The Path of the Ellipsis -- An Adoptee Navigating Life Through Anger & Art -- Guest Post by Cristina Link

For most of my life, I had this terrible thumb-biting problem. I didn't just bite my nail or cuticle, but I bit the skin around it until it bled. Somedays, I bit it worse than others, but the nail never healed.

Adoption felt like that…biting my thumb until it bled, putting a Band-Aid on it, letting it heal for a day or two, and then doing it all over again, and feeling like I had to keep an ugly Band-Aid on it most of the time not to show the raw pain underneath it.

Figuring out my truth, how to express that truth, and my personal definition of adoption is a part of my journey that I didn’t realize I needed until my mid-thirties. Adoption, for me, came with a lot of unexplained pain and a world of support.

Adoption felt like an unknown hole in my body that was slowly peeling away the layers of my skin, exposing a raw, open wound and dripping blood onto the floor.

I know that sounds gruesome and a bit gnarly, but adoption sometimes felt like I was walking around with this hole, and no Band-Aid could help heal it.

Adoption was a loss that I couldn’t explain, and it came with my imagination trying to fill those gaps. Most of the time, it came with rage and anger that I couldn’t put words to, and it felt unfair. There was this feeling of missing something so profoundly I would fall into a depression I couldn’t explain or lash out in unhealthy, self-harming ways.

On the flip side of all the internal pain, adoption came with beautiful examples of female strength, feminism, and perseverance in my two badass mothers. It came with the unique family I was adopted into during a time when lesbians were unable to adopt. My personal experience with transracial and transnational adoption radiated with support on all levels, years of confusion, separation, and a unique connection with multiple mothers who paved the way so I could find my strength. My moms and I may not have always had the best relationship, and our family certainly had its moments of explosive arguments and misunderstandings. But still, I was always fully supported in my wild endeavors as a creative.

My two moms are my twin pillars. They have shown me what unconditional love feels like, even when I couldn’t feel it within myself.

But adoption still carried that blood-dripping hole in the middle of my gut that I couldn’t fully explore until I searched for my own truth. No one could find that truth for me…I had to set out to search for it myself.

All an adoptee wants is truth, and one day we might just be slapped in the face by the universe saying… “Hey, now is your time to go after that truth, or you won’t make it.”

For me, that was my 35th birthday. I was starting my second master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling and Art Therapy, and the universe knew I had to face some repressed truth to be the best counselor for adoptees I could be.

I realized I needed to go down some hard roads.

I needed to know where my birthmother was and search for my origin story.

I needed to know more about my culture, my heritage, and how my life began.

But there was more that was missing.

I want to see my original birth certificate as it is a part of the truth of my identity.

I want to know what happened in the first three months of my life.

I want to know who my birth father is.

I want to know what happened to my grandparents. Did I really look like Abuelo?

I want to know what happened with the adoption agency.

I want all my truth with no detail left out…

I want the world to stop making an adoptee feel bad for speaking their truth of pain.

I want someone to acknowledge that our first introduction to the world is painful and started with the loss of someone we were connected to for 9 months.

An adoptee deserves to know how their life started.

Without it, they don’t feel whole…without that truth, my identity took a hit and has cracked ever since.

I have been building up piece by piece, still with a cracked base.

We have been forced to water down our truth to make it more comfortable and digestible for others and doing this makes it harder on the adoptee.

That makes the anger boil inside me to a full-on internal rage.

The truth is I want to scream.

I’ve wanted to scream at the top of my lungs for longer than I can remember, and the only way to let it out is to write furiously and throw paint around.

I still have a long way to go to answer all my questions, and I acknowledge that many questions won’t be answered. But I am devoted to unfolding all the inner truth I can muster. Over the last 35 years, I have learned a lot about myself…and the biggest truth about who I am is that underneath all the dark clothes, punk rock, art, and anger, there is color bursting out of my soul. I am a woman dedicated to the people I love; I am loyal, hardworking, loving, and emotional. I am someone who wants to make the world slightly better in any way that I can. My truth lies in my colorful attitude, expressive paintings, writing my story, love for others, and my work.

Despite all the unknowns of my story of a transracial and transnational adoptee….

I have an inner truth that is MY colorful, artistic, and badass life force.

Connect with me on Instagram: @inner.link.artistry