Stop weaponizing adoptees for political gain — Have you ever vented to a friend about how your parents’ divorce fucked you up, and the friend said something like, “at least you have a roof over your head” or “no one else I know is fucked up from divorce?” Probably not. Most people understand why adults divorce, and…

Silence doesn’t serve us — Okay well, in retrospect, the bottle of pills, the tablets of Tylenol poured out on the yellow formica kitchen table, swallowed slowly, methodically, one by one, was a little misguided. 16. So young, empty, so afraid. I wish I had words back then, that cold January day so long ago…

I’m not a doctor, a biochemist, a scientific professional of any sort. Just a 54-year-old woman here to tell you a story. This is not a how to and I’m not giving advice. That’s my disclaimer. Take from my words what you want, discard the rest. The typical woman spends…

Hate is harder when we see each other’s humanity — It was 1987, my freshman year at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The First Intifada had just begun. Young Arabs with keffiyehs around their necks stood at a long table near the cafeteria’s exit, a Palestinian flag hanging behind them. “Sign the petition! Free Palestine!” They terrified me…

In memory of the women who had no choice, turn despair into action. My daughter and I, side-by-side on the top bunk, cuddled under soft blankets, hidden by darkness. She was 7, in second grade. Her little brother, my son, was fast asleep on the bunk below us, so we…

How mine changed my life — It’s 1996, I’m 27, and my soon-to-be mother-in-law requests the time and place of my birth to have my astrological chart done. Sun sign, rising sign, are-you-good-enough-for-my-son sign. She is a stunning Brit with fiery red hair and an upper-crust accent that sends my shoulders back and my spine straight…

A human being is not a secret. I went to Paris to meet with my birthmother’s husband. He didn’t know about me. She took the secret of me to her grave. They had been married 23 years when she died, one day before my 27th birthday. She died before I…

Finding the courage to do more than just exist. — Today I will live. I will taste my coffee and the oat milk I foamed in the fancy foamer. I’ll taste the way sweetness gives way to bitterness and back and forth they go. I won’t just gulp it for the fuel it gives me, for the habit it sustains…

As an adoptee, I’m painfully aware that when money changes hands, humans become commodities — I sat hunched over my phone at a small table in the windowless basement of the clothing store where I worked, and watched the New York state Assembly pass a law allowing adoptees access to their original birth certificates (OBC). I sobbed. 2019. 51 years old. Finally. The simple, humanizing…