Essays, Fiction, Poetry

By Adam E.L. Anthony

All my life, I’ve been told stories about my adoption that include words of gratitude, love, excitement, and pride, with a not-so-subtle Christian overtone from my family, friends, family-friends, and acquaintances. Those are the origin feelings I was supposed to emulate and identify with.

I’m not saying I didn’t genuinely have those emotions. It’s just that the darker and more complex emotions of anger, confusion, frustration, and doubt were “too much” for many that I have grown up with. I put those emotions away in a box without discussing them much, but they were still apparent in my actions and behaviors. Anxiety became a best friend. And how easy it can be to expel those feelings on unsuspecting people I encounter. I then feel hurt.

With the journey I’ve gone on so far, there is so much hurt, accompanied with sadness and some regret. It mostly has to do with those ancestors and biological connections passed that I never got the chance to connect with or those with whom our time together on this earth was much too short. It hurts that the people involved and the system did not consider my possible desires to want to know where I came from and the people who played a part in my existence. The assumption that I would just be okay with living a life that never fully suited me and having a limited backstory because “I’m so blessed and grateful to have the life I’ve been given, so the rest is moot”—well, that’s just incorrect. I feel the pain from the choices other people made for me, and because of my birth and adoption circumstances, there was nothing I could ever do. (Continued)

By Michelle Talsma Everson

“It has been an honor to raise you…”

She met me when I was 21 and broken. Now, a lifetime later, I’m 36, and she’s sitting across from me at Disneyland, pausing to make sure I understood that.

Also a mom, I understand the honor that comes with motherhood. Still very much broken but actively seeking healing now, I don’t comprehend how that honor can be applied to me. It’s like I understand it theoretically, but my heart is working on accepting it. One day at a time.

I am an NPE (non-parent expected). The dad who raised me isn’t my biological dad, and the man who is isn’t interested in taking up space in that realm. It’s like someone being raised from the dead and dying again. Not many people mourn the same relationship twice.

Even before I knew I was an NPE, I was the daughter of alcoholics, addicts, two people battling undiagnosed mental illnesses. They died when I was 22 and 24. I had their grandson in between. I was never loved how a child should be loved. Love is conditional, of course, dependent on how you act, who you pretend to be, and the moment itself. My parents tried—likely doing the best they could with the tools they had—but betrayal, abuse, and diagnoses of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and more tell a story that’s not pleasant to hear. “Sometimes we are the casualty in someone else’s battles against themselves” is my favorite quote from the internet.

“It has been an honor to raise you…”

She met me when I was 21 and broken. Now, a lifetime later, I’m 36, and she’s sitting across from me at Disneyland, pausing to make sure I understood that.

I refer to her as my bonus mom in my narratives. Mother-in-law no longer fits, and the guilt from that is something I battle. I want to apologize to her that her son and I couldn’t make a marriage work. I want to ask her forgiveness for me being so much. So much trauma. So much talking. So much anxiety. So. Much. Everything.

Instead, she simply says, “I love you for you, unconditionally.”

The thought floors me.

I love my own son unconditionally. There’s nothing he could do that would change that. So, in theory I understand, but my heart has a hard time believing that could be applied to me.

I often think of my own parents, dead now nearly 14 and 12 years, and I wonder if they’d still love me knowing that I found out about a long-held secret and—to heal—I share it with the world. I know they wouldn’t approve of how I live my life in that aspect and so many others. I hope they’d still be honored to have raised me. I’m not so sure.

But my bonus mom shows it through action, not just words. We have boundaries, but she knows my secrets, she includes me, she stands in the grey between being my ex’s mom but also being my friend, advocate, and bonus mom. She encourages us to be the best people we can be and to do what’s best for her grandson. Beyond that, she simply holds space and is there when we need her. She doesn’t play favorites between her son and me. It’s a balance not many manage.

By Dawn Post
Aiden’s* father pushes him to the attorney representing NYC’s governing child protective services agency, the Administration for Children’s Services (“ACS”), and a caseworker for the agency that’s been assigned the care and responsibility of Aiden and his siblings. “Fine, if you aren’t going to let me have him then you take him,” he yells and storms out of the courtroom. When I reach 7-year-old Aiden, he’s huddled in a corner crying and screaming. Hand in hand, we desperately search the courthouse for Aiden’s father, as this was not, in fact, a case where Aiden has been removed from his father due to allegations of abuse or neglect. Rather, his father has the misfortune of simply being a parent who no longer lives in NYC, and ACS refuses to let Aiden cross state lines to live with him. So, Aiden remains in stranger foster care, and his father travels from South Carolina for visits and court appearances when he is financially able to do so.

Since the early 1960s, the process of transferring children who are involved in the child welfare system has been governed by the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC), a uniform state law adopted by each state. The ICPC has been subject to much criticism. Any family law practitioner can tell you that the ICPC can take months and even years. I worked on another case which involved a custodial parent in Florida. Her children were placed in foster care in NYC after their grandmother was charged with abuse while they were on vacation with her. Despite getting an order for a Regulation 7 ICPC, which should take 30 days to completion, it took nine months because it had to be reinitiated each time one step in the process and timeline was missed. As soon as the word ICPC is voiced in a conference or courtroom, everyone has a visceral reaction, frequently one of trepidation. Because while the ICPC creeps along, children languish in foster care, usually with strangers, even when there are family members, and even when they have parents like Aiden’s, who are eager and able to care for them. And the state that stirs the most dread because of lengthy inexplicable delays, ironically, is one that New York shares a bridge and tunnel with, New Jersey. (Continues)

By Hannah Andrews

My glasses weren’t rose-colored, but they were the wrong prescription. I see adoption more clearly now, and in previously overlooked places–often hiding in plain sight.

I recently rewatched “The Truman Show,” a 1998 film lauded for its artsy take on free will, privacy, and our perception of reality. It both predicted and parodied the reality TV explosion. It also was a subtle, if unintentional, jab at the closed adoption system. The lead character, Truman Burbank (Jim Carey), is an adoptee. Truman was “chosen” pre-birth from a pool of unplanned pregnancies and legally adopted by a corporation (the TV studio). His entire life was fabricated and filmed—fake parents, a fake town, and a fake world that is actually an enormous domed production studio. As cracks work their way into the facade, Truman begins to question, and quest for truth (True Man) ensues.

You see it, right? Chosen. Adopted. Fabricated. Search for truth.

Yeah, I missed all that for over two decades.

In my defense, adoption was not the focus of the movie. I suspect it was just a handy plot device. (Adoption so often is, but that’s another essay. ) Maybe the writer was typing up the tale and thought, “How could this character have zero clue about his real identity his whole life? Ooh—I will make him adopted!” The audience doesn’t learn of the adoption until well into the film. It’s a catch-all explanation.

Like Truman, I’m an adoptee. Mine was never a secret, but other truths eluded me, and I was mostly okay with that.

“I’ve always known I was adopted but never wanted to search.”

 This was my mantra, repeated with an eye roll for nearly fifty years. Mostly, I just wanted control of the narrative. Long before DNA tests were a thing, people—friends, relatives, random strangers—constantly questioned my lack of search, my ethnicity, and sometimes even my lack of questions. I accepted my false reality. The identity quest wasn’t for me, but if other adoptees felt the need to search, I didn’t criticize. At least, not out loud.

Unless you count my older brother, who found his family of origin when we were in our twenties. His green eyes sparkled as he described meeting his biological sister and how she looked like him. “Can you imagine?” he gushed.

I seethed. Imagine was all I could ever do.

I saw a baby bird on my walk recently: long legs, tiny body, fluffy feathers, and barely moving. It had fallen from its nest on the sidewalk, frantically chirping for its mother. I watched it for some time. As I bent down to pick it up and put it to safety, it hopped closer to the tree’s edge, hiding in the monkey grass. The mother bird finally chirped back, calling out to her baby. I left it alone since she knew where it was, safe in the monkey grass, camouflaged from predators.

My oldest child, Noah, just started sixth grade, which is middle school where we live. At the prospect of this occasion, I have had myriad of emotions since the beginning of this year. I could not name what it was, but now I know: it is fear. I am scared for Noah, much like the mama bird who was chirping for her baby, hoping it was close by and away from danger. Noah’s strong, extroverted personality will not allow him to stay hidden.

Middle school scarred me, as it does with most. The taunts and ridicule for being an adopted Korean made my middle school experience hell with no fire. I stuck out in my mostly White middle school in Alabama with no chance to blend in, although that is what I desperately wanted.

Noah and I approach life in the same way. However, whereas I was completely unprepared for middle school,  Noah was ready for sixth grade and has been for the past couple of years. Even through the COVID-19 pandemic school years, he showed signs that he was prepared academically and mentally for whatever challenges middle school would bring. For instance, Noah reads on a Lexile Level for college and career readiness and is also learning Spanish and Korean. In 1996, I was not ready for middle school, and I am the one who is not

ready now.

With many of my parental moments, there is a mix of joy and sorrow. Joy because Noah has made it to 11 in one piece, and sorrow because my circle of influence is much smaller than it used to be. I am losing him bit by bit with each passing day as he forms his own sense of self and the person he is growing to be.

Parenting in general is a challenging adventure. Parenting as an adoptee brings another layer of complexity that I did not foresee as a newlywed dreaming of the prospect of motherhood. I did not realize that many of the struggles I faced as a child, such as identity and belonging, would be issues my own children would face too but in different ways.

I am not one of those mothers who cries with each achievement: cutting teeth, crawling, toddling, walking, talking, potty training, starting preschool or elementary school. I was happy to put each of these occasions behind me because I knew once achieved, something new would take its place. But Noah starting middle school has made me cry multiple times, which has surprised me.

Sadly, I do not have a mother, birth or adoptive, to call and ask, Is this reaction normal? To feel this scared? To feel this ill equipped? Melancholy mixed with a side of bittersweet makes me wonder if my birth mother ever longed to see what I have accomplished. Or does she view me as a forever baby trapped in 1985? Was there a “before” time, before I was a problem or a burden, and an “after” time when I was no longer there that chronicles her life and keeps her trapped too?

I think about you almost daily, but it doesn’t sting as much anymore. I am so grateful for that because I don’t think that people are meant to hold onto that much pain for too long.

“You are your father’s daughter…” the Disney song played on my radio. Yes—yes, I am. The man who raised me will always be my dad. I cling to my maiden name like it’s made out of gold. Pictures. Stories. Tattoos. I cling to them all.

“You can sit in the suck while still looking forward to the future.” My therapist chirps and I wrote it on my phone notes. For once we’re not talking just about you. The passing of time does help.

Still, those same phone notes have a list of things I want from you—bare minimum bullet points that I hold close to my chest. When I mention them—those closest to me re-affirming, “No, it’s not stupid to want that.”—that helps. Each small acknowledgment helps.

You’re the part of my story that almost broke me. The part only those closest to me know. However I came into this world, half of my genes are yours. Still, I only whisper your name to those I trust wouldn’t “out” you. (I am so scared to out you.)

I apparently have your nose and your hustle. I, too, can work a room and make strangers into friends. I’m hurt. I’m embarrassed and self-conscious (though I did nothing wrong). I’d never expect anyone to replace my dad, but to know you exist and that your life won’t change because I also exist is a pain I cannot explain. A friend put into words what I couldn’t: “You expected his life to change too.” Yes, unmet expectations perhaps hurt the most.

I could corner you, rant and rave and ask about my list. Or calmly “make” you admit X, Y and Z. But I will not force myself into your life (no matter how much I want to). The person who is coming to rescue me is me. (Which is so hard to tell my inner child who apparently was still waiting for someone to come.)

And everyone, all well-meaning, have their opinions on what I should do or how I should act.

But they’re not the ones whose world crashed, and they weren’t left putting the pieces back together. They’re not the ones whose hearts break at nearly 1 a.m. in the bathroom, tears falling, wanting to scream into the ether that, “It’s not fucking fair.”

 Some days I’m glad it happened. Other days I wish it never did. Always I don’t understand how you could see photos of my growing boy (genetically, your grandson) and not want to rush to know him. If roles were reversed, I’d have been on the first flight.

As time goes on though, so many wonderful people restore my faith in humanity.

NPE: Non-Paternal Event 

(noun) A genealogical term used to describe the disconnect that occurs in familial lineage when a person, as an adult, discovers at least one parent is not biologically related.

(noun) a qualifying term used by people who have experienced the unexpected discovery of a genealogical disconnect between themselves and at least one parent.As in: “When I found out my parents used a sperm donor, I realized I am an NPE.” 

MPE: Misattributed Parentage Event 

A social term used to describe the myriad DNA-discoveries that can occur, including Late-Disocvery Adoption, Donor Conception, and Non-Paternal Event. As in: “I found out that as a teenagerI had fathered a childr; when this person reached out to me, I realized I am a part of the MPE community.” 

Genetic Mirroring

A term or phrase used to describe the powerful experience of seeing similar physical traits in a relative. “Without genetic mirroring, I’ll never understand where my green eyes came from.” 

Facebook: 

(noun) Modern society’s downfall. See also ‘social media,” “Twitter,” “Instagram,” “Discord.”

It was a lovely photo, an innocuous post. A group of dark-haired adults sitting around a table, smiling at the camera, golden hour sunset glowing from a side door. Colorful Fiesta pottery suggests a delicious meal is imminent. Wood side-paneling screams “Montana cabin,” and I swear there are golden-retriever puppies asleep on the floor. 

“It’s a truly amazing feeling when I can see all my siblings at one time again. The nostalgia hits hard and the old and new memories made are truly a blessing.” 

For a split-second, it is no big deal. I scroll social media quickly these days, tired of its mundanity, confused by the chaos, embarrassed to be addicted to it anyway. I stop at this one, caught off guard by the golden hues. My heart leaps into my throat, and my breath quickens. I feel angry and sad at the same time. I think I am being ridiculous and try to move along to more important posts like parenting memes and Tik-Tok tips. But my thumb is out of my control, bringing the handsome family back to me again and again. 

They are my handsome family; I was not invited to dinner. 

At the end of each Wednesday evening writing class, the instructor gives us a prompt to write on for the following week. She instructs us to write for 20 minutes and limit editing. We need to have the piece ready to read at the next class gathering. The last prompt was to write about “a lie I told.” I’ve never been good at telling a lie, so this was a hard assignment. When I was a kid, I got caught whenever I told even a little white lie. There wasn’t any point in lying, so I stopped. It took me a few days after getting the assignment to remember a lie I had told.

I needed a passport because I was planning to go to Cancun, Mexico in September 2005.  I applied and later received a letter in the mail saying my application was denied because I hadn’t submitted documentation to explain why my birth certificate was filed 14 months after my birth. The first call I made was to my mother to tell her my passport had been denied and ask if she knew why my birth certificate was filed so long after my birth. She said it must have been a clerical error and hung up. I called the town clerk’s office in the state where I’d been born. The person who took my call couldn’t help and advised me to contact the probate court. I called the court and was told to write a letter to the judge stating dates of the trip to Mexico, including the passport application denial and the reason for the denial. I was hoping the court could actually find the documentation explaining that reason. I wrote and mailed the letter the next day

After this experience, I began to wonder if I was adopted, so I left some messages on adoption reunion boards with basic information, such as the year and location of my birth, hoping to connect with someone who might have some information about me. At that point, I was willing to try anything. I just wanted an answer to this mystery. I’d mentioned to my family that I might take a day off from work and go sit at the Probate court to see if I could get an answer to my letter.

Then I had an idea. I’ve always gotten my medical care at the clinic in our town—the clinic where I’ve worked for years—so it occurred to me to go to the medical records department and review my chart. I spent my lunch break on August 22, 2005 reading my medical records. The first line of the last page in my chart—essentially the first page documenting my life with the Sheas—said “Adopted Baby, 4 lbs 4 oz.”  Finally, I had confirmation that I’d been adopted.

So what are we supposed to do the day after—the day after our life is upended by a call, an email, a Facebook message, or clicking on new DNA results?

Mail-away DNA kits promise adventures of discovery, mysterious and exotic cultures, and inspired histories of relatives once lost; they are instead Pandora’s boxes and, once opened, can never again be closed. My kit certainly led to discovery as promised, but not the kind seen reflected in carefully crafted and nostalgic commercials. In my case, half of my family tree, meticulously constructed over decades, lay in pieces on the floor, leaves violently stripped from limbs in a sudden storm. The father who appeared in my now fading childhood photos and forever inscribed on my birth certificate, prominently positioned on the first branch in that tree, hadn’t, I discovered, created me. His leaf was the first to fall. I numbly stared at the screen as each of my four paternal half-siblings faded entirely away. A full-sibling transformed into a half-sibling. My paternal tree was bare.

DNA tells no lies, and the truths it reveals can be shocking. Day One, Discovery Day, raises questions rather than answering them. What the hell just happened? Who is my father? How does one deal with a half-empty tree at 58 years old? How does one process a nearly sixty-year-old lie? With these and countless other questions racing in my mind, I did something counterintuitive and went to sleep, my brain pleading for time to decompress.

On day two of my non-paternal event (NPE) journey, I woke surprisingly calm and energized despite having no earthly idea what I needed to do next. I was accustomed to dealing with complex problems, but this was like no mystery I had ever tried to solve. I paused, took a deep breath, took inventory of what I had at my disposal, and was encouraged by what I found.

The abundance and quality of my DNA matches were tremendous assets. While there were no parent or sibling matches on my list, there was an individual labeled as a possible “1st cousin” who had a publicly available tree with 1000+ entries. All by itself, that was a gold mine. I also matched with several dozen second and third cousins and noted the same surname repeatedly appeared in that group. A quick cross-reference with my first cousin’s tree found that same name within his first two generations, so the odds favored I was on to something important right away. Was that my father’s name?

While I technically had a free Ancestry account, I quickly discovered that I would need to upgrade to gain access to any of the choice information I needed to fill in the many voids in my understanding, so I paid for the cheapest version offered. The resources available through this paid account were immense and much better than expected, but I hadn’t opted for the more expensive plan that provided access to old newspapers. I quickly learned that was a mistake, so I did what any other mature and law-abiding citizen would do in my situation and became a Google and social media stalker.

We were sitting in the car on the way home from school and I shared with my son how I re-discovered a childhood Bible of mine that my dad had given me, and I couldn’t wait to show him because my dad had really cool handwriting.

He replied, “I think I got my handwriting from my dad…” then we had this pause moment that comes with the reality of an NPE discovery. My dad, his grandpa, didn’t pass his cool handwriting down to him—or the color of his hair, his eyes, none of it. We found this out a little over a year ago – and it’s been a struggle for me to return to center.

But then the empathy and grace came in: “He wasn’t your genetic daddy but he taught you lots of stuff and that counts too, mama.”

Empathy for other people’s experiences is something I hope he’s gaining from this experience he’s walking with me.

Since late March 2021, no, mama hasn’t been okay—not 100%. But I’m working on it each and every day, and he sees that. People have reacted differently to this experience—and we talk about how there’s no good or bad guy—just people doing the best we can to deal with something traumatic and new.

He sees me have good days and bad days. Of course, I shield him from most of my bad days, but he knows words like “mental health” and “therapy” and “gratitude journal” and he sees me struggle but he also sees me succeed. And I get the blessing of seeing him grow and learn and absorb, and I am amazed at his self-confidence and sense of self.

I made an NPE discovery a little over a year ago and I continue to tell myself that, “The bounce back is going to be epic.”

When your whole world shatters and time and space stop making sense, you need something to hold onto as you sit in the suck and hope better days are coming.

And better days do come.

But then so do bad days.

And medium days.

The bounce back isn’t as dramatic as you picture; it’s quieter and more sustainable; comprised of hard work and clinging to sanity.

It’s small victories and painful boundaries being set by others and yourself.

It’s f-cking hard, not epic.

It looks like going to bed at a normal time after reading no less than three devotional and one prayer app.

It’s praying. So. Much. Praying.

It’s talking about the same thing repeatedly until you apologize to your friends and thank them for their continued patience.

It’s panic attacks at the idea of being social when you used to be an extrovert.

It’s a smaller, more sustainable friendship circle.

It’s breaking down multiple times because nothing goes as planned.

In a single afternoon, I experienced both sides of the non-paternity event (NPE) / biological family fence, and it all started with an unexpected phone call from a friend.

I was traveling out of state and three hours from home. Only a few minutes after I transitioned from the backroads of scenic North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains to congested I-40, I received a text from a familiar name. Because I was driving, I called back rather than texted. I knew him as both a friend and professionally from a previous vocation and didn’t find the text unusual. Although the call started with small talk, like many conversations, I perceived some nervousness and hesitancy in his tone, so I encouraged him to “just spit it out.”

He told me that he’d purchased a DNA kit as a Christmas gift for his sister, the family’s historian and amateur genealogist, and she’d discovered something unexpected in her results. The entirety of their father’s side was missing in her DNA matches. Perhaps thinking there was a mistake, she encouraged her brother, my friend, to submit his sample. He found the same results; there were no DNA matches on his dad’s side. Over months of research, she had carefully and painstakingly pieced together a picture that seemed to reveal their biological father. His sister had reached out to this person and he consented to submit a DNA test for confirmation. The results were in. My father was their biological father. My friend told me we were half-brothers.

Life doesn’t equip you for every moment, and this was one of those moments for which I was unprepared. I had no script to follow, no foundations on which to rest or react. While still weaving through increasingly heavy traffic as I slowly edged towards Asheville, I inquired about the ages of my friend and his sister. Quick mental math revealed that the older had been conceived when I was two and the younger three years later. Though my parents later divorced, they were married during the births of both of these individuals. As shocking as it was, this news somehow too comfortably aligned with the mental image I had developed about my father. My father and I were significantly misaligned in nearly every meaningful aspect of personality, temperament, demeanor, and worldview. We have been estranged for years. I chuckled out loud as I processed it all.

There was, however, a certain uneasiness that began forming in the back of my head. I had submitted a sample for DNA analysis several years earlier, primarily because of curiosity about my ethnicity. I had given the DNA matches section little attention. My father, my friend, and his sister, all closely related, should have been recently added to my match list, yet I hadn’t received a single notification from the DNA company that these new persons had been added for my review. As several direct-to-consumer DNA companies offer this kind of service, I first thought my new relatives had used a test from a company different than the one I used, but my new half-brother confirmed that they’d used the same company I had. My next thought was that I was no longer notified when matches appeared. This seemed entirely plausible as I gave very little thought to these matters. I didn’t have the company app on my phone, I had forgotten my password, and I hadn’t brought my laptop. I was several hours from home and unable to further investigate this possibility.

i.
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.

As 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.

I 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.

My 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 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.

My 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.

From a very young age, I was always deathly terrified of cockroaches—these slimy, dark creatures that live in the smallest and darkest crevices where nothing else could ever imagine existing. I think this fear originated from being allowed to watch horror movies with my older brother before the age of 5. My mom told me that if I started to believe any of the movies were real, she wouldn’t let me watch them anymore. She assured me that the events in these films were just fiction, even though a lot of the scenes felt very realistic. If I started to have nightmares or be afraid because of the movie, I would not be permitted to stay up late and hang out with my older and cooler brother. I simply hid my terror about the many scenes that elicited fear. That’s how I continued to hide my feelings for the rest of my life, stuffing them below the surface so no one could access them and use them against me.

I specifically remember watching a particular episode from the 1980s series “Creepshow” in which a cruel germaphobe is killed in his apartment by a swarm of cockroaches. I don’t remember all the details, but I was terrified by the scene in which hundreds of bugs crawl out of his mouth and over his eyes. I was convinced that these filthy, awful creatures would find me and bury me too.

In the southeast, we make up special names for these creatures so they don’t sound so grotesque. In coastal North Carolina, they’re referred to as water bugs to differentiate the larger insects from the smaller bugs. The large cockroaches usually thrive in conditions with more rain and humidity and typically are more present when the seasons change to cooler weather as they search for warmer environments indoors. This important distinction is made so people will know that this type of cockroach exists through no fault of theirs. The other kind—the smaller variety—may signal to others that there’s an infestation due to less than ideal conditions, such as uncleanliness. As an adult, I find this differentiation ridiculous; it seems to reflect the way that our society silently judges others for their simple existence today. Because why would an infestation be anyone’s fault? This seems to place blame on being dirty or being poor or having no ability to rid yourself of the infestation.

In the picturesque city of Charleston, South Carolina, a true representation of the genteel south, these disgusting creatures are referred to as Palmetto bugs. I still remember the first time I saw one. I squealed in a panic while my then-boyfriend calmly explained that the Palmetto Bug is the other state bird of South Carolina, a true beacon of the city—a flowery term to describe a very ugly insect in hopes of accepting its indigenous right to exist in a city that barely stays above water.

Strangely enough, I’m not that afraid of spiders or other insects. I have a healthy fear of snakes, but an irrational fear of cockroaches, especially the large ones. Regardless of what they’re called, my fear of them continued to grow. Whenever I saw one, I broke out in goosebumps all over while silently trembling and desperately trying to escape the room. What is it about the creatures that live in the dark that make them so terrifying? Is it the idea that they live in a place of darkness or is it the darkness they bring with them that’s frightening? Maybe it’s the darkness that morphs them into these ugly creatures. Or is it that they live in the dark because they are terrible and are unworthy of living in the light?

It was winter up North. I was four, riding shotgun with my dad in a car on the highway. The naked trees scarred the grey sky, and now and again, birds flocked and dipped in the wind like shards of glass slicing the clouds. My cheeks burned hot. My dad had rolled the driver’s side window down an inch and the whistle of the cold wind sucked his cigarette smoke out the crack. Every time he took a drag, the tip of his cigarette glowed orange underneath the grey of the ash. When it got low, he lit a fresh one from it, then tossed the butt out the window. The inside of the car smelled like Kool menthols, sedan vinyl, and drugstore aftershave.

I was unbuckled because we all were back then, and I fidgeted in my seat, uncomfortably eager to reach a bridge I would be able to see from the driver’s side window. I didn’t know why I felt nervous, only that I had a knot in my stomach that periodically lurched into my throat.

When we got close to the bridge, I slid across the bench seat, grab my dad’s arm, and peered down the divide between the two sides of the highway into a gully that led to a tunnel, where I got a quick glimpse of a black hole framed by the arch of the bridge. I could never quite see what was inside that little hole, but I kept trying. I needed to see it, but I didn’t know why.

I suppressed a thrill of fear whenever I saw it. Mostly I feared missing the opportunity to look inside the hole, because I believed I must look inside it, or else the day would go wrong. The hole bothered me then, and the memory of it bothering me has bothered me for most of my life, with the kind of prodding nag you feel when you are on a 46-year hike and there is a pebble in your shoe. You can ignore it for a while, but eventually it rubs, then blisters, then becomes infected. Then it festers and begins to rot, and you worry about it possibly killing you.

For years I didn’t remember where we went on those rides, so I didn’t know what to make of the memories, or of my fear of seeing that bridge, so I banked them alongside hundreds of other memories that made no sense, like the time I was awakened from sleep by yelling and the shattering of the storm door glass, and the next day, after the doctor had stitched up my mother’s hand, I broke the household silence by asking what had happened and my parents said, “Nothing.” Or when I once got up the courage to ask my dad why he was always so mad at me, he told me to ask my mother, and the bitter way he said it made me afraid of the truth. Or that time when, after several years of chasing his love and not catching it, I asked my mother if he was my real father and she said, “Shame on you.”

Years later, while visiting my dad, I brought up that morning drive and the bridge and he said, “That was when I used to take you to daycare.”

“I went to daycare?”

“You don’t remember? It was a home daycare. Run by a guy. You cried every time. Every day for a year you cried, and I never knew why.”

“And you kept dropping me off there? To a home daycare center run by a guy? To a place that made me cry every day?”

The 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 80s, I did not 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 for large gatherings when I was very young. The evangelical church community my adoptive parents belonged to recruited new members throughout the Long Island, New York suburbs. Their 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. I and two of my brothers 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. I and my adopted siblings 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.