In Flourish today, some people were talking about not being truly seen by their adoptive family. And, subsequently, by friends, coworkers, and, finally, themselves. Often, adoptees don’t feel seen because they shelter in place, they withdraw, they turtle, they lie, they chameleon, they pretend, they don’t know.

How can you show the world who you are when you have no clue?

I thought about about the skeleton we had hanging out in massage school. His name was Seymour.

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I had an idea: what if adopted people got a picture of a skeleton and studied it until they were able to recognize the bones in the picture as the core of themselves, like a coat hanger from which their being hangs? What if they saw their skeleton as the Castle of Truth of their body?

Skin and muscle and fascia are slippery, changeable materials that are malleable, vulnerable to touch and opinion. People can see our skin. They can grab our arm and feel the heat or chill of flesh, the give of muscle and fascia. But bone, unless violated and broken, stays steady. Bone supports us, links us to ground and sky. Bone is personal, hidden, ours.

One reason anorexics are so startling is that they often seem to have changed the rules and let bone come front and center. Anorexics deny the flesh and what is left is the truth of bone which says soon I may die.

Bone plays hardball.

I feel like it’s time for adopted people to play hardball.

It’s time for us to be known, to come out of hiding, to take our own hands off our own mouths and tell and tell and tell the truth of our experiences.

I had an idea that I’d get a picture of a skeleton and list what I consider to be my core character traits to one side. I wanted to see me: bone and being: I am funny, boring, smart, stupid, kind, mean, generous, stingy—you get the idea. I’m confusing.

I would like to sit with this: the bones and the words and take myself in. It’s okay to be both and. It’s okay not to be easily understood. It’s okay to not be “good”. It’s okay to to “selfish”. It’s okay because it’s what I am sometimes and, as Byron Katie argues with The Work, you can’t argue with what is. But you can go into inquiry, ask questions, challenge ways of thinking, learn.

I thought I might share the picture and the words with my dad and see if he saw me the same way I did. Am I allowed to be mean in his view of me? Is all of me in his line of sight? We can look at these bones together, imagine they are my bones, bones that were not created by my father or my mother. My bones.

It could lead to a conversation.

I would have rather eaten a dead skunk when I was younger than share this kind of intimate information with my father (or mother if she were still alive). I hid parts of myself because I was ashamed or because I wanted them for myself or because I wasn’t sure it was okay to be myself. But now I’m not afraid. I’m just curious. What do you see, Dad? Do I know you? Do you know me?

And does it matter?

I think it does.