The Declassified Adoptee

From a scrapbook my maternal aunt made me. The other day, I had an interesting exchange with one of my best friends.  She is not adopted.  Together, we spoke of family, life, and the holidays.  As I so often do when speaking of both of my mothers, I prefaced "mom" with each mother's first name. I have gotten into the habit of prefacing "mom" with each mother's first name for the sake of clarity.  Simply using "mom" when talking about both mothers in conversation seems to cause confusion.  People interrupt me mid-sentence, "wait, which mom?  Your real one or the other one?" so on and so forth.  The false dichotomization of mothers in adoption as "real" or "unreal" is a microaggression I try to avoid.  Apparently, I have adjusted my speech accordingly.  This friend stopped me in mid-sentence to offer commentary on my use of the word "mom," as so many people have done in the past.  However, what she said wa...

A holiday photo card for you, featuring an image of a gift to me from my original mother. Have you ever had one of those moments when someone says something to you that sums up an ocean of your own thoughts in just one sentence?  I will never forget the moment in undergrad when one of my favorite professors gave a short lecture on what's called the "strengths perspective."  The strengths perspective identifies acknowledges that all people have strengths that can be used to help them overcome problems.  By pathologizing someone instead--choosing to see deficits or assuming the worst of a person--we alienate them from their sources of strength.  We also alientate them from ourselves when we could potentially be a source of strength for each other.  Then he said it, the line I will never forget.   "Be careful not to define 'family' too narrowly for someone else.  Family is a source of strength for many people." Yes , I thought.   That . The ...

I awoke this morning to the muffled sounds made by my two early-risers down in our kitchen.  My husband quietly sang "Happy Birthday" to our oldest son.  Today is my son's fifth birthday.  A string of memories played out in my mind. *** I remember my own fifth birthday like I remember no other birthday.  I awoke the morning of my fifth birthday in our green apartment where we lived until I was ten years old.  I threw off my bed spread and slid down the side of the mattress and box spring until my feet hit the cool, wheat colored hardwood floor.  I excitedly bypassed the enormous refrigerator box at the end of my bed that housed what could only be described as a "ball pit" of stuffed animals.  Normally, I would wake each morning and spring from my bed into my heap of stuffed animals.  That day I did not; I was simply too excited to delay.

"I thought I would have at least two more years before I would have to do this" I huffed in my husband's direction.  He looked puzzled.  I was performing my nightly comb-through of our oldest son's preschool bag, a canvas tote that I had carefully hand-painted with red and black swirls.  I had pulled out his penmanship practice papers, a mixed media collage shaped like an apple, and then I saw it.  A tree.  A large, finger-painted, green and brown tree on an oblong sheet of paper.  The instructions clipped to the top of the tree paper explained that parents were to paste on to the image pictures of family members to create a "family tree."  I held the tree up for my husband to see and he nodded.  He has witnessed my several-years-long effort to educate others on the acceptance of a person's family as they identify it, including my own right to include my original and adoptive families together in my own tree. Why did I have such a re...