By Cindy Shultz
In my mid-twenties, I was raising two children by myself while caring for my mother, whose ever-changing mental health needs kept me on notice. I began seeing someone twelve years older than me. He drank a lot and told me stories about his chaotic adventures, like growing up traveling with the circus and getting lost in the desert while hopped up on meth and peyote. Though the stories should have been a red flag, they sounded like adventure to me. His handy nature was helpful for home and car repairs and his vibrant personality and exotic tales brought excitement to my otherwise laborious existence. By the time Emerson Blake Bennett came along, I was a beautifully broken mess.

I grew up in poverty with both mental illness and alcoholism in the home. My parents barely had adulting skills, much less social-emotional ones. As such, I had a hard time making friends, and my schoolmates picked on me. So, I spent the long days of my childhood bicycling around the vast rural countryside with my imaginary entourage, exploring abandoned houses. I couldn't wait to be free from the chaos at home, but pregnant at 17 and again at 20, my freedom came in the form of buying a mobile home on an acre of land with money from my deceased father’s life insurance policy. Within three years, my mother moved in after a stroke exacerbated her schizo-affective disorder.

The emotional emptiness of my childhood—stemming from parentification, unmet needs, and a lack of friends—created a void that I filled with reckless behavior, codependent relationships, and late nights at a country bar in West Lodi, Ohio (population 223). Huppy’s was one of the bars I frequented with my dad as a child, and it felt like home when the world seemed too big. The owner, Ed, was Dad’s good friend. He missed him and loved to tell me stories while pointing out the old rusty foothold traps, vintage metal signs, and shotguns my dad donated to decorate his bar. The bartenders, who were local housewives, became my friends.

This latest relationship brought an exciting distraction, like a ripple through stagnant water. I had grown accustomed to casting emotional dependency on unsuspecting partners who had little to offer. It was the life I knew. Familiar felt safer than the unknown. A few years in, I realized I had feelings for this man in a way I’d never experienced. Was this… love?

By Dr. Liz DeBetta 
​As adoptees, many of us live with a kind of void that is hard to describe. It’s the space where answers should be but aren’t, where family history should connect but doesn’t, where the feeling of rootedness should live but feels absent.
For so many of us, the void is ever-present — like a constant dull ache. That void is real. And like all humans, we reach for ways to soothe it.
The problem is, not all coping mechanisms — or even so-called “healing spaces” — actually help us heal. Some offer temporary relief while quietly keeping us stuck in cycles of harm. Others create the conditions for transformation, helping us move toward wholeness. This particular void requires more than simple attention; it requires gentle witnessing, love, and care.