by Lake Calder
​I wonder…do all parents think their kids are going to get married and have kids of their own to spend holidays with? Is that just part of the parental mentality? Most parents expect their children to outlive them. Sadly, that isn’t always the case. Research reveals that the risk of suicide attempt is approximately 4 times greater in adoptees compared with nonadoptees (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2013). I’m an overdose survivor, and for many years, my parents had reason to fear they might outlive me.
Adoptees that do outlive their parents might still not go on to have children or families of their own.
What if the child/future adult has a physical/mental illness or disability that precludes them from having a partner or children? What if they had a bad experience with their family and don’t want to risk re-creating it? Who will they have to spend holidays and special occasions with? Will they have cousins, siblings, parents’ friends, their friends’ kids, community?

by Corey Goldwaves
(Chaotic rhyme scheme to match my emotional state)
​


As I enter the home to over-salted deviled eggs, loud dogs, and poisonous side conversations,
the adoptive family quickly unleashes their shallow holiday greetings and stale smiles.
The black sheep of the family has entered the home with the people-pleaser persona ready to please,
and the scoffing house owners' covert resentment that you can see for miles.


I go straight to the TV gathering because sports takes precedence over discussing the oddities of the human soul.
Any emotional releasing of truth from an adoptee to a narcissistic narrative holder, to their image, may take a serious toll. Along with football being the shield to any true connection, the subject of jobs is always a safe bet.
Employment talk is a sanitary substitution to life's passions, the path to which an adoptee's heart is truly set.


I mention my joy of a piano gig to an adoptive sister's husband, who quickly changes the subject.
God knows how many complaints they have shared about me as I stay in their minds, they're abundant.
It's an unspoken rule that I am not to share my success unless it is theirs that is confirmed to be greater.
Their ego is fragile, their understanding is short, and their comfort mindsets are baselined at haters.


I pretend to be ok as I walk in circles, hitting the appetizers and surface-level relations.
Only dreaming to myself of real connections and completely conscious of the apparent negative vibrations.
It's time to eat and I sit at their kid's table with another outcast who is an overt racist.
But not outcasted for his racism, it's his word against mine if I'd ever complain, and their distaste for bigotry is forever in stasis.


It's time to go home, and alone, my depression hits, for I long for the compassion of another.
I long for a family that knows me well, my pains, my yearning to uncover.
I declare Thanksgiving is the last holiday with the adoptives; I refuse to bear them for Christmas.
The adoptee chat is my new family now, my allies, my companions, my witness.

​

About the Author:
Corey Goldwaves is a Black, transracially adopted artist who expresses his emotions and heals through music. Listen to his music here: https://coreygoldwaves.bandcamp.com/

​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 [email protected]

By Hannah Andrews
First things first.

As 2024 draws to a close, I want to express my gratitude to our guest bloggers. Your essays and poetry are a generous and precious gift to our community. Words matter. Stories change lives. Hearing a short piece of memoir from a Baby Scoop Era first mother jump-started my own search and eventually led me here.

My thanks don’t end with the bloggers, of course.
​
I continue to learn from so many in the community. Since beginning my mother of origin search six years ago, my journey “through the fog” and toward “adoption consciousness” has been, well, bumpy at best. It seems every time I think I have this whole adoption thing figured out, I don’t. I’ll read an essay or memoir, click into a conference or peer support group and BAM! Another a-ha moment smacks me right in the face.  An “Oh, I never thought about it that way,” self-realization or a, “Wow, yeah, that happened to me too” bubbles up from my memory.  

By Dr. Liz DeBetta
Four years ago I wrote an essay for NAAM called Adopted Bodies Are Good at Holding it All In. Revisiting this piece of writing is an act of reflection and a way to track my growth. To remind myself that healing is possible and that I am doing it one day at a time even when it feels like I’m not. At the time, I was in the midst of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy and had written and performed my now award-winning solo show Un-M-Othered for the first time. I was deeply engaged in the radical act of making my truth known so that I might feel more healthy and whole. So that I might feel worthy of taking up space. So that I might help others to feel seen, heard, and understood. In that essay, I wrote,

The thing I want most in the world is to be healthy and feel whole. In many respects, I am healthy by society’s standards, but I am not healthy in myself because I have never felt like a whole person. I feel unhealthy because I feel like a fraud.

I feel like my insides don’t match my outsides, and I am constantly exhausted by trying to figure myself out. I have struggled to feel worthy of taking up space. I am so used to keeping myself small by not talking about things. By holding it all in. By ignoring my own pain, I have made myself numb. I have made myself a container of fear.

by K E Garland
Ever since I was a child, I’d sensed something was wrong with me.

I used to fantasize about and crave sex, well before I understood what it was. At the end of my eighth-grade year, I succumbed to desire and lost my virginity. Afterward, I developed an art of quickly connecting with boys—and eventually men—through mutual attraction. Once I received a man’s sexual attention, I determined if I actually liked him. Sometimes I did. Many times, I did not. I thought this behavior would subside when, in my early 20s, I met and married my college sweetheart and then had two daughters. Unfortunately, the pattern persisted, so I became adept at hiding what I perceived to simply be a socially unacceptable personality flaw.