I want this class to be fun. I also want it to change your life.

The pursuit of perfection is a suckhole of terror. It’s like spitting into the wind that blows into your face and thinking things will go well.

This morning my friend Laura Foote sent me a drawing she did of a mouse singing a ball of pizza dough. Of course she did.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I got a raging private message from an adoptee on Facebook telling me that I am a pathetic freeloader and a big piece of crap.

I told my truth yesterday during a podcast. It was an opportunity I’d only dreamed of having.

Recently COVID has driven me (repeatedly) to Nordstrom Rack. COVID doesn’t have a car, so COVID leads me online, and, what I’ve found is that once you make that trip, online shows up everywhere you go online. Suddenly Nordstrom Rack is all over my Instagram and Facebook feed and filling my email box with things that were made, apparently, just for me.

Sometimes when I am with other adoptees we call those we aren’t adopted “civilians” or “normal people”. It’s nice to say things like this and not hear back, “But you aren’t any different. Being adopted doesn’t make you an outsider.”

Granted, mothers and daughters historically often fight about hair. But when I started to ask other female adoptees about their experience with their mothers and hair, the response was loud. “She cut my hair so short! She didn’t know what to do with it.” is something I heard again and again.

Judging from the responses to the meme I posted about hair on Instagram and Twitter, it looks like hair is a thing between adopted girls (and some boys, of course) and their mothers.

Erase, erase, we must erase. Erase her name, erase her heritage. Blank slate. Hurry hurry, she doesn’t matter—we matter.

When my mom was dying, I had some talking of my own to do. I had carried deep, deep shame since I was 22 for stealing from her in a premeditated and unloving way. I had betrayed her trust in me and then I had run away.

I am wondering how many adopted people believe they were relinquished by the mother because they, the baby that was given up, was ugly.