All (!!) those times I quit college, my parents “knew” I should stay, but they didn’t know why, exactly. They knew it had to do with my future. They knew it had to do with giving me a label they were comfortable with: “college student”. They knew it had to do with my having a life that was mappable.

But I don’t think they knew that staying instead of quitting had to do with velcro. I am betting that my parents had read exactly .0005 books on attachment theory—and for very good reasons: primarily, no one was telling them that, as parents of three adopted children, they should be reading 5,000 books on the subject.

My parents didn’t know I had come to them a piece of velcro with many of my loops torn off after the birth mother tear; they didn’t know that even more loops had torn off when whomever or whomevers took care of me the first ten weeks of my life and then disappeared, and even more then tore off when eight months later we moved from the smells and sounds and sights of New York City and the Riverside Drive apartment to small town, suburban life in Massachusetts. By that point maybe I was half wrapping paper, half velcro.

Add to this a lifetime of quitting dance classes, swim classes, summer camps. Add to this pets dying and leaving one teacher for a new one the next year. Even more loops gone!! It’s hard to attach to a piece of wrapping paper! And it’s hard for wrapping paper to attach! That’s why people use tape when they wrap presents! The paper doesn’t stick!

And neither did I, as an adopted person.

I left and left and left and left before I could be left. I gave away precious possessions, money, pets even, before I could lose them. This gave me a sense of control, and also it let me fall into a familiar grief place of loss where I could remember who I was. I was the girl with the core of sadness I could not share with anyone because it stank of death and dirt and ugliness.

(I still do. It feels like who I am, but I’m working on staying, on sticking. It’s scary. Terrifying. It’s also exciting and thrilling and real. But that’s a topic for another post. A post on sticking.)

Adopted parents often think in terms of behaviors rather than in terms of loops and loop maintenance. What if everyone was aware that adopted people have a damaged and limited number of loops with which to connect to other people, places, and things? So, for example, if a parent buys a house and moves their family across town but then decides a year later to move again, perhaps the thinking process would be different if the “loop cost” were taken into consideration.

What exactly has my child attached to in this house, this neighborhood, this town? If you really pay attention, the list may go on for pages. If you have a compliant adoptee, which you probably don’t know if you do because you’ll just think you have an “easy kid”, the child may well tell you they don’t care about the house. They don’t care where you live. They will tell you they aren’t attached.

(If you hear that, you should call 911, is my non-professional opinion. You have a floater.)

Is it worth giving your adopted child a puppy if there is a chance in six months you will decide the puppy to whom your child has become attached is too much work and so you are going to give it to someone in another town?

How important is attachment, anyway? Well, ask any astronaut.

Get a group of adopted people together and ask if any of them feel like an alien, and see how many hands go up. Aliens are not attached to humanity. They are alien. Ask the same group if feeling like an alien makes them feel loved, powerful, safe, at home.

And then ask them about their attachments, about what matters to them, makes them feel part of something bigger. Keep asking.

Adopted people can be so confusing! You would think they would all be crazy desperate to attach to everyone and everything, and some are, but watch for the ones who say they are fine. Watch for the ones who push away. We do not do well alone in the world.

Even when it seems like the safest way to exist.