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.

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By Megan Culhane GalbraithOnce upon a time a little girl was born in a charity hospital in Hell’s Kitchen to an unwed mother.

Her name was Gabriella Herman and she was adopted about six months later. Her name was changed and her identity was erased. Her birth certificate was dated two years after she was born.

By the time she was six months old she’d had three mothers: a birth mother, a foster mother, and an adoptive mother.

_____

My reunification with my birth mother began via a letter from Catholic Charities followed by another by Air Mail from my birth mother. To me it felt like a new beginning. Perhaps then it is fitting that our relationship would end with a letter. This time it was sent 25 years later and by certified mail.

_____

The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book is my attempt at unwinding the story of my birth and identity through the lens of stories told to me by my birth mother. The book was accepted for publication on Mother’s Day 2020. The synchronicity was not lost on me. My debut! My first-born! My book baby! My mother—dead for decades—wasn’t here to celebrate my happy news, so I called my birth mother to tell her my book was about to be born.

She was excited for me on the phone. She mailed me a congratulatory card. Inside she wrote; “You did it! Congratulations on getting your book in print in 2021. How wonderful! XOX.”

She was fond of using the USPS and had a habit of sending me envelopes stuffed with news clippings, Harper’s articles she’d torn out of the magazine, and typed letters that contained sternly worded directives even though I hadn’t asked for her advice. I called these her “lectures.” I shrugged them off in the interest of maintaining a relationship with her. After all, she was the only mother I had left.

_____

I use dolls as a window into my story by recreating photos from my baby book in my dollhouse. Doing this allowed me some distance from my fears. By playing with dolls I could examine those fears through a different lens. Dolls are used to understand trauma in myriad ways—“show me where he touched you,” or “point to where it hurts” or “can you show me where she hit you?”

Memory born from trauma is full of dead ends. Shame is spring-loaded. My birth mother’s stories circled back on themselves: they were versions of a truth.

When I brought up the shame and the trauma I felt as an adoptee, she said they were useless emotions.

_____

As I dove into editing my book I sought permissions from my father, my siblings, and my birth mother to use various photos from my baby book or, in my birth mother’s case, from the album she’d given me titled “Our Family Album.” These were photos of her as a teenager, in her early 20s, and of our reunion in New York City, at a hotel just blocks away from The Guild of the Infant Saviour, the Catholic unwed mother’s home where she’d been sent to have me.

Dad gave his immediate approval: “No one can tell your story but you, honey,” he said. One of my siblings supported me; the other did not.

After weeks of unusual silence from my birth mother I became concerned. My follow-up emails were met with what felt like chilly silences. When she finally wrote back her tone was cold.

“I sent you a letter about permissions,” she said. “You need to go to your local post office to investigate.”

“Need” and “investigate.” Those words sent me into a spiral of anxiety.

In the early stages of my search for her I’d used the number on my birth certificate to compare with the numbers in the genealogical listings at the New York Public Library. It was an exhaustive and fruitless effort. Now, she was asking me to search again, but without a USPS tracking number I was at a loss. It was like I was setting out on another search but this time without even a number as a clue.

_____

I began thinking about silences. I re-read Silences, by Tillie Olsen.

THE BABY; THE GIRL-CHILD; THE GIRL; THE YOUNG WRITER-WOMAN

“We cannot speak of women writers in our century (we cannot speak of some in an area of recognized human
achievement) without speaking also of the invisible, the as-innately-capable: the born to the wrong circumstances—diminished, excluded, foundered, silenced,” writes Olsen.

“We who write are survivors . . .”

_____

Many emails later, my birth mother forwarded the USPS details to me. As I clicked through the tracking system I realized she’d sent me a certified letter. I was stunned. It had been undeliverable for nearly a month and was now on its way back to her marked, “Return to Sender.”

_____

re.turn  |  \ ri-ˈtərn
intransitive verb
1.     to go back or come back again //return home

transitive verb
2.     give, put, or send (something) back to a place or person

sent\ ‘sent\; sending
transitive verb
1.     to cause to go: such as
        a. to propel or throw in a particular direction
        b. DELIVER //sent a blow to the chin
2.     to cause to happen //whatever fate may send
3a:   to force to go: drive way
         b. to cause to assume a specified state //sent them into a rage

_____

A wise friend of mine told me her experience with book publishing was 90 percent wonderful and 10 percent “a blow to the head you never saw coming.” Here was my 10 percent. I felt physically sick for days. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I felt nauseated and deeply lonely. The two people most opposed to me using my voice were the two most closely connected to me by adoption.

Why a certified letter? Why such an abrupt change in tone? Why the long silence and sudden secrecy? What had changed in the days between our upbeat phone call, my birth mother’s congratulatory card, and this letter? Why couldn’t she have returned my phone calls?

“Can you please email me the contents of the letter?” I wrote.

“After two failed attempts by the U.S. Postal Service to deliver this May 22, 2020, certified letter to you, I have no choice but to send it by e-mail,” she wrote, copying my editor and the series editor.

Before she’d grant me permission to use the three photos she’d need to read, revise, and edit my entire manuscript, she said. She suggested there were inaccuracies. She requested her privacy.

“I hope that you will have the honesty and integrity to grant this request,” she wrote.

Was she trying to keep my book from being published? Why was she making this about her? I felt like she was trying to silence me just at the time I was finding my voice.

_____

The search for my birth mother began nearly 25 years ago via a letter from Catholic Charities that contained her “non-identifying information.” From those spare details, plus a search by my caseworker, I found her. She’d been willing to be found. We began a long-term relationship. She’d promised to be my open book. She’d said I could ask her anything. I listened to her stories and wrote a book about piecing together my identity via her memory, among other things.

She’d surrendered me when she was 19 years old. We’d done the hard work of knitting each other into our families. Now she was demanding I erase her from my narrative.

How could I choose a name for her that would signify this second erasure, this silencing?

_____

erased; erasing; erasure
transitive verb
1a.   to rub or scrape out //erase an error
b.     to remove written or drawn marks from //erase a blackboard
c.      to remove (recorded matter) from a magnetic medium //erase a videotape
d.      to delete from a computer storage //erase a file
2a.    to remove from existence or memory as if by erasing
          b. to nullify the effect or force of

_____

Fairy tales fascinate and annoy me because of the lack of agency of the female characters. The women are acted upon, locked away, shut up, and shut down (many times this involves a wicked stepmother.) They wait for permission to speak, or for a prince to rescue them.

In deciding on a pseudonym for my birth mother I was firm that I would not erase my birth name, or our shared last name. I’d had enough of the shame, secrets, and half-truths that burden us adoptees. The shame wasn’t mine to carry anymore. If she wanted to live in the shadows, so be it.

I’ll rename her in my book I told my editors, but I won’t erase myself in the process.

I chose the name Ursula. It reminds me of another tale; that of Ursula the Sea Witch in Hans Christian Anderson’s 1836 version of The Little Mermaid. Ursula demands the little mermaid’s voice in exchange for fulfilling her desires.

“But if you take away my voice,” said the little mermaid, “what is left for me?” goes the tale. … “Put out your little tongue that I may cut it off as my payment …” says Ursula.

_____

In his column for Catapult called “Love and Silence,” my friend and fellow adoptee Matt Salesses writes about how hard it is to tell a story the narrator is not supposed to tell.

He teaches Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. He writes:
“. . . begins with a story the narrator is not supposed to tell. It is the story of her drowned aunt, who was erased by her family because her story is unacceptable: She became pregnant out of wedlock. In punishment, the townspeople burned the family’s crops and killed their livestock, and the next day, the aunt was found with her baby in a well. The narrator, Maxine, is told this story by her mother, on the day she gets her first period.

“Beware, the story implies, of desire. The narrator’s retelling of her mother’s story doesn’t censor desire, but explores it, wondering whether the baby was a result of rape or love, why the aunt did not abort it, why she jumped into the well with it—a kind of mercy? The retelling is an act of love. Maxine frees her aunt from erasure, by making the story-that-should-not-be-told (which is always only one story) into many stories, reinstating her aunt in the realm of imaginative possibility.”

The retelling is an act of love … in the realm of imaginative possibility.

_____

One of Ursula’s favorite books was Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale. I have the copy she gave me here in my lap. I’ve read the novel many times. It was Setterfield’s first published book.

The narrator is Margaret Lea—whose name is near perfectly similar to my birth mother’s. In the novel, Lea admits to feeling like half a person who is compelled to unwind the narrative threads and the secrets of a reclusive writer named Vida Winter. Winter tells her dark family story through Lea, who is not allowed to ask questions.

The epigraph of the novel reads:

“All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind, and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t is the truth; it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”
—Vida Winter, Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation

The Thirteenth Tale is a story about endings as much as beginnings. It is structured to begin where it ends because, in the end, both characters confront the weight of family secrets, their pasts, and their intersecting stories. Its themes are identity, loss, reconciliation, and death.

I’m unsure what compelled me to pick up the book again except the vague memory that it was a book about a book about memory, and that it was significant to my birth mother. When I first read it years ago, I’d wondered if she was trying to tell me something. It felt like a harbinger. Just like the main character, Ursula had been telling me stories about my birth and her life for years. Many times she bristled at my questions and shut me down.

“The past is the past, just leave it there.”

“Whose memoir are you writing, mine or yours?”

The end always justifies the beginning.

_____

I have a poem by Lucille Clifton secured to my refrigerator titled, “why some people be mad at me sometimes” …
“they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and I keep on remembering
mine.”

_____

Most fairy tales have a “happy ending,” but that rarely happens with adoption. Have we come to the end of our story? Is this what is meant by “coming full circle?”

I was born. I was surrendered. I was adopted.

We were reunited: lost and found and lost.

It’s been nearly a year of silence from her. My book will be born on almost the same day one year after she sent me that certified letter.

I must now be the one to surrender.

THE ENDMegan Culhane Galbraith is a writer and visual artist. Her work was a Notable Mention in Best American Essays 2017, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, Redivider, Catapult, Hobart, Longreads, and Hotel America, among others. She is associate director of the Bennington Writing Seminars and the founding director of the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont Young Writers Institute. Look for her on Twitter, on Instagram here and here, and on Facebook here and here. Go here to buy signed copies of The Guild of the Infant Saviour and for information about events and interviews.

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 Sara EasterlyA common mistake adoptive parents make when hearing adult adoptees speak about adoption trauma is discounting their experiences because “times have changed” or their adoptee hasn’t voiced similar feelings. Some parents will straight-up ask their adopted children if they feel the same way and then rest easy when their children deny having similar feelings. Differing details of adoption stories can be used as evidence of irrelevance. Adoptee voices that land as “angry” are often quickly written off as “examples of a bad adoption.”

“Not my adoptee,” is a knee-jerk, defensive response that blinds parents to adoption-related dynamics that may be uncomfortable or painful to consider—especially when everything seems to be going swimmingly in early childhood. This posture, though, discounts the real and proven trauma inherent in adoption, missing an opportunity to fully support adopted children and ultimately benefit from closer, more authentic relationships.

That trauma looks good on you.

One reason it’s so easy to miss signs of adoption trauma is because it can present so well.

Adoptees are unintentionally groomed to be people-pleasers. Once we’ve lost our first mothers to adoption, we can work incredibly hard to win the love of our next mothers. We strive to measure up—doing and saying whatever is needed to keep our adoptive mothers close. This is all unconscious and certainly not meant to be fraudulent. To our brains, running the show, it’s simply a matter of survival. Children need parents, after all, and attachment is our greatest human need, taking priority even over such basics as shelter and food, as explained by child developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld.

Of course, “good,” compliant behavior is welcomed and adored in our culture. What parent wouldn’t find a well-behaving child absolutely lovely? As a mother, I confess that my job feels so much easier when my kids behave. Unfortunately, though, the more adoptees are praised for our good behavior, the more our unhealthy patterns are reinforced and extend outside of our family relationships. We’ll ditch our true feelings in a heartbeat if it means feeling treasured and keeping loved ones close.

Other manifestations of adoption trauma are valued by mainstream culture: perfectionism churns out hard-working, dedicated students and employees who’ll always go the extra mile—nobody spotting the adoptee’s frantic need to prove his or her worth. Adoptees often make natural leaders—nobody knowing that we can harbor a desperate need to be in charge that started upon relinquishment when our brains decided nobody was looking out for us, so we’re best served when we’re at the helm. People-pleasers can also be charismatic, supportive, empathetic, and generous … others unaware of the self-sabotage that can be at play behind the scenes. We can seem unfazed in the face of stressful situations, many not understanding that’s because we’ve spent a lifetime diminishing our feelings and disregarding deep pain in order to become masters of compartmentalization.

These are traits we value in society. They serve. These traits aren’t all bad, of course. But they can be inwardly destructive—especially if adoptees aren’t aware of them, and most certainly if the cost is the adoptee’s true sense of self.

Adoption blinds.

Another reason it’s harder to spot adoption trauma is because it hides itself from adoptees themselves. The grief of losing a first family member through adoption is so significant it’s not easily looked at by the adoptee. Like looking at the sun too directly, it will burn. What’s more, our experiences of such great loss are often preverbal, before we learned words like loneliness, isolation, abandonment, and hopelessness to help us understand our overwhelming emotions—so overwhelming, sometimes, they aren’t felt. Our brains protect us in that way, because to feel them just might do us in.

Developmentally, most children won’t even have the capacity to reflect upon adoption loss until much later in life. This is what’s known as “living in the fog”—a state of denial or numbness in which adoptees are unable to closely examine the effects of adoption. When directly asked, in-the-fog adoptees often won’t have the consciousness, or the words, to talk about adoption trauma. We spend years, and possibly decades, feeling more comfortable parroting society’s or a family’s lighthearted interpretation of adoption than trying to articulate our underground, confusing, complex emotions.

When we sense a disconnect between our nuanced feelings and culture’s saccharine-sweet story of adoption, we blame ourselves. When we fail at being “perfect,” we are prone toward additional self-attack. When we’re more three-dimensional than simply “good” adoptees, we can resort to secrecy in order to keep the darker parts of ourselves hidden from those closest to us. In any of these ways, we can end up living a double life, censoring large swaths of ourselves—making it harder to feel fully known and rest in a sense of deep love by those closest to us.

This is why it’s critically important to listen to out-of-the-fog adult adoptees. Adoptees who share their stories aren’t usually doing so for fame, glory, or money, but out of a genuine desire to support other adoptees. We share on the other side of healing—or in the midst of our healing—in hopes of opening adoptive parents’ eyes to our innermost secrets that we wish our parents had had access to in our younger years.

Are some of us angry? Absolutely. Society hasn’t made room for our voices in the story of adoption, despite the fact that we’re its central players. Some of us have been let down by the people closest to us—again and again. Some of us haven’t felt seen or known. Some of us have been mistreated. Some of us have sought to take our own lives to stop the pain without having to shed light on adoption’s darkest manifestations.

“Not my adoptee” could easily be your adoptee—whether you or your child recognize so right now. Like all children, adoptees eventually grow older; hopefully, in the name of their mental health and wholeness as individuals, their feelings around adoption will evolve over time. As your child matures, you’ll want your child to look back and know that you did your best to understand them, to see them, to know them, and to guide them. While all adoptees are different, and each story is unique, listening to #adopteevoices—an array of them—is of utmost importance when raising adopted children toward their full developmental potential.Sara Easterly is an adoptee and award-winning author of books and essays. Her memoir, Searching for Mom, won a Gold Medal in the Illumination Book Awards, among many other honors. Her essays and articles have been published by Psychology Today, Dear Adoption, Red Letter Christians, Feminine Collective, Her View From Home, Godspace, and others. Find her online at saraeasterly.com, on Facebook, on Instagram @saraeasterlyauthor, and on Twitter @saraeasterly.

BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about adoptees, NPEs, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
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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…

Look on our home page for more essays and articles about adoptees, NPEs, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
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By Billie BakhshiMy dad is my dad. I said what I said. You can’t change my mind.

My therapist has tried to—or at least tried to change the words I use to describe my father.

Over my lifetime, I’ve called my father daddy. I’ve referred to him as my father or Steve.

But he was my dad.

My dad was an NPE (not parent expected). He grew up with a drunk mother and without ever knowing his own biological father. He bore his stepfather’s surname and wasn’t welcome at the stepfather’s family homestead over the holidays, unlike his two half brothers—his stepfather’s sons.

I find it interesting that my dad referred to his own missing biological parent as his “sire.” He seemed to be a stickler for labels and calling things by their proper names, although I suspect, in his case, his choice of label was heavily peppered with anger and resentment.

He never knew his father. Or why he left. Or why none of his father’s family sought him out.

But my dad—he was my dad until I was almost four years old.

But then he abandoned me.

My therapist thinks that because he left me, and because he never resurfaced, his title should be nothing more than sperm donor. She thinks by calling him dad I give him too much power and influence over me.

There is language in NPE, adoption, and donor conceived circles to describe family members and relationship roles, but it’s complicated. Words and roles—like dad, father, donor—just aren’t simply defined anymore, and I’ve had trouble unpacking the roles and titles in my life.

The dictionary is useless on this topic.

I had a great conversation with a friend I met in an NPE Facebook group. Our very first conversation was on the topic of fathers. She was donor conceived but was absolutely adamant that this man—the donor—was her father. So I asked her about my conundrum.

When I explained myself she said, “If your dad had died in a car wreck when you were four years old, would his title be changed to sperm donor because he wasn’t there for you anymore?”

I certainly don’t recall seeing “beloved sperm donor” etched on anyone’s gravestone in the history of ever.

My dad was my dad.

Period.

Even if it was for just short of four years.

He was mine. My dad.

You can’t change my mind.Billie Bakhshi is now a fatherless daughter, a second generation NPE whose maternal grandmother was illegally adopted. Her mother was impounded at Booth Maternity Home for Unwed Mothers in Philadelphia, where Bakhshi’s sister, Donna, was given up for adoption through Catholic Charities. Bakhshi has half a dozen (maybe more) half siblings from her father. Where are they all? She’d love to know, too. Bakhshi lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband, four children, a cockatoo, tuxedo cat, and neurotic chihuahua mix. You can follow her on Facebook and read more of her writing at The Family Caretaker. See her previous essay here and here.Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

Please return to our home page to see more articles about genetic identity. And if you’re an NPE, adoptee, donor-conceived individual, helping professional or genetic genealogist, join Severance’s private facebook group.

BEFORE YOU GO…

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• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com
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• And like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/severancemag andfollow 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 B.K. Jackson

Until recently, most people likely haven’t encountered someone who’s been knocked off balance by a DNA test result, so it’s understandable they might not appreciate the magnitude of the impact. But it’s just a matter of time. Mind-blowing DNA revelations are becoming so common that some DNA testing companies have trained their customer service staff representatives to respond empathetically. While those employees may know the right thing to say, here in the real world the people around us often haven’t got a clue how it feels — like a punch to the gut.

If you’ve become untethered from your genetic family, you might get a second surprise: some of your friends and loved ones may be remarkably unsympathetic, often infuriatingly judgmental, and sometimes even hostile. It’s clear that although DNA surprises have become ubiquitous, social attitudes haven’t kept pace, and a stigma remains.

When you’re in a free fall and looking for something to grab hold of, negative reactions can set you spinning off your axis.

It shouldn’t be surprising that people may not know what to say to someone who’s received shocking DNA results. After all, few know how to comfort someone who’s experienced the death of a loved one, even though grief is a universal experience.

If your world has been rocked by a DNA surprise, let those around you know what helps and what doesn’t. And if you haven’t been so affected but want to help and support someone who has, it’s worth trying to put yourself in their place and imagine what the experience has been like. Or better yet, simply ask. But think twice before adding to their distress with one of these unhelpful yet commonly heard responses.

This well-meant platitude isn’t comforting to those who didn’t feel loved and nurtured by the dads who raised them. It’s like pressing a bruise. They wonder whether their biological fathers would have given them the love their dads didn’t or if the dads who raised them loved them less because they weren’t true progeny. And those of us lucky enough to have had precious relationships with our dads don’t need that reassurance. It’s like telling the bereaved their loved ones are in a better place. It’s what people say when they don’t know what to say. It doesn’t soothe our roiling emotions or patch the holes in our origin stories.A more cynical take on the same idea, this attempts to make light of those roiling emotions. If we were lucky, we know our dads are the men who loved us, bandaged our knees, held us, worried about us, sacrificed for us. Our love for them and theirs for us is ineffable, immutable, inseverable. But it doesn’t make us any less curious about the men whose not insignificant sperm gave us life and gifted us with half our genetic makeup.This tries to mollify us and discount our feelings at the same time. Blood is exactly what makes family, consanguinity being the first definition of kinship. Certainly there are also families of affinity, but the familial love we feel for them doesn’t alter the fact that our blood relatives exist and they matter to us.Of course we’re the same people! And yet we’re not. We may feel diminished, less of who we thought we were, or, if we always knew deep down something was amiss, more at ease, more authentically ourselves. All the cells in our bodies are different than we thought they were. Each contains the DNA of someone unexpected that encoded the traits that are the foundation of who we are.No, we can’t. But missing is akin to longing. We can wonder what we missed and long for what never was. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” — the flip side of this comment — is equally untrue. It’s precisely what we don’t know that does hurt us. We don’t know where we came from, what genetic landmines could detonate our health, or the biological relatives who may be out there, somewhere, not even realizing we exist.Letting loose the family skeletons tends to be frowned upon. But just as grief is too heavy to be carried alone, keeping secrets is a lingering burden that feeds isolation and loneliness. It’s a comment that whispers, “You’re a dirty little secret.” It’s not our shame, but it is our truth to tell. As Anne Lamott famously wrote in “Bird by Bird,” “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”Wonder and longing often fuel a desire for reunion with biological relatives, which may be perceived as an affront by our families or as a threat by biological relatives who fear the shame exposure of their long-kept secrets would arouse. Discouraging a search for biological family sends the message that our need to know fundamental truths is insignificant compared to others’ needs to protect their secrets.That millions take DNA tests to see where they come from and millions more trace their lineage seems evidence enough that knowing about one’s pedigree matters. But tracing a family tree isn’t an option for NPEs (non-parental events or not parent expected) who can’t establish filiation, nor is protecting themselves against collateral damage — invisible health risks. For example, I worried my whole life about birth defects, cancers, and other genetic diseases that were the legacy of my Russian ancestors. Fortunately, I discovered I descend from robust Sicilians who lived long, healthy lives. Not so lucky is the ticking time bomb of a 40-year old NPE who doesn’t know he has a father and four half-brothers who all died of heart disease before 45. We simply want the same knowledge everyone else has.Having a good life doesn’t make us immune to despair, confusion, or grief. Ask anyone who’s lost a parent. Comments such as these disregard the sense of dislocation we feel after having been unceremoniously severed from our family trees. And lack of ceremony is key, because when something is lost, even if it’s something we didn’t know we had, there’s grieving to be done, whether the unknown father is dead or yet living. But there are no ceremonies, rituals, or social supports for this particular bereavement.We likely won’t get over it unless we’re able to grieve our losses and gain answers to the questions that others never have to ask about the things they take for granted — knowledge that is their birthright, but, they believe, not ours.Understand it’s complicated. The issues and feelings a DNA surprise give rise to are numerous and diverse. The most meaningful thing you can do is listen and acknowledge the feelings, but withhold judgment. Sometimes a willing ear and kind silence is the best response. Consider how you might feel if you learned you’ve been a secret for decades and what it’s like to see your family tree pruned by half. Erase everything you know about your father: his name, appearance, forebears, and medical history. Erase everything you share with him: his surname, religion, ethnicity. If you didn’t know all this, would you still be who you are? Would you not feel stripped bare and dispossessed? As Michael Crichton wrote in “Timeline,” “If you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree.”Return to our home page to see more articles about NPEs. And if you’re an NPE, adoptee, donor-conceived individual, helping professional or genetic genealogist, join Severance’s private facebook group.BEFORE YOU GO…

• 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 at https://severancemag.com/submission-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 at https://www.facebook.com/groups/402792990448461
• And like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/severancemag and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag

By Liz DeBettaMy body remembers

the shiver of separation

the moment of release

from anything and everything I ever knew

My body remembers

the renunciation

the retraction

the ricochet

of loss

Pain becomes an echo of that loss

that thunders through my skull

screaming

Forcing me to remember what my body refuses to forgetTrauma lives in the body. When you don’t have words to remember, your body will store those memories in fascinating and complex ways. Being an adopted person means living with an overwhelming storehouse of anxiety and confusion that comes from being separated from the mother who carried you in her womb. The only safe place you ever knew is gone, and your baby brain learns to operate on hyper alert, constantly on the lookout for danger. Or, as I like to call it, always waiting for the other shoe to drop (or the shit to hit the fan). Suddenly you are untethered and adrift in a new world with strange sounds and sights and smells that don’t make sense except that you don’t yet have words for it so all of that fear gets locked inside and becomes a constant companion. I have lived with so much fear, so much anxiety, and so much confusion that it’s exhausting. I’d love to sleep, to really and truly sleep, but that is difficult because my body remembers and my brain won’t relax.Breathe

Relax

It’s not real, it’s only a dream

But it feels real and I can’t separate from the feelings that bubble up while I sleep

I want sleep to be an oblivion

A place where I can just relax and breathe

A place where I can take a break from myself

Instead I sweat, cry, search —

for something

or someone

I never find

An endless pattern of up, down, into, through —

stairways

elevators

escalators

hallways

rooms

Desperately searching

Knowing that if I can find it

or you

I will be OK

I want to be OK

to breathe

to relax

to let go

So that when I wake up

I can be here

instead of stuck there

where I can’t find you

frantically wandering on the edge of panic

on the edge of despair

where reality is blurred by the darkness that still seems to threaten me

I have a recurring dream that is a manifestation of my fear and anxiety. It’s been happening for twenty years and it always makes me feel drained, panicked, and powerless. I wake up full of raw emotion, vulnerable and scared even though you are right next to me. Even though you are here and I am not alone. Every time it happens I’m less able to focus, less able to feel capable, less able to be present with you or anyone else. I have to struggle to find enough balance between what I know to be real and what, even though it feels so real, is only a dream. This recurrence is a reminder of how deeply embedded my fear of loss and separation is, a reminder of my terrified baby self who didn’t understand what had happened or why it was happening. This recurrence is what keeps me stuck in those preverbal memories that have such a strong hold on my inability to open up and express my feelings. How can I find the words to say how terrified I feel at the thought of losing you, or anyone I love? That losing you in the dream feels worse than death. It feels like I’m drowning in my own panic and I can’t stop moving because if I keep moving I might keep some of the panic at bay. If I keep moving I might get closer to finding you and then I can rest. So I spend most of my time waking and sleeping in a kind of constant motion to make myself feel safe. But I am safe and unsafe at the same time in this pattern and this constant tension creates a cage that I long to break free from. I have to fight my way back to feeling ok again in the aftermath of the dream because it haunts me and clings like a dark shadow refusing to let go. It makes me feel too much like I’m wearing my skin inside out. But these scars are invisible, only I can see and feel them. This is the stuff that love can’t fix.Liz DeBetta is a PhD candidate in humanities and culture, Union Institute & University (certificates in Women’s and Gender Studies/Creative Writing); a lecturer of English at Utah Valley University; and the writing and performance mentor for Act Risk No More. A member of Actor’s Equity and SAG-AFTRA, she’s interested in performance-based narrative writing for healing and social change from a feminist perspective within the areas of adoption culture and reproductive justice as a way of disrupting dominant narratives and shifting paradigms for adoptees and birth mothers. Her writing has been published on “Dear Adoption.com” and in “#MeToo: Essays About How and Why This Happened, What it Means and How to Make Sure it Never Happens Again.” She’s a team facilitator of Adoptees Connect in Salt Lake City and is researching the benefits of creative writing to heal adoptee trauma.

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

By Billie BakhshiDear Donna,

How’s my big sister? I’ve fantasized about asking you this ever since I found out you existed.

I thought I was the oldest of our mother’s children, but then there you were.

I was 24 years old, nursing my second-born on the sofa when our mother suddenly burst out and said, “I’m not going to my grave with this.” She revealed that she’d been 17, unwed, and pregnant in 1967 and had been sent to live at the Booth Maternity Home for Unwed Mothers. The unnamed boyfriend wouldn’t marry her, so her parents made arrangements for her to be squirreled away, protecting the family from shame.

She lived in a dorm. Think “Madeline” — remember, the children’s book? Except all the girls were pregnant and weren’t to talk to each other to preserve their anonymity. When they walked outside — not in two straight lines as in Madeline — they each wore a slim gold wedding band so they could be passed off as respectable, married, mothers to be.

At Catholic Charities, unwed mothers were “prepared” to relinquish their babies. They were told they were saving the baby from the stigma of being a “bastard” and were being given chance at a re-do in life.

She named you Donna, after the song by Ritchie Valens, which she heard playing on the radio when she was there at the home for unwed mothers. You were whisked away after being born. She saw you a year later, at a relinquishment hearing, and she described you as tall and blonde.

I was stunned by my mother’s confession. I wanted to find you. You’d been there all along — the big sister I always wanted. But then our mother shut down and she’s refused to say another word since.

Armed with your birthdate, the name of the hospital, and the adoption agency, I began to investigate. Booth Maternity Center was gone, and St. Joseph’s University had bought the property. Catholic Charities would not release any information. Sealed adoption. They allowed me to write you a letter. If you ever went looking for it, you’d find me. Maybe. Vital Statistics was another dead end. I posted on the International Soundex Reunion Registry and hoped. With each passing year, my hope of finding you has dimmed.

I imagine you’re the lucky one. The wanted one. Your adoptive parents must have really, really wanted you and fallen in love with you at first sight. Mom was beautiful when she was young, and she always had an eye for a gorgeous man. I just know you’re gorgeous, too. How your mom and dad must love you. I know that not all adoption stories are the fairy tales the Hallmark Channel wants us to believe they are, but I hope yours was.

Meanwhile, I was our mother’s second attempt at keeping a man who didn’t want her. You escaped my fate. Maybe my existence was a constant reminder to my mother that she was unwanted. She never loved me. My first memory of her is of her beating me. I learned to keep my distance, to lay low.

She was unpredictable, her mental health an issue since childhood and exacerbated by drug use. Joan Crawford had nothing on her, and I became the codependent caregiver.

At 17, I was so starved for love that I found myself in the very same circumstances that our mother had been in all of those years earlier — unmarried and pregnant. And she tried to inflict the same heartbreak on me, making calls to maternity homes and adoption agencies to make arrangements for me.

I didn’t know our mother’s history at that point, Donna. I only knew that I could not live without my baby. But when I learned about you, when I fully realized the depth of our mother’s cruelty — being so willing to inflict on me the same heartbreak, completely unnecessarily in the 1990s — it was more than I could bear. I distanced myself for many years.

She never saw my daughter, except in pictures, until Serena was 4. She completely missed the first milestones. I couldn’t bring my daughter near her. What if she gave Serena away when my back was turned?

Cody was the first newborn our mother saw me interact with. I think seeing me, blissfully breastfeeding, triggered her. I was happy. She was not. Her response — her resentment and anger that I had a baby and a husband while she had neither — was, “You have a sister. No, I won’t tell you anything about her. Now stew.”

Our mother is no longer a part of my life. I am finally healing. That said, what do I bring to the table?

• A completely unhappy family history of intergenerational trauma, abuse, and mental illness.
• An obsession with breaking the curse of said intergenerational trauma, a happy marriage, and four great kids who would adore having an Auntie Mame. (I warned you that I fantasize.)

 Confession: I’m so afraid of what I might find in you. Are you plagued with the same mental health problems and addictions as our mother? Will this information disrupt your life or hurt you? Because I don’t want that. No, I can’t help you bridge a relationship with her. Please don’t ask. I burned that bridge permanently.

I only wish you love, joy, and peace, dear sister, even if we never meet.

I’m on 23&Me and hitting Ancestry next.

Love,

BillieBillie Bakhshi lives with her husband and children in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can read more of her musings at her blog, The Family Caretaker.

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

By Kevin GladishOn May 26, 2015, thanks to a change in Ohio law, I received a copy of my original birth certificate in the mail. That day, I finally learned a truth that I had long suspected but denied my entire life — that I was adopted. I was 43 years old.

Six weeks later, I began writing and speaking publicly about it. And I haven’t really stopped.

I had no idea then how writing and storytelling would save me. In those first days, my words were raw and filled with both a newfound freedom and a newfound grief. Learning that I was, in fact, adopted, was like putting on prescription glasses for the first time after years of not even knowing I couldn’t see. But it also meant seeing how long I’d been lied to and what believing those lies had cost me.

I posted my blog to Facebook and waited. At first, my confessional ramble felt like a selfish act of rebellion. Until then, I’d only told a few people what I’d learned. I knew that the news would come as a shock to most — not so much that I was adopted, but that I had only just now found out.

It was embarrassing, like finally admitting that I’d been pretending to laugh along with a joke that I never got, a joke that was on me the whole time. And yet there was also a relief. Despite how I felt, I knew it was not my fault. I simply could not fathom that the father I loved and trusted my whole life, a man I still today sometimes miss terribly despite everything, could look me in the eye when we were both grown men and lie. But that’s what he did. Having seen one too many clues, I’d finally gotten the guts to ask him if I was adopted.

“No,” he said. “You’re not.”

I had a decision to make, and I did what I think a lot of people do when confronted with whether to believe someone they love. I chose to ignore the growing mountain of evidence: photos and timelines that made no sense, memory fragments, and my own reflection in the mirror. I chose to believe my father.

None of this changed what I’d always felt inside. I’d spent a lifetime averting my eyes and changing the subject whenever the conversation turned to family ancestry, a topic that inexplicably made me uneasy. I’d say I was mostly Slovak (I know now I’m mostly Irish) and taught myself to repeat lines like, “I take after Mom. My sister takes after Dad.” In truth, I looked like neither, and deep down I’d always felt like a fraud playing badly at a game of charades.

That first blog post was read by hundreds of people and passed on. I got calls asking if I was OK. People connected me with online support groups of other late-discovery adoptees, with whom I shared more. And for the first time, I felt a layer of loneliness I never even knew existed begin to fall away. I began to relate to people, for the first time, as me.

Of course this was also frightening. At times I was seized with sudden irrational panics squeezing my throat and chest. I imagined losing everyone, being rejected and abandoned for telling the truth. I was sure that somewhere a meeting would be called to decide that I had stepped out of line and needed to be punished. And though my father by this time was gone, and my mother was in the grip of severe dementia, I still believed there would be dire consequences for exposing the truth.

None of this happened, of course. It was all in my mind. But such is the power of deeply held shame.

Until I began telling my own story, I’d been a character in someone else’s made-up tale. It may have been a nice story, but it wasn’t mine. And it wasn’t true. And just as I had been putting my health at risk each time I walked into a doctor’s office and wrote down someone else’s family medical history instead of my own, I was making myself soul sick every time I repeated it.  Now, I could finally start to get better.

It would be a while before I could begin to trust myself. My first instinct, to this day, is to assume that I am always wrong. “You need to listen to your gut,” I’ve been told, and it’s good advice. But what if you’d spent a lifetime convincing yourself that your gut was telling you lies? Journaling and meditation help, along with honest friends I trust. But I’ve got a ways to go.

Years later, I am still new at this. Every word I write and speak of my truth is a battle against self-doubt and uncertainty. But that’s precisely why I keep doing it, long after some would prefer I “get over it.” Again and again, I am saying: “This is me. This is true.” And every once in a while, someone will say, “Thank you. Your story helped me.” I hear not only from other late-discovery adoptees but also from those who are healing from their own family secrets and inherited shame. I listen, and our stories become a conversation, one that saves us both.

Of course there’s always a risk in telling a true story. Not everyone will want to hear it. But someone, somewhere, will need to hear it, just as badly as you need to tell it. I hope you will. I’m listening too.Kevin Gladish is a late-discovery adoptee, writer, and storytelling performer living in Chicago. He started documenting his discovery and search for birth family soon after finding out he was adopted at the age of 43 and is working on a full-length solo performance piece that is yet unnamed. He’ll take suggestions. Check out his blog, A Story with No Beginning: A Late Discovery Adoption Journey.

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By Adrian JonesI share exactly 0.0% DNA with the people with whom I share a last name and my childhood. I don’t look like them. Never have. I have lived nearly five decades as an adoptee.

Regardless, my adoptive family is my family. They raised me and cared for me. They taught me important life lessons and good values to live by. I had plenty of opportunities to grow and little to want for. They provided me and my younger adopted sister a very good life and supported us during the difficult times.

For the most part, we were accepted as one of them across the many branches of the family tree. (There’s a small limb on my maternal side, however, that did not accept me and my sister). While I share a last name with my parents and am legally their child, there’s always been some part of me that feels like I’m not them. To be sure, I am a Jones and our family traditions will be carried forth by me and my children. The family tree will remain standing; I have no intention of cutting it down. There is no doubt about that. All the family histories and lore are as much a part of me as the clothes on my back. In a way they are what keeps us together.

My parents loved us with all their hearts, but there isn’t any amount of love that can fill all the holes created by one’s relinquishment and adoption. I have found it hard to shake the fact that, as an adoptee, I’m known throughout my family as that — an adoptee — someone who came from another genetic line, a limb cut from another tree and grafted onto theirs. When the Jones family gets together, I’m cognizant that they share DNA that I do not.

Three years ago, driven by medical necessity, I charged full steam ahead into finding my biological parents. I found them, still living, along with three half-sisters. They are lovely people who have welcomed and accepted me. Both parents had buried my existence into complete secrecy since the day of my birth, and outside of their respective spouses, no one in either family knew of me. Once I arrived on the scene, both parents came clean with their families, immediate and extended, and the cat was officially out of the bag. The relinquished child had returned.

I’ve been so welcomed that they’ve invited me to mini family reunions on both sides, and I’ve met uncles, aunts, and some first cousins. On the outside looking in, I think it would appear that our reunion story is that of a heartwarming Hallmark movie, and I think in many ways you could make that argument. All things considered, it’s gone very well and I am grateful for that.

These reunions, as with so much about adoption, are complicated. I’m surrounded by people with whom I share a large amount of genetic material and I can trace physical commonalities between us. I love this. By physical appearances alone, I feel at home. I belong. I am surrounded by my blood.

But commonalities end there. While we share genetic material, we do not share history, traditions, family lore. We are missing these things that serve as connective tissue. Stories roll off their tongues as they naturally do when families get together. I am a stranger to them. I feel like I could have been there for them if only people had made different decisions about me several decades ago. They wear their family’s history like a comfy pair of worn-in jeans, but these jeans do not fit me. In fact, I do not want to try them on. At times, it’s hard to hear their stories and memories. I wasn’t there for them. For any of it. Am I supposed to be excited to hear them? Am I supposed to adopt the stories as if they were mine? So far, I cannot. I’m an outsider looking in.

I love these people. I truly do. And our relationship is deepening into really meaningful places. As we unpack decades of separation and learn to move forward together, I’m hopeful that our collective future will bring beautiful experiences and memories. We’ll begin our own family history and lore with a rather unusual start date — one with much of our lives already behind us. I’m fully committed to building upon our relationships, but I know there is a moat between us created by time, separation, and life events.

When we get together with many members of the family and I look like others, it’s nearly impossible to not feel conspicuous. Why is this?

I’m the adoptee who showed up at the front door, pushing fifty years old, with decades of my life behind me, and behind them. How much of an outsider am I? What level of intrusion does my presence bring? They assure me there’s no intrusion, but I cannot help but feel it. In the presence of my own genes, I am an interloper.

Sometimes, when we are together with their extended family, I wonder if they collectively sing this song from “Sesame Street” in their heads, a song that haunted me in my youth.

One of us is not like the others

One of these things does not belong

Can you tell which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?

— 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.

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By B.K. JacksonIn a black and white photograph with deckled edges, I stand grasping the railing of my crib, my eyes peering over my fingers and staring into the camera lens. I like to pretend my mother took this picture on our last day together — that she snipped a slender strand of hair that fell down my forehead and later taped it to the back of the photograph. Maybe she tucked the photo into a small silver box she carried with her move after move, always placing it on the highest shelf in her closet, underneath a pile of sweaters. Maybe each year she took it out on my birthday, remembering how I fussed when she cut the lock of hair or the way I clutched her scarf trying to make her stay, leaving a sticky handprint and a sweet-sour milk scent that still slays her in her dreams. Maybe over time the photo grew brittle and creased, with flecks of emulsion wearing off and its corners crumbling. Maybe many years later, when her children became old enough to snoop, she took the box down from her hiding place and held the photo over the sink, struck a match to it and watched it buckle and warp, the flame moving inward from its white deckled borders, the fire enveloping me in my crib. Maybe she dropped it in the sink but couldn’t take her eyes off it until there was nothing left but charred confetti. Maybe she thought that immolation would annihilate the memories and let her leave me — us — finally, in the past.

Maybe. I’ll never know. For 50 years, she was a mystery to us while we were skeletons in her cupboard. She left no evidence of my brother and me or her marriage to my father. We had existed only as rumor to the six children born after she left us, children named as her sole survivors on the obituary I discovered three years after she died.

I wonder when we became a secret. There must have been a particular moment when she decided to tuck her past life away, like the photo in the box. Did she have to sever ties with everyone who knew her, who knew us? Did she walk away from her mother and father too? Did she expect we’d try to track her down and so covered her tracks? What did it cost her to keep us under wraps? After all, it’s not easy to shed one’s skin — to slough off the memories and never turn back. It takes work to put on a new face for strangers, paint over your history, scrape away your failings and regrets. It takes practice. Once you start keeping secrets, there’s no turning back. You have to pay attention to detail and remember what you tell people so you don’t trip yourself up. You have to be resolute, even when someone tender enough to consider loving you tries to pry open your heart and extract your deepest secrets.

Or maybe it took no effort at all. Maybe she simply started over and let her old life fade away. Let us fade away.

I don’t know what her truth was. Maybe she carried us in her heart like thorns. Maybe she buried her memories deep down only to have them rise back up, like grasping tendrils of a stubborn weed, like tiny hands reaching out to grab a scarf.

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.