Ep. 12 – Okay, Okay Already

I realize that much of what I felt was displaced rage, an unending scream, buried behind my silent, infant mask I assumed at birth. As an adoptee, I feel I have always had a life-long infection, a buried, festering sore, at the breaking point where identity and the self in relation to the world index, the nexus where I meet others. Bridging that chasm means having a vision of what is possible. The bridge must be precise, but the chasm is itself un-chart-able. Adoptees are all left, more or less, with this bridge to construct, on their own, from their side of the canyon.

Ep. 11 – Fatherhood

There is a phrase that I first encountered in Betty Jean Lifton’s book Journey of the Adopted Self, the term “genetic bewilderment” and “cumulative adoption trauma.” Becoming a father, meeting someone, finally, who looked like me, even if it took a few years to really become apparent, was a kind of anchor.