because my parents were somewhat non-traditional in the way they raised me—without strong traditions, based on ethnicity or religion. My parents were raised Jewish, but did not consider themselves religiously Jewish. My mother explained that while we were not religiously Jewish, we were “ethnically Jewish.” What does that mean exactly? I love brisket and knishes. I know what a seder is (a Baptist friend corrected me on a few details). I picked up some Yiddish words listening to conversations between my grandmother and her friends. But does that make me Jewish? From a religious standpoint, it does not. In fact, according to Jewish law, adoption alone doesn’t make you the religion of your adoptive mother. As an adult I learned that my birth mother is Protestant, and children born to non-Jews and adopted by Jewish parents must go through rituals of conversion before they are considered Jewish. I did not.

Inasmuch as being Jewish could be part of my identity—religious or ethnic, I didn’t need to wait until adulthood to know I wasn’t a real Jew. This was established by some of my relatives. Jewish preteens typically prepare for a bar- or bat-mitzvah to be welcomed into the adult Jewish world. When I was about 11, I overheard a relative question another as to why I wasn’t preparing. The answer dismissed me—and my entry into the Jewish adult world—with but one sentence, “She’s not a real Jew.” I remember feeling like an imposter. From then on, despite my mother telling us that we were “ethnically” Jewish, I felt increasingly detached, especially around holiday gatherings. Years later, my non-Jewish status was confirmed by my own mother! I had received a threatening letter from an anti-Semitic group, and before forwarding it to the Southern Poverty Law Center, I showed it to my mother. She waved it away, saying what I’d already heard—“but you’re not really Jewish.”

So, if I can’t claim a Jewish identity— ethnic or religious—then by the same logic, I can’t claim my grandparents’ Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Austrian ethnic backgrounds either. Back to the drawing board.

No doubt, adoptees have all sorts of reasons for discovering their birth or genetic backgrounds. I actually don’t know what compelled me to seek my birth certificate or to make contact with my birth mother. Even though I’d struggled as a kid to fit in as Jewish, it didn’t occur to me at the time to search for any other ethnic identity. It wasn’t until I was a new mom that I started giving real thought to my birth story. When I requested my records from Maine, I spent several years contemplating whether to write to the woman who brought me into this world. Eventually I did. I projected her need to know about the baby she’d given up, basing that assumption only on my own feelings toward my children—trying to imagine how a woman could part with her child. I thought perhaps she might want to know that I’d had a good life. Or perhaps wondered if she’d want a relationship with me. She did not. But another motivation for my search was to learn of an ethnic identity that I could claim as part of my own. When my birth mother declined contact, I felt like she had denied me a bit of that ethnic identity.

My need to discover more details about my genetic identity waxed and waned after the initial contact with my birth family. Then something clicked. I’m not sure whether it was because the Census questioned my response to the ethnicity question (it changed my response ‘American’ to ‘refused to answer’) or if curiosity finally got the better of me. I ordered a kit from AncestryDNA and within weeks had a breakdown of my genetic heritage.

So what have I done with these results? Besides connecting with half-siblings I never knew I had (that’s another story), I’ve had fun exploring the traditions and places where my DNA originated. At Christmas, I baked and cooked my way through the traditional foods of my genetic ancestors. And I’m hoping to visit or re-visit the countries represented by my DNA. And yet, despite doing these things, I’m still left wondering, does any of it give me a true ethnic identity? Does baking beautiful lussekatter make me Swedish? Does mulling a warm glühwein make me German? When I step off the plane in Scotland, will they recognize their native daughter? Will I feel a part of these places or these people? Or will I still be an imposter?

In our melting pot country, we place so much emphasis on our ethnic heritage: We’re not American, but Irish-American, Chinese-American, Italian-American. Even the Census forces you to record some ethnicity other than American. When you’re adopted, however, it’s complicated. I sometimes wonder why it’s important, but I know that it is. We want to belong. We want to know where we came from. No matter how grounded we are, we yearn to have connections to others. But when you’re adopted these connections can feel tenuous. And I, for one, am still left asking, “Who am I?” and “Who do you think I am?”Fleming lives in New Hampshire, where she’s a writer. She’s known all her life that she’s an adoptee, but only recently embarked on a journey of discovery. Through searching and genetic testing, she’s connected with new family members, and in joining the adoption conversation has found new opportunities for personal growth and reflection. You can connect with her via Twitter @cidkfleming.BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Candace CahillFor years I kept his blue baby blanket in the bottom right-hand drawer of my dresser.

I stole it from the hospital.

I remember lifting it to my face and noting the sharp odor of sour milk mingled with the intoxicating scent of baby. Without a thought, I slipped the soft, waffle-like material into my brown paper sack.

When I got home, alone and hollowed out, I curled into a fetal position with the blanket bunched up like a pillow and cried.

I refused to wash it, hoping to hold on to what little remained.

In fragile moments, those times I couldn’t pretend anymore, I’d pull it out to hide my face and collect my tears. When the storm passed, I’d fold and tuck it away, careful to nestle his first pacifier and hospital identification bracelet, the one with the name I gave him on it, into the center, like eggs in a nest.

Now, thirty years later, that blanket cradles the other keepsakes I have of him. Pages of handwritten updates from his early life. A collection of school pictures and snapshots from vacations and holiday parties with his adopted family. A construction paper daisy chain. And now, his funeral program and a favorite stuffed animal, Scrappy, handed over by his adopted dad as an offering of solidarity.

Over the years, the blanket faded from baby-blue to the color of glacial ice, and my tears washed away his scent.

All that remains is the stale smell of sadness.

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By Brad EwellTwo days after I learned I’d been adopted, we met to talk about the secret you’d kept from me. Looking back, I was completely unprepared for that conversation. I was still in shock from learning you weren’t my biological parents and that you lied by omission about this my entire life. What follows is what I wish I’d have known to express then in that first conversation. I didn’t know then that would be our only conversation about this. Had I been able to say these things then, I think it would have made it easier on all of us.

I don’t regret being adopted. I’ve had a great life; in reality I’ve been spoiled. You did a good job raising me to be the man I am today. You made me feel loved and supported. You taught me the importance of hard work and perseverance. You showed me the simple pleasure gained from working with my hands. You also guided me toward an honest life where I stand up for what I believe in without worrying much about the personal costs. When I look at my life now, I don’t see how I would have ended up where I am today if you hadn’t adopted me. I’ve got a great wife, wonderful kids, and a life I love.

But none of this changes my need to know who I am and where I come from. Searching for and reuniting with my biological family hasn’t been something I did as a rejection of you or as a result of some failure in your parenting. No matter how much you ignore my need to know, it will never disappear from inside of me. I simply have to understand who I am, and because of adoption, there’s more to that story than who raised me.

As I trace my roots, I begin to understand why I am the way I am. I still see your hand in molding me, but I also see the biological foundation of my attitudes and behaviors. I also know where some of my struggles came from. You tried to shape me to be more outgoing; maintain outward appearances; and adopt a go-along-to-get along mindset at home, but biologically it wasn’t who I was, so we clashed over these expectations.

Discovering my lineage and meeting my biological relatives makes me feel more like a whole person than I ever have. I’ve seen myself reflected back to me in others—my rebelliousness and personal style; my difficulty in going with the flow; my mischievous sense of humor; and my deep introversion. Since I’ve met my biological father and heard stories about my biological mother, these traits all make sense to me now. Before, it just felt like I was doing something wrong.

While I’m not sorry I was adopted, I deeply regret that you kept my adoption secret from me for 48 years. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I can see the places where I was trying to force myself into a mold that was never meant for me. While for the most part I’ve made peace with the time and energy I invested trying to be someone I’m not, I likely will always have nagging questions about what might have been had I stayed truer to who I biologically was. It’s still hard to look back on the internal struggles I had—feeling like I’d failed in some way for not fitting into the family mold. It makes me sad to think about the fuller relationship I believe we could have had if I’d known the truth.

In the end, what I hope you understand is that my need to know where I come from has everything to do with me and nothing to do with you. It’s not a result of some failing on your part. No amount of extra love or attention would have made my need to know who I am go away. From talking to others in similar situations I’ve learned that the need to understand our heritage is an inescapable desire many of us feel. How ironic that you told me several times “blood is thicker than water,” yet here we are with you now wanting to ignore that. You’re still my parents; you’re the only parents I’ve ever known; but I still need a connection to my roots to feel intact .

I hope this will all make sense to you. Please understand there’s nothing about my search that threatens our relationship, and in the end all I hope to do is become a better person through the things I learn.

Your Son,

Brad

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By Lisa CollinsWhen you were but two years old, I came into being.

We were unaware of one another’s presence, but we co-existed.

Separated by a thousand miles, yet side by side on this planet, we grew.

We were born alone, no siblings with whom to form that unique bond.

We were given a name and assigned a family.

But somewhere out there, just beyond reach, the other was there.

I don’t know why we were allowed to live for more than 50 years without one another, and why we weren’t permitted the connection so many take for granted.

Were we somehow assigned the payment for sins of the fathers?

Why were we destined to miss out on the comfort, the familiarity, of another human connected by blood, intertwined for life?

We will never know. We will always wonder.

We will never get that time back.

But from this point forward, we now know.

There is another person, no longer unreachable and distant.

A person with whom we share blood, and genetics, and values.

Silly little things, like a preference for rice.

Difficulty swallowing.

And a dark, easy tan.

And big, important things,

like stubbornness and independence.

Fierce loyalty.

Refusal to follow illogical rules.

And a smartass sense of humor.

We will never again be without.

No one can ever take this away.

We have less time left to be siblings than we had to be without.

So I choose to acknowledge, honor, and place immense value on this fact:

For the rest of my time on this planet, I will be

Finally, and forever,

Your sister.

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By Lisa CoppolaThat evening Ma ate clumsily from a bag of cheese curls, and the orange dust caked on her fingers; crumbs hung from stray hairs on her chin. Her left eyebrow tensed with each dramatic revelation the show brought. The episode was about the reunification of a mother and son after decades apart. They fell into each other’s arms, and I became as tense as a pole. My heart sped up, and a hard lump formed in my throat. I remembered the box in the upstairs closet labeled, “The clothes Lisa came in,” as though I’d been purchased in a store—a real human doll with a blank slate background. “I never stopped thinking about you,” said the mother on tv. Tears escaped from my eyes. I wondered aloud over the years but had never asked the actual question.

“So Ma, what do you actually, really, know about my birth mother?

She looked at me, one hazel eye lifted slightly. She breathed in carefully, turned to me, and switched off the tv.

“Well, her name was Margaret. Your name before we got you was Libby. But we thought you were more of a Lisa.”

My cheeks flushed.

“Libby? Like short for something, like Elizabeth? Lisa’s better anyway.”

“Nope, just Libby. Margaret was mentally ill; we know she lived for a while in the State Hospital. Also, we know that she may have been raped—or something.”

Raped—or something? A tremble tightened in the pit of my stomach.

“By who? Who raped her?”

“It may have been another patient. They didn’t tell us much.”

She sounded a bit too removed.

“Seriously? Really? That’s really nuts, huh?”

I reached for an Oreo out of the tin Dad kept on the coffee table and casually ate it while my hand shook from the adrenaline.

“We tried to find out more after we got you but they gave us very little information.”

I steadied myself onto my feet and moments later found myself in the bathroom. I leaned onto the sides of the sink and peered closely into the mirror to study my nineteen-year-old face, a typical daily practice. That night it came with more information. My intense blue eyes stared back at me and I tried to see what was in there, what kind of entity I even was. Probably human I figured. As a kid, I thought the mysterious indentation on top of my skull could have been where I was released from a port when the ship dropped me off. My reflection continued to stare back at me like a stranger. Ma was not the type to fuss about her looks or to diet like many of my friend’s dieting mothers, which the feminist part of me appreciated. Still, with no biological guide to help me know what I may have been growing into, I had to look to magazines and media and tried to sort out what kind of woman I may be destined to look like. My frame was a thin hourglass shape. Magazines told me this was acceptable, but also told me that thinner would be better. I had full lips. I was not necessarily pretty; I was not cute. I was sexy. I was a hot girl, but I wanted to be beautiful. Sexy and hot got you noticed, got you chosen from a crowd, got you sought after for a moment. Beautiful, however, got you kept. At that point, I was living out the role of a sexy and disturbed girl that sometimes got herself into trouble.

Daring to peer even closer, I tried to see both the rapist in me and then the mentally ill woman in me and wondered which parts come from whom. Questions arose: What kind of mental illness did Margaret have? Could she be scary, like my brother Simon? Or,  was she more like me, either lost in daydreams or stuck in annoying obsessive thought cycles? Maybe Margaret would understand my quirks. Then, the first of what would be daily visions played out in my head. A woman’s mouth struggling to open smothered by a gnarly hand, her head pushed into the plastic covering on a hospital mattress. What did it mean to exist only because a woman was raped?

This inquiry was big, too big to fathom. Doubt reserved a dingy backseat in my brain and whispered to me. Perhaps it wasn’t. Maybe she lied, maybe they were in love. Maybe she was religious and lied because of her faith. Or, maybe it wasn’t a patient. Maybe it was a doctor or a counselor, someone who could take advantage of a mentally ill woman living in a hospital. The man was a looming dark shadow, standing tall and hovering and faceless. I only existed because of a bad seed.

I left the bathroom that night and paused to look at the wooden doghouse that hung off the wall in our kitchen. It had been there for as long as I could remember. Five small dog pieces, each about two inches tall, and each had one of our names written on the front: Ma, Dad, Russell, Lisa, and Simon.* Dad’s dog was a bit taller than the rest; Ma’s was plump and smiling. My older brother Russ’s dog was scuffed up and guilty, his big black eyes pointed up to the right. Simon’s dog looked out of place, like a different breed—a terrier perhaps. Mine shined with innocence, wide-eyed and floppy eared. For many years, when one of us kids got into trouble, Ma would announce our dog’s move into the doghouse. It didn’t happen too often for me. Simon was occasionally in there for ignoring her. It was Russ whose dog was always hanging in there and it still was in there that night. As though I was in a kind of visceral trance, I walked up to the doghouse, moved Russ out, and moved my dog in.

*Names have been changed in the interest of privacy.Lisa Coppola is an adoptee advocate and creator of the Voices Unheard Speaker Series, which is put on through Boston Post Adoption Resources. She lives in the Boston area and is working on a memoir about healing from sexual trauma and tracking down both of her biological parents. Look for her blog, visit her author page on Facebook, and find her on Instagram @morethanjustaluckyadoptee.BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Lisa Ann Yiling CalcasolaDear birth mother and father,

How are you? Where are you? Who are you?

I grew up with two Italian-American parents who have given me the world and more. I had as happy a childhood as anyone, the majority of my time spent running around outside in the grass and sunshine of a small, safe New England suburb. I have had many identities as an athlete, student, traveler and artist. I am in my third year of college in New York City.

From the outside my life looks fantastic, a true American dream. I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted—moving to this big city to fulfill bigger dreams—and I should have absolutely nothing to complain about. I have been so fortunate, physically, financially, emotionally. I have the most caring and supporting family. I have no reason to be sad.

And yet you cannot help how you feel, can you? You cannot apologize for your emotions because you are not in control of them. Or you can have control of them, but only after some time. I’m not sure—I’m still trying to figure that out. But the uneasiness and anxiety over my past is something I still struggle to understand every day. I have no immediate reason to be anxious, but I am.

Few people would guess this, because outwardly I am fairly energetic and optimistic. It is inside my own head, especially when I am alone, that this fog comes over me and I feel an unending loneliness, even with the knowledge that, not too far away, there are people who care a lot about me.

I guess I used to cry about this a lot, when I was four—at least that’s what my mom told me this past winter break. I just learned, after twenty years, that I was not merely put into a foster home; I was abandoned in a park. Forest Park, a truly ironic twist of fate, given that my home in America is a five-minute drive from another Forest Park.

It does no good to dwell on the past. I try not to be sad and think about you, but I am. Sometimes, I am. I miss you, these people I have never met. You left me, I presume, I hope, because you wanted me to have a better life, and here I am, twenty years later, with everything a girl could ever ask for.

And yet I am still not whole. I still miss you. I still feel lonely, especially in this city that is so vast. I still think too much, but I cannot help these thoughts: that for all my outward material comforts I sometimes feel an emptiness that comes out of this dark pit I want to keep hidden and buried within me. It is ugly and thick and I do not want to expose it. Because I am afraid of it.

I wonder if meeting you would make a difference, if the loneliness and anxiety I feel is linked more to the mystery than to the two of you, who seem to me more phantom than real. It is always the unknown that haunts us.

You wanted to give me a better life, but is this better? In one of the biggest most “successful” cities in the world, yet still feeling lonely, still feeling lost? I do not know what life would have been like with you in China, in our city of Fuzhou, of three point seven million people or more. I do not know what it would be like to have a brother or a sister, to see the world through an Eastern rather than Western lens. I have my education here, but what has this education taught me but that the world is far more complex than I’d ever imagined, with more and more terrible things happening each day?

And I do not know if this is related to you, or just to me, and to my growing up. And I do not know anything about you, who you are, what jobs you do or don’t have, if you’re short like me, if you’re athletic, or artistic, or happy. If you are even alive. I do not know, I do not know, and it is the not-knowing, the possibility that I will never know, that whispers to me when I am alone.

I miss you, but I do not know how much. Because my mother and father here are the ones who raised me, who taught me how to walk, and speak, and treat other people. They instilled these values in me. What values would you have instilled? Is it egotistical and nonsensical for me to even ask such questions? Maybe I should just accept what is and move on.

But like I said, feelings cannot be controlled. I can’t help how I feel. I can try to change my perspective, of course, but at the end of the day I still think of you, and I do not know if you think of me.

I hope to go to China very soon. I look forward to it more than any other trip, and of course I want to see the culture, but mostly I want to find you. I don’t know if this is possible. But it’s another distant dream.

Take care,

Your Fu Yiling

福宜玲Lisa Ann Yiling Calcasola is a writer and adoptee. Her work has been previously
published in Hyphen Magazine, Vol 1. Brooklyn, the Asian American Feminist Collective’s
digital storytelling project, and more. She wrote this essay in 2016. Find her @punkelevenn.

Severance Magazine is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

Venmo: @punkelevennBEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy. Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts. Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com. Tell us your stories. See guidelines. If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

By Imee DaltonThere were so many things already happening
The night a gibbous moon
Peered down at a young woman
Poised on the brink of a pregnant pause
There were already fishermen in the tiny village
Getting ready for the next day’s catch
There were already pious congregants in the small church
Getting ready for that evening’s prayer
There was already a Cancer sun and Aries rising
Getting ready to fate the earth
Already a destined heartbeat rising
Already a pre-ordained ocean tide rising
And down by the beach
There was already a boat waiting
To ferry away whatever foundling
Came earth side that night
Because there were already
The sideways glances and whispers
Already known crucial players missing in this act
How is it that before the infant
Even had the ability to wail and protest
There was already the both/and
Of inexpressible joy and sacred heartache
A duo of life long friends waiting for her
And even before there was a mother’s
Clenched jaw and concentrated travailing
There was already a cord being cut
And when the time came to take her first divine breath
And arms and land were there to catch her
With the finality that only life can give
It seemed already woven into her story
The counting of how many rebirths
Until she makes it back homeAlong with being on the board of Encompass Adoptees, Imee Dalton is a mother, a creative, and an entrepreneur. She was adopted as an infant from the Philippines and is a transracial, international, kinship adoptee who has been actively processing her adoption story since 2012. BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy. Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts. Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com. Tell us your stories. See guidelines. If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

By Michelle HensleyLight, water, love.

What a plant needs to thrive, to grow. Common needs for humans. But what if you didn’t get what you needed to grow? Would you somehow persevere?

I didn’t have what I needed to grow. I had the basics: food, shelter, clothing. They were fragile, not always in quantities that would lead to a secure sense of comfort. Clothing was mostly from garage sales or purchased with credit cards that would later have to be cut up. Shelter was a house that was mortgaged several times over to pay for a gambling addiction. Food was portioned, and we filled our bellies with bread and butter because maybe we were still hungry and that’s all we had left on the table.

Love was hard earned. It was conditional to behavior. Feelings of animosity and jealousy led to separation—physical and emotional. My adult self recognizes the disfunction, the probable mental illness, the absurdity of the accusations. I did not feel loved.

I moved out three weeks after high school graduation, and I was given a tree a short time after that. A houseplant ficus tree. I cared for that tree. I gave it light, water, love. I made sure it had a sunny window in every rented apartment and basement space. As it grew, so did I.

Finally, when I was living in a house to call home after I married, the tree thrived, and so did I. It grew so big and tall that it had to be replanted, cut back, split, and repotted many times over 30-plus years. It became a member of the family, fondly known as “the tree.” It stood in as a Christmas tree more than once. The tree lived at a trusted friend’s house when it got too tall.

Eventually, it made its way back and had to be hacked once again to fit into the space available. Leaves would drop in protest to the jarring change of space and severing. And then, as if by magic, new shoots would emerge, with new starts of a branch. I showered it with light, water, love.

It was a constant reminder that with light, water, and love, anything could thrive.

In a particularly tough patch in my life, I started to resent the tree. It had been a gift from a person who did not give me what I needed—love. I did not get the care and compassion that was essential to grow as a human being. I began to see the tree as a painful reminder of that person and I made plans to kill the tree. Yes, kill it, as in take it out back and hack it up with a hand saw, a hatchet, or whatever sharp tool I could get my hands on. I envisioned a scene like the one depicted in the movie “Mommy Dearest,” where Joan Crawford, in a fit of anger, chops down a prized ornamental tree.

I didn’t kill the tree. Instead, I made arrangements for it to live at the library. I gave up that tree. I now know that it will live in infamy in a space that was despised by the one who failed to give me what I needed. The thought of the tree getting to bear witness to all the growth and knowledge that’s nurtured in that building—everything I was denied—gives me peace.

The tree also produced a stub, a leftover of the last replanting. It was nothing more than a stump in a big pot. It had been unceremoniously shoved in a dark corner, away from light. It had been ignored, forgotten. There was no light, no water, no love, nothing.

A side glance one day brought shock when a flash of green caught my eye. From behind a chair, nestled deep in the corner, there was life. The tree had not given up. The tree had sprouted a new start, from deep beneath the soil, an offshoot, perhaps, of the stump. The tree had used its reserves, its inner strength, to show that it could persevere.

The new branchtree appears strong. It mockingly showed up, despite the lack of light, water, and love. It is here to grow. Its inner strength pushed through. It’s a survivor. It will not be killed. It has become the new tree, the courageous self-sufficient being that emerged. It’s now being given light, water, and love. It sits in the sun. It is growing. It will know that despite its beginnings, it alone pushed above the soil to emerge victoriously.

I am the new tree.Michelle Hensley was adopted as an infant and is in reunion with members of her birth families. She’s a mentor and facilitator at Encompass Adoptees, Transracial Journeys family camp, and Adoption Network Cleveland. Follow her on Facebook and find her on Twitter @Michell99944793.

By Michelle HensleyI was scheduled for surgery on March 25, 2020, but because of the quarantine, the surgery was canceled. My condition declined and I politely and persistently encouraged my surgeon to appeal to the board. The appeal was successful. The surgery was rescheduled, and I had the operation on April 17.

It was a much different experience than I could ever have imagined.

I wasn’t afraid of the surgery. I’ve had several operations in my lifetime. But what I wasn’t prepared for was being alone—completely alone—immediately after my surgery and the entire night I spent in the hospital. The nurses and patient aides were attentive. If I needed something, I pushed the button, and they were able to help with pain meds or small amounts of food. But I was alone. Because of COVID-19, my husband was not allowed to be with me. He dropped me off at the door at 6 AM and I didn’t see him again until the next day when he came to drive me home.

I spent the entire night alone and in pain and had no one to comfort me. I imagine that my birth mother may have felt the same way the night she gave birth to me. I tried to get comfortable, but couldn’t. I tried to sit or lie in different positions, but it didn’t help. I was in pain and I cried. I barely slept. I felt nauseous at times and struggled to drink even the smallest amounts of water. My heart ached for my loved ones. When the nurse did come in, she was quick and efficient but didn’t stick around for small talk. She didn’t provide any kind of nurturing or offer encouraging words. I cried more and thought about calling someone, anyone, but I didn’t want to be a bother. Adoptees do that—we feel bad asking for help, as if we should be able to handle everything or because maybe we are not deserving of basic human compassion.

Back at home, my husband has taken great care of me. All I have to do is ask, and my wish is granted.

I didn’t go to the hospital to have a baby so—unlike my mother—I have no shame about why I was there or any guilt about my behavior. My heart does not ache for a baby I wasn’t able to take home and I am healing physically. I have a new understanding of what my birth mother experienced the night I was born. The baby scoop era was tragic, and the homes for unwed mothers were horrible places. They were supposed to be medical facilities where the patients would be cared for, when in fact they were places where girls and women were shamed and chastised for having become pregnant. These women were left in rooms alone during labor and after they gave birth. They were told they deserved to be treated that way.

On Mother’s Day, not long after my surgery, all I could think of was all the birth moms who suffered in silence. Many were told to never ever talk about it, and they went home as if it didn’t happen. They buried their pain. I’m so sorry that happened all those years ago. I’m sorry that it was the memories of a lonely night spent in pain in the hospital that allowed me to understand the depth of that loss.Michelle Hensley was adopted as an infant and is in reunion with members of her birth families. She’s a mentor and facilitator at Encompass Adoptees, Transracial Journeys family camp, and Adoption Network Cleveland. Follow her at Facebook and find her on Twitter @Michell99944793.

I circle my birthday on the calendar every year.

As the date draws closer, its approach feels increasingly like warm, heavy breathing on the nape of my neck and I begin to think about it daily, as much as I don’t want to. The breathing on my neck intensifies. I work hard to bottle up anticipation that bubbles up from my soul. When it is a week away, anxiety skyrockets. Try as I might to banish all birthday thoughts and emotions from my mind and body, I’m unable to. The more I try not to think about it, the more I do. Thank you, irony.

Then it arrives. It’s here! The big day! Time to celebrate! Celebratory texts and Facebook posts begin rolling in. Regardless of what’s planned for me on this most wondrous of days, I don’t need to guess what this day will be like or how I will feel. It’s my birthday after all. October 10^th is here. Yippy.

Anxiety levels now reach all-time highs, or, to be precise, match the same highs set each preceding year. I don’t know what to do with myself. There is one certainty with my birthday: I will find a way to sabotage it. As sure as the sun rises each morning, my birthday will somehow become a fiasco.

For most of my life it has been like this. I wish it would stop, but it won’t. Like a family of pit vipers slithering over each other in a dark den, something buried in my subconscious moves, waiting for a chance to strike. I’m riddled with emotional pain and loneliness even though I’m blessed to be married to a superhero and am a father to two wonderful children who go out of their way to do nice things for me. I feel as if I am seeking something that cannot be found.

Regardless of whether we have a party, go out to dinner as a family, or do any of the other good ideas my wife comes up with, I try my best to be happy. Yet that happiness is as elusive as sleep is to an insomniac. The celebration and presents are never enough to quell the pain, and then the sabotaging kicks into high gear and I turn into a monster in the presence of people doing nice things for me. I snap. I peck at their nests. I bark. I am fussy. This is not me in entirety, but it is who I unfortunately become on this day.

Some form of trauma boils up from the depths of my being. It takes charge as much as I fight it not to. It’s in control, not me. All I truly want is for the day to be over. Please, can it be October 11^th? I am not good enough for my birthdays, and they are not good enough for me. It wasn’t until very recently, when I turned my gaze within and introduced myself to the core of my being that I finally could grasp the source and depth of this angst.

You see, I’m adopted. Born a bastard, I was separated from my biological mother at birth. The woman I spent nine months preparing to meet was gone in an instant. In my most vulnerable state, I was motherless. Without mother. At the time, I was overcome by a high degree of trauma, a trauma that cannot be undone. Worse, this trauma is precognitive. I, like millions of my adoptee crib mates, do not know what life is like without trauma, as we were introduced to life in such a traumatic state. Due to recent scientific studies, we know this to be true. Babies are born expecting to meet their mothers, hear their voices, smell their scents, taste their milk.  When their mothers are not available, they become traumatized. If puppies and kittens must stay with their birth mothers for a few weeks before being adopted, why is it okay to separate a newborn from her mother at first breath?

After reading and processing this research, I could finally grasp the source of my annual torment. It’s my adoption trauma raising its ugly head and expressing itself.

My actual birth day was not a happy day. There were no relatives there to hug me and fawn over me. There were no flowers and balloons in the hospital room. No one was smoking cigars anywhere. I was moved into the natal ward to be cared for by nameless faceless baby handlers.  I cannot account for the first few weeks of my life. There are no photos. There are no family stories. I do not know who bathed me. Who fed me. Who swaddled me. My biological parents did their best to forget about me and move on with their lives while I was swept into the system as a ward of the state. It is hard for me to imagine how a human being could be more vulnerable.

I have been reunited with my biological family, including my birth mother, since early 2017. She and I have become very close since our reunion. We routinely explore our feelings about my adoption and have deeply emotional conversations about my issues. We become extraordinarily vulnerable in the process, and she wants to take all that pain from me. She never knew the depths of trauma adoptees are exposed to, and she suffers in guilt as a result.

As much as adoption agencies and society at large claim one can paper over this separation with love, there is no amount of love that can fix this vexing situation that arises through the act of adoption.

She was not without trauma, either; it has riddled her since my birth. We cannot forget that birth mothers suffer too. I listen and help her unpack her suffering and sadness. We promise each other that we aren’t going anywhere. One separation is enough for her and me.

Recently, my birthdays have improved. It has helped to learn the science behind what a newborn knows and yearns for and how the absence of those things results in trauma. This has truly aided me in my quest to understand myself. Added to that, several biological family members love to celebrate my birthday with me too, as they hold it in high regard and see it as a monumental day that absolutely needs to be celebrated. Some want to celebrate all the “lost” birthdays we didn’t get to celebrate before our reunion. Further, I have found solace with adoptees on social media and in a local adoptee group I run. I’ve learned that there are many other adoptees who find birthdays equally painful and anxiety inducing.

With time and healing, my birthdays are becoming less toxic and angst-ridden. I am more relaxed and I smile more than frown. Birthdays are meant to be happy days, and I am on the path to making sure that my birthdays are happy before they run out.— Adrian Jones, an advocate for adoptees and heart health, lives in Marin County, California with his wife and two children. Visit his blog, An Adoptee Shares His Story. Look for another of his essays here. 

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