by Taya Reed
There are stories written in ink.
And there are stories written in the body.
I came with paperwork.
A decree.
A new birth certificate.
A file sealed and placed somewhere official.
On paper, my story looks complete.
But if you have lived adoption, you know — the record rarely holds everything.
Some of what shaped us was never documented.
Some of what shaped us did not yet have language.

by Jessica Boston
Each year, I experience the holidays as a season of buzzing excitement, Hollywood-like nostalgia, and a bit of chaos thrown in for good measure. I navigate big feelings, endless plans, and at the end of a whirlwind few weeks, I find myself returning to the familiarity of habits and patterns that are both healthy and unhealthy; the unhealthy ones soldered to me like shields of protection.

Every January, I also find myself bombarded with an onslaught of advertisements telling me how I should change and what goals I should set for myself in the coming year. Whether it is diet plans or meal services, gym memberships, or apps to track my activities—each touting guaranteed results by the way—the message being that with a commitment, and spending a whole bunch of money, I can be a whole new person.

For me, being adopted means change can be tumultuous. It’s equivalent to instability, unpredictability, and “little me” gets lost. In birth, and subsequently in childhood, change meant a loss of self, a disregard of my identity, and a command of obedience and performance in what was characterized as “adventure” ahead. There was no room to process the grief and loss that accompanied it. I was expected to embrace change, celebrate it, and in many ways, be grateful for it.

Change became emblematic of a metamorphosis, but rather than feeling a little tender but renewed at the end, I felt like the molted pieces left behind. Forced to keep moving, devoid of predictability, I became accustomed to the idea that change was something that happened to me, something for which I held no agency. So, in adulthood, I spent huge chunks of my life resisting change, settling in, and hiding in the familiar just to survive.

Despite what the advertisers have to say, the “new” of the new year in nature is not until spring begins to warm the earth again. And as an adoptee, I am not rushing change. With the passage of the winter solstice behind us and the days continuing to grow longer, I am asking myself: What if I explore change through intentions as a process rather than double-clicking for yet another subscription and the promise of immediate results? During these winter months, what if I explore simply setting the intention and building a practice around finding healing and peace, for myself and for my community? Because the only change I am now seeking is in the form of healing and finding ways to feel whole.

I believe healing is a sacred component to my ability as an adopted person to move through this life and to empower me to live my life most fully. So in this month of January, as the ads continue to roll in, I am inviting room for intentions rather than resolutions. I am committed to exploring what I hope to see in the new year, exploring what will feel purposeful as I move through the darkest days and the coldest nights of the year, and allowing the coming light to guide me.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac reports that immediately after the solstice, the increase in sunlight per day increases by seconds at a time, but will steadily grow into 3 minutes a day by late February. As each day grows incrementally longer through January, I am also exploring how to bring healing and light into the many places in my life impacted by my adoption journey and story.

I am still learning definitions and theory and exploring the research that informs how each of us is navigating an extremely complex system. For example, “integration” in the adoption space very broadly refers to how children integrate into the adoptive family. But for me, and for this chapter in my life, I am challenging and questioning how I am actively bringing my whole self into the life I have built in adulthood, because while I have always been of both a family of origin and adopted, I was never able to integrate both identities at the same time.

So while the media and advertisements encourage immediate transformation in just 30 days!, integration for me almost seems to suggest the opposite. With the gradual increase of sunlight, how can I integrate both identities into my life? In this incremental process, what progress is finding me?

Most days are humid where I live, even bordering on warm for days at a time, which keeps the bone-chilling temperatures of winter at bay. But on the days when the sun is shining and I feel guilty for hiding in my house on these shortened days, I consider the guilt and shame and the many narratives I feel as an adopted person to perform, to be prolific even. As an adoptee, there are tremendous expectations to be productive, to be grateful, and to make the most of this “gift” that is adoption. Yet, even as the sun shines, it is a practice for me to consider rest - what it is, how it is showing up in my life, and how I am making space for it. But I cannot integrate all of myself into the life I have built if I have to perform for the benefit of others while ignoring myself. So I must have time to rest.

In my own healing journey, I am setting the intention of not just naming rest, but seeking rest and unlearning my conditioning to keep working. For all time, I knew—and my body knew—what the car sounded like from inside the house as it pulled into the driveway outside, my body knew what the keys sounded like from inside as they turned in the locked front door, my body knew the sound of footsteps and the mood of the bearer of those feet, and I knew if I wasn’t doing something, I better get up and get to work. What needs to be cleaned? What should I be studying? What should I be “doing?” But what I have come to practice in undoing the childhood conditioning of “if I’m working, you’re working” is allowing for the space and the intention in this new calendar year to invite and integrate rest and healing.

Setting an intention does not require me to be superhuman. It is just a few more minutes of sunlight a day, bringing me warmth and healing. This intention gives me the permission I need to integrate light into my life as an adoptee. I am letting this new year be about the revolution of the sun and not the resolution of forced expectations. I am not able to change how I relate to others as an adopted person overnight, but I am working on how I am bringing my whole self into every room with me, and I recognize it will take me many seasons to move from intention to integration. But as I explore this transition and season, I cherish protecting the time, the quiet, and the rest it will take me to bring my intentions to life.

So in this season of winter, while the nights are still longer than the days, I am embracing it as a season of pause instead of production, and I am listening. Listening to myself and all the voices within me, waiting for an opportunity for expression. Bringing all of myself into the room with me, boldly mashing those eggshells as I go. Bringing all of who I am into the light and letting the night keep painful parts. Pausing to see what’s out there ahead and visualizing what comes next. Because while advertisers would have me believe this is a time for ambition, I am keeping my eye on those three minutes of sunlight. Sunlight that I am pausing to watch grow, and noticing how it is growing within me.

Despite what was dismissed as my identity as an adoptee, the light was there all along. I am who I came into the world as and the person I had to be to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I am adopted, but I am native in my own story, and it’s a story I am writing by the light of three minutes of sunlight at a time.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jessica Boston is an adoptee from Honduras through an interracial closed adoption. She first connected with the adoptee community during the pandemic through resources from Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, which provided invaluable support and connection. Jessica now volunteers as a peer facilitator to help create safe, understanding spaces for fellow adoptees to share their journeys. Jessica holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from The University of Texas at Austin, and has over 15 years of professional experience in health care policy and advocacy. Outside of her professional and volunteer work, she enjoys camping with her spouse and their rescue dogs, as well as attending live concerts.

AKA invites you to hear from members of the extended family of adoption and the surrounding community.  While we take great care in curating the content, please know

• ​The opinions of the authors we invite to share are theirs and theirs only 
• Some of the content shared here may be emotionally activating depending on your personal journey - therefore, please be sure to practice self-care and seek the support you may need
• ​If you would like to be a featured guest-blogger, please submit your piece for consideration to BlogandNewsletter@adoptionknowledge.org

By Kathleen Shea Kirstein
The telephone cord is so short that I feel trapped in a 3-foot space. I can’t pace, which is what I want to be doing—anything to dispel this adrenaline circulating through my body. I am on hold with the Passport Office to find out why my passport did not arrive in the same envelope as my husband's. We had applied for our passports several months before, after winning a trip to Cancun. My husband's was a renewal, and mine would be my first-ever passport. I was thrilled, but now I stand here on hold listening to the crappy elevator music..

Finally, a voice on the other end of the phone said, “Your birth certificate was filed fourteen months after your birth. You did not send documentation to explain the delay in filing your birth certificate. We require this documentation to proceed.” She discussed that a packet of information would arrive in two weeks.

I barely choked out the words, “Ok, thank you.”

I called my mother. Hoping she would have the answer to this question. We were very close and talked at least once a week.


“It must be a clerical error, I‘m sure it will be fine,” she said and hung up on me.

I stood in my 3-foot square staring at the phone receiver in my hands. Sobs overcame me. I hung up the phone, palms of my hands against the wall, and I let the emotion wash over me. What was going on? Why did she hang up on me? What did I do wrong? I suddenly had an urge to leave the country, probably because I had just learned that I was trapped in the USA.

It was twenty years ago in August, but it feels like yesterday.

That call resulted in 3 months of online searching for answers when I should have been sleeping. It ended up with me checking my own medical record on a whim. Finding that last page in my chart that read: Adopted Baby, four pounds, four ounces, two weeks premature. As a nurse, I worked in the building where I had gotten all of my medical care. That was also the day I went into my medical record and erased all of my past family medical history. For half my life, I had been using the medical history of a family for which I shared no DNA. What was my family's medical history? Who was my family? As I sit here today to type this essay, I am three months away from my sixty-ninth birthday.

On that August day, I embarked on a rollercoaster ride that led to a reunion with my maternal family. The gift of that reunion was learning that my brother and I were full siblings, for I had always wanted a brother. In fact, as a child, I had tried to turn my two favorite cousins into brothers, but they had no interest in this little girl who wanted to spend time with them. Teenage boys had better things to do.

Slowly, I am rebuilding the foundation of my identity. I was the only person in my small town who didn't know I was adopted.

I had a reunion with my paternal half sister that went very well. Three days later, I received an email stating, “Do not contact me or any member of my family again.” I decided at that moment that I was at least a well-rounded adoptee, having known both rejection and acceptance.

The biggest revelation came on December 31, 2019, at 6:30 pm, a DNA test done for fun revealed that my brother and I actually have different fathers. I was devastated. Again, I would be going into work and into my medical record, this time I only erased the paternal family medical history and said through my sob’s “ Not again”. I was back on the search for my biological father and family.

Shouldn’t it be easier the second time around?

It wasn’t emotionally; it was harder.

I held dear synchronicities with the man I thought was my biological father all those years. I discovered that he died the day I learned I was pregnant with my son, whom I named Christopher. Unaware his daughter was named Christina.

I traced the DNA matches with the help of some friends and have been in reunion with my paternal side for a few years now. My half sister and I spend time together. My half-brother met me once and decided that was enough. I now have two brothers with the same first name and middle initial. My ex-husband and I now both have sisters with the same first name and middle initial. My two adult sons decided who gets the uncle and who gets the aunt in front of their names to ease the confusion about who’s who. I have even collected some new first names as a result of learning that I started my life with a different name.

Adoption is very complex. I have learned that things are no longer either-or, it's and. Example: I carry grief and joy side by side, think of scales of justice if you need a visual.

I have found solace and healing in the adoption community. I have learned about relinquishment trauma, along with other trauma responses. I am learning to find my voice in speaking with my non-adoptee friends and others about the impact of late discovery adoption.

As the Christmas season approaches, I reflect on a situation that I would never have questioned would be DNA-connected, or perhaps it was just that my biological mom and I share the same personality. To set the scene, my adoptive mom loved Christmas. She had a knack for finding the perfect present for each of us. She decorated to the hilt, magazine-perfect. She loved entertaining her friends, and her wrapping was next-level. All my life, I tried so hard to measure up. I admit that I am not the best at picking gifts for people. I do better during the year when I know someone needs something, I pick it up and give it to them then.
I accidentally set the tradition of wrapping my Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. I found myself spending those hours wrapping, berating myself for not measuring up to my adopted mom. I am my worst judge, jury, and critic. Cruel to myself is the one sentence description. I gave others grace, but never seemed to have any left over for myself. It actually became the annual wrapping-and-berating party for one. I often use humor as a coping skill. That and minimizing, but I am getting off track.

That year, I decided to call my brother and ask how our Mom was at Christmas. He said, “I don't want to speak ill, but she wasn't perfect. Gifts in a bag. She was much better during the year.” We talked for a few more moments and hung up the phone. I burst into sobs, wishing I had called him with that question years before. He had just described me. I simply had different DNA from my adopted mom. I was an apple, and she was an orange—the thought of all those years I spent berating myself for not measuring up.

The psychological damage I did to myself was so unnecessary if I had only known of my adoption sooner.

I would have better understood the reasons for my unique body type and problem-solving skills. I would have understood better why I never felt like I fit in or belonged anywhere. I might have learned to give myself grace earlier than age 68. And understood the importance of self-love and self-care. It was trauma responses, not my personality, driving me while my authentic self sat unaware in the back seat of my own life.

That's the wound-healing work I continue to do daily—the gift of strength in knowing that I can do hard things and find humor along the way.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kathleen Shea Kirstein is a Baby Scoop Era, Domestic, Same race, Late Discovery Adoptee and NPE (Non-Expected Parent Event). She’s the mother of two sons, a retired Registered Nurse.
She’s the illustrator of 3 children's books with author D Ann Hollon and has three essays published in Severance Magazine.
Dear Mother https://severancemag.com/dear-mother/
Blown off Course: https://severancemag.com/blown-off-course/
There Was a Secret: https://severancemag.com/there-was-a-secret/
Kathleen serves on the board of Adoption Knowledge Affiliates and volunteers as a peer supporter facilitator for AKA support groups.

AKA invites you to hear from members of the extended family of adoption and the surrounding community.  While we take great care in curating the content, please know

• ​The opinions of the authors we invite to share are theirs and theirs only 
• Some of the content shared here may be emotionally activating depending on your personal journey - therefore, please be sure to practice self-care and seek the support you may need
• ​If you would like to be a featured guest-blogger, please submit your piece for consideration to BlogandNewsletter@adoptionknowledge.org​

Develop self-awareness. Currently, adoptees’ voices are being amplified to raise awareness. We long for our adopters, birth parents, and those outside of the constellation to understand the pain some of us have endured. Raising others’ awareness is an integral part of effecting change, but something else is equally important—developing awareness of oneself.

This is no easy feat.

Developing self-awareness requires introspection—an examination of one’s own thoughts and feelings. We can journal and meditate to become introspective, but these are merely tools. In my experience, the act of introspection requires intentional reflection. For example, we can commit to a plan of journaling, meditation, and reflection during and after adoption conferences and meetups. Deliberately processing what arises during interactions with fellow adoptees can help you locate triggers and subsequent opportunities for personal growth. This could lead you to a deeper sense of self-awareness, which will allow you to engage with others in healthier ways.
​
Embrace your identities. For over 40 years, researchers have known that there are seven core issues in adoption, one of them being identity (Silverstein & Kaplan, 1982). As a result of anxious and avoidant attachment styles that are common for adopted people, Roszia and Davis Maxon (2019) have added that identity issues can affect relationships and self-esteem. In fact, these scholars said that “if…constellation members have not fully addressed the initial four core issues, identity issues may occur” (p. 147). Meaning, if you haven’t dealt with the loss, rejection, shame and guilt, and grief of being adopted, then you may continue to struggle with being your authentic self in your everyday life. This can negatively affect how you show up in adoption spaces.
​
In talking with adopted people, I’ve sensed that some seem to cling to an adoptee identity. For some of us, this sole way of being can offer a sense of importance we may not have felt since the day we were “chosen.” For others, it may offer a feeling we’ve never felt at all—importance. In the adoption community, we can become superstars, who are valued simply for our lived experiences. If we are credentialed, it is easy to garner attention through platforms, podcasts, and organizations. We are finally seen, heard, and belong, just for being our adopted selves.

Many seem to use their adoptee status in positive ways, but I fear some use an adoptee identity to boost self-esteem. Additionally, this identity can be pain-centered. So, I’d like to offer an alternative thought: We are more than our birth parents’ relinquishment choices; we are more than the dreams we may have fulfilled for our adopters; and we are more than the adoption trauma that has ensued. Being an adoptee is one part of our whole selves. Recognizing this is an important first step toward building an authentic sense of self.

Acknowledging all our identities is a second.

One way to learn who you are, sans adoption, is to dive into fourteen questions Roszia and Davis Maxon (2019) created. Here are a few of my favorites:
● Who are you? List all of the words you would use to describe yourself.
● Which part of that list would you openly share with others? Which parts of yourself would you keep private?
● When do you feel as if you are masquerading in a role, and do you fear others will see the truth behind your mask? Where, when and with whom do you feel authentic? (p. 163)
These questions presume we have several identities, not just one. Honest answers can help you find yourself outside of your adoptee status.

Lead with empathy. In a short timeframe, I have had the good fortune to meet and work with numerous adoptees. Likewise, I’ve read seminal works that some of us carry in our backpacks and purses. I’ve familiarized myself with texts that highlight our shared truths. Like some of you, The Primal Wound has informed my understanding of how adoption has affected my life. I shelved The Seven Core Issues of Adoption and Permanency beside Mother Hunger. All three are stacked on my bookcase.

Podcasts, professional relationships, and collaborations have further shaped my understanding and impacted me on a personal level. As a result, I now assume that every adoptee I meet has interrelated trauma rooted in relinquishment. No matter how many degrees or how high functioning, I assume every adoptee wrestles with a unique combination of loss, grief, and rejection.

Conscious or unconscious, I assume you, dear adoptee, are like me and struggle with a sense of belonging. We are, indeed, real-life mirrors for one another.

Whether the reflection sparkles or is smudged, I offer every adoptee empathy. Before I hear anyone’s story, I know the other person deserves my compassion. They don’t have to earn it. This doesn’t mean we should withstand each other’s bad behavior. After all, we’ve been through enough, and we don’t need to re-traumatize one another. However, if anyone should understand why an adoptee “acts out,” demonstrates perceived bad behavior, or shows sadness and despondence, it should be us. Adoptees should be the first ones to offer empathy toward one another.
​
Unfortunately, leading with empathy is not always the norm. It should be. We have choices when we meet with one another: we can either co-regulate our nervous systems, or we can further dysregulate them. I recommend the former. I suggest we practice the three above ways of being, so we can learn to honor one another and create authentic communities of care. It is in this way that our lives can and will be enriched by one another’s presence.


Works Referenced:
Silverstein, Deborah N., and Sharon Kaplan. “Seven Core Issues in Adoption.” September 10 (1982).
Verrier, Nancy, N. The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. (1993).
Roszia, Sharon, and Allison Davis Maxon. Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing in Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third Party Reproduction. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
K E Garland is a same-race, domestic adoptee and an award-winning creative nonfiction writer and blogger. She is also co-founder of Black Adoptees Meetup. Garland writes to demarginalize women's issues. Her essays have been published in several anthologies, including Chicken Soup for the Soul's I'm Speaking Now: Black Women Share their Truth in 101 Stories of Love, Courage and Hope and Mamas, Martyrs, and Jezebels. Her work has also appeared in online magazines, such as midnight & indigo and Raising Mothers. Garland's debut memoir, In Search of a Salve: Memoir of a Sex Addict, illustrates how unresolved, interrelated trauma, including adoption, can lead to a behavioral addiction. Her book was long listed for the 2023 Santa Fe Writers Project.