We do. This occurred to me yesterday for the first time really.
I was having a discussion about compromise with a large powerful religious organization who is anti-adoptee rights to our own personal information.
I started in my normal calm way of thinking and discussing this matter. I was going to point out that we are not “partners” in this with the Catholics, you know this isn’t an agreement that we made with them and we have to give a little and they have to give a little . We are not partners with a common goal. We don’t have to be fair or consider them. ( I realize that those dealing with them probably have a very different take on their motivations) but that in fact we are a class of people that have been discriminated against.
So instead of making this seasoned reasoned argument, I said instead something to the effect of “Fcuk Compromise, we deserve a goddammed apology” and then it didn’t stand out enough so I added a 70 point font.
It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen when I was done.
It made me wonder though, why aren’t we asking for this?
Why are we playing so nice with the specious argument of “birth mother” privacy. What a crock that is. If anyone is so naive to believe in it. Trust me no other laws are written to protect the weak. Ever read employment law? The lawmakers are influenced by money and power not the disenfranchised.
How ridiculous, and please while I do have sympathy for any person who has difficulties in their lives, and that would be pretty much anyone– I am not the beast of that burden.
There really is no nexus between whatever trauma my mother experienced in her life and my identity. That is an invention to protect agencies and attorneys. Otherwise why is where I was fostered protected under the guise of my mother’s privacy?
Most people experience trauma in their lives, one of my good friends super-genius dad was killed by the CIA when she was 8. It turned her idyllic privileged world on its ear. Where is the government intervention for her protecting her from her own life? What about soldiers who have combat-shock? Are they not allowed to contact each other by government order when they return home? After all they may engender difficult memories.
Is there any evidence in any other arena that suggests that good mental health results from lying about one’s life? This flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
Are we willing to let state legislators make decisions about our emotional well-being, personal life, and privacy? Why are they considered qualified?
Adoptees as a class have been discriminated through no self-selected behavior. We have been wronged, stigmatized. We have been burdened with a shame that doesn’t belong to us.
I want to say, dear Catholic Church, take your shame, shove it up in your ass and rub it around a little. I am not the cover for your sins.
Get out of the way, give me my own birth certificate and a very public apology from the state of California. I deserve it.
In other news I have recently discovered early Adam Ant is grossly underrated, at least by me.
I noticed they are having a new carnival at Grown in my Heart. I have read many of the entries. I have become kind of fascinated in spite of myself on the different entries, for the different topics.
If for nothing else, it demonstrates how differently people can see the same situation.
The latest is your favorite “adoption picture”. My first response is what?
Adoption picture?
What is an adoption picture?
I have pictures of my ancestors, I have pictures of my adopted ancestors, who influenced me as well. Their customs, personalities, heritage made an influence on my sense of self and how I was raised. In a lot of ways culturally, I have some claim to them in how my personality was shaped.
Other than that, I have pictures of my sisters, my brothers, my mothers and fathers.
I have a picture of my mother as a teenager not long before she conceived me looking very unhappy. I have pictures of my amom running through the yard as teenager with her baby nephew on her back. I have pictures of me in frilly pink dresses with rosy cheeks playing with a truck. The dresses were my choice, never forced on me, and the trucks were my choice too.
I have pictures of my first car, pictures of me as a pouty teenager. Pictures of my boyfriends, who I also adopted. Pictures of me in girl scout uniforms, pictures of birthday parties and fantastic Christmases. Pictures of me staring in wonder at some trifle, pictures of me looking pensive. Pictures of me looking blurry, pictures of me looking like Suzie-Chapstick. Lots of pictures of me looking very happy. Pictures of my wedding, pictures of my baby.
Professional well-done pictures of my adoptive family looking fab and stylish and oh so thin. Pictures in Hawaii, on ski slopes, on our frequent vacations.
I think you are *ahem* getting the picture. Sorry, love bad puns.
Adoption isn’t really a before and after for me.
I did have one picture that was really an adoption picture, or maybe it was three, or two, or I don’t quite remember. Pictures that my mother had sent me right in the very beginning of our relationship.
I remember my grandmother telling me, “oh your mother carried your picture around for years” as if I would find that comforting, and maybe on some level I did.
Comfort wasn’t the only feeling that accompanied that bit of information though. It also stung, as if I should be grateful that I mattered at all, or surprised, or maybe I am just not comfortable enough to know exactly what shot through my body when I was told that.
I see I am avoiding the other picture (s). There was a picture or pictures I was given of brand-new baby me. I am surprised how hard this is to write about.
Okay, little baby me. If it was really me, which I have doubted that it might not just be some other random lucky chosen baby—I looked a lot like Tomtom.
My mother refused to sign her TPR unless she saw me one more time. So she saw me, or at least they told her it was me. Who knows? My grandmother was with her, I guess my grandfather went to work like any other day.
I was told by my mother they were polaroids, that a special camera had been purchased so that no pesky film developers would be aware of the shame of my birth. That would have been truly awful.
The pictures I received didn’t look like polaroids perhaps they were copies. I kind of hope so, not that I would necessarily ever want to see them again. My mother’s face is not in them, an added precaution. Her long hair is, over my baby face.
Even after all these years thinking about the pictures upsets me.
Pictures of the most painful event in my life.
I didn’t want them, I didn’t want the pictures of my mother giving me away to an agency.
I suppose if I was a different person I could see that they were the only pictures of us together, before we were separated.
The reality is though, that we were already separated, albeit not legally. I was in foster care, if that was me or not me. There was some lady handling me, some strangers giving in to my mother’s demand even though they said it was against her interest.
I didn’t look at them with rose colored glasses.
I looked at them for what they were. A mother, a young mother being cowed into signing away her baby. Me. Me losing my identity, my connection, my me-ness.
The biggest horror-show of my life caught on film. Whatever good things and bad things followed, nothing has matched that so far, and I pray nothing will top it.
When I was 22 I burned them. It made her upset. It was the 90s though and there was this theory going about that if you burned something it would release the negative energy or whatnot.
Doesn’t work if you are curious. At the same time am kind of grateful that I burned them, along with my OBC, six-point inspection et al. I would hate for them to be around to pull out and torture myself at low moments with.
‘I took notes in the hospital while he was in ICU figuring I could write an article’
‘I had no maternal feelings and tried to intellectualize motherhood’
Oh and the beeeeeeeeyoooootiful smug, precious, ‘I am a writer an intellectual and all and somehow completely missed that tabula rasa is centuries out dated concept, the baby wasn’t a lump of clay after all–who knew?”
The other distubing thing is I have more than likely been. nice. to. her. face.
I have to get my parking tickets punched with their purple numbers and letters all the time. It is kind of a pain in the neck but when that black and white striped bar lifts and you get out for free, it always gives me a bit of a thrill.
I know, I am easy to pleasy.
It doesn’t always work though, the other night after going to the market I ended up in a frustration that cost me $5.00 to go to my grocery store for about 5 minutes. It was more expensive than those sex lines that are advertised on T.V. Grrrr.
About an hour later, I was talking to some adoptees on line regarding fogged-up adoptees. How they can be annoying and you know they don’t annoy me. Really, not in the least I am not swayed, impressed, concerned with them. There is nothing, no influence they can have over me.
Without thinking about it, I said, that I have no opinion about them, they don’t annoy me because no one can threaten my experience again, I am too validated. No one was talking about being threatened by them, and later I thought maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I realized I went there so quickly because I used to be threatened by them.
I mean most adoptees like myself are basically gaslighted their whole lives. We are told we are nuts, ahem *deluded* we must be defective for feeling the way we do ad nauseum. Hairdresser’s cousins come pouring out of the woodwork wielding hot curling irons and fake smiles, like a Greek Chorus singing “we love being given away and adopted we just wish it would happen more often.”
I can no longer be intimidated by these happy adopted cousins, they have lost their sparkle for me. I am neither threatened or even mildly interested. I don’t feel pity or annoyance. I just feel my attention being pulled elsewhere.
Having this blog has changed me in ways, I never thought possible. Talking to other adoptees, even though we are all different has been invaluable. A friend recently commented to me that she had seen a huge change in me the last couple of years. A friend that doesn’t even know I am adopted.
“You used to get really torn up when you talked about your mother, you used to be a lot more vulnerable” It made me squirm a bit. I didn’t say that I am free of soft-spots or flaws, am not. Still progress is relief.
I was talking to someone close to me recently and she started to tell me what sounded to my ears like a big fib. It was being told in response to something I said. Kind of a defensive “me too” including others. I didn’t buy it. It sounded completely implausible.
She later admitted she was inventing. I thought about it, I am of the belief that usually people who lie have a reason to lie, people warming themselves with denial are protecting themselves from what they simply can’t face.
I don’t have to deal with that, I don’t have to fool myself.
I am not perfect, have more than my share of flaws, but I don’t have to pretend about this.
She admitted that she struggles with self-esteem issues, and made the comment that everyone does.
“No, not everyone does, lots of people don’t. I don’t.”
Which I can only hope opened a door for her. As much as I have struggled with adoption there was always a core of self-esteem and self-respect that seemed to just come with my body.
I think I just inherited it from my father who is fond of exclaiming “My name is Joy’s Dad, and nobody fucks with me, man”
While I find his self-expression juvenile, I understand the sentiment. It crashes out of me like a wave at times. It can make other people very uncomfortable because its true not everyone feels strong enough.
I can’t help those people though, and there is no denying that the bar has been raised for me and I am free to go.
I have always identified with the fool and the rushing in that expression.
We did a lot of things with our company, so it is not just like we had this one conversation about my personal adoption. After the initial explanation about our current situation and the difficulties it is fraught with my company decided to help me out by educating me about the bright side of my adoption.
It is so interesting when you talk about adoption. There was so much that I didn’t say that they seemed to have perceived me as saying. I see this on line all the time. For a lot of people if you say anything except exaggerated gratitude and strange platitudes the implication is that you are saying you wish your adoption never happened, that it was a total wash and you don’t appreciate anything about your life.
Naturally since they care about me, they didn’t want me to see my life as a wasteland so they decided to school me. Again these people have known me pretty much my whole life. They knew me when I met my mother and I told them about it. I believe they met and liked my father. I know there was at least one Christmas where they took me to my father’s house for a visit.
Their first tract was telling me to be thankful for my son who would have never been born if I wasn’t adopted. “You don’t know that” I responded. Sweetheart reiterated what I said, “You don’t know that”
This went on for just a brief while. I got the abortion argument thrown in for good measure, then I was asked if I could not see ‘anything’ good coming from my adoption.
My brow furrowed, sometimes my body busts out with comments that bypass my mind, and sometimes I am glad for my body’s wisdom. My mind started to say, ‘ you are putting words in my mouth, I never said that.’ Suddenly, I heard my mouth fairly calmly declare, “fuck-you, I am not sitting here listening to this shit anymore.” I got up and went outside to have a cigarette and cool my jets.
Which I did, it didn’t take long.
I rejoined the party. We were having a glad and gay time, the woman though, she is an inquisitive curious one that sometimes doesn’t know when to quit. What can I say, ya gotta have sympathy for a sister in that way. She starts to let me know that other people have problems too. Which doesn’t get to me, despite the fact that I have never exhibited any behavior that suggests otherwise. Despite the fact that I have been very supportive to her through some real tragedies of her own, the loss of a child, the loss of a brother to addiction.
Did she think I didn’t take her sorrow seriously? I don’t push it because I recognize the line of thinking. If you have any difficulty with adoption, you believe you are the only person who has ever had any difficulty in life. This is a common and bizarre theme. “You know bio families have problems too” Yes, we know that. How could adoptees not know that? If our bio familes hadn’t had difficulties we wouldn’t be adopted for feck’s sake Seamus! (my favorite Stewie expression).
That doesn’t discount the very peculiar difficulties of being adopted. Is there any other situation where people feel compelled to say such absurdities?
If someone tells you their wife left them for the pool-boy, do you say, “Pool-boys have their problems too?” or “That sucks, I’m sorry, if you want to talk about it I’ve got an ear?” I mean honestly.
I indulge her I talk a bit about sealed records, reform, etc. Then she confronts me with, “Well if you feel this strongly about these things, why don’t you DO something about it instead of ‘wallow’ in it”
This time my head is spinning and my mouth starts to sputter. The beginnings of sentences come out, ‘run a forum, organize a national protest, found a…” but then my body and my mind cut me off. Since it worked so well the first time, I repeat, “Again, I am not going to sit here and listen to this shit, you don’t know what I do, you forgot to ask” and spin up and out of my chair.
My sweetheart says cooly, “You have no idea what she has been through” Which shocks me. My sweetheart reminds me a lot of John Stewart only funnier, quicker, and a bit more subtle. Granted he is not on T.V. and maybe that is why John Stewart delivers on the heavy side.
This time he isn’t like that though. He doesn’t joke to diffuse the situation. He hates talking about adoption and most of our discussion around it comes in the form of him sighing “great” when an obvious trigger is delivered to me, or even goading me by saying the thinks this video is “cute”
He got Tomtom to go along with him…:P
But when it really mattered to me, although I would have been okay without his support. He who hates the drama of adoption was there calmly, completely supportive of my downright surliness. I have never talked to these people like that before in my life either. I am too adroit and cagey in real life to come off with such a lack of argument, a lack of caring whether or not they understood my side.
I have done it on line to be sure. I have had people want to argue their point on my blog APs and NMs, with the purpose of denying my experience or having me perform gymnastic feats to get them to maybe consider my point of view and I have said, “bug-off, I don’t have to have your approval, you don’t have to approve of me or like or understand me. This blog isn’t for you, wanker”
I haven’t done it in real life, well granted I don’t talk about it much in real life. Still I have never done that. My mind told me I wasn’t polite, there was a better way to handle it, I could have been more sensitive.
My body said, “no way, that felt good goddammit, that felt excellent. I will not be a party to degrading my experience or toadying up to them just because I love them.”
They needed to step-off and I made that as clear as possible. I am not going to console them or bouy them up regarding my adoption shit. They had better learn to respect it if they want to talk to me about it.
Part of what got my back up, is this woman has known my me for nearly the entirety of my life. When have I ever sat and wallowed? My personality has always leaned toward action. I was the kind of kid that jumped in the swimming pool first, I was a teen mom and finished college to get three ridiculous degrees, for the most part on my own, have been involved in a lot of political action, organizations, volunteer work, creative projects including literally building a freakin’ school and now she is suggesting I am just a lay about crying about my birth certificate.
I know others have done more, but scratch your average adoptee and I am no slouch in the “up with adoptees” movement.
Most of all, even though I could certainly work on my delivery, it made me feel free and secure in myself that I didn’t need to justify or apologize for my experience to them. The only way I can describe it is the ability to stand strongly on my own two feet for myself. I wasn’t going to be knocked over or cowed. Even if that meant being impolite.
It can’t have been to hard on them, I got an enthusiastic thank you card for a fabulous time, fabulous was underlined twice. They are teh awesome.
My sweetheart’s unblushing support was just an added bonus.
It made me think for the millionth time, I don’t give him enough credit.
We had company again. This time it was company that I have been very close to, since I was about 14. Shirt-tail relatives if you will. Important people in my life.
They had somehow never seen the painting before. Or should I say the copy of the the painting to be accurate. Let’s not forget it was a copy that my mother refused to give me.
It makes me wince even now. The first thing I asked her for after what 15 years? A sentimental copy, “NO!” what if my other daughter wants it? She will still get it— Unbelievable to me really, I so cannot relate. I cried. I cried for like three days. My mother was completely unmoved. “I love you” she would say.
Hmmmmmmm.
Well she showed me who was boss. I hope that was very satisfying for her because I paid a rather high price.
So anyway, they were instantly drawn to the painting and wanted to know why I had a painting of me dressed up like a sailor-nun.
That is how much the painting looks like me, people assume it is me. People who know me well. It causes people to gasp and put their hands over their mouth when I tell them it is not me.
They ask if that is what my mom looks like too. “No” I say and pause, “she thinks it does, or she has said that anyway. Do you think it looks like her?” I turn to my sweetheart. “No, not at all” he answers.
So the question that follows is, “What does your mom look like?”
I am surprised that they have never seen her. Words fail me, “Well she has a really big head” I start. Which sounds retarded. I mean her head isn’t really that big, like you don’t look at her and say, “now there is a big-headed woman” it is just bigger than mine.
“She’s dark” I say, “she’s all brown” I mean you can tell she is my mom, we have the same feet, only hers are brown and a bit bigger. I have little feet. Not as little as some people, but small enough to get commented frequently on that I have the “feet of a baby” which is weird. Tomtom does too. Lol.
Maybe I have a picture, I suggest. I do not keep my pictures well. I have a few albums but most are just thrown in a boxes and ignored until one day I come over and spill a cup of coffee on them and walk away.
I find one of my grandparents wedding day. She looks a lot like her, I say pointing to my grandmother.
I keep looking, “here are my brother and sister at Christmas” I hand the woman a picture/card marked 1997. They are both holding teddy bears from a department store that seems odd to me. They are sitting on either side of my grandfather who is infirm at that point. It is taken in my mother’s house. I never visited that house. I have never visited most of my mother’s houses. I was never invited.
I can see pictures of people important to my mother in the shelves behind my relatives. A weird picture of my mother’s face looming incredibly large over what looks like my brother and sister in the lower left. I remember that style. I have one on my agrandparents like that. I used to think it was hysterical because my grandfather looked like a giant floating ghost.
Where is your family now?
Erm. I sigh. This is not going to go well at all I can already tell.
Around. I make a gesture around the room as if they could be in any one of these many directions. Which is actually kind of true.
They continue to look at me. “Well my sister lives here” They perk up at that imagining I have a relationship with my sister, imagining they could meet her.
“we don’t speak though”
Why not they want to know.
“Well my mother’s husband never accepted me because he didn’t want step-children. So I was never allowed to know them, they grew up in a house where I was a secret, a source of contention between their parents, and now it is just weird”
Both these people ARE step-parents. They make faces, disapproving ones.
“That’s not right” they declare.
I laugh, “the funny thing is he claims he teaches people how to be more loving” I laugh that black kind of unhappy laugh that I hate to hear people laugh.
It is not funny, it is not right, but it is not my choice. I had no power.
I look down at the photo/chirstmas card again. My mom used to always send me things like that. Or form letter Christmas cards.
I am sorry that I had to experience that. Regardless of her reasoning, however many mothers are going to read this and then worry me that I don’t understand what she went through.
They are right, I don’t understand. I don’t share those values. I don’t treat my children or other people’s children like that under any circumstance.
I have done a lot of things I am not proud of in my life, but I have never treated anyone like that. Especially not someone who was a child to me. Un hunh.
Stay tuned for part two when my company decides to lecture and learn me on adoption and how that works out for them.
Oh and P.S. the really funny thing is that my sister WILL get the copy of the painting, and it looks like ME. Maybe she won’t want it after all…lol
After seeing my mom’s last post where talks about her expectations with my adoptive parents.
When you give your baby away for adoption, at least in the state of California. You are not, NOT, giving your baby to the adoptive parents.
You are not entering into a contract with the adoptive parents.
You are giving your child away to the state. If things go awry, you have no rights. T. has a post up about my particular agency and the pride they took in quality assurance. I have seen those papers about my baby self and they are chilling.
I wasn’t completely healthy when I was born, there was a big worry.
Adoption is a huge gamble. I know some people need to take it, but it needs to be presented for what it is, a huge gamble.
I am not a big “what if” person. That is just not something I can relate to. Often I see people condemning “what if” scenarios as crazy-making. I don’t condemn, because frankly whenever I do indulge in scenarios not lived I get a lot of insight rather than frustration.
Sometimes I just get more questions, and I am partial to questions.
I remember when I was first in reunion all those years ago, and I was still in a phase of being open about adoption with my friends were real kids, they would ask, “What if your mom had raised you?” with a ton of curiosity. My answer was always the same, “But she didn’t”. I couldn’t relate to going down a path that was so irrelevant in my mind. I was having a hard enough time dealing with what did happen. There was no room in my mind for what might have happened.
I have had a really intense work week, that involved lots of meetings. Meetings with really excited people. People who feel like they have been cheated, people who feel accused, people with a lot of emotional needs, even though in theory– my work is supposed to be absent of emotion. Practice-theory-practice-theory always runs through my brain, they seem to be such divorced realities.
I feel like I have sat through an incredible amount of meetings in this last week, listening to people with their emo problems only to respond like a robot, “But that is irrelevant” Which always blows my mind because I am sitting there getting paid to say, “that is irrelevant” like they couldn’t come up with that themselves. Which I guess they can’t and maybe its not, at least to them. Legally, yes, emotionally, no.
So one of the things I started thinking about on my many drives home, “what if I had been kinder to my mother when I met her? How would our relationship be different today?”
My mother sees a lot of me in Issy. I think this has been misunderstood by my adoptee friends that know of the connection she makes. She is quite aware of the differences between Issy and me, but there is a commonality, that I at least think is accurate.
I mean there are a lot of adoptees, at least on line that talk about their longing for their mother, their romance with her, putting her on a pedestal. Issy and I, enlighten me if I am wrong Issy, were more like, “Wait just a minute here lady, didn’t you leave me in a hospital by myself at my most vulnerable hour?”
We, Issy and I, were/are self-protective. I am not sure that is a bad thing.
But now my What if, what if I wasn’t like that?
What if I came into reunion with a softer, more open heart? On the other hand, what if I came into reunion needier and more demanding?
I never thought my mother could heal me. In our first meeting, one of the things I asserted, in explaining my life and the troubles, which were impressive, real honest to goodness troubles. I said that I didn’t believe you could trick-out someone’s destiny. I blamed my troubles on my fate vs. my adoption. Maybe I was right? Who knows?
I never thought my life would have been trouble free had my mother kept me. I don’t think that now. I think life per se is a lot of trouble. I am glad to have the trouble of life, that is true.
What if I had been less aloof and more caring, what if I had understood her position more than I did? What if I had let her touch me? As an older woman, older at least than I was when I met her, and I was all prickly-pear–what would have happened then?
My mind goes into two distinct places.
The first, the most self-protective, says your mother didn’t have any support, in fact she had anti-support. She created in her life the same situation that was true of my birth. Her life didn’t support me in it. Her husband said, “no step-children” He didn’t say, “my God, how can I help you?” Not that I want to minimize how hard this can be on spouses.
It is.
Mine basically did the same thing, but my reaction was “fuck off”
The epicenter of this disaster was my mom and me though. I wouldn’t accept the lack of support, it pissed me off. Of course I was never abandonded while pregnant, so I didn’t have that frame of reference.
So what if I had allowed myself to be vulnerable and loving just to get absolutely shattered by the reality of her situaton? Would I have survived? I don’t know.
As it was, I was self-protective, aloof.
What if I wasn’t? What if I was kind, what if I believed her story? What if I hugged her when I saw her, what if I was willing to give more than a handshake?
Well that would have been very challenging given what she said to me, given her attitude. Of course that is me, my personality interpreting that. Maybe I shouldn’t blame myself so much.
I know that some natural mothers consider me abusive, because I don’t see things from her perspective as much as they do. I know that those women don’t consider their child’s point of view. They call their children names and want to be nurtured by their children.
My mother is not of that extreme.
Perhaps, if I had been more kind, we would have a better relationship today. Perhaps a warm embrace would have strengthened her. She could have had more of a basis to relate to all those that she loved that were anti-me. She could have felt more secure, more loved.
She could have rejected the bullshit that she was not good enough.
Perhaps.
All I know, is that after thinking this through, with all the many outcomes that could happen—I am more interested in being kind to my mom. That underneath all the tremendous hurt and it is profound. I will never discount the tremendous hurt that I experienced. Ever.
Underneath my hurt is love. I want my mom. And this doesn’t mean I reject my adoptive mom, I love her too. I have also been reading Dawn’s blog, called, “this woman’s work” and her adopted daughter claims at one point that she would like to chop up her sibling into the ravioli, the irony of course is we adoptees are the ones chopped up and put into the ravioli, it is our identities, hearts, souls that are divided and denied to ourselves.
Many people are doing the circus or whatever its called about adoption.
How they were “touched” hmmmm, yes. I was touched so to speak, in a place where no one was supposed to touch me as a very little child.
So here goes:
1. You are not responsible for all the parents in your life’s feelings. They have problems, they are going to involve you in, but they need to take care of themselves. Don’t try to heal them.
2. Your feelings are legitimate. It doesn’t matter if all adoptees feel the way you do or no adoptees feel the way you do. You have every right to experience your own feelings without being invalidated by your family. They will do this, all of them. You have no allies here. Don’t risk it.
3. You were abandoned, but you are not being abandoned right now. You can never be abandoned as a newborn again, of course you thought you were in a life or death situation, you were. That isn’t happening anymore. You are a capable person now who has enough resources to take care of herself. No matter who abandons you now, you will be alright. Remember that in all your relationships.
4. Your birthday is going to suck. Don’t even try, you don’t have to partcipate the bizarre weirdness of celeberating the anniversary of the worst day of your life every year. It is okay to skip it.
5. You need the support of people like you, seek them out. People with your interests your likes, your prediclictions. They exist and you will love them when you find them.
6. This is going to impact every aspect of your life, but don’t take it out on others. Realize where your destructive behavior stems from and withdraw when you have to, but don’t lash out and don’t abandon your responsibilities. This will cause more problems than it solves.
7. Art makes every day life bearable when times are tough and trancsendent when its good.
8. You have as much right to be here as any cricket, star or tree, don’t let anyone talk you out of that—they will try.
9. Your mother who gave you away, and your mother who took you in, neither of them are going to be able to handle this. I can’t overemphasize the self-protection thing here.
10. Your ability to love is going to save your life. Always remember there is much more reward in loving than being loved.
This mom has had enough
I hope she prevails. It is about time someone stood up to this “m’kay thanks for teh baybee, bai” routine that happens so often.
