Why I (Can't) (Don't) (Won’t) Stop Writing about Adoption

Inevitably, I get the question: When, dear Anne, are you going to stop writing about adoption and move on to something…more you? Something bigger? Something more evolved? Something that lets you spread your wings? Something that is…more interesting? More universal?

You know how birds fly into windows? It’s a terrible noise, that thunk. People walk into windows, but not as often, I’m guessing, as birds fly into them. Why? Because we see the glass, the reflection, the overall structure of the building, and so we sidestep the thunk and the cut-up body, or, in the bird’s case, the broken neck.

To be a bird and to fly into glass! Oh! The deep shock and terrible grief! What? This air that feeds me, that holds me, that lets me swoop and dive has limits I can’t see? My life, the natural way I live it, is not as it appears? How do I know it’s okay to fly when at any moment I could slam into something that brings me to the ground, shocked or dead?

Adopted people never ask me when I’m going to stop writing about adoption because they understand what it is like to fly into glass. Many have asked me to keep writing about the effects of relinquishment and adoption for the same reason I need them to tell me in all honesty what their lives are like: when others talk about how relinquishment and adoption have affected their minds, bodies, and lives, it’s like someone put a sticker on a window or door and made the glass a little more visible, they give me a chance to see—Warning! Sticker alert! Veer left!

Non-adopted people don’t know what it’s like to be walking along your merry way and to all of a sudden slam into something you didn’t even know was there. Non-adopted people don’t know what it’s like to have a brain created in a bath of trauma, a special cocktail of trauma that was made of she went away before I was finished cooking and now I’m walking in a world with skin and a brain that is half-baked, skin and a brain that may appear normal, but that cause me so many problems.

My friend said, Because you’re a writer, I’m wondering what would call to you to write about it if you didn’t have this niche? What, she said, would you do if you knew you were safe?

The definition of niche is a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment and a shallow recess, especially one in a wall to display a statue or other ornament.

I love my friend very much, and I know that she worries about me. I know she wants the best for me. I know that reading this might be a tiny bit painful for her, but I want her to know this is not me standing in judgement of anything she said. When people talk to me honestly of their impressions of what I’m doing as an adoptee, I get an ever-clearer picture of what might be at the heart of this real current-day divide between those who were adopted and those who weren’t.

Divides are fun when it looks like, Here: I’ll cut this piece of cake in two so we can share it, but when it is a social divide, an us and them, it is painful and alienating and not productive and lonely.

Here’s the thing: being relinquished and adopted is not a niche unless being hearing impaired is also a niche. It’s a state of being. Those things are all states of being. My brain and body exist and react in certain ways (read The Body Keeps the Score if you want specifics) because of early trauma, and you can ask me to grow out of these ways or to forget about them, and I understand: I WANT TO FORGET ABOUT THEM!

But here’s the truth: yesterday I left Santa Cruz and my daughter left to go back home and I lost it. In her new memoir, Face It, Debbie Harry (Blondie) wrote about how hard it was for her to separate from her bandmates each time they arrived home. She was adopted, and so this separation anxiety is par for the course. It’s like, duh. Only not, because the world does not know the vocabulary of relinquishment and adoption, the list of reactionary behaviors, feelings, physical symptoms, etc. etc. etc. etc.

I cried for three hours yesterday and felt like my world was falling apart. This is one reason I don’t have a “normal” job. I need room to lose it because the “losing its” are unpredictable and unburyable. The “losing its” often make no sense to me or to those around me. I was just visiting Santa Cruz, after all, and I was traveling to a place I loved just as much. My daughter was leaving happy, and we’d had a great visit. It was time for her to go do her stuff and for me to do mine. The “losing it” was a major pain in the ass. I had stuff I wanted to do, but instead I had to cry.

If I knew I were safe, I’d be someone else or I’d be on drugs. So what I’d do if I felt safe is that I would live your life. Anyone’s life. It doesn’t matter. The point is that it would not be my life. Not feeling safe goes hand-in-hand with having a traumatized brain, and since doctors are not, as far as I can see, making it a high priority to figure out how to neurologically re-wire the brains and nervous systems of orphans and adoptees, I’m stuck with the brain I have until I’m able to crack the code. (I want to be relaxed! I want to feel safe! I want to believe I am loved! I’m trying! I’m trying!)

I’m writing about adoption because I’m trying to understand myself so I can better go out into the world and be of use.

The end.

For now.